So... when do Terry McAuliffe and Tom Harkin issue their apology statements?

Great job Bill. Keep up the Good Work and bring down McCaullif.

Unfortunately, even with this kind of evidence, CBS is still going to "stand by" its story.

Jerks.

So, why has CBS been so silent when the evidence has been pouring in?

They aren't stupid. They can easily see what we all see. There is an obvious reason why we haven't heard a word from them since their facially inadequate counter-response (e.g., the first version of that font was invented in 1931; a very different sort of superscript that doesn't rise above the line was available in 1972).

Here's why the silence and delay.

They are meeing with their lawyers to see if a crime was committed. They are meeting with their lawyers to see if they can, or may, or must, reveal the source. They are meeting with their lawyers to see if they must make an SEC disclosure.

They are meeting internally to see whose careers are over. (Please include Jonathan "Pajamas" Klein.) They are meeting internally to argue over disclosing the source. They are meeting internally to decide how to word the retraction.

A public company that realizes it screwed up cannot issue half-truths. (Remember what happened to Martha Stewart?) CBS will not speak until they have all those issue ironed out. That's why the silence in the face of reality.

Here's my guess: within 48 hours, CBS will make a retraction that will be louder than the disappearance of Krakatoa.

Is the GOP going to make an issue of this? The MSM will drop it as soon they can. Someone has to nail someone to the wall for this.

Forgeries? In an attempt to manipulate a democratic election? Forgeries? I am still just astonished. I expect bias, but forgeries?

Did the DNC handle these papers or not? Did they go through the DNC on their way to CBS?

This can't just end here.

Tom:

Another prediction. Forging an official government document is a crime. Once CBS retracts (and we've haven't heard from them because they are getting ready to make the mother of all retractions), then a US Attorney will open a grand jury investigation.

This will not go away. That explains CBS's silence. It will be interesting to see how many careers end and how many indictments come down.

This will play out for, I guess, three years.

Johnny,

Why does CBS have to come clean? Where is the pressure? From the internet? It's not getting big play in the papers or on TV. Why can't they just wait for it to blow over?

Thanks Bill ^^

I could be wrong, but this is what's prompting my prediction. Why has CBS been so silent for so long, as why is it not responding to the incredible level of detail publicly available on the web?

One hypothesis is that no CBS employees see what everyone else in seeing. I don't think that's plausible. More plausible to me is the possibility that in fact lots of people at CBS can see the obvious.

In that case, it takes a lot of time to get everything squared away. Let's see if I'm right. I'm putting the odds at 75% or greater that the silence from CBS is because they know what we all know. Also, if plenty of smart people at CBS see what is obvious to see, it means the end of some very important careers. Working through that is another reason for silence and some delay.

I'm kind of wondering if it's really a good idea to forward this to CSB and the Boston Globe. Judging from their past actions I wouldn't be surprised to have them take the following quote from Mr. Newcomer's opinion: "The font existed in 1972; there were technologies in 1972 that could... reproduce these memos"

Would anyone be shocked by this?

Its just as well that CBS ignores this expert. If they quoted him it would be under the headline; DOCUMENTS PASS EXPERT SCRUTINY:: No evidence of Kerning.

JD - email your city paper as well as CBS and the Boston Globe - I just mailed the New York Daily News.

Be careful, this guy is right on most of the facts, but wrong on one in particular:

However, Microsoft Word by default does not kern text. The text of the memo is not kerned.

Not true. This guy here shows kerning pairs in the memo - but not in output from the IBM Selectric Composer. We all know now there's that wierd option to turn kerning "on" - what that does we don't know, all we know is that the kerning embedded in Truetype fonts doesn't go away no matter how you set MS Word.

This expert goes on to say:

But kerning is complex, and computationally expensive, and therefore would have slowed down redisplay in a WYSIWYG editor.

I think this was definitely true when he was working on early laser technology - but is no longer the case. Kerning in MS Word and just about every other program is pretty bad and roughly done - but it's still there, to a degree.

Meanwhile, the kerning proves (again) the Selectric Composer can't make the memo.

Jonas: I think the article you cite agrees with Dr. Newcomer...he just calls it a different name.

The article you cite calls the effect "automatic Kerning"...I've read others calling it "internal kerning" of the font...whereas Dr. Newcomer calls it "pseudo-kerning" or the "characteristic of Microsoft TrueType fonts called the ABC dimensions."

I think if you read the entire article by Dr. Newcomer, you'll realize he is the one with the greatest degree of accuracy on this issue.

Dr. Newcomer's analysis definitely seals the deal. He is unequivocal in his conclusion, and doesn't seem afraid to go public with his analysis.

Of course, Dr. Newcomer also has the impeccable credentials to back up his analysis, and presents his analysis with very helpful graphics.

I'd say this guy is a real ace.

Wouldn't it be nice of a Republican 527 would run some sort of ad campaign on this, if CBS doesn't come clean?

Dr. Newcomer's analysis seems pretty conclusive, although his website design could use improvement. His page has a counter -- its' gotten about 1,000 hits in the last 15 minutes, so word is spreading fast.

milowent: I thought the same thing about Dr. Newcomer's web design! He might be a computer genius, but he hasn't devoted much attention to the aesthetics of his website!

This reminds me of an ace coder I once worked with...he is an absolute genius at writing code, but his website sucked. He is just so good and gets so much work through word of mouth that he doesn't need a snazzy website.

Don't forget to email that page to CBS's competitors too.

It's a lot easier for CBS and the Globe to ignore our emails than it would be to ignore a few Time and WaPo articles and relentless FNC and ABC televised news segments.

Rumor has it their "unimpeachable source" is career Bush-hater Bill Burkett. If this is true, Rather will have to be fired. That would be an out-and-out lie.

There is only one level of pressure that is going to matter, corporate. MSM is still not entirely sold that the cable outlets are legitimate journalists, so dont even think about the internet. There will be a point where the rats start jumping ships, and the other networks smell enough blood in the water that they cant resist the scandal. Its a race to see if CBS can weather the storm before that death cycle begins. I'd say 50/50 this is swept under the rug.

CBS has a few more things to mull over...

If the documents are real then the Family and the TANG can immediately call for an investigation to "discover" how CBS came into possession of them since they were not released through the freedom of information act nor did the Family give CBS permission to use them commercially. An investigation would require "discovery" whence CBS would be required by Federal law to produce all copies and the deliverer and identify the source(s)...

If the documents are fraudulent then the FBI can pursue all copies and information concerning source under Federal counterfeiting laws. Since they are military papers the DOD can get in the act also....

Either way CBS is in the poop....

I don't think this is going away...FOX has been hammering away at this all day in every news segment...The blood is in the water....

Amy Barnes went on with Rita Cosby in yet a third phone interview... She didn't hesitate to say that her father has lied before and is probably doing the same this time to promote his upcoming book and help get Kerry elected....Damning indeed...

Brit Hume bitchslapped CBS/Rather directly (paraphrasing) - [No self respecting News organization should ever be caught pressing the issue for something so blatantly fraudulent and partisan] ...

The only question is will CBS take the "Who knew" way out or go down with the swiftboat...

Either way, who in their right mind will ever take Rather seriously again... He's toast....

I do agree that applying pressure to the corporations with moneyed interests will also help advance this story.

Does anyone know the contact data to Viacom, CBS' parent company?

Also, of course, there are the network sponsors.

lgf has a report of TIME going to the mat. Sheesh.

"But Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York City who worked for IBM repairing typewriters from 1973 to 1985, says those experts “are full of crap. They just don’t know.” Glennon says there were IBM machines capable of producing the spacing, and a customized key — the likes of which he says were not unusual — could have created the superscript th."

We've _already_ shot everything said in there down.

Wow, kooks. A guy named "flounder" is goign to overturn Time Magazine, the Boston Globe and 60 Mintues. You blogger militias really are a joke! Is "flounder" another far right fascist freeper too???

The Ameircan people don't care about kerning you stupids! They care that Bush lied and a few "fake" memos (which I doubt are fake) are not going to stop the truth that Bush lied from getting out.

I think the question is no longer whether the docs are forgeries, but how soon lawsuits will be filed and whether a crime has been committed here. Beyond the obvious civil defamation and libel lawsuit against both CBS and the source, I would imagine there are criminal penalties for forging a U.S. military document, even one as trivial as a memo to self.

Stop Bush!:

Thanks for posting. It's great to see the contrast between left and right in the thread.

I'm curious at to whether anyone else has noticed the obvious speckle about lines of text in the copies at the USA Today site.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf

These seem to have been cleaned up in the copies at CBS News and FoxNews.

Photoshop or equivalent?

Talldave:

Let's play that thought out, because I, too, see litigation in the offing.

That's why I think CBS has gone into radio silence, even as other MSM have started to pick up on all the details revealed on the web. Why the radio silence? I think the internal doubting at CBS has reached the point where they realize they can't speak in error again.

That's why they told their expert he can't speak to the press. That's why we don't see new facts from CBS, or hear new theories from CBS.

They are very busy plotting the end game, and it won't be pretty at all: the end of careers, criminal investigations, etc.

I am sure lots of people within CBS see all that and are scrambling.

If we pull the forgeries out of the CBS story, Mr. Rather still gets to run with the fact that Bush was suspended from flight status for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination." (Hodges memo from personnel file, dated September 5, 1972, citing effective date of August 1. No mention of any "order" being disobeyed.)

I see no quarrel with the Hodges memo. There's nothing either new or exceptional here.

But Rather clearly wanted more: it seems that he wanted to allege that President Bush disobeyed a direct order, so he went public with the forged memos which support his case. And Rather seems to think that skipping the physical is his story, so he's sticking by it. But he's been overtaken by events: the day after broadcast, his story was the forged documents. Rather has forgotten that the story is whatever people make the story to be.

Even with the forgeries, there really isn't a story here: the President served and was honorably discharged. And there's no debate but that Senator Kerry served with honor in Vietnam.

But now CBS and USAToday have to explain why they've released different copies of the documents (USAToday apparently applied additional compression and included a couple additional docs. And now I can't find my links to any of these PDFs. Aargh.) They have to explain where they got them. And they must be pressed to provide whatever their original copies were (physical or digital) to be properly evaluated.

Yeah, the "you stupids" remark made laugh out my coffee.

Perhaps someone could identify and publish the name of the gov’t department that would investigate and prosecute forgeries such as these, so concerned citizens could urge them to look into it.

from powerlineblog:

http://www.hughhewitt.com/#postid893

Read the third e-mail.

If you can show the CBS memos are authentic, you could invalidate some of Apple's patents on TrueType technology (at least 1 of 5,155,805; 5,159,668; or 5,325,479).

Not only did Killian's typewriter do exactly what Microsoft Word does 30 years later, but it uses the same technology that Microsoft licenses from Apple, and that Apple invented starting in 1989.

Now THAT'S an amazing typewriter!!!

expect a concerted effort on part of DNC sympathizers and/or operatives to launch Denial-of-service attacks on the blogs which have been keeping this story going. their desperation has reached a level where anything is justified in getting Mr. Teresa Heinz Kerry into the Oval Office.

silencing these blogs would solve their problems very nicely, and left on its own the fraud could be swept under the rug within a couple news cycles. so where would you go to complain? "Letters to the editor" and emails to Ombudsmen? haw haw haw.. just like the Good Old Days.

I'm outraged that no one in the MSM is putting pressure on CBS. Is it because they all practice such unethical journalism? Am I living in an Orwelling nightmare? Seriously though, what is going on here? It is 100% clear to everyone that these documents are fake. Yet, the only decent reporting I can find on this scandal is from the blogs.

Has anyone taken any sort of action against CBS (legal, etc)? Is there anything we can do so that this just doesn't blow away in the wind?

I suspect the reason the MSM aren't hammering the story is because they feel that the case for forgery has not been conclusively made. Some are probably still looking; others may have decided it's too muddled to run with fully.

The main problem is lack of original documents. Copying and transmitting documents - especially by digital methods - muddies the water too much for certainty in these matters.

I have a blog post here:
http://pajamapundit.blogspot.com/2004/09/more-fonts.html

It is the result of my experiments trying to reproduce the memo with different near derivatives of Times New Roman (Times Europa, Times Ten, Times New Roman PS, and Times). According to the true believers this should work since derivative fonts like the one for the IBM Selectric Composer share the same letter-spacing as the original.

Sadly (for them) this isn't the case.

In the original statement change "hoaxed" to "willing participants", and "libelous" to "ludicrous". I think that would be the more accurate statement.

As to typesetting pioneers...I was involved in 1968 as my company did the General Motors Buick Division Service Manual --- first ever on electronic typesetting...we started with an IBM 1401 and subsequently used a IBM 360/30 with 65K splitting the master program in three phases after inputting change data from Flint MI to Cleveland OH and using a phototronic CRT from RCA in a patchwork process that evolved into what is used widely today from pc's on up.

Yeah, I am a pioneer some four years earlier, but the brains belonged to one Neil Block, my Vice President of Research who started earlier at Jet Propulsion Labs in CA.

Actually, the typesetting language used then is very much like HTML today.

Just a historical footnote of sort. Sigh! And Bill Gates got all the money....lol