Check for magic marker on Rather's fingers.

If you turn up the brightness on your computer and enlarge the CBS 4 May 72 PDF, you can easily see the blackened out address: 5000 Longmont #8. I didn't discover this oddity myself. I picked it up from the blogsphere, but I can't remember well enough to give credit where credit is due.

What surprises me is than no one has run with this. If we were looking at a copy of the marked document, I don't believe we would be able to see the address. If I'm correct, this means the marker was applied directly to the copy CBS has in its possession.

Try it yourself. Using Word 1972 (or any later version), type in "Dan is a doodyhead" and send it to your printer. (I used a Brother MFC-6800.) Use a marker to black out a portion of the text. (I used a Marks-A-Lot Quick Drying Waterproof Permanent marker.) Do go overboard, like you're really trying to hide the image, just give it a couple casual swipes with the marker. In that case, I had no trouble seeing the text through the marker. It was much easier to read my document than marked out portion of the 4 May 72 memo. I then copied the document (using the same printer/copier/scanner). There was no way I could read the text on the copied document. I even tried to backlight it with my 1,000,000 candlepower halogen flashlight. Nothing. The information simply was not preserved during the copy process.

If you marked out the text like you really wanted to hide it, I guessing you wouldn't be able to see the text even on the original. That's what happened here. The marking on the 4 May 72 memo was apparently applied by a casual marker, otherwise the text wouldn't be visible at all, copy or no copy. In either case, however, the text won't be visible on a copy.

But wait! The information was in fact preserved when the CBS scanned the document into a PDF file. (I assume they are the ones who did so.) Curious about that, I scanned my marked document into an image file using the default settings on my printer/copier/scanner. I was surprised to see that I could easily read the marked out text. Not only that, I found that if I printed the 4 May 72 PDF document, I could more easily see the text on the printed output!! If I could see it on a printed copy of a scanned image, I presume CBS and their top-notch document experts could see it on the document itself.
Bottom line seems to be that the information is preserved when the document is handled as an image, but lost if simply copied paper to paper. At least that's what happened here.

What does it all mean? I'm not sure. I'll give it my best shot then wait for the blogworld correct and amplify.
1. The CBS document IS NOT a copy of a document which had been marked then copied.
2. The CBS document IS a document which had been copied THEN marked.
3. The CBS document has marker material (not just copier ink) on it.
4. Either CBS applied the marker or a perpetrator not far upstream of CBS added the marker.
5. In either case, the address will be easily visible through the marker on the CBS documents.
6. The CBS document experts, assuming they existed at all, either sucked as experts or participated in the fraud.

I now make the following predictions:
1. The original documents will never appear, certainly not the one with the mark. CBS has the only copy with that unique mark pattern.
2. The handwriting expert will soon be claiming he was only responsible for reviewing the signatures.
3. The other document experts will never be identified. Either they didn't exist or they don't want their careers ruined by their criminally careless work.

And finally, a note about what pissed me off enough to write this. I was watching a 9-11 video tribute made not long after the attack. You can find it at http://www.gunstuff.com/america-attacked.html. It takes a long time to load, but I recommend it nonetheless. It is a series of photographs set to the music of Enya. No voices during the first half, just peaceful music and images of planes flying into buildings, people falling a hundred floors to their death, photos of loved ones lost, horror and destruction and fear and pain and anguish. Then the voices begin in the background. A woman calling her husband from one of the towers. People reacting to the collapse of the buildings. Policemen shouting orders.

Then the voice of Dan Rather came on, and that's when it happened. Just hearing his voice on that video, that did it for me. Let me be blunt. I believe he no longer deserves to have his voice intermingled with the voices and images of all those others. I would have no problem if he was an objective news reporter. I could even accept it if he was merely an extremely biased news reporter. But now he has gone beyond the pale. He is knowingly participating in and perpetuating a fraud designed to effect the outcome of a presidential election. He has gone too far. He has dishonored himself and CBS.

John Allen

Just for the record, just sent the following, along with citations to indc and their 11 SEP article:

---------------------------------------

At this point, the Globe is still running with the CBS forgeries. The Globe has egregiously misquoted Dr Phil Bouffard, and completely reversed his conclusions in the article hed today.

As an interested reader, and sometimes jounalist myself, I write to ask: Is this kind of dishonest reporting the Globe's editorial policy, or will these misquotations and misrepresentations be corrected and their authors and editors disciplined?

Sincerely yours

Charles R Martin

Bill, if you have the actual Word document... peek around inside it. They're notorious for picking up extra garbage that may or may not be either of interest or relevant.

Wait, there it is on your site.
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/AirForceDataSystemsDesignCenter1969.doc

It has the _properties_ set. It isn't just a scan, someone had to make it... and it has 'Author' set to 'Neil M. Franklinn' and it took him 6 hours to make. What kind of 30 year old farging document HAS THE PROPERTIES SET when opened in Word?!? And what kind of scan takes 6 hours?!?

Time to track Neil.

Probably not this one:
http://www.thinkquest.org/library/site_sum.html?tname=26026&url=26026/About_This_Site/coach_neil_franklin.html

Or this one:
http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1996/february_9_1996_173206.html

I'm not good at tracking people via Google, so I thought I'd "report" and let more eyeballs think about it.

Nevermind, someone in a lower post examined the properties and re-found the document via Google -> making it look more legitimate.

There's a simple way to resolve this. If the original documents are available, give Dr. Bouffard a crack at them. He would probably tell you that analysis of an electronic document is iffy at best. How can anyone be sure if a resized electronic doc is real or not?? I commend your amazing reporting and agree that the onus is on CBS to provide these documents to outside experts. If CBS doesn't have originals and is not willing to provide them, then they should be counted as absolute fabrication and should be discredited.

As for the journalistic ethics issues, I completely agree with you (even though I think the significance of this story is more about independent media holding corporate media in check -- the press has admitted to covering up anti-WMD stories during the war and I bet most of your readers don't include that fact in their hypotheses of a "liberal media" - and where were you guys when the NYT was going after Clinton on iffy Whitewater charges??) that Rather should turn in his microphone.