There are two common Times New Roman-like font balls for the IBM Composer. One is Press Roman and Aldine Roman. Press Roman has feet on the fours that do not exist in the document. So, then the left has said but it is Aldine Roman. But, Aldine Roman has capital jays that descend below the base line.

In the May 4 memo there is a four without a foot and the signature block has a JERRY where the J doesn't descend below the baseline.

So, I challenge the left to name the font available to Selectric Composer that matches the letters.

Reflecting on the quote:

"But others have said that the elements were available on an IBM Selectric Composer, an enhanced electric typewriter in use at the time."

If a partisan hack was up against the wall she or he might well argue, "Hey, I didn't say who the others were or even if they were experts! Actually they were two drunks at the corner bar."

Your last point is incredibly important: NO RANTING!!!

Remember: The Globe has made a horrible mistake. The Globe has broken faith with its readers by not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The nastier and more angry you are, the less you will be listened to.

Remember this! It is still entirely possible that these are merely reporters who were pretty sure this whole thing is bogus and merely saw their prejudices confirmed. To accuse them of outright partisan perfidy would be a mistake. They may simply be blinkered. Remember this when you write them!

Here's a link to my blog that eliminates two of the possible fonts on IBM Composer.

Cab I just make a small remark here?
Composer/Comshmozer.

That machine might be able to produce, with elaborate tweening and multiple steps, very similar documents.

An elaborate, multi-step process would have been required for each and every memo and done with a perfection across several different memos over a period of years.

Bouffard may or may not dispatch the idea that
a similar document could be identical because of subtle differences in the typeface.

The composer was unlikely in the extreme to have been used in that setting by that author for that application.

Will Brouffard render an opinion on whether WORD was equally likely to have produced the copies he is reviewing?

For if he does, then the remote possibility a composer was used still leaves the letters unauthenticatable by review of typeface.

THe signatures could be cut and pasted. Since CBS admits the papers they have are multi-generation copies, and making multiple photocopies is one technique used by forgers to hide cut and pastes,
How can anyone say with certaintly the signatures are authentic?

Then, the military format and language,
as in text abreviations, for the documents is anachronistic.

Strong refused to vouch for the authenticity of the memos, and Hodges declares them fakes after having been tricked by CBS. They declared them to be in Killians authenticated handwriting, and essentially Hodges did not deign to second-guess feelings expressed in Killian's own hand. "If he wrote it, that's what he felt". I guess CBS is immune to Boolean logic operators.

CBS's handwriting expert said he "authenticated" one signature on one document as being Killians handwriting, but that does not address the cut and paste issue, and Hugh Hewitt hired a handwriting expert who contradicted CBS's.

Bring me the hard drive of
Bill Burkett.

"He's magically unimpeachable."

"It is still entirely possible that these are merely reporters who were pretty sure this whole thing is bogus and merely saw their prejudices confirmed."

Often times it is not the reporters at all, but their EDITORS.

Great point Bill. If you come off as a wingnut, you not only invalidate your own remarks you cast doubt on legitimate points raised by others.

Always be as reasonable and factual as possible.

Why don't they just check the records done at the Reserve Unit for other letters typed at the same time frame and see what they come up with. It should be easy to find other documents that would show the same print used by Killian.

Hell, barb, you can do that yourself. USA Today has all the Bush records on line. They're all typed with a conventional, monospaced, Courier typewriter. This includes a Bush efficiency report from a month before.

Signatures don't seem to match either.

"And documents produced with the typewriter reviewed by the Globe have proportional spacing and the curved apostrophe".

The Globe article says they have reproduced several disputed elements from the memo with a typewriter. They don't say what model.

Yeah, I think the total lack of any other documents with the same proportional font is another nail in the coffin on this, in addition to the (impossible on 1970s typewriter) 13-point vertical spacing and (mathematically intricate and also impossible for a 1970s typewriter) perfect centering (down to the twip, or 1/440 of an inch) of said proportional font.

Random prediction: the reason the White House has been so silent on the forgery issue so far is because they don't want to drop bombs on a weekend when they'll get lost in the noise. Instead, they're waiting for Monday, at which point they're going to unleash a MOAB of evidence from professionals demonstrating conclusively that these are forgeries, likely at a news conference or other high profile event. At this point, the MSM will have to cover the story, and CBS will either be forced to back down or suffer a permenant credibility loss.

I think the WH was silent because they were being cautious, and then as forgery now starts to looks likely, they are letting McCauliffe and CBS hang themselves with their own rope before they hit back.

Bill:
Did you ever find out if CBS News actually contacted (actually talked to) Dr. Bouffard yesterday, or did they outright LIE about it?

They cited the Boston Globe account.

That is not what this says, unless I cannot read anymore!

"Anchor Russ Mitchell of the Saturday edition of the CBS Evening News says CBS News contacted Broussard Saturday, and Broussard said he could not dismiss the documents as fake, but he needs to do more analysis before coming to a final conclusion."

This is copied & pasted directly from the CBS site. It is the paragraph directly after the paragraph in which they mention the Globe and its quote.
"...and Broussard said he could not dismiss the documents as fake, but he needs to do more analysis before coming to a final conclusion." sounds exactly like (word for word, I think) the quote Dr. Bouffard told you he gave to the Globe but did not use.

Then you are right. I didn't read that article, just recited what I had heard about Rather's appearance via Wizbang.

I didn't see it, so another question is, what was the theme of the story ON THE BROADCAST? From what I understand, they were claiming that the docs were authenticated.

I did not see the broadcast (I would not waste my time!) but I e-mailed you last night a similar paragraph that appeared to be coming from a transcript.

I sent email about this directly to Bill, the site's moderator, but I'm sure he's been innundated, so I thought I'd post it for others to consider.

I believe I can prove that an IBM Selectic Composer was not used to produce the memo. There's a site (which now seems to demand a password) with the user's manual for the IBM SC in PDF format. In an appendix, on page 108, is a chart that gives the width of the propotionally spaced characters in integer units, which vary from 3 for 'i' up to 9 for 'M'. The relative character width does not depend on the font, though it of course scales with the font size. I wrote a C program to compute the unit line positions based on this chart, and used it to investigate the "CYA" memo.

According to my program, the strings "SUBJEC" and "interfere" should both be 40 units wide if typed on the IBM SC, yet in the memo, the first string is somewhat longer, overlapping the next 'n' in "interference". Similarly, the 'sh' in "Bush" in the first line should be directly over the 'to' in "today" in the second line. Both should start at unit position 269. In the actual memo, the 'to' is shifted over half a character to the right of the 'sh'.

Needless to say, all character positions in the memo match the Word document exactly.

It's always possible that there's a bug in either my analysis or my program, but I believe I've been quite carefull.

Mike

"just recited what I had heard about Rather's appearance via Wizbang."

The echo chamber of the amateur right-wing rumormill.

Nice example of a classic ad hominem, mark_y1.