Wimp!

Heh.

Saw it briefly... expect an organized leftie attack on the 4 bloggers who first questioned CBS... an effort to discredit you guys.

Aww...is it that the Kerry camp may have sent the memos to CBS? :)

Anyway, the sig. block on the memos are funky too.

My dad (USAF Lt Col ret.) just told me that he thought they were fakes because the sig block should say LT COL not LT. COLONEL.

Regulations /might/ have been different 7 years before my dad (1979) and may be different in the Guard, but its worth looking into at least.

This is starting to sound like Dave Kopel's "59 Deceits of F911" only insert "CBS Memo" for "F911". It's wrong on so many levels it's hard to keep track of all the stupidity involved. I would have done a much better job of it. And that's the scary part, if I could do a better job of it, there's guys on the left that are probably already working on a new improved version that put's W on the grassy knoll in Dallas right now.

OK, I understand that you wouldn't want to traffic in rumors. Could you point us in the direction of, ahem, someone who would? {grin}

Rather's defense on Friday was sloppy but tonight's interview with Katz was outright naïve. CBS's defense reaches an unfathomed depth of amateurishness. An "expert" who does not know the first thing about Microsoft Word? (At best, Katz's expertise reaches up to PC-Word, late 80's.) By my very rough estimate, 25 million Americans must know better than Katz. Somebody in CBS must be setting up the Dan.

RATHER: Richard Katz, a software designer found other indications in the documents. He noticed the lower case l is used in documents instead of the actual numeral one. That would be difficult to reproduce on the computer today.

RICHARD KATZ: If you were doing this a week ago or a month ago on a normal laser jet printer, it wouldn't work. The font wouldn't be available to you.

RATHER: Katz noted the documents have the superscript th and a regular sized th. That would be common on a typewriter, not a computer.

KATZ: There is one document from may of 1972 which contains a normal al th at the top. To produce that in Microsoft Word, you would have to go out of your way to type the letters and then turn the th setting off or back over them and type them again.

since I was about 12 or so I have been of the opinion that mainstream journalists are the stupidest most hypocritical group of human beings on the earth. I have generally used this stereotype to explain things like RatherGate and general bias (rather than assigning willful misrepresentation).

But I am starting to get mystified, because no one of any real professional standing can possibly rely on such ridiculous BS as Rather has the last few days. No one is this stupid. No one be this willfully blind no matter how hypocritically dedicated to their premise they are.

I saw a post yesterday about the typewriter repairman "expert" and magically this guy shows up today to refute someone who actually is unimpeachable (Dr. Newcomer). This is just plain crazy.

All right, fellas, take a deep breath. You've done your job. The docs are bogus. Everyone (at least everyone with any sort of ability to actually breath) already knows this. You've got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run... Sorry.
Anyway, now is the time to hold. We know what we've got, and we know its good. All that needs to be done is to put the presure on them, with what we've already got, to call or fold. Either way, we win (and I say "we" in the most vicarious way that "we" has ever been used).

Looks like the Washington Post just dropped the hammer:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18982-2004Sep13.html

The MSM can pursue the main thread here. The next important issues are the classics:

1. What did Dan know? and when did he know it?

2. If the documents are clearly fake, then all journalistic ethics rules invert themselves and 60 Minutes should OUT the folks that provided the documents. Unless of course......

RICHARD KATZ: If you were doing this a week ago or a month ago on a normal laser jet printer, it wouldn't work. You can't type a letter "l" where a "1" should go.

DAN RATHER: What?

KATZ: I said, you can't type a letter "l" on a computer.

RATHER: I heard what you said. Are you shitting me? You think typing a letter "l" on a computer is hard?

KATZ: It would take at least 3 menus to do it.

RATHER: Holy fuck. This is the expert the morons upstairs got to save me? I'm more tweedled than a polo bug in a robot factory.

KATZ: Uh, what did you just say?

... that's how the interview should have gone. As soon as that noise about it being hard to type the letter "l" was uttered, the producer should've gone immediately to commercial and come back only after beheading someone.

Wow that WaPo article is brutal!
esp. the part where ex-typewriter repairman/now IT consultant Bill Glennon claims that the documents could have been produced in 1972, then admits he isnt a document expert and cant vouch for the memos because CBS wouldnt give him copies.
The kicker is in the very next paragraph where his "analysis" is dismissed by the program manager for fonts at Adobe!

So the only other "expert" CBS has left since Marcel jumped ship is some "software designer" they dug up (translation: web designer who knows HTML and Flash). Theyve reached the point where their experts are rejects from USENET flamewars.

I first posted this at Whizbang but I am so proud of my new pajamas I am posting it here too.

Either Rather plus his producers are colossally stupid, really, or they know what they said and hoped to fool some colossally stupid people. i go with Rather is colossally stupid, as follows:

We say they are forgeries because we say someone went out of their way to make them look original.

Here is what Rather said tonight:

1. "We checked the signature handwriting on the copies!"

We say, sure, but I can myself easily go out of my way to make documents with copies of Killian's signature. So could any forger. What's your point?

2. His expert said, "The documents show that the same key was used for a character one and a character ell. If you used different keystrokes in a Word Processor a laser printer would never print them the same!"

We say, sure, but I can myself easily go out of my way to make documents with the same key used for a character one and a character ell. So could any forger. What's your point?

3. His expert said, "The documents have a superscript 'th' and same-size-lower-justified 'th'. Someone using a word processor would have to go out of their way to duplicate that!"

(Uh, gee, can't even brain-dead Dan Rather see through that one????)

We say, sure, but I can myself easily go out of my way to make a superscript 'th' and same-size-lower-justified 'th'. So could any forger. What's your point?

(Not to mention that the Blogs are full of the fact tonight that clearly lowercase ells were used to turn off auto-superscripting!!!")

4. Rather says, "Look here, some of the dates in our documents match some other dates known in the public domain. That contributes to their authenticity."

This is really getting tiresome. Dan Rather really is as stupid as he looks.

We say, sure, but I can myself easily go out of my way to find public domain dates to put into a document. So could any forger. What's your point?

5. I wasn't going to add this because it doesn't have the same idiotic obvious flavor of the others, but it bears saying.

That "expert" Glennon (let's hear it for 15 minutes of fame!) says that all of the features in the memo were existent at that time and could be ordered as special features. Rather said essentially the same thing in his first defense on Friday.

We have no interest in a general assertion of that nature. Show us the machine that had ALL of them simultaneously, period. And I add, that machine must have the pseudo-kerning of the documents, it must tuck the "r" under the "f" in "from" and it must do it in a reasonably automatic way that would make us think a 1972 Lt. Col. would use it to dash off memos.

(All of those type capabilities probably existed SOMEWHERE in 1950, 1925, 1875? I'm just guessing. The issue is not did the type capabilities exist but did they exist in one machine that a 1972 Lt. Col. would use to dash off memos?)

So, really, multiple times tonight Rather and his experts used the defense "you would have to go out of your way to get those results in a WORD PROCESSOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Uh, yes, that is by definition what a forgery is.

So, I reiterate,
1. Rather could not see that he is monumentally stupid (my explanation)
or
2. The extraordinarily transparently bad logic is so obvious that I have to consider the possibility that Rather knows better and just figures it would totally dupe his stupid listeners. I admit I had to re-play the part about the 1's & l's to fully grasp the total stupidity of what they were saying, so maybe Dan is right and he can get away with it.

Respectfully submitted,

jwniii

Yes this whole stupdity question it boggles my mind. Either Rather is collosally stupid or he thinks everyone else is. I doubt either one can be true.

So is he stalling? I dunno its just, well, fishy.

jwnii--

Great summary. I'd add that in addition to the specialized machine you describe in your point 5, it really ought to be a machine that does all that fancy crap, and yet, doesn't come with the "one" key included, thus necessitating the user to hit "ell" instead on his state of the art kerned superscripted proportional printer-grade super expensive typewriter.

I guess they were trying to save a few bucks on the "one" key when they were ordering their top of the line futuristic machine. Cause, you know, you can just hit ell and that's good enough for gov't work.

to the poster who said
"the sig block should say LT COL not LT. COLONEL"
in the other non-disputed docs Killian used Lt. Colonel rather than LT COL or LTC
....however he also always signed them

JERRY B KILLIAN
Lt Colonel, TexANG

not
........................Jerry B Killian
........................Lt Colonel

so yeah, they are still fake, but not because he wrote Lt Colonel, apparently that was the way Killian always wrote it

As I understand it, either abbreviation is correct, as long as it doesn't include a period (and, per the style of the time, is flush left).

I keep reading about CBS and Rather specifically being "stupid" and "naive." He is neither. This entire story is nothing more and nothing less than propaganda for the Democrats. There is no other reasonable explanation for it.

It's becoming increasingly clear that CBS obtained these fake memos from either the Kerry campaign or the DNC for a number of reasons:

L) CBS won't deny it. Why? Because there's absolutely no way to spin that contention into anything other than a bold-faced LIE once the truth finally comes out.

2) CBS has exhibited a vehement reluctance to offer ANY information whatsoever to justify their characterization of the source as "unimpeachable."

3) Several articles have cited CBS insiders identifying the Democrats as their official document distributors.

4) Terry McAuliffe says it isn't true.