Look at Charles' MIcrosoft Word version superimposed on the "memo" at LGF http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526_Bush_Guard_Documents-_Forged

It is clearly Times New Roman on Microsoft Word with default tab settings and margins. It would be very difficult to create a document in any other format or with any other font that would match up this well.

Good stuff Bill... keep us updated... I would love to see this 'document' blow up in their face.

The combination of the "th" superscript AND the proportional font might be enough to eliminate all possible typewriters of the time.

Also rather suspicious in addition to the default Word tabs and mrgins, is that there is, for the documents I've looked at, a space in between the # and the "th" where it is not superscripted - which is what you have to do in Word to have it not auto-correct to the superscript.

Blogs rule. Nice work, Bill.

Top shelf work. What are the odds alone of the line breaks lining up perfectly with the default word settings?

I believe the proper term is: "Slam. Dunk. All your bass is mine."

I hope you have sent this report to every media outlet that you can find.

Major issues are raised if indeed these are forgeries......

It is easy enough to correct the superscripted 'th' in a Word program, but it does require some attention to detail. That easily explains why the forger caught a couple of them but missed one.

I think the apostrophe is defining. It is curved, which to my notion is never on typewriters regardless of serif or sans serif

EVERYONE should start calling local CBS TV stations, especially those in states where the President is most popular, to demand that they read this website and conduct their own investigation independent of CBS HQ. Make the local stations pay for this smear job, and CBS will be ruined.

Bill you rock! I wasn't one bit surprised that you tracked down a forensic expert annd picked his brain, just the kind of thing I like about INDC Journal.

Per your update, I don't think CBS was duped. Even to my sort of untrained eye (I've worked with computer word processing and type writers for the past 25 years) those documents looked wrong right off the bat. The don't even _look_ like typewritten documents. They don't pass the initial smell test.

If they were duped, they were duped willingly at the very least.

Should that be PHILLIP Bouffard rather than PETER?

I can google up a forensic expert in Lake County named PHILLIP (who works for a guy named Charles Coulson, interestingly enough...) but the only PETER Bouffard I can find online is a guitar expert. Which is a nice thing to be but does not make him qualified to offer an opinion about typefaces.

Just double checking. The "Coulson" that Phillip Bouffard works for is a Charles E (like, "ECHO") Coulson.

Nixon's Charles Coulson was, it turns out, a Charles W (like, "WHISKEY") Coulson.

So they might be different people.

But then, so might PETER and PHILLIP.

Welcome back, Bill! Glad you're back on the case, nailing the bad guys.

> (peapies)

If you're referring to the May 4, 1972 memo, what apostrophe?

This Lt.Colonel Killian seemed to be a pretty proficent typesetter decades ahead of his time.

Perhaps Bill Gates owes his estate royalties since MS-Word seems to so closely emulate his setup.

There's no "i" in team, and there's no "u" in (Nixon's) Colson.

Another thing... if this document is from private files, why was it copied and recopied so as to make such a crummy looking print? Wouldn't we be looking at a cleaner copy... maybe only copied once .. if it were truly from a private file? Or are we looking at a forger's attempt to make sure it looks like it's an "old" document? Does anyone make copies of copies of his private files?? If so, why?

This is great fact checking. Bravo
It raises the question again, who was CBS's expert, and why didn't they catch this?

Real question is how CBS reacts now. My guess is denial and viscious attacks on the blogosphere. In other words the usual when they are shown up by the new media. If Rather has the slightest amount of journalistic integrity (or pride) left, he'll burn this lying source into the ground.

As someone wiser than I once said: 'A source lies to you, you burn them. Period.'

Using a downloaded TrueType Typewriter font, I was able to mimic those memos in Word. I then added some underlining and speckling in Photoshop. The results are here

Mark: Of course CBS will deny and smear. That's whay we have to call LOCAL STATIONS and make them decide if they will put their credibility on the line. They can call local forensic experts as easily as we can.

In so many ways bloggers are better and more diligent reporters than professional reporters. They actually seem to want to get to the truth. Their interest does not lie in circulation numbers or selling ad space. This is great stuff.

There won't be a denial or smear, at least not immediately. Instead, MSM will quietly ignore the story.

The line breaks line up exactly in MS Word using Times New Roman 11 point font and a 2 inch left margin. I typed the 19 May 1972 document into MS Word and it lines up exactly.

I will post the MS .doc file if anyone will tell me how to do it.

I sent the link to my local CBS six o'clock newscaster/anchor. We'll see what happens.

Look, I'm a Kerry supporter but these are badly faked documents.

Who the @$%##$^ gave CBS these documents????

"I sent the link to my local CBS six o'clock newscaster/anchor. We'll see what happens."

Nothing. Locals take their marching orders from network. You're more likely to see this story on the frontpage of the NYT than a local affiliate covering it, particularly CBS.

Drudge just posted Power Line's blog on the subject, top of his page. Hopefully INDC is soon to follow

Something else bothers me. In one of the documents, the purported LTC Killian says something like "...report not later than (NLT) blah blah blah." At least in the Army, we wouldn't do that. EVERYBODY knows what NLT is, and in a semi-formal memo that's all they'd use.

Uh, at least some of the analysis is off.

Fonts from that time clearly show closed number '4' with a foot.

EG:
http://www.selectric.org/selectric/fonts/bookface72.gif As an example.

Many IBM typewriters of the time could type proportionally, and many even had font size differences and superscript capacity.

Now, these docs might be fake, sure. But this analysis doesn't quite do it.

Well, the 4 convinces me, because I seem to remember that typewriters used the open 4 so that they would strike better.

Of course, when you can type the document into the latest version of Microsoft Word and get an exact copy...

Boy, when you come back, you certainly do come back! Thank you very much for your impressive contribution to this story!

All the best,

Paul (in DC)

There are two logical ways to clear this up:

1) If legit, these documents would have typed by an in-house secretary. Is she still alive? Does she remember the documents in question? What model typewriter was she using at the time?

2) The military keeps records on EVERYTHING, especially supplies and inventory. If this magical IBM typewriter was being used in that office in 1972, an offical record should reflect that fact. Dig it up.

These "memos" bear no resemblance to type-written documents at all. Who at CBS could have been so stupid as to fall for this? Score another one for Karl Rove. He played the media like the patsies they are. The only problem for the Bush campaign is that they probably didn't count on the forgeries being detected this quickly, I assume they wanted this story to percolate a little before using it to expose the media as frauds. In any case, I'm sure the media will never dare mention Bush's National Guard "service" again so Bush wins.

"In any case, I'm sure the media will never dare mention Bush's National Guard "service" again so Bush wins."

Wanna bet? :)

Of course, when you can type the document into the latest version of Microsoft Word and get an exact copy...

Ahh, but they don't.
See discussion here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/9/153213/0277

Fonts from that time clearly show closed number '4' with a foot.
So now try finding a closed '4' without a foot (like Times New Roman and the in the document in question).

What -

I forwarded your link to Dr. bouffard for rebuttal.

He's really a big shot in this area, so we'll see what he says.

Bill

Bill, I gotta say, that's a really nice piece of work. You've done a great service here, and impressed a lot of people. I hope you are feeling justifiably proud of yourself. Really well done.

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet. One of the "memos" has Bush's rank as "1st Lt." I was an army officer from 1969-74. I am certain that by 1970 at latest, the DoD had adopted the 3-letter format for all ranks in all branches (2LT, 1LT, CPT, MAJ, LTC, COL, etc.). Can't believe that an officer or clerk even in an ANG unit would have used the old form for ranks. As I remember, the adoption of the 3-letter versions was immediate and universal.

Chuck--
Well, how about this one?
http://www.selectric.org/selectric/fonts/delegate.gif

I have no idea which typewriter or font was used, but the selectric was a widely used typewriter, and there are lots of fonts available for it. The ball mechanism allowed a huge variety of typefaces.

Bill--
I'll be interested in his comments. I'm not interested in refuting him. I just think that some of this is spurious. All of this is moot until we find out what typewriter would have been available to the author and so on.

Here's another:
http://www.selectric.org/selectric/fonts/adjutant.gif

Has anyone checked the memos against others of that era? I thought the military always wrote their dates in military "style", like "04 MAY 1972" or "04 MAY 72" and "01 AUG 1972" (instead of "August"). I guess that may have boiled down to personal preference. Just wondering.

Why hasn't anyone made a big deal about the fact that Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian's signature on the fake documents is WILDLY different from the one where he approved Bush's discharge? Seems to me that in combination with the font issue, that would pretty much seal the deal.

What -

I'll have to see what he says, but I was not spurious in tracking down a man with his specific credentials in this area.

We'll see what he says, but when he called back and said more than 90%, I was pretty floored.

At this point, I would be that he has an explanation, but we'll see. If you scooped one of the country's biggest experts, I'll retract/update (unlike CBS).

Looking at the 04 May 1972 memo, there is a redaction of Mr. Bush's address. But you can read through the redaction (it looks like it ays "5000 Longmont, #8). Anyone who redacts documents with a Marks-a-Lot knows that you black-out on a copy, throw the copy away, and then make a copy of the blacked-out copy--otherwise, one can see through the redaction, as is the case here.

Great work Bill, you're a giant amongst us little men, Dr. Bouffard.

By the way, just speculating. That guy Ben Barnes from Texas, who was smearing Bush, was on CBS 60 minutes. So were those fake documents.

Ben Barnes was convicted for fraud in the 70's.

Did CBS get those documents from him?

Good site about Kerry's book The New Soldier here.

At this point, I would be that he has an explanation, but we'll see. If you scooped one of the country's biggest experts, I'll retract/update (unlike CBS).

Heh. I wouldn't go *that* far. I don't doubt the good doctor's creds. All I'm saying is that there were fonts back then, widely used, that have the features of the 4 in question, foot, no foot, closed, open, permutations of the above.

*shrug*

What? --

I checked your link, and while it has a "closed 4 with a foot" you might also notice that it has a "straight" apostophe -- unlike the "curly" one in the document.

So that font you linked too isn't the same one.

What?

What are you talking about. His analysis says that the documents lean more to being a fake because the number four in the disputed memos DO NOT have a foot and a closed top. While, fonts of the time (~1972) would have a foot. Your GIF shows a four with a foot but a closed top. This actually strengtens his argument. You'd need to find any old typewriter font that has a number four WITH NO FOOT.

Call to lawyers: Is forgery a felony?

Would CBS be vulnerable in this case to libel charges if the document is indeed a forgery?

To What?

I linked to the other site and saw what they meant with the transparency test - but as an experiment, I compared a Word document using Times New Roman 11pt against an OpenOffice document using the same font - and the "th" looked much smaller in OpenOffice (and more similar to the document in question). Not that it was done in that software necessarily (it could have been WordPerfect or even Word for Macintosh, for that matter), but just to add more fuel to the fire...

What?:

JC doesn't mention the '9', the '7', and the 'W' also do not match. I'm impressed that you found a closed,no-foot '4' -- but unless you posit that the typist switch balls like a maniac, you need to find a single ball that matches every character in the document.

'Course, we already found one. It's not a ball, tho: it's the Times New Roman font in MS Word...

Also, look at the numbers 7 and 9.
The custom back then in typewriters is that the tails drop below the baseline.
Doesn't happen in the forged documents

"Would CBS be vulnerable in this case to libel charges if the document is indeed a forgery? "

Not unless they did it knowingly. You would need intent. A civil case would be possible but I dont see Bush suing CBS any time soon.

JC:
So that font you linked too isn't the same one.

I'm not claiming that they are. I have no idea what font was used. How could I? All I'm saying is that such fonts existed at the time that the text was ostensibly written. I'm giving an counterexample, not citing the exact font. My point simply: There were fonts then that were both closed and footless. (More on this below)

The webpage I quoted above has a collection of widely used fonts, but there are others, and there are specially designed fonts which may well have been available for military use (though I have no idea on that last bit)

What? What?:
What are you talking about. His analysis says that the documents lean more to being a fake because the number four in the disputed memos DO NOT have a foot and a closed top. While, fonts of the time (~1972) would have a foot. Your GIF shows a four with a foot but a closed top. This actually strengtens his argument. You'd need to find any old typewriter font that has a number four WITH NO FOOT.

Uh, true. I missed this the first time, but then showed examples of two such fonts from that time. Here they are again:
http://www.selectric.org/selectric/fonts/delegate.gif
and
http://www.selectric.org/selectric/fonts/adjutant.gif

Both fonts have closed 4 with no foot. Again, I'm not saying that one was the exact font used. I dunno. They could be forged. I'm just saying that there were contemporary fonts with these characteristics.

'Course, we already found one. It's not a ball, tho: it's the Times New Roman font in MS Word...

I've tried to suggest above some analysis that questions the MSWord point, but this is getting to be speculative. (The Dailykos thread above in particular refutes the charge that MS Word's times new roman fits 'exactly')

Isn't this just precious. Here we are at war against terrorists who kill without distinction: men, women, children, and each other. As we struggle to regain our economy after our worst attack in history, "we the people" have nothing better to do than forge documents in an attempt to bring down our extraordinarily bright and talented leader, President Bush...to the level of discredit self-imposed by his opponent, John Kerry, in his self-indulgent obsession with (his own)exagerated importance? Only in America where we also have the freedom to be vain and stupid.

Here's a selectric font from the 60s-70s with a closed 4 and no foot:

http://www.selectric.org/selectric/fonts/adjutant.gif

Charles Johnson has done the superimpose test where the allegedly-forged document and his Macintosh-based Microsoft Word document matched just about exactly.

What you are trying to refute one of the nation's foremost experts on this type of analysis. Your argument just doesn't hold water. You just don't have a clue.

Kerry Spot reader Bruce Webster who has as served as an expert witness in U.S. District Court cases regarding computer document forensics, writes in that the CBS News document "has all sorts of problems... The typefaces weren't available on typewriters in 1973."

From National Review

The typefaces listed and linked below, by the way, do not have “curly” quotes, only "straight" ones. Oddly, you'll notice the CBS documents, like the Kerry Spot, have both, sometimes in the same document. (On the Kerry Spot, this is a result of transferring text from a word processing program into web-publishing program Moveable Type. (A link using curly quotes won't link correctly, which means every link has to be checked to make sure it has the right kind of quotes.)

CBS had better have one heck of a defense for this.

Let me try to summarize a bit if possible:

In order to believe this memo is genuine, you would have to believe that a proportional spacing typewriter (which was a pain in the ass to use) was used to write a standard memo that would generally be hand written. The font on that typewriter would be one that we cant identify consistantly from 1973, and the "th" would have to have been custom installed. All this was to have happened in an airforce office, where apparantly the lingo used was archaic and/or unlikely in a supposedly typical memo. Also the memo is missing any official letterhead and any intra-office notation one might expect in a document sitting in a military facility for 30+ years. Also the signature appears noticeably if not radically different. A leading expert in forensic documentation finds the likelihood of forgery at 90+% and must be dismissed as well.

Or you can believe this was typed in Word where the linebreaks happen to match this document with an 11 pt font and 2inch margin identically.

Alan,

'What' posted that (see the 5:03PM post).

Okay, I have a dumb question.

What 4?

I don't see a link to the document itself in this post. The one at Wizbang doesn't appear to have a 4 anywhere in it, that I can see.

What am I missing?

If it is truly a copy of an original done on a computer using word prosessing you should not be able to line them up word for word because all copiers distort the image slighlty it would be highly unusual to put your original in front of or behind the actual 'copied' document and have each word exactly match when held up to the light.

usually it is distorted along the lenght of the copy as run through the copier.

For instance it will turn an o into an oval. And at the tail edge of the copy the words would not be exactly on top of each other.

So if your looking at two documents that line up exactly one of them wasn't copied or it is a 'forced' alignment of some sort. Im 90% sure of that

Odd too that the May 4 memo has the P.O. Box being "34567" (could be a coincidence).

We shall see. All I am saying is that part of the argument presented--specifically on the availablity of a footless closed 4--is not accurate, so far as I can tell.

On the rest, you read way too much into my post.

Mark Buehner,

Here is a signature comparison. The 'K' in Killian's last name is radically different in the allegedly-forged memo.

What: I'm sure you can agree that CBS was sloppy to the point of unethical in releasing this without at least 3 bigshots backing this up. I see at least 4 experts in the "forgery" camp between two websites.

Spoons -

In the full doc (published in the WaPo this morning, now strangely not on the front page), there is a "4" in the heading.

Also, FWIW, I can't find any curly quotes in the four memos/docs available on the cbsnews webpage. Can someone provide a link to ostensibly original documents from this period with these curly quotes?

I think we should be sending these discoveries to our local FOX news outlets and the NYpost. They are our friends and carry a lot of weight.

By the way. Since the signature of a military officer was forged, shouldn't the Pentagon or one of its offices be investigating this fraud? Does anybody know how we can set in motion an offial complaint? I mean this is serious stuff.
You can't go around forging signatures of officers and CBS should have done due diligence.

You can read John Kerry's anti- American book THE NEW SOLDIER and 4 chapters of UNFIT FOR COMMAND for free online HERE

Ahhh, thanks Bill. That explains it.

BUSH LIED!!!!!

(Sorry, just wanted to add a bit of comic relief ; )

What is the statute of limitations on perjury? Anyone know?

What -

"so far as" you "can tell."

The problem is, tell me that that font of selectric typewriter is correctly identified a font that could have been used in a typewriter at that time.

Wait for the good Dr's response. He invented the database program that tracks these fonts.

Not trashing your skepticism here, but this guy is an expert. It's likelier (at this point) that you are not thinking of something rather than him. Wait.

What: I'm sure you can agree that CBS was sloppy to the point of unethical in releasing this without at least 3 bigshots backing this up. I see at least 4 experts in the "forgery" camp between two websites.

I have no idea what CBS did to fact check their story. Knowing 60 minutes, I'm willing to bet they did *some* factchecking and authenticity analysis. On whether that's true or not, how would I (or you) know? If they didn't, yes, I'd call that foolish.

If I owned one of these old IBM typewriters, I'd place it on Ebay ASAP! Sleuths are gonna want to track them down.

"From 1973 until late 1982 I was a repairman for the Office Products Division of IBM. I can assure you that the comments on your site by Mr. Burgess regarding the Selectric typewriter are incorrect. The Selectric was available only in mono type. At that time my customers who wanted proportional type used either the IBM Executive typewriter or IBM Composer. The Composer was an expensive and complicated piece of equipment which would normally be found only in printing and communications departments. I doubt that it would be used to write memos to file"
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007760.php

Selectric may be out as a contender. And lay off What, he's doing a good job raising questions. thats how you find answers after all.

What -

"so far as" you "can tell."

Yes. I'm no expert here. I defer to the good doctor. I'm just saying that one of the arguments he used doesn't fit what I've seen from fonts from that time.

The problem is, tell me that that font of selectric typewriter is correctly identified a font that could have been used in a typewriter at that time.

Wait for the good Dr's response. He invented the database program that tracks these fonts.

Yes, I'd be interested in his response. How would I know exactly what font the document is written in? But the arguement was the 4 is odd because of x and y, and I've given counterexamples of x and y.

*shrug* Again, I don't know. I'm interested in the further analysis.

Wouldn't it make more sense to look for additional documents from that same unit (or from the same person) written in the same time frame. The unit may have had several typewriters, but if its like any unit I've been at, all the typewriters would be busy generating the paperwork a bureacracy runs on. So if there are several memos with proportional typing and all that other stuff, it seems the one in hand would be genuine. If not, then more doubt to heap on.

All this searching for 'the perfect font' ball is insane.

Yes, you're going to find something that matches someday probably - but NO ONE USED IT. That is - every single profession that might reasonably be expected to have more than the two balls (10 & 12) that _came_with_the_typewriter_ has something to do with professional publishing. Ad houses, magazines, publishers, etc.

Finding that the Selctric II was a ball-oriented proportional typewriter is great. But what was on the _stock_ ball? And did they have Selectrics?

"Foolish?" Try "dishonest." This is about THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, not some local Mayoral candidate. A REAL professional news organization takes no chances here. If they get this wrong, they might as well be named "Arthur Andersen."

Here's the information from the CBS article on their document expert. This information is not available in the current website document.

But 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November."

Lt. Bush tells his commander "he is working on a campaign in Alabama…. and may not have time to take his physical." Killian adds that he thinks Lt. Bush has gone over his head, and is "talking to someone upstairs."

Col. Killian died in 1984. 60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.

Robert Strong was a friend and colleague of Col. Killian who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative office in the Vietnam era. Strong, now a college professor, believes these documents are genuine.

"They are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being," says Strong. "I don’t see anything in the documents that is discordant with what were the times, what was the situation and what were the people involved."

"He [Killian] was a straight-arrow guy," adds Strong. "He really was. I was very fond of him, liked him personally. Very professional man, a career pilot. He took his responsibilities very, very seriously."

It's not just one guy but now it's two experts including Bruce Webster who say that is is a forged document

http://bfwa.com/litigate/

Selectric may be out as a contender.

It might. The executive could be a candidate, but I don't know what its font base was. Then again, could not be an IBM at all. Or, as many here want to argue, it could be a 2004 MS Word...

Dave's point is right on: look for similar contemporary documents.

And lay off What, he's doing a good job raising questions. thats how you find answers after all.

Thanks. I'm trying not to be confrontational...

Oh, and Dave, SMASH has a link to other TANG documents through a site dedicated to Bush-was-AWOL.
http://www.indepundit.com/archive2/2004/09/dirty_tricks.html#

Running _those_ documents pas the document expert would also be very interesting.

Is Robert Strong a document analysis expert?

The analysis said that there were no *proportional* fonts with closed 4 and no foot. So I don't think the expert (or his database) is impeached unless that combination is found.

Mark,

Air Force is two words and both are capitalized. We're a little touchy about that.

A proud Airman

Pay attention, people.

All the Selectric font GIF's linked to are NOT proportional fonts. The Selectric did not offer proportional font spacing. These memos absolutely did not come from a Selectric.

Dr. Bouffard was comparing the 4 with a closed top and no foot to the proportional-spaced fonts that were available at that time. Apparently, none of those proportional fonts had a 4 that matched.

My summary so far:

CONTENT:
-there are glaring inconsistencies with the body of this document. Staudt retired a brigadier general in 1972, a year before this Saturday memo was written.
-4-digit years not commonly used in 1970s headers
-CYA not likely to be used as a header in an official doc

FONT, ETC
-same exact margins, wordwrap, tabs, kerning, superscript (when printed, not on screen as some here noted) as MS Word in 2004 (Look at Charles' MIcrosoft Word version superimposed on the "memo" at LGF http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526_Bush_Guard_Documents-_Forged It is clearly Times New Roman on Microsoft Word with default tab settings and margins. It would be very difficult to create a document in any other format or with any other font that would match up this well.)
-different th on different documents
-"smart" apostrophes instead of straight
-space from bullet numbers to sentences, space between bulleted items identical to default 2004 settings
-proportional fonts (rare, esp in military apps)
-superscripting of "th", while non-superscripted "th" in other places in docs are one space away from #, exactly as one would do in Word if you didn't want Word to auto-correct to superscript
-"square end" on Killian signature said by expert to be impossible (CNS story: http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200409\POL20040909d.html)

-(?)wrong size paper - NG did not use 8 1/2 x 11

I worked for IBM in the period from 67-85. For a while I was an FE (Field Engineer), and had to work on Selectrics attached to the CPU operator consoles.

I noticed that some of the characters in the May 4th document were raised above the line (I noticed the letters 'a' and 'e' in particular). This may be an artifact of the copy/fax process, but it looks suspicious to me.

The tilt/rotate adjustments on a Selectric didn't tend to allow raised letters. The detent's forced smears and partial characters.

So, I would conclude the document was done on a non-IBM ball typewriter, where raised letters are very common.

But, that can't be either. The 'th' makes that impossible. I think someone went to a lot of trouble to create this 'messy' document, and still didn't get it right.

(Once upon a time I worked with a guy named Rick who programmed a dot matrix Epson to drop pins out of printout. On a trip to SF he forgot to get a receipt. The one he printed was a work of art. Much better than the CBS fakes.)

What's not doing anything wrong, but at this point it's a waiting game to see what the Dr and any other analysts say. I'd say that this will all be hashed out shortly.

From the National Review

IT'S MORE THAN JUST THE 'TH' [09/09 04:54 PM]

The usually-brilliant Jonah is a bit off in his statement in the Corner that so much hangs on the ‘th.’ The problems with this document, so far, are as follows:

* The font does not appear to match any available at that time.

* No letterhead.

* Did the typewriters at the time have the ability to make curved apostrophes, and the elevated, smaller-font ‘th’ at the end? Why does the document appear to shift between straight-line apostrophes and curved-line ones? For that matter, why does one document refer to “1 st Lt. Bush” with a rather glaring space between the numeral 1 and the ‘st’? Could this be an effort to overcome a modern word processor’s setting to bump up the ‘st’?

* The size of the paper should be 8x10.5, not 8.5x11. Where is the line on the photocopy?

* Is it mere cooncidence that typing the same words into Microsoft Word results in spacing and line breaks, if left to Word's defaults, are identical to those in the CBS document?

Yet another observation from a Kerry Spot reader: “IBM did have a ‘custom element’ option available for the Selectric, that did make special symbols like logos, copyright symbols, super and subscripts like the "th" used in the August 18 memo in question, but these were VERY rare and VERY expensive because it required special tooling at the IBM typewriter plant in Lexington, Kentucky.”

Would this be used at an Air National Guard base in Texas or Alabama during that time period?

I'm not a big conspiracy buff, but in addition to what others noted (those dot patterns, for example: I never saw so many on any copy, from that era or any other; and shouldn't the May '72 patterns match?), a few other things struck me as odd:

1) the military usually abbreviates dates. "01 August 1972" would be rendered 01AUG72.

2) Same memo: who is "Harris"? No rank given. Odd in an official document.

3) 19 May 1972 header: "Bush, 1st LT Bush"? Sounds normal in a movie script -- "Bond, James Bond" -- but odd on a military memo. It would be "Bush, 1LT" or "1LT Bush".

4) same doc: "memo to file"? What file? Not MilParlance.

5) Ref to pt. 3, Killian would more commonly have put his rank (in abbreviated "LTC" form) on the same line as his typewritten signature line. Equally odd is the absence of his identification of his position, e.g. "CDR, 111th F.I.S., TexANG" or something like that.

6) 01AUG72 memo, lines 1 and 2: verbal orders? Suspending someone from duty? Not done. Especially over the phone (point 2)? And how does point 2 ("I conveyed...request for orders of suspension") square with point 1 ("I ordered [Bush] be suspended from flight status")?

7) Does anyone else with military experience find it odd that the 04MAY72 "memo" would say, verbatim, "not later than (NLT)"? I never had anyone explain "NLT" to me. Hell, they rarely explained anything to me...

8) Post office box as sending address for a military unit? And P.O.B. "34567"? Why not "CDEFG"? An amazing coincidence? A lazy forger? An inside joke? Does anybody know the address of the 111th?

I'm not a big conspiracy buff, but in addition to what others noted (those dot patterns, for example: I never saw so many on any copy, from that era or any other; and shouldn't the May '72 patterns match?), a few other things struck me as odd:

1) the military usually abbreviates dates. "01 August 1972" would be rendered 01AUG72.

2) Same memo: who is "Harris"? No rank given. Odd in an official document.

3) 19 May 1972 header: "Bush, 1st LT Bush"? Sounds normal in a movie script -- "Bond, James Bond" -- but odd on a military memo. It would be "Bush, 1LT" or "1LT Bush".

4) same doc: "memo to file"? What file? Not MilParlance.

5) Ref to pt. 3, Killian would more commonly have put his rank (in abbreviated "LTC" form) on the same line as his typewritten signature line. Equally odd is the absence of his identification of his position, e.g. "CDR, 111th F.I.S., TexANG" or something like that.

6) 01AUG72 memo, lines 1 and 2: verbal orders? Suspending someone from duty? Not done. Especially over the phone (point 2)? And how does point 2 ("I conveyed...request for orders of suspension") square with point 1 ("I ordered [Bush] be suspended from flight status")?

7) Does anyone else with military experience find it odd that the 04MAY72 "memo" would say, verbatim, "not later than (NLT)"? I never had anyone explain "NLT" to me. Hell, they rarely explained anything to me...

8) Post office box as sending address for a military unit? And P.O.B. "34567"? Why not "CDEFG"? An amazing coincidence? A lazy forger? An inside joke? Does anybody know the address of the 111th?

9) As noted (item 8) in PowerLine Blog ( http://www.powerlineblog.com/
) , "the signatures on the CBS documents do not appear to be authentic. Check out the two signatures below. The one on the left is an actual signature of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian. The one on the right is from one of the CBS documents. It's not even close; in fact, it doesn't even look like the person who signed it made any attempt to copy Killian's signature."

10) Looking at the same signatures, note that Killian seemed to have a perfectly normal, non-proportional space typewriter for Bush's discharge. Not the same typewriter? Hmmm.

My apologies Dale. Thanks for the correction.

Sorry 'What?'...

The numeral 3 in the memo's does not match either of the selectric fonts you linked to.
It does, however, match the numeral 3 in Times New Roman font using MS Word.

Excellent work Bill.

Thanks zumkopf, your list has lots more stuff than mine.

What,

I think that the good Dr. was referencing the 4 in context with all the other characters. Not that the whole 4 itself is intrinsically rare, but the combination with that paritcular 4 is rare.

What,

I think that the good Dr. was referencing the 4 in context with all the other characters. Not that the whole 4 itself is intrinsically rare, but the combination with that paritcular 4 is rare.

Thanks for that. I'll go back and re-read his analysis.

Again, all of this is very interesting. I'll be interested to see if the media folk do further discussion/rebuttal of these points. Some comparison with contemporary documents would be in order, or 60 minutes will be flogged.

G'night, all

Don't understand all of the focus on things alleged to have happened over 30 years ago. Especially when there is so much scary shit that Bush & Co. have been up to recently.

Brian Dupri claims that Ben Barnes was convicted for fraud and offered a site for proof. The site (Mother Jones) has nothing concerning any conviction whatsoever. Here's the text:

Barnes was once a rising star in Texas Democratic politics, becoming a state representative at age 21. Later, he was elected lieutenant governor with 2 million votes, a Texas record. After he was involved in a bribery and stock fraud scandal in the early 1970s, however, he never held public office again. He was involved with a number of banks and thrifts that were mentioned during the S&L crisis, and forced into bankruptcy when the Texas thrift industry cratered in the late 1980s.

"Don't understand all of the focus on things alleged to have happened over 30 years ago. Especially when there is so much scary shit that Bush & Co. have been up to recently."

Did I just see a trial balloon go by?

What does you expert say on the fact the kerning matches? Did the devices of that era do kerning?

I knew it would come to this. Or something like this anyways. You fascist wingnuts never let up.

For what it is worth, the typewriter in question was developed and sold to clients in 1941, far well enough in advance for the military to use it in 1972.

http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941.html

God you reepers are so desperate. Tick, tock, only a few months and we pull the plug.

LOL we're in the Washington Times. They just broke the story. Wait-that sound...it must be the last bit of the air going out of the Kerry campaign. Game, set, match.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040909-040052-8114r.htm

We can put the P.O. Box 34567 to bed. I saw it on a legitimate document.

Did CBS take the documents off their website? and if so why?

Concerned Citizen,

It goes beyond simple proportional spacing.

Read the post again, and take off your Lib glasses...

Excellent research of these questionable documents. I note that CBS also says they had the documents examined for authenticity but offers no evidence. It's obvious that you and a few smart blogger/volunteers are worth more than the highly compensated big guns who call themselves journalists.

Concerned Citizen -

The forensics expert has no partisan motivation to lie. Your comment puzzles me.

You wingnuts are so full of shit. You kooks are being DEBUNKED:

http://www.thetalentshow.org/archives/001216.html

YOu digital brownshirts need to get your shit together. I smell SLANDER lawsuites to you and your right-wing blogger pals!

SOMETHING INTERESTING...

P.O. Box 34567 in Houston is listed as Ashland Chemical (a division of Ashland Oil).

Sound familiar to anyone?

Does anybody smell a hint of panic in the air?

Bill,
Your site got mentioned by a caller on Sean Hannity's radio show at about 4:55 pm EST.

Welcome back!

CNS News has three experts that are suspicious. Boy, it looks to me like Slick Willy set Kerry up for a fall here. Bubba's campaign managers take over the Kerry debacle and now a sloppily forged document shows up.

http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200409\POL20040909d.html

Especially when there is so much scary shit that Bush & Co. have been up to recently.

Too true.

Especially scary to Saddam, Al Quiada, the Taliban and the Iranian Mullas.

After typing and printing the text of "18 August 1973" in MS Word, OpenOffice, and Wordperfect, these are the results:
-Lines break after the same words in all three, but only in MSWord are the final 'g' in the third line of the first paragraph nearly directly below (only very slightly ahead of) the final 'g' in line two, as in the CBS document; in bith WP and OO the lower 'g' was further forward.
-The superscript. In OO, the superscript does not extend above the top of the number '7'. In WP, the horizontal line on the 't' is about even with the top line of '7'. In Word, the superscript is higher, just as in the memo.
My conclusion: MS Word/Times New Roman were modeled after the same model typewriter/font combination used by the TANG in 1973.

I didn't think this fake document would be very important but based on some of the apparently far left posts here it must be hitting a nerve. When they have to throw around words like fascist and try to hide behind lawyers it usually means they have no other valid arguments.
This might get interesting.

Um, "Right Wing Lies",

perhaps you should read my post before you post something that does not address the points made by a forensics expert. Your refutation has nothing to do with the evidence presented by my source.

Right Wing Lies-There are NO typewriters that superscript a "th" Maybe if you had a real candidate you liberal jackasses wouldn't have to resort to these kinds of tactics.

Bill, hope you have a suit ready for Hannity and Combes. Good luck!

Hmmm.

"My conclusion: MS Word/Times New Roman were modeled after the same model typewriter/font combination used by the TANG in 1973."

Man. I really wish I hadn't been drinking a Coke when I read that!! :)

lol!

Fox is reporting on the docs now. They're reporting on the problems, including the signature discrepancies and font issues.

FINALLY!

"Especially scary to Saddam, Al Quiada, the Taliban and the Iranian Mullas."

Touche Skippy, very witty indeed...yawn.

congrats, Bill. I suppose you'll soon be too big to come on NRAnews.com :)

scare as trueth? IRAFUTABAL CLICK

Boy, it looks to me like Slick Willy set Kerry up for a fall here.

Ka-CHING!

These people are being played like fiddles. Un-freaking-be-LIEVABLE!

"Otherwise, the font is very indicative of Times New Roman, the font that is only available on computer word processing programs."

Times New Roman was created in the 1930s, for the London Times.

That was rather before computer word processing programs.

Think of what all this *really* says about the current White House . . . that they would take these documents, accepting the word of CBS that they are valid, and address them at face value.

On one hand I'm appalled, but on the other . . . I almost want to cry it's so damn beautiful!

Thor:

Is Bush's "scary shit" as scary as torturing and murdering men, women and children in a small Russian town on the first day of school? Is Bush's "scary shit" as scary as bombing embassies in Jakarta and night clubs in Bali? Is Bush's "scary shit" as scary as hijacking four planes and killing 3000 people with them? Is Bush's "scary shit" as scary as running a brutal kleptocracy for 30 years, using poison gas on your own people, housing children of murdered dissidents in jail, randoming disappearing whole towns, invading neighboring countries, etc.? Is Bush's "scary shit" as scary as an Iranian mullah hoisting a 16 year old girl by her neck from a crane for a sexual daliance we would laugh at if we saw it on an episode of Friends? Is Bush's "scary shit" as scary as your and the rest of the "offended left's" intollerable ignorance and myopia? Not by a long shot.

BTW, that bit about P.O. Box 34567 being the same as for the Ashland Oil company was just a coincidence. I thought it was a bit ironic that a PO Box # that had been associated with Bush would later be used by an oil company (with which Bush/Cheney apparently had some loose ties).

"perhaps you should read my post before you post something that does not address the points made by a forensics expert."

Your *forensics* expert doesn't know crap if he's saying that Times New Roman is only a computer font.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"Among the modern faces whose design Morison supervised were Eric Gill's Sans Serif, which enjoyed a wide vogue in advertising and avant-garde book typography; Gill's Perpetua, based upon his stonecut letters; and Times New Roman, designed by Morison himself for The Times (London), whose staff he joined in 1930. The last has been called the most successful type design of the 20th century, a result of its economy and legibility when used on high-speed presses."

"In 1929 Morison joined the staff of The Times, for which he designed a new face, Times New Roman, which appeared for the first time on Oct. 3, 1932. "

Concerned Citizen is spamming that same message from website to website.

I didn't read all of the posts... BUT

Quote: Odd too that the May 4 memo has the P.O. Box being "34567" (could be a coincidence).

According to the USPS website:

The following errors were found:

The ZIP Code you entered could not be found in our database. Please confirm the ZIP Code and try again.

Without a post office locality map in front of me, the best match ZIP I could find was 34220: PALMETTO FL. A little far from Texas, no?

Lysander

Uh, Lysander, that wasn't a Zip code, it was a PO Box.

I'm just taking a guess here, but perhaps what he means is that TNR is not found on any typewriters, rather than that it is literally only used on computers -- that, pre-computer word processing, it was used only by typesetters rather than as a typewriter font. I don't know that this is true, however -- perhaps someone could confirm or provide a link to a typewriter that uses TNR.

I'm sure some clarification will be available later.

Regarding the small "th" after the date . . . [it] wouldn't make a lot of sense in a military setting.

Right. The military never needs to use "th" for things such as the "111th" division or whatever and rarely has any documents with dates like the "7th" of December.

Of all the settings where "th" might be used frequently, the military would seem to be one of the more likely ones.

Not that this means the documents are genuine, but that is a pretty pathetic argument from an "expert."

Jon H:

While you are correct about the existence of the Times font, you are incorrect if you are trying to imply that the documents in question are NOT forgeries.

They very clearly are forgeries, so it really doesn't matter if there was a font called 'Times New This' or 'Times New That'.

That's not really what's being argued here and you know it, so please save your breath, okay?

The only questions that remain are 'who dunnit?' and 'why?'

Someone has already pointed that out:

The Klintoons!

They were NEVER going to let Kerry win if they could help it, because that would ruin Hill's chance of running 4 years from now.

El Retardo Republicano Conspiracy?

Maybe! You better hope so!

I saw posted at Powerline the diffinative answer; the documents are forgeries. Its called "kerning" and typewriters (of any era , make or model) do NOT kern. That is, they can't adjust the individual characters to fit closer together, something a word processer does automatically. The forgeries are clearly "kerned". Game, set, match.

sligobob,

Fine argument. After many years of being a member of 'the offended left' I have just switched my political affiliation due, in no small part, to your scintillating logic.

Seriously, do you really believe that one's destructiveness should be ignored just because it is not as atrocious as someone else's? Should we condone corporate fraud because it does not seem as evil as ritual murder?

Which typewriters used Times New Roman?

Jon,

'Your *forensics* expert doesn't know crap if he's saying that Times New Roman is only a computer font.'

If you read the paragraph in question a bit more closely and apply some generic reading comprehension, you'll find that Dr. Bouffard is not saying that at all.

'Dr. Bouffard ran this number and could not find a match in his entire database of over 4,000 typewriter fonts that have been maintained and collected into his computer database since 1988. Otherwise, the font is very indicative of Times New Roman, the font that is only available on computer word processing programs.'

Dr. Bouffard is referring to typewriter fonts, not the typesetting process used by the Times - another technology entirely.

You expert is, frankly, an idiot. Times New Roman was not invented for computers, and typewriters could do both proportional spacing and super/subscripting before computers could. Look here: http://www.ibmcomposer.org/SelComposer/description.htm for the first Selectric that could do proportional type. This was in 1966. These were common enough that my father used one as an economics professor in the late sixties and early seventies.

Times is one of the most common fonts in existence, being used extensively in newspapers around the english speaking world. Good heavens people, at least try and use google--and pray to god your expert never runs into a decent lawyer.

Uh, Lysander, that wasn't a Zip code, it was a PO Box.
Posted by: Jon H at September 9, 2004 06:30 PM

The first mention of it had it as a ZIP; it's close enough to one I grew up with, so I went looking. *shrug* Didn't cost much to check, though.

Lysander

Slightly off-topic, but re Barnes, he's never been convicted of a felony. He is, however, the very caricature of a roguish, bankrupt, slick, fast-talking, high-rolling, fund-raising lobbyist and disgraced politician. Details and links on my blog.

Bill from INDC, my hat's off to you, and to your excellent commenters.

I saw posted at Powerline the diffinative answer; the documents are forgeries. Its called "kerning" and typewriters (of any era , make or model) do NOT kern. That is, they can't adjust the individual characters to fit closer together, something a word processer does automatically. The forgeries are clearly "kerned". Game, set, match.

The kerning argument clearly contradicts the default settings argument, since kerning is not turned on by default.

LOL harmonizing those two arguments.

"Times is one of the most common fonts in existence, being used extensively in newspapers around the english speaking world."

Are those newspapers typed out on a typewriter? What kind?

You guys are way off base here. This is sounding like the OJ Simpson defense 'the bloody glove must be fake'. Bad move, force the other side to prove the documents are genuine, the claims being made that they are fake are simply wrong and will quickly be falsified.

First you claim that proportional fonts were not invented, oops the IBM Executive had them in 1941. Next you claim that IBM Selectric typewriters were rare, oops no they were one of the most successful machines of the time. Next you go on to hairsplitting distinctions due to a catalog of only 4,000 fonts maintained by a guy whose principal expertise is computer typesetting.

A Colonel is a pretty elite officer, only one step below General. What is 'rare' in the military is irrelevant. What is significant is what is common for senior officers, the commander of a regiment is a very senior officer, exactly the type of person who would have their correspondence typed out on an IBM electric typewriter.

Non-IBM typefaces were very common, there was a whole industry producing them. A good forensic typewriter typeface library has 80,000 entries.

Face it guys, Bush failed to show up for his medical. This is exactly what you would expect his commanding officer to do, give him a direct order to take the missed medical and make sure that a record was kept to cover his ass in case someone came round to ask why a pilot had been allowed to stop flying after training costing over a million dollars.

. . . he's never been convicted of a felony. He is, however, the very caricature of a roguish, bankrupt, slick, fast-talking, high-rolling, fund-raising lobbyist and disgraced politician.

Very good description of George Walker Bush.

NotAMoron?

I *beg* to differ.

From the very site you posted:

The basic task of the IBM Composer was to produce justified camera ready copy using proportional fonts.

"Corporal, type up this memo pronto. And make sure it's camera ready!"

"Yes-sir!"

And, again from the site, and much more damning:

Since it has no memory, the user was required to type everything twice.

Oh. I'm sure that's the feature which made it such a popular choice for military note-taking!

Your "expert" loses all credibility when he made that utterly absurd claim about Times New Roman font. IBM has had Times New Roman font on their typewriters since the 60's.

On EBay someone's selling an IBM Executive typewriter ad, which has what may or may not be a sample of the type. And it's not necessarily in Times New Roman.

http://www.cd-outlet.com/pics3/ibm55exeelectyp.jpg

I think what people are calling 'kerning' may just be the effect of using a proportional font, instead of the monospace font used by most typewriters.

As the ad says, "Because of the exclusive IBM "proportional spacing," executive letters look as if they were printed."

Also "You can choose from a wide range of distinguished type faces..."

IBM, okay. Should somebody with an IBM typewriter from the era try to reproduce the document?

Well I guess since Al Gore invented the internet that makes all you left wing nutjob dope smokers more qualified to analyze this document than several of the nation's foremost experts in this area. Nice try though. Like I said, if you hadn't nominated a turd like Kerry you wouldn't have to resort to these types of Clinton-esque tactics. Good day!

Advocate, that's pretty snarky, but untrue.

Barnes really did go bankrupt. Bush never did.

Barnes really is a disgraced politician who was thrown out of office by disgusted voters after the Sharpstown Scandall. Those same homestate voters decisively re-elected Bush as Governor and continue to support him for President.

Barnes is a registered lobbyist. The post I linked on my blog talks about the high-roller banquet he threw at the DNC, where he bragged that everyone there was good for $25k. He's raised over $400k for Kerry. Yet it's almost all behind the scenes, where the fat cats meet and greet. Yes, there are Republican fat cats and lobbyists and rogues too. But that's not Dubya, much as you wish it might be.

(Sorry for straying further off topic -- I was taunted by someone claiming to be holy who's actually holey.)

No typewriter could do kerning. Period. Kerning and proportional spacing are NOT the same thing at all, but these documents show signs of kerning.

You make a very convincing argument Phill. Of course, to believe you, we would also have to discard the growing list of other discrepancies with these 'official' memos: such as the lack of true military parlance and total lack of regard for "Tounge & Quill" (or whatever it's prdecessor would have been at the time) type of inter/intra-office correspondence.

Also, given the fact that a Guard member who was NOT on active duty orders at the time, could not possibly be considered AWOL (legally impossible), your whole AWOL meme kind goes right down the tubes with all the previous iterations of this non-starting, de-bunked slimball tactic. Doesn't it? Sorry to burst your bubble like that.

'A good forensic typewriter typeface library has 80,000 entries.'

Um, no. Dr. Bouffard is talking about fonts and typewriters. You are confusing characters with fonts.

Just to throw in my two cents:

Does anyone agree that the vertical spacing between the lines seem a bit too regular to be the product of a typewriter? In every typewriter I've ever used, the paper tends to slip just a bit as it goes through the platen; the slips are very noticeable in single-spaced documents (you tend to get space-and-a-half rather than single-space on some lines).

Advocate for God: You miss the point. NO typwriter ANYWHERE can kern characters. The forgeries show fonts kerned (the "o" in the word "To" is tucked under the overhanging cross of the "T") That's impossible, default or no. Typwriters can't do that!!!

Kerning......
Kerning......
Kerning......
Kerning......
Kerning......

All you left libdems need to explain the kerning....

How is it possible that the memo's had kerning, and superscript....

Oh I know.... The London Times sent an entire 1930's typeset machine to Killian to use to type ANg memo's in 1972... I mean how big could the machine be??????

So libdems, explain the Kerning.... If you can.....

Regards,
Sonar5

I looked through the docs linked by Smash / Indepundit, and the PO Box 34567 is used as an address for Killian multiple times in at least one of them, so I think that can be ignored.

But I urge everyone to look at the typed documents from that same time period, regardless. Not the least bit similar to these CBS memos. Which should surprise precisely no one.

Just a word on the followong comments that appeared while I was googling to find data for my last answer.

Times New Roman is a computer typeface due I believe to Adobe. But it is a variation of a much older font called Times Roman which is one of the most widely used and copied fonts of all time. If you try to claim that there were no typewriter fonts that had Times Roman in 1973 its not going to stick.

I don't see the claimed kerning in the copies, admittedly the copies are poor but these do not look like computer typesetting to me.

This is an easy issue to sort out, just release the microfiches and the whole issue is settled. Failing that lets take a look at other correspondence from the Colonel from the same time.

the doctor's analysis looks pretty convincing to me, but i think it behooves all of us to stop ragging what here. the question he's raising are the very ones that the kerryistas will be hurling in the msm once this thing starts drawing blood and until we're sure we know what we're talking about then we should welcome hardhitting questions. remember, folks, if this turns out to be a forgery then the msm will have done what apparently a lot of people in this thread want to do: use flimsy documents to beat a political opponent over the head with. let's not do that. it looks to me that the blogosphere has caught two major msm outlets peddling false info, info they didnt bother to check because it didnt fit their agenda. let's make sure this is the case first; we can always celebrate later.

News has been good today, nice to wake up to. (I work nights)

The so called bush book is a flop.

Kerry's VVAW fraud futher exposed by Steve Pitkins affidavid.

And this 90 minutes fraud.

As they say at MacDonald's...

Ba-da-bup-bup-da! I'm lovin' it!

Kerry, the DNC and the media are completely corrupt. This is THE national wide scandel of the century.

Great article btw.

INDISPUTABLE PROOF!!!

from powerline

------
Another aspect of the type on [the August 18, 1973 memo] suggests, perhaps proves, forgery.
1. The type in the document is KERNED. Kerning is the typsetter's art of spacing various letters in such a manner that they are 'grouped' for better readability. Word processors do this automatically. NO TYPEWRITER CAN PHYSICALLY DO THIS.

To explain: the letter 'O' is curved on the outside. A letter such as 'T' has indented space under its cross bar. On a typewriter if one types an 'O' next to a 'T' then both letters remain separated by their physical space. When you type the same letters on a computer next to each other the are automatically 'kerned' or 'grouped' so that their individual spaces actually overlap. e. g., TO. As one can readily see the curvature of the 'O' nestles neatly under the cross bar of the 'T'. Two good kerning examples in the alleged memo are the word 'my' in the second line where 'm' and 'y' are neatly kerned and also the word 'not' in the fourth line where the 'o' and 't' overlap empty space. A typewriter doesn't 'know' what particular letter is next to another and can't make those types of aesthetic adjustments.

2. The kerning and proportional spacing in each of the lines of type track EXACTLY with 12 point Times Roman font on a six inch margin (left justified). Inother words, the sentences break just as they would on a computer and not as they would on a typewriter. Since the type on the memo is both proportionally spaced and kerned the lines of type break at certain instances (i.e., the last word in each line of the first paragraph are - 1. running, 2. regarding, 3. rating, 4. is, 5. either). If the memo was created on a typewriter the line breaks would be at different words (e. g., the word 'running' is at the absolute outside edge of the sentence and would probably not be on the first
line).

3. The sentences have a wide variance in their AMOUNT of kerning and proportional spacing. Notice how the first line of the first paragraph seems squished together and little hard to read but the last line of the first paragraph has wider more open spacing. Even the characters themselves are squished in the first line (as a computer does automatically) and more spread out on the last line where there is more room.

There's no way a typewriter could 'set' the type in this memo and even a good typesetter using a Linotype machine of the era would have to spend hours getting this effect.
-------

Fox was reporting that they had FBI specialists look at the documents and they all concluded they were forged.

So...does this mean that W. was a War Hero after all?

It's even getting better. Now the leftists are picking one idea that they misread and ignoring all the other facts.
God, this is fun for those of us who don't care who gets elected. (America won't really wake up again until there is another attack, bigger than 911, no matter who is President)
The only one I want to see lose is the media.

Why should anyone have to disprove the documents-- shouldn't CBS have to prove they are real? They're the ones making the accusation. They've offered nothing beyond "trust us". What is the chain of possession of these documents? Who was their expert and how did he decide they were probably legit? If CBS is unwilling to tell us, I'm not willing to believe these are anything but forgeries.

Maybe Microsoft will sue for defamation -- a modern Word document should look much better than something banged out on a typewriter 30+ years ago, not identical or even nearly so.

'The kerning argument clearly contradicts the default settings argument, since kerning is not turned on by default.

LOL harmonizing those two arguments.'

Easy. The type of 'kerning' being referred to - putting the O slightly under the T in TO for example - is the default setting for word. As a matter of fact, it is the default for any word processor just as it appears in this comment. Specialized kerning does need to be selected, but you should have looked a bit closer at the claims before trying a rebuttal like that.

All in all, the weight of evidence is for forgery and getting more reliable confirmation as time goes on. I have yet to see a counterclaim for authenticity bounced against the evidence of forgery that stands up to minor scrutiny on any site. This goes for sites posing the questions like this one, and the sites that right now are shrilly and desperately trying to salvage the authenticity of the memos.

Take a look at:

http://users.cis.net/coldfeet/doc27.gif

There are many differences between this (Bush's application and acceptance for discharge) including the fact that the signiture is completely different!

Other things: "Ftr Intcp Gp" not "Ftr Intrcp Gp", correct identification of LtC Killian as
"JERRY B. KILLIAN, Lt Col, TexANG,
Commander"
three character month names, 2 digit years, the correct use (for that time of FROM/SUBJECT/TO titles), and a completely different font! Try getting this one to line up in Word (Allahpundit tried and failed)...

This is the smartest political move Karl Rove has ever made: use forged docs to invalidate _any_ debate of Bush's service.

Sorry, but it isn't kerned.

Look at the Y and A in "CYA".

If it was kerned, the A would start underneath the right arm of the Y. That isn't the case. If you draw a line from the end of the right arm of the Y, you don't hit the A.

Okay, CBS News has what appears to be the complete .pdf you were talking about here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardaugust18.pdf

I still don't see any 4.

Are we talking about the same document?

"Um, no. Dr. Bouffard is talking about fonts and typewriters. You are confusing characters with fonts. "

No I am not, 80,000 typefaces. The number of typewriter models produced is in the thousands. After the introduction of the Selectric and later the daisywheels one machine could write in as many fonts as the owner wanted. There were hundreds of fonts produced by IBM alone and there were many third party suppliers. In many cases a single font was available in different sizes.

The selectric was intended to be an international model and so the golfballs could carry up to 88 or 96 characters to allow for accented characters in european languages. That left plenty of room for multiple glyphs like 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, st, rd, th etc.

If you think that 4,000 typefaces is a large number for forensics then that is very definitely not your field.

No mention of the forgery allegations on CBS Evening News tonight. Big surprise!

Check here spoons

http://wid.ap.org/documents/bush/040908xfer.pdf

I really don't see any examples of kerning in any of the documents.

No glyph overlaps into the space of an adjacent glyph.

Okay, thanks who.

That's a completely different document than the one most people are focusing on, though.

Bush supporter here.

What about the situation that the origional document was type-writer writen but scanned and OCR software was used to convert the scanned image to text.

This is often done to archive paper documents into the computer and to make them searchable.

Any ideas regarding this?

Josh

Mike said:
"Sorry, but it isn't kerned.Look at the Y and A in "CYA".
If it was kerned, the A would start underneath the right arm of the Y. That isn't the case. If you draw a line from the end of the right arm of the Y, you don't hit the A."

*******

Hey Mike, look at the my in "doing my job"

Blow it up in Adobe any where from 800% to 1600%. And CYA in Capitals didn't kern on mine either.... lol

"What about the situation that the origional document was type-writer writen but scanned and OCR software was used to convert the scanned image to text."

The handwritten signatures are a problem with that.

What might be causing trouble is that it looks like the documents were scanned at some point at relatively low resolution. That might make them *look* more like they're
from a word processor than from a typewriter.

The thing is, though, they don't *look* like they
were laser printed or inkjet printed. If they were forged,
they look more like screen resolution, or maybe dot-matrix.

Were the documents faxed? That would explain a lot.

Sorry, the above should have been addressed to Jon H instead of Mike...

There is my Retraction, something I doubt we will ever see form CBS..... lol

skipkent,

I was just linking to the earliest available model. By the early seventies the Selectric II was out, and the features of proportional spacing, super/sub script, and event a choice between pica and elite typing were standard on all models. They had 88 characters, many were used for curled quotes and fractions, or international characters.

As I say, I would love to meet Dr. Bouffard in a court of law. At least as presented here he makes multiple errors of fact that can be easily shown. This throws the rest of his credibility out the window.

And by the way, which printer is it that prints the lower case e slightly higher than all the other letters? That's very common for a typewriter, but no printer could do it. It's very evident on all the memo's and could probably be used by a real expert in typewriter to match the exact machine.

Still, it's enough for you people who still somehow believe there are WMD's in Iraq somewhere--or maybe buried in Syria.

'No I am not, 80,000 typefaces. The number of typewriter models produced is in the thousands.'

No again. The question here is unique typefaces, not the number of typewriters. Different models did not necessarily have different typefaces. They used common type mechanisms across models in a line of manufacture.

The number and form of unique typefaces commonly used by forensic experts is listed in the Haas Atlas. Dr. Bouffard very specifically references the Haas Atlas as the basis for the 4000 unique typefaces he programmed into his software. The link is in the main post of this thread.

There are very few typewriters where the font pattern is unique to just that make and model. A forensic expert usually needs a sample from the original machine to match a letter to it with any certainty. Often the best he can do is say the the sample in question is consistent with one from a particular make and model.

All beside the point.

Oh and ummm Jon H...

Please explain the curly quote as well...

I'd really like to hear the explanation on that one.....

"Hey Mike, look at the my in "doing my job""

I think that's just distortion from the scan, making the y look fatter.

And my name's not Mike.

http://wid.ap.org/documents/bush/040908xfer.pdf

No way is this document kerned. Look at the space between the H and the Y in Phyiscal. This is exactly what kerning is meant to take care of. Also, the V,E, A and I characters all wander off the baseline in a way characteristic of typewriters or other impact printing devices.

The pixilation you see when you zoom in is the result of the document being faxed, and also makes the serif's extremely inconsistent--and hence the font very difficult to identify, but certainly consistent with many available fonts.

It's not Times New Roman though. The 4 actually have a small gap being disguised by the pixilation.

Well, it seems that IBM began selling proportional space typewriters in 1941! Maybe your expert isn't the guru that he claims to be. Also, compare the "E"s in SUBJECT. The vertical spacing is clearly different & this is significant because those are only letters easily compared in the two documents.

Sorry, time to take off the tin-foil hat. Not forgeries, Bush just wasn't a very good reservist.

"Please explain the curly quote as well..."

I would expect a typewriter, with a proportional typeface, marketed to executives, would include curly quotes rather than or in addition to, the rather pedestrian plain quotes.

Sorry:

All beside the point. It does not take an expert to view a memo from Killian taken from official archives side by side with the recent releases purported to be from his private files to see immediate and striking discrepancies in format, style, signature, paper etc etc even given the poorer quality of the recent releases.

This is going to backfire badly. The forgeries will put the questions about Bush's guard service to bed for good and will be linked to Kerry deservedly or not. Whoever concocted this did Kerry's campaign a grave diservice when they sent it to CBS. It won't be fatal, but it will remove Bush's guard service from Kerry's armory.

I have do my own comparison, overlaying the Times New Roman screen capture from Word with the orginal PDF file.

The match is perfect. I don't see how it the documents could possibly be produced on any platform other that Microsoft word. Forget all the other arguments--even if there had been a Times New Roman typewriter with proportional fonts and kerning, the odds of having two documents produced on seperate systems match so well must be trillions to one.

I have no doubt that this document was created in Word.

Someone I talked to raised this posibility:

Coult the original 1970's documents have been scanned, OCR'd and put into Word later?

The military does such things from time to time. I see this as the only possible way that the content of this docuement is genuine.

I would stake my life on the fact that the docuement itself is NOT authentic.

Jon H

try to deflect and defend with OCR Scanning, and ANG Officers getting $20,000 typewriters....etc....

You are too funny..... Nice Try though...

See you on November 3rd where you will be wallowing in defeat....

And ummmm Jon H, I unlike CBS corrected my post to you by retracting it above, scroll up for my name and you will see I corrected my mistake...

Will CBS do the same....?

You see that is what seperates me from them... I have integrity to admit when I screw up... Pathetic hypocritical war atrocity criminals like kerry, and his minions like cbs and dan blather HAVE NO INTEGRITY...

See the difference.... I doubt it... But hey enjoy your version...

I suggest you call Air America, and have Al Franken have you on as a guest. I hear they are looking for a third listener there... ;)

Even if they did, there's several other problems with the format, terms used, dates and the signiture...

erik,

Can I see your comparison of how the lower case E glyph is raised from the baseline? Cause that's damn hard to do on a monitor.

09DEC69 was a big day for me. I became a 2LT. A year later, I was a 1LT. Then on 08OCT71, I left active duty.
One might tell somebody in English--as opposed to military--that somebody else was a first lieutenant, but in any kind of reference it was the 1LT format.
Besides, in those days without the easy correction, the less you typed, the less chance for making a mistake. Things have gotten prolix since then.

Why don't you dems eat shit and die.

I suppose every expert in the world that says this is a forgery must be taking secret bribes from Haliburton. Now we even have a Kerry supporter saying this is 99% a hoax.

http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=4596&R=9FCD2F192

Joh H,

As far as the signature goes, it is common for OCR software to recognize areas in a document which are not type-face / interpretable and to leave them as scanned.

I am by no means an OCR expert and am be interested in hearing more about this line. It seems obvious to me that some of them at least were from a word processing program and the OCR explanation is the only feasible answer to that.

As far as your scanned question, I think they were faxed, at least the ones released by the WH; CBS faxed them over.

Oh and Jon H....

You said:
"I would expect a typewriter, with a proportional typeface, marketed to executives, would include curly quotes rather than or in addition to, the rather pedestrian plain quotes."

I CALL BS..... PROVE IT OR RETRACT IT.....

Come on Jon H...

Like CBS you can't prove the authenticity of these documents where others have proved they are FORGERIES....

yeah, I'm sure the TexANG had all kinds of money for the technology needed to produce these...

Even Killian's son has said he thinks these are not right..

Link here:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040909_1710.html

SO step up Jon... Prove all these claims you are making about OCR, scanning, etc.... Curly Quotes, etc....

Sonar5,

A Selectric II did not cost 20,000 dollars and was one of the most successful pieces of office equipment ever made. Most other brand had models that competed feature for feature. Quit whacking that straw-man would you?

Sonar5,

The selectric II did curly quotes as well.

The documents need to be checked for mechanical variarions. i.e. letter spacing, position, strike force etc.

NotAMoron.
Enjoy the Kool-Aid. Deny, deny, deny while those of us who really aren't morons wait for the truth.

CBS will do like kerry does and some libdems here....

deflect and spin out of denial...

Kerry hasn't answered Press questions in over a MONTH....

How long will CBS deny all of this...

And Jon H, it is CBS who has to prove these are 100% Accurate and not forgeries...

It is not up to the ones questioning it to prove they are fake... heck, anyone with SM Word can apparently do that....

Kerning. Typewriters didn't do kerning.

Maybe I'm naive, but why would a maniacal forger use a modern word processor for his evil deeds? Lord knows there's enough vintage typewriters lying around. And since this is a copy, there's no "age dating" of the paper or ink to worry about. In short, if you're trying try to pass something off as type written, wouldn't you use a TYPEWRITER for the fake? Isn't that the SIMPLEST and most LOGICAL route to take?

M.Simon: "Kerning. Typewriters didn't do kerning."

It's not kerned.

There's one "my" that looks like it might be kerned, but that's because the letters are kind of blobby from the fax.

But nowhere else does it even come close to looking like it was kerned.

M. Simon....

Yes but Jon H says the kerning is because of OCR scanning technology, which he cannot prove to us or anyone else....

the left will do anything to deflect from their continued lies, a stalwart of the kerry campaign....

watch them spin this as I've seen other places...

They drag out Harkin, and his pathetic attempt at smearing today, and that will backfire as well.

I'll tell you what, lib dems, we'll concern the topics to President Bush and his performance as CIC, and we'll let you talk about Kerry's 20 years in the senate... Deal... :)

brendan,

Excellent question.

I blame the French.

brendan

lib dems are too dumb to think that far ahead....

They only had time enough to get these into Barnes hand and call Dan Blather who will believe anything if it fits his warped agenda....

Sonar5,

One of the officers who was supposedly pressuring Killian was retired at the time the memo was written.

That seems like a pretty big hole.

--==--

Why did John Kerry meet with the representatives of the Viet Cong and Communist North Vietnam on his honeymoon in Paris?

I guess selling out his home country was more exciting than his new wife.

New Soldier html

What is the War Hero Afraid of?
Form 180. Release ALL the records

http://www.ibmcomposer.org/

http://www.ibmcomposer.org/SelComposer/justification.htm

My Canuckistan elementary school had one of these for the secretary. This would have been circa 1979-1981. No way they would have bought a $20k typewriter.

As well check the examples from the 2nd link. Look familiar? Looks like Times New Roman to me, looks EXACTLY like what was printed.

And don't get "Justification" and "Proportional" confused, only the former required typing twice.

They also advertise new fonts can be installed in 5 seconds and have many different sizes and faces available.

Read the brochure, they advertise that the entire brochure was writen with a selectric typwriter. Looks like typesetting to me!

Going to check Ebay to see if i can buy one of these guys.

Cut&Paste from me at Anti-Idoltarian...

I was a 70250 UASF Administration Specalist for the Washington ANG from 1988 to 1994. I trained on pre 1990 702X0, meaning before PC. I had to memorize how documents, letters, orders, memos, talking memos, etc were produced, stored, retained and recored.

I saw the PDF version of the memo. My thoughts:

The SUBJECT heading is missing. I can't ever recall when this was the case EXEPT if the letter was of general nature to non military parties.

The date is wrong. All dates are directly accross from the TO: line.

Pre 1990 headings were meant to be done w/o electronic tabs; they look like this

TO: Date: August 16, 1972
FROM:
SUBJECT:
(if this formats right, the : all line up)

Signature blocks are centered on non official and on official are (if i recall) on a left hand lineup, 3 carriage spaces past the last line of entry.

Any letter written that is LESS than 1/2 page is double spaced.

Signature block typicaly looks like this:

Bill Smith
Lt. Commander USAF
(unit line if needed )

There are no file markings. All corrispondance MUST have a visible file mark, when placed into archives. ANYTHING written and issued falls under certian standards for retention. The filmark was written by hand in the upper (right?) corner of the document, prior to being physically placed in a file cabinet. (I once got written up for this).

There are no typist initials on the bottom of the memo. This was standad practice.

My conclusion: If this document is authentic, it was not done by any admin spec, which I find amusing since I have never seen an officer type up ANY official order them self.

As I understand it, CO's don't issue official "Sugestions" to lowly Lt.'s. This may very well have been written by this guy, but it was never placed into proper file dispenation, and does not appear to be of official AF corrispondance. We were allowed NO margin of error for anything we typed up. PERIOD.

PS... I have an IBM Selectric II in my office RIGHT NOW and I looked at the ball... No little 'th' on it. The standard issue typewriter since they came out was the IBM Selectric II (adopted by USAF in 1975) and before that the the IBM Selectric I since 1967 (ish, don't recall) but I have used logged many flight hours on both models.

The IBM "Model A Executive" typewriter introduced in 1949 offered proportional spacing.

http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1949.html

A 1955 ad:

http://www.cd-outlet.com/pics3/ibm55exeelectyp.jpg

Let's be realistic about this...CBS couldn't possibly prove the documents to be real.
Who would ever believe them?

Good catch of the kerning. Physically impossible for any mechanical device (i.e. typewriter)

Regarding the alleged dispute over whether the document is kerned:

THERE CAN BE NO DISPUTE!!

Look, if it wasn't kerned exactly the way MS Word does it in 2004, THE OVERLAYS FROM LGF WOULDN'T MATCH!!

http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/

Clearly, they match EXACTLY.

So you're left with 2 possibilities: the alleged 1970s documents are kerned exactly the way MS Word does in 2004, or MS Word doesn't kern.

Gutenberg's press provided proportional spacing.
So what. That doesn't explain all the other "coincidences".

The "fe" in "feedback" looks very kerned to me.

There is a reason the OpenOffice does not match. There are parts of TrueType known as tipping that are patented and cannot be replicated completely. So, we have a Proportional Font Selectric with TrueType technology!

Dave.... the USAF and by proxy ANG had STANDARD ISSUE typewriters. See, that's the military. They do the same thing now with PC's in that we had standard issue or "Milspec" as it might be called. I can say with 100% assurancy that they would not by any off the shelf typewriter. Infact as an AF Admin we trained on the IBM. It was part of our training. Specificaly the IBM Selectric II. Like a the standard issue rifle is the M-16, the typewriter was an IBM.

If its TNR from Word, how come the numbers are completely different?

Hey John,
Re: your stuff on the composer... absolutely right, the brochure was written on a Selectric Composer... released in *1975*...

http://www.etypewriters.com/history.htm

Guess your going for the old time-travel explanation then? :-)

Whoops... my bad... that was the electronic selectric composer... Well, I too admit my mistakes (unlike CBS!)

That brochure was released in 1975 .... but if you cared to read a bit you would have come upon this...

"The first IBM Composer was the IBM "Selectric" Composer announced in 1966."

You know, in researching these typewriters... and btw, we are ONLY looking at IBM typewriters, ignoring Smith Corona and the other manufacturers... you have to admit, they were damn sofisticated for their times.

Electronic storage in 1964?

I wouldn't doubt it that somehow they found out how to do kerning (which the quality of the faxed document makes it tough to prove is there)

Dear Phil,

You obviously work in a service business and have little or no idea how things work in the manufacturing sector. While there may be 80,000 type faces, hell there may be 1,000,000, it don't mean they gonna make em all. What the expert said about 4,000 type faces is probably about right. If it takes $10,000 to develop a product how much does it retail for if customers only buy 12? I can say that it would be far more expensive to purchase the specialized equipment to produce this document, at the time it was purportedly promulgated, than the FANG would be willing to pay. Your argument fails the economy of scale test. If I have told you once, I've told you a million times, stop exaggerating.

You know, one thing that is bugging me about this whole thing.

If i wanted to forge these documents, I'd just find an old IBM selectric typerighter and whip them out.

I WOULDN'T use Microsoft Word.