Former Dean Campaign Manager Joe Trippi just said on Chris Matthews' Hardball that he just got an e-mail that the Killian memos might have been printed in 1972, but had the fonts changed when they were recently scanned into a modern computer system.

He also repeated the old rumor that the documents were challenged on Free Republic before the 60 Minutes II program was over.

This is a bit off topic, but I was struck by this passage in the interview with Pierce:

"- Pierce is not happy that CBS plastered his home address all over the Internet (it’s on the ‘professional opinion’ memo in the letterhead). A CNN crew was “banging on his door at 5:00am” on Thursday morning trying to get a statement, and camped there until he called the local police to have them removed from his property. His phone’s been ringing off the hook, and he said a reporter [with a major publication] has been “hounding” him the last couple of days, with veiled threats of some kind of legal action against Pierce unless he gave an interview to the reporter. He said the last few days have been “hellish” for him."

I've heard about what reporters do to people at the center of a big story a few times (the woman falsely accused of having an affair with Kerry gave a poignant account of what it was like). There's something wrong here. I don't know what the solution is, but it bothers me. No one should be subjected to this when they're just doing their job.

--Rick Taylor

The Raving Atheist wrote:

"Former Dean Campaign Manager Joe Trippi just said on Chris Matthews' Hardball that he just got an e-mail that the Killian memos might have been printed in 1972, but had the fonts changed when they were recently scanned into a modern computer system."

A problem with this is that the document looks as though it was distorted to make it look old. One person I read said it looked like it had been put through some aging filter in Photoshop. I don't know if that's true or if it could be verified, but if it could, that would rule that out.

At this point it doesn't even matter very much whether the documents were forged or not, at least as far as CBS is concerned. For me, the main issue is the arrogant way in which they distorted experts testimony, refused to make public their reasons for their cofindence in the documents, etc. etc. etc.

--Rick Taylor

Trippi's theory makes no sense. Why were the signatures on the documents? This is ridiculous.

"...had the fonts changed when they were recently scanned into a modern computer system."

Yeah.. yeah...That's the ticket!

This "fonts changing when scanning into a modern computer system" is just nonsense.

When you scan a doc into the PC it is recreated as an image...no fonts are changed, nothing. And as Bill points out, how do you explain the signatures? Why weren't those converted into a digital font?

Perhaps someone should check with the Kinkos in Texas and see if they have such a magic machine...right next to the magic typewriter...right next to Kerry's magic hat from Cambodia.

Trippi is just trippin...he is intentionally spreading stupid rumors to try to help Kerry and hurt Bush.

The Dems have already shown no regard for the truth...why should we expect them to do any differently with their commentary on this story?

Character Recognition software, is that what Trippi is saying??? yeah..okay, so then go to your source and say "Hey we're in a bit of a spot here, can we have the originals?"

It is amazing how much slack and to such degree lame asses on TV or in print are willing to go to defend this thing.

By the time this thing is over journalists will be a degree behind lawyers within public perception.

The OCR technique, while interesting, still fails to take into account all of the problems noted with wrong terminology and layout of the content, not to mention objections by Killian's family and others as to the content itself.

As one who has used some OCR, I might add that half the time you can count on it totally trashing your formatting.... having things nicely centered, etc, is usually icing on the cake. Even having it get the TEXT right is a plus, you have to read it for errors after you scan.

Also, an additional note on the fake aging- Charles at lgf followed up tips from his readers and produced a processed version of one of the documents showing the wrinkle marks where it had been deliberately crumpled and then spread out again. His theory was that it was more fake aging... perhaps, but it would be unneeded if they weren't supposed to be real.

And that leads us to the crux of the whole thing. If this brilliant ploy were actually true, why would Dan Rather go out on this long, slender limb by ridiculing the experts who pointed out (rightfully) that they were made on a modern computer? He'd have to be out of the loop from his own source!