posted 09-10-2004 08:38 AM         

RATHERBIASED.COM UPDATE
September 9, 2004

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<http://ratherbiased.com/news/>

Rather Stupid? Did CBS Get Duped by Hoax Memos?
<http://ratherbiased.com/news/content/view/202/2/>
--During last night's 60 Minute segment on President George W. Bush's Air National Guard service, the CBS News touted a number of documents which seemingly indicate that the future president failed to meet his service obligations.

That may well be the case but it is becoming increasingly evident that 60 Minutes, and the Dan Rather, the reporter behind the story, may have been relying on forged documents to prove their case.

Several indicators point to this conclusion including the fact that the four memoranda, which Rather said were written during the early 1970s by Bush's commanding officer Lt. Colonel Jerry Killian, are printed in a proportionally spaced type style similar to the common computer font Times New Roman. But such computer technology had not even been invented when the documents were allegedly written.

This does not imply, however, that the memos could not have originated during the 1970s since IBM, the dominant player in the office equipment at the time had several years earlier invented a typewriter which allowed typists to use proportional fonts.

Such machines, marketed mainly under the model name Selectric had become quite popular by the early seventies even though they were extremely expensive according to Jim Forbes, who collects the now-discontinued machines and operates a web site about them called Selectric.org.

For the most part, organizations who could afford the typewriters only allowed professional typists to use them especially since they were often cumbersome to use. Non-professionals stuck to the older, less-complicated typewriters which printed in the traditional monospace fonts like Courier.

As a government installation, it is quite possible that the Texas Air National Guard had a few Selectric (or its successor models) in its possession. However, examination of Bush's official records released by the Pentagon reveals that Killian and his fellow officers did not use proportional spacing typewriters (1, 2, 3, 4) for their correspondence.

For its part, CBS has refused to disclose where it had obtained the controversial documents. During last night's program, Rather stated "we are told [they] were taken from Colonel Killian's personal file." Contacted by The Washington Post, Kelli Edwards, a spokesperson for 60 Minutes declined to elaborate any further.

Other evidence points toward the conclusion that CBS News may have been duped. Two of the alleged memos, dated May 4, 1972 and August 18, 1973, use a font technology that was beyond the capabilities of the day.

Both documents use relatively sized fonts to write out ordinal numbers, a typographical convention used to spell out numerical orderings or rankings such as "twenty-fourth." In normal English usage are often written in shorted form using the relevant number followed by an ordinal suffix. Thus "twenty-fourth" becomes 24th. The 1972 document uses the ordinal 111st and the other refers to 187th.

The fact that the person who made the documents used this notation casts doubt on their authenticity since typing it out numerically with a superscript ordinal suffix was quite difficult to do on an Selectric model typewriter which required a very involved process in which the user would have to feed the paper up half a line, manually remove the device's "font ball" which was used to place characters onto the paper, replace it with a ball with a smaller-sized font, advance the page back down half a line, and then put back the original font ball.

While it is conceivable that the memos' creator may have actually followed the elaborate procedure to get the perfect superscript ordinal suffix, that does not seem likely according to Gerry Kaplan, another Selectric collector who operates IBMComposer.org.

"The person who produced this copy does not appear to have taken the time to properly space things out, such as 'May,1972' has no space after the comma; '(flight)IAW' has no space after the parenthesis. So, it would be hard to believe that they would take the time to produce the superscript 'th' manually. So, if no general-use typewriter existed with such keys, it is unlikely that they took the time to superscript that," Kaplan says.

Theoretically, it is possible that Killian may have had access to a font ball which contained superscript-sized ordinal suffixes, but such an accessory would have been very rare.

"If one had a font ball that had a superscript font, then it could be done, but as far as I know, the only common superscript font was the number set available on the Symbol balls," says Forbes. "These would be used for formal papers with footnotes, most likely. So, the short answer to your question about a letter superscript is 'No.'"

The typographical case against the documents' authenticity is further undermined considering that all of the memos appear to use a font that was not in wide use on Selectric machines during the early seventies. A search of Forbes's online archive of common Selectric fonts reveals none matching typeface used in the purported Killian memos. In fact, the CBS documents' font looks much more similar to the modern-day Times New Roman.

In the face of such evidence (including the fact that Killian has long since been deceased), and CBS's refusal to reveal its third-party source, it seems increasingly likely that Dan Rather's "exclusive" has turned out to be a hoax. Should that be the case, it would not be the first time that the 72-year-old anchorman has been embarrassed by reporting unconfirmed stories.

In his legendary book on the 1972 presidential campaign The Boys on the Bus, author Timothy Crouse relayed how many of Rather's rivals on the White House beat resented him for his gung-ho approach to the facts.

"Rather often adhered to the 'informed sources' or 'the White House announced today' formulas, but he was famous in the trade for the times when he bypassed these formulas and 'winged it' on a story. Rather would go with an item even if he didn't have it completely nailed down with verifiable facts. If a rumor sounded solid to him, if he believed it in his gut or had gotten it from a man who struck him as honest, he would let it rip. The other White House reporters hated Rather for this. They knew exactly why he got away with it: being handsome as a cowboy, Rather was a star on CBS News, and that gave him the clout he needed. They could quote all his lapses from fact, like the three times he had Ellsworth Bunker resigning, the two occasions on which he announced that J. Edgar Hoover would step down, or the time he incorrectly predicted that Nixon was about to veto an education bill."

posted 09-10-2004 01:46 PM         

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Originally posted by Bob Miller:

I just wish the debate centered on the economy, health care, Iraq, terrorism and a host of other relevant issues instead of this 30 and 40 year old crap!

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posted 09-10-2004 02:08 PM         

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posted 09-11-2004 08:00 PM         

Blogger Charles Johnson:

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The spacing is not just similar -- it is identical in every respect. Notice that the date lines up perfectly, all the line breaks are in the same places, all letters line up with the same letters above and below, and the kerning is exactly the same. And I did not change a single thing from Word's defaults; margins, type size, tab stops, etc. are all using the default settings. The one difference (the "th" in "187th" is slightly lower) is probably due to a slight difference between the Mac and PC versions of the Times New Roman font, or it could be an artifact of whatever process was used to artificially "age" the document. (Update: I printed the document and the "th" matches perfectly in the printed version. It's a difference between screen and printer fonts.)

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The Powerline Blog:

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The type in the document is KERNED. Kerning is the typesetter's art of spacing various letters in such a manner that they are 'grouped' for better readability. Word processors do this automatically. NO TYPEWRITER CAN PHYSICALLY DO THIS.
To explain: the letter 'O' is curved on the outside. A letter such as 'T' has indented space under its cross bar. On a typewriter if one types an 'O' next to a 'T' then both letters remain separated by their physical space. When you type the same letters on a computer next to each other the are automatically 'kerned' or 'grouped' so that their individual spaces actually overlap. e. g., TO. As one can readily see the curvature of the 'O' nestles neatly under the cross bar of the 'T'. Two good kerning examples in the alleged memo are the word 'my' in the second line where 'm' and 'y' are neatly kerned and also the word 'not' in the fourth line where the 'o' and 't' overlap empty space. A typewriter doesn't 'know' what particular letter is next to another and can't make those types of aesthetic adjustments.

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posted 09-13-2004 01:34 PM         

He got really interested in Selectric typewriters a few years ago and started a web site called the Selectric Typewriter Museum. He's gotten so many hits in the last week that he took down the selectric portion of his web site.

The really scary thing about all of this is that you just can't beleive what you read and see in the press. I think he finds it pretty humorous that his web site has been cited but no one has actually verified what the credentials of his web site are -- although CBS obviously didn't do much to verify the authenticity of the memos either....

BTW, his web site also got cited in the October issue of Hot Rod magazine. A picture of his 55 Chevy made it into the Power Tour article and his site URL was published under a listing of web sites with on-line Power Tour journals.

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Originally posted by CJ:
Is anyone besides me getting tired of hearing about past war records between the candidates???

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I'm getting tired of the left lying their pants off about everything and the liberal media printing and talking about stuff being gospel then repeatedly found to be inaccurate.

This is just a glowing case of stupidity on the American Biased Channel's (ABC), National Biased Channel (NBC), or the Certifiably Biased Channel (CBS) reporting.....

posted 09-13-2004 11:03 PM         

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"Everything that's in those documents, that people are saying can't be done, as you said, 32 years ago, is just totally false. Not true. Proportional spacing was available. Superscripts were available as a custom feature. Proportional spacing between lines was available. You can order that any way you'd like," said document expert Bill Glennon.

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Yeah. By the same token, I'm sure most current government issue word processing computers today have nearly infallible voice recognition technology based on optical nanotech processors. As a custom feature, of course.

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Richard Katz, a software designer, found some other indications in the documents. He noted that the letter "L" is used in those documents, instead of the numeral "one." That would be difficult to reproduce on a computer today.

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Good point. Having seen the photorealistic computer-generated battle scenes in Lord of the Rings and Attack of the Clones, I really doubt if current computer technology is powerful enough to make an "l" look like a "1".

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"There's one document from May 1972 that contains a normal "th" on 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 up and then type it again," said Katz.

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Yes, only a criminal mastermind with decades of experience in the art of forgery would have the audacity to go out of his way to toggle-off one of Microsoft Word's auto-edit functions.

posted 09-14-2004 08:11 AM         

"Are these CBS people off their rockers?"

From Jay Leno last night:

Today's New York Times has an update on the scandal over Dan Rather's use of fraudulent documents in last week's hit piece on President Bush. Oddly, the Times piece lacks a byline, but it has what may be the greatest headline ever: "Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says."

posted 09-15-2004 07:35 PM         

quote:

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Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says."

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posted 09-15-2004 09:22 PM         

C [BS} News continues to support their story. Their Evening News division website:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/eveningnews/main3420.shtml

IMO, its time for Dan to hang 'em up. Its pure politics with him,,,,he'd love to see Kerry win.