Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

I think we need to begin to examine how the US has used propaganda warfare in foreign lands.

This latest episode with the attack on the Killian memos-- which we now know was essentially controlled by the Republican Swift Boat flacks Creative Response (see Salon-- is reminiscent of that.

The Washington Post-- which took forever to start to unravel the Swift Boat liars most blatant lies-- took no more than 36 hours to put together a comprehensive attack on the Killian memos.

They apparently did not contact IBM to verify the allegations their experts made.

Some of their experts may be Republican partisans or otherwise compromised.

Ted Koppel apparently did the Washington Post one better, throwing out allegations about forgeries without doing any real journalism.

Send a letter of thanks to CBS for still trying to do journalism. Send a letter to the Washington Post to complain about the unprofessionalism of this rush to judgement.

A second comment on propaganda warfare.

How exactly did Time and Newsweek manage to weight their samples so heavily with Republicans. In one case, they asked to speak to the youngest male, and if none was present, to the oldest female. That would seem rather self-evidently to bias the poll away from typical people and toward young males.

When professional outfits start using methodology that is o self-obviously wrong, look to Venezuela as the model for corrupt poll operations.

Brad> Did Jerry Killian's office have an IBM Executive Model D typewriter, and are there other documents from his office at the time that demonstrate this?

I think a Model C could have done it too. I've been railing about this question since the well before the Washington Post published their article. So far, I can't say that the Third Estate has done any serious journalism yet.

It looks like the forgery story will go down in flames, and the authenticity question will go away. I suspect no one will really care whether there was an IBM Model D (or C) Executive Typewriter on Jerry Killian's desk, once the bogosity about MS Word being the only technology capable producing the documents is exposed.

The story has gone from "Bush disobeyed a direct order" to "Bush disobeyed a direct order and his cronies are still trying to cover it up."

Brad,

Why all the focus on the IBM Executive Model D (or C)? Yes, the Model D (and probably the Model C, too) could produce proportional spacing in any font from IBM's book (and that most assuredly included Times Roman, which the firm purchased from the original designer in the early '30s, after it was created for the NY Times).

But starting in 1961, IBM began selling the Selectric. Selectrics also type proportionately. And changing fonts is easy ... it takes about 5 seconds to replace the typeball. Courier and Times Roman were the two most popular fonts, and lots of folks bought both (often with bold and italic typeballs as well). Many IBM typeballs included extra characters, including superscript "TH," "ND," etc.

So it didn't just have to be an Executive Model D, or C.

Oh, and the government bought IBM typewriters by the gadillions. They were indisputably the best machines on the market, tough as tanks. I'd bet that the "champagne" TANG unit was at the top of the food chain in the Texas National Guard for such goodies, and had long before the early '70s put in Selectrics, sending its old Model Cs and Ds down to less influential offices.

I bought my old IBM Model C from Central Stores at UC Santa Barbara for $200 in 1976. It had first been bought in 1964, and used all those years by the physics department. It was not, however, an Executive model. Wouldn't surprise me if the Chancellor's office had 'em, though!

-- Roger Keeling

Goes back further than that!

http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941.html

> IBM announces the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter,
> featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing.
> By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized
> characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a printed
> page, [...] The proportional spacing feature became a staple
> of the IBM Executive series typewriters.

Too bad no one in the big-time major-media press has figured out Google yet...

Tim

All across America long retired couples are having this conversation;

"You used a Selectric at the office and didn't tell me!? I DON'T know you."

So what if the forgery story gets debunked? Many millions of voters will hear only that the liberal media believed forged documents that were intended to smear the President's service in vietnam.

What particularly bothers me about all this is that a good 30% of the voters don't care what the truth is, about anything involved with the election. They only want their guy to win.

Most of those voters will still be here when Bush is history. How do you share a democracy with that many of that sort of people?

"Most of those voters will still be here when Bush is history. How do you share a democracy with that many of that sort of people?"

This gets to the nub of what I think are the two most important reasons why this National Guard story is important. Even without an election it would be important because; 1) now more than ever we need accountability, and disrepect for accountability is what is still driving, to this day, the Bush crowd to cover up the sorry details of his life; and, 2) the Bush apologists who've given up all principle-- fiscal responsibility, straight talk, loyalty to our service men and women, etc-- must be forced to wallow in their self-hate. It's the only way they'll come to face the enormous mistakes they've made over the last decade.

Uh, the Bushies would love to discuss typewriters instead of moral cowardice. They'll do so past November and until late January 05, if given the opportunity.

cb, you're quite right.

Forgeries or not -- and I think that without access to the originals or at least to the first-generation copies that CBS presumably has, it's impossible to know -- the fact remains that undoubtedly-authentic documents already prove that Bush bailed on his obligations. He's been lying about it for decades. Those are facts.

And THAT issue nests in the bigger one, referred to by a poster above: the astonishing unwillingness of the Bush Regime (collectively, and all of the individuals within it) to accept any accountability for their actions and mistakes.

The thing we need to do isn't prove what typewriter someone had in 1973. It's to get GwB out of the White House.

Go donate $20 to MoveOn.org or the Kerry Campaign. Volunteer to walk a block on or before the election, especially if you're in a swing state. Write a letter to the newspaper. If you can, plan on a long weekend or full-week trip to the nearest swing state as a volunteer. Go do something!

-- Roger Keeling

"Did Jerry Killian's office have an IBM Executive Model D typewriter, and are there other documents from his office at the time that demonstrate this?"

Perhaps griping about the performance or lack thereof of Lloyd Bentsen III and/or John Connally III?

And if he had one, how did he keep his wife from finding out?

C'mon, you can do better than THAT. We've already established that these are not "from his office", where official memos on actual gov't 8.5"x10.5" stationery complete with letterhead were kept. These are from some sort of secret Texas archive that only LtGov Barnes knew about. Or only CBS News could find. Or something. That Killian's memos "from the office" -- some of which we have already seen, and are in Courier not Times New Roman, etc -- differ from these "new" memos doesn't prove anything one way or the other.

Meanwhile, while the incompetent press corps chases down the antics of a self-confessedly irresponsible TANG lieutenant, the candidate with the United States Navy's ONLY Silver Star PLUS a "V" for "Valor" is being ignored.

Charles: "Some of their experts may be Republican partisans or otherwise compromised."

Yes.

Do a search on the handwriting expert that CBS used to validate the docs. Lots and lots of references dating back 20+ years. Very credentialed.

Do a similar search on the forensic expert that the AP used who says she'll testify that the doc was written by a Word processor. Very, very little info outside of professional directories. Oh yes, and that contribution this year to a Republican 527.

One thing I've learned in the past 4 years is that it is amazing how readily people will lie for the Republican party. This really is a religious war to them ... no holds barred.

Remember the hearing in 2000 on Gore's request for a recount? Remember that "expert" with the 10-gallon hat who testified for the Republicans, claiming there was nothing wrong with the punch card system? Turned out he just flat out lied ... he'd filed a patent for an improvement to that system and documented all the problems with punch cards in great, accurate detail.

Here lies a problem with most of the analysis that I read in these comments. Some documents will show "111 th" and others have the "th" in superscript. In fact, in the "memo" dated 4 May 1972, in the heading one finds "111 th" but in the body of the memo one sees the "th" in superscripted. Why the inconsistency?

A reasonable explanation is that these documents were produced with a word processing program and the person producing such documents forgot to put a space between "111" and "th" and as a result, the word processing program automatically placed the "th" in superscript.

There are many other inconsistencies cited by the experts that the Associated Press and ABC news independently asked to review the documents. Those non-partisan experts concluded that the documents are likely forged. However, those that drink the DNC Jim Jones Kool-Aid fail to acknowledge these conclusions by independent and objective experts.

Finally, CBS loses points for failing to present both sides in this issue. CBS interviewed the son and wife of Killian. Both expressed to CBS their doubt about the documents. The son also provided the names of other individuals who could provide other information to help determinee the accuracy of the claims. Such individuals also significantly doubted the documents. CBS ignored this information and only broadcast one perspective. Hence, one cannot reasonably declare that CBS objectively reported on this issue.

Wouldn't Bush's strongest argument be, "They're forgeries and they're lies"?

Note his people seem to be disputing the authenticity of *these* documents, rather than the reality they describe. Do they know *other* documents prove them to be true?

Is this a dog that isn't barking when it should?

Pouncer,
"We" have established that, huh? Glad to know we have an expert among us. You guys have gotten so much right on this topic over the last 36 hours, I'm sure we should take your word for the "paper size" issue, too.

Smarter monkeys, please.

As someone who spent a good chunk of his life typing on an electric typewriter, let me add that one could make "superscript" with ease. One simply turned the platen up a half line, typed what one wanted superscript, then put the platen back on line. If one could swap fonts for a smaller one (like one could do with the selectrics), one could even get Small Superscripted Characters.

As Digby relates, the surest reason to doubt the forgery story is that the wingnuts are promoting it. If you had a dollar for everything they've claimed that's turned out to be baloney, you'd be a very, very rich man. Think about it: Drudge is promoting this. Limbaugh is promoting this. That should tell you just about all you need to know.

Oh, and Pouncer, one more thing for your edification: do a quick Google search (that's at http://www.google.com) for "Silver Star with Combat 'V'". Aside from the snide references to Kerry, you'll quickly find a couple of dozen examples of decorated soldiers' biographies on the web describing their silver stars in this manner.

"One thing I've learned in the past 4 years is that it is amazing how readily people will lie for the Republican party. This really is a religious war to them ... no holds barred. "

So far has the gap between reality and representation opened in the last four years that basically everyone on board with the Bush administration is either a liar or incompetent, or both, and so far have American critical thinking skills decayed that this makes Bush more likely to win elections here, not less.

And it gets even weirder when one tries to empathize, and understands that they really don't believe in their hearts that they are either lying or incompetent.

Christianity began with the word--in the beginning there was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God--and the apostles spoke, and all who listened heard one truth--how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?--and so long as the word was preserved, and the proper interpretation known, no one could be lost, and all questions could be answered, which is why Christians were early adopters of that wondrous technology, the book, which enabled far easier reference than the papyrus scroll; and why the Catholic Church, once it became primarily interested in preserving order and its own power, ensured that the laity had no access to the word and the clergy was its only interpreter; and which is why every anti-ecclesiastical resurgence of faith from Wycliffe on was accompanied by a return to the word, the original word--ad fontem--and yet easily spilled into enthusiasm about the new word, the new gospel, the word of now, when the holy spirit speaks in men, and all doth signify. Let all that have ears to hear, hear. As long as one has the proper interpretation, or has faith that one does, -anything- can become the word.

And one can say anything about typewriters, or the equal protection clause, because the spirit may be moving within one, and God does not lie because he is the word and his word is truth.

Only when you understand that allegory is as central and as unconscious a method of thought for them as the scientific method is for us will you realize why we are so alien to one another, and why the reportage of the Washington Post et al, based on a still simpler paradigm, does not even begin to suffice to represent our disagreements.

They are building new chapels in the Pentagon. Lots of them.

Me, I'm moving to Vancouver or Trieste, if they'll take me.

NM

But what about the documents with *perfectly-centered headers*? Can any of the aforementioned IBM typewriters do that? Phil Magness of ChonicallyBiased.com says this: "Since typewriters mechanically stamp letters onto a sheet of paper one at a time, it is physically impossible to create a mechanical typewriter document that perfectly aligns two or more centered rows of text on top of each other."

http://www.chronicallybiased.com/index.php?itemid=1486

Magness tried to duplicate one of the headers with MS Word. Direct link to his results:

http://www.chronicallybiased.com/index.php?imagepopup=8/20040910-CBSforgery.jpg&width=640&height=480&imagetext=CLICK+HERE

Oh, and you ratioscientifempiric forgery-debunkers: did I lose you in there somewhere? Did the Daily Kos piece? Not surprising, because you are lost. Better join the Jesus freaks, cause there ain't no middle ground, or if there is, you don't want to be there.

Gasps and wails and whistling shrieks
echoed through the starless air.
I wept. Outraged screams, ululation,

gasps and howls, the languages of strangers,
grating voices, a roar of drumming
hands—all sounds a cacophony

which forever wheels its way within
the black'ning atmosphere, all sounds
swept up as sand is when a whirlwind spins.

"Teacher, what is this? Who are these folk?
It looks like pain has beaten them,"
I asked, as horrors swung around my head.

He spoke: "This misery, it is the death
of those who earned no praise and no disgrace
back in the world above.

Mixed in is that pathetic choir of angels
who neither put their faith in God,
nor rose up to fight him. They just looked on,

so heaven flung them down, still lovely,
to here, nigh on the rim of the abyss,
lest the outcasts down below

begin to lord it over them." And I responded:
"Now, what could be so terrible;
what causes all this howling?"

"I’ll tell you. These can’t even hope for death.
Their life is void and doorless;
it has no exit. They envy everyone.

News of them is not allowed to reach
the upper world; the merciful and just disdain them.
Don’t gawk; look and move."

NM (fulminating)

Have any of you guys bothered to really look up some of the analysis that has been done?

Just go take a look here.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12544_Yet_Another_CBS_Document_Experiment

I find it pretty hard to believe that even if the typewriting technology was available then, that the item in question matches EXACTLY with an MS word created document in its standard template settings. That link superimposes an MS word doc with the CBS item and if that isn't an exact match, I don't know what is.

And the signatures on the documents:

http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_signatures.html

I'm not a handwriting expert either, but those on the documents certainly don't look like the other signatures shown from the officer in question.

Please don't just assume that it is impossible for a republican or a blog written by a republican to tell the truth at least sometimes, because that is precisely what they think about you. And that is why politics have gotten so ugly lately.

* footnote - Do I think that the LGF site is a often an over the top display of xenophobic arab-hating neo conservatives? Often it is.

Do I think in this case that what they're saying has at least a little bit of merit? Yes I do

All this chatter about the typewriter is largely irrelevant. If someone wanted to forge a document they would simply use an old Selectric. I would still have mine if not for the Oakland Fire. The signature part is more difficult; you would need a sample of the signer’s signature that was not generally available because you run the risk that someone could discover the existence of two identical signatures. You could also have an expert forger fake the signature. Even big companies can get fooled. The classic example is the Hitler diaries. The German publishing giant Gruner and Jahr (publishers of Stern magazine) bought the diaries and had them authenticated by the American documents expert Ordway Hilton. Hilton had impeccable credentials and declared the diaries to be genuine. Dr. Max Frei-Sulzer former head of the Zurich Forensic Department concurred after studying the documents for months. Yet the diaries were a crude forgery. The paper was manufactured after 1954; none of the inks were widely used during WWII, and the writing was less than a year old (see The Casebook of Forensic Detection by Colin Evans). Lesson learned: You need the original if you really want to authenticate. Don’t just rely on handwriting experts as CBS is evidently doing with regard to the Bush Guard memos. Yahoo News says CBS only has photocopies, no originals. I suppose a photocopy that was cotemporaneous with the original would be helpful as you might be able to date the paper.

This just in: two very big stories have now come in -- no thanks to Patrick -- which really do call the authenticity of the memos into serious question:

(1) The Dallas Morning News ( http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/washington/elections2004/stories/091104dnpolguard.117c8.html ) confirms that Buck Staudt really did retire as Guard commander fully 17 months before the date of the "sugar-coat" memo.

"A CBS staffer stood by the story, suggesting that Col. Staudt could have continued to exert influence over Guard officials. But a former high-ranking Guard official disputed that, saying retirement would have left Col. Staudt powerless over remaining officials." And, indeed, the key sentence in the memo -- "Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush's OETR and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it" -- certainly sounds as if Staudt was supposedly exerting the kind of sustained pressure that he could only have done as an acting commander, not as a former one.

(2) ABC reports that Bobby Hodges has now told them flatly ( http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/NotedNow/Noted_Now.html ) that CBS is lying about him:

"HODGES SAID HE WAS MISLED BY CBS: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were 'handwritten' and after CBS read him excerpts he said, 'well, if he wrote them that's what he felt.'

"Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been 'computer generated' and are a 'fraud'."

Next question now, of course, is whether CBS admits it was lying -- in which case it is in very deep manure -- or whether it insists that Hodges is lying now. The latter is quite possible, however: Hodges and Staudt have both made it clear they're very much on Bush's side politically, and it remains interesting that they were both totally silent for several days after the story broke. (Indeed, the Dallas MN says Staudt is still refusing to comment.) And, as I say, it remains fascinating that the Bush Administration itself was steadfastly refusing to say that it knows the memos must be false, or that Killian must have been lying, because the events recorded in them never happened. So: the whole damn story is still wide open. Stay tuned.

Wow. This is a strange alternate-reality here than the one I live in. From what I've read, there's lots of good reasons to think the memos were forged. This pisses me off because, if true, it hurts the credibility of everyone questioning Bush's NG service. But I have no trouble believing that lots of people are capable and willing to forge, badly, such documents and that a major news organization would run with them. If the politics were reversed, you guys would be laughing at the absurd contortions of the right-wing to rescue the legitimacy of the memos.

It's all too bad because the underlying truth remains the same. There's a lot of smoke concerning Bush's service. I think there's little doubt that there's something(s) there that BushCo doesn't want found. I suspect they'll turn up sooner or later.

Hell, maybe the Bush people planted the bad forgeries in order to cast doubt on the credibility of this story. That's why they even went so far as to pass the memos out themselves.

Oh, the point about the superscripted "th" is not that it was superscripted--of course you can turn the platen a half-step to accomplish that. The point is that they are a smaller type size.

While this is a small matter now: every discussion of the superscript "th" I've seen makes it clear that a special key would have been needed to type that particular superscript -- but many commentators say that a lot of military typewriters at that time DID have just that special key.

The issue isn't whether one could buy a special superscript th nor whether there was proportional spacing nor whether there was a font based upon Times New Roman. The point is that when you type the menu with the defaults in MS Word it lines up nearly *exactly*. Try it. I didn't believe it at first and then I did it. It's true.

Do you *really* expect that even with all the caveats that people bring up that *all* the letters would be exactly where they are in MS Word? Come on. That's a bit hard to buy.

Further, the manuals from the various typerwriters mentioned have been posted at various sites. It is damn hard to get anything even remotely similar to what is done. Why would someone spend that kind of time typesetting a *memo*? I can see some things - but a memo?

Finally the fact that the expert CBS used is a *handwriting* expert and not a typerwriter or computer expert suggests his comments are beside the point. If, as it now appears, CBS had only a photocopy, then the signature could have been scanned and pasted into MS Word in a matter of seconds.

When you add in the fact that the "extra witness" confirming the documents says CBS is lying, the son says the author didn't have this sort of thing, and the person purportedly applying the pressure had retired, exactly why should we believe it is authentic? At what point is the support merely *wanting* it to be true?

Whoops, that should have read "typed the memo" not typed the menu. Mea culpa.

BTW - why is it that both right wing and left wing folks passsionate about "their man" are so quick to believe conspiracy and that everyone on the other side are all liars. No wonder so many of us are turned off of politics. A pox on both their houses and all those who blindly turn things into an "us vs. them" fight to the death...

"Do you *really* expect that even with all the caveats that people bring up that *all* the letters would be exactly where they are in MS Word? Come on. That's a bit hard to buy."

Why not? Times New Roman was designed in 1931 for Monotype--it predates both IBM Executive typewriters and MS-Word. IBM licensed other fonts from Monotype--Courier most notably. As if that isn't enough the typescript looks both dirty and a bit worn--look at the way the loops of the "e"s are slightly filled in, the way they got on a dirty typewriter, and notice the slight jitter in the baseline.

Regarding the two new anti-memo stories: #1 strikes me as a good deal deadlier than #2. Hodges could very well be lying now -- God knows enough of the SBVTers changed their stories -- but an official record is an official record, and I really do not see any way in which the phrasing of the "sugarcoat" memo can be convincingly fit with the idea that Staudt was trying to exert pressure behind the scenes.

But, yet again, combine all this with the White House's reticence (especially THIS White House)... If anyone can put the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle together yet, they have better eyes than I do.

Let's note that what we've seen is a PDF which has been through a series of changes. First, there were whatever copying errors took place on paper as the documents were either copied or faxed back and forth. Then the document was scanned, which probably means it was turned into a TIFF file. TIFF files are huge, and a detailed scan results in a TIFF file with a size measured in megabytes. Then the TIFF was converted to a PDF, with whatever errors that might involve. PDFs are much smaller than TIFF files, and have a very different binary structure. Until an expert actually analyzes the original paper, the best efforts on either side won't impress me much.

(Brad, just for the record, I post as Alex at Baens and made a similar post there. No one has plagiarized anything.)

The IBM Executive achieved a proportional look by having four different widths for letters but it couldn't produce overlapping letter pairs the way a computer printer can. Look at the sample of IBM Executive text on http://www.selectric.org/selectric/index.html, especially the "fo" in "fox", which is clearly not overlapping. Then compare with the overlapping "fo" in "report for duty" and the "fe" in "feedback" in CBS's documents.

The idea that these documents might have been produced on an IBM Selectric Composer is demolished with great style on http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that typeface and font are no way to authenticate any document where the question of whether it came from a typewriter or a printer is salient. The way to determine whether a document is typed or not is by examining the paper. If CBS could not get hold of the actual paper, then they should only have gone with the story if they had testimony that was as good as the documents as to their authenticity. If they have the author or an eyewitness, then yeah, otherwise, no, without the paper.

It is a trivial matter to determine wheter a document was typed or printed. It is a slightly more complicated matter to tell which sort of typewriter a typed document came from. If someone purports to have a document typed on a typewriter, all one would need to substantiate the claim is a few seconds with a strong light. Typing of any sort leaves obvious impressions on the page that no other printing process does.

And if the documents were typed, then there is nothing at all to the forgery allegations, since they all hinge on the claim that the documents were created on a word processor. If CBS had any access to the originals at all, they could instantly put to rest claims of forgery of this sort, by saying that the paper has typing impressions.

Now, if CBS bought the papers after seeing only copies, then they might well have been snookered. Although, I thought they enlisted the services of 'document experts', not merely handwriting analysts. Any document expert worth her salt would scream blooody murder at not being alowed to see the originals of typed documents. Checking to see whether a document was typed is the quickest, most non-invasive test there is. People who won't let you hold their documents up to the light for a few seconds (hell, even the reporter can do it, it needn't be the expert) aren't on the up-and-up.

That said, I sincerely hope that CBS wasn't stupid enough to buy these things without seeing the originals. That's a Daily Mail mistake.

Well, Epist, CBS was.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-guard11sep11,1,6324867.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Gadfry. (They also do say that Bobby Hodges has changed his story -- but, as I noted above, that's the less important of the two new stories generating skepticism about the memos.)

And the next questions are:

Why are these documents, along with others, missing from the official records?

Why did Bush avoid taking the physical he was ordered to undergo?

I've been searching the web for any document of the same time period that looks like the CBS memos, and I have not found any. The point isn't that it was impossible to do with a typewriter, because clearly you could do it. But it just looks nothing like anything else out there, while it does look a lot like a poor reproduction of a memo done on a current word processor.

The best trick I found for turning up old typed correspondence is a google image advanced search restricted to black and white. You will lose some good examples this way, but you see a higher concentration of typed pages rather than other images.

The interesting thing is that you can find a wealth of variable-pitch memos if you look. They're not as common as fixed-pitch, but they're typical in some cases, such as national security memos to the president. Go to the web sites for the Ford, Johnson, and even Truman libraries, and you'll find lots of them. Here is a link to a Johnson national security memo on Vietnam in 1963. http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/NSAMs/nsam273.asp

Take a look at the typeface, because it's not Times Roman and not even very similar. Obviously, I am not an expert, but I would say that this font (whatever it's called) is almost always the one used in official variable-pitch documents.

I spent a lot of time trying to find even one variable-pitch document with a superscript "th." It would be fun to find one just to sow doubt among the critics, but I am not optimistic of my prospects. I tried looking for memos likely to contain ordinals. I found some, but they are generally written out normal font. Sure the 111th interceptor squadron could have ordered a typewriter with a special key, but there is no reason other than wishful thinking to think that they did.

BTW, here is a document showing that 101st Airborne Headquarters could indeed do variable-pitch type in 1970 (in the usual font) But, sadly, they did not buy a typewriter with a superscript "st" key:

http://currahee.hispeed.com/officialDocuments/images/101st/operational/073170/1.gif

It's over guys:

http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html

I hate to recommend anything by Patrick Sullivan, but the link to shapeofdays is worth reading. I have been wondering for almost two days what that memo would look like in Press Roman on an IBM Composer. It's a better match than I was expecting, though pretty clearly not good enough.

(BTW, my initial reaction was annoyance at people who thought you could not produce nice-looking text from the desktop before Microsoft came along. In fact you could, and the link to shapeofdays blog demonstrates this point nicely.)

As I posted early yesterday, it's time to disavow these memos and cut any losses. They're junk. CBS was fooled. Brad should be demanding a better press corps and should not be too surprised by now that the one we have is not good. They didn't even demand an original. They didn't even do a basic "smell test" comparing them with similar documents of the day. They also never gave a plausible explanation of why they and no one else has found these memos. Where were they were supposed to come from?

Final shred wishful thinking: The memos exist, but CBS is now being blackmailed by the anonymous source that will demand ten times as much as the first payoff to produce the originals (with typewriter impacts) of the genuine memos in a more plausible typeface. Honest, that's about the only scenario I can think of where these turn out to be real.

Just because I want Bush out of office doesn't mean I should let myself be fooled. If the goal is just to cooperate in a smear campaign against Bush, then I don't dismiss it out of hand. But I just doubt it's going to work. Nobody cared much to begin with, and the memos are now so discredited that it would take an awful lot of chutzpah to trumpet them.

Magicians call this misdirection.

The concept isn't new, but what you’re seeing with this "forgeries" uproar, fed to the mainstream through eager partisans and fueled by hundreds of comments by official sounding self-credentialed names on all the blogs -- comments by people we've never heard of before in addition to all the regular "trolls" (though we used to call professional plants “shills”) -- is one of the largest, most urgent coordinated broken wing strategies yet. The forgeries flap is similar to setting fire to the grocer while you rob the bank.

But why save the communications room overtime for this issue when it’s already been so heavily worked? Why not keep the same Old News tack that’s worked so well prior? What gets lost in all the chaff thrown up, by design, is an innocuous detail among the memos that had never been discussed before. This small detail is less important for what is says but more so for the question that [republican leaders] desperately don't want dug into: Why was Bush 'ordered' to take his physical when he was?

This doesn’t seem like a large point but there is significance, lost if the question is kept off radar.

Bush was specifically ordered to take his physical two months before his birthday. This becomes key because physicals were just expected in the normal course of events and Bush was still two months shy of bringing any attention to his not having taken his physical. To be given a SPECIFIC order to take his physical two months ahead of schedule meant that there was a SPECIFIC REASON his commander wanted that physical taken.

But let’s talk about Times New Roman and kerning until the general public gets bored with it.

. . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . .

Randolf, having the same font doesn't mean anything. Those of you who are old enough to remember back in the early to mid 90's (presumably most of you) recall when moving a document from the Mac to the PC using the *same* fonts and the *same* program (Word) the spacing often didn't match exactly. It was very frustrating at times. Having a standardized font with hinting on both platforms removed this. That's why you get the same results on both the PC and Mac versions of Word, if you use the same font on both platforms.

For a typewriter with limited logic and no kerning (real kerning, not proportional spacing) to have exactly the same spacing and line up exactly with the modern version of Word is simply beyond the pale. It couldn't happen. Hell, you can't even take an old world processor from the 80's and get it to line up the same as with modern versions of Word.

Anyone who tried the experiment and had done much word process ought to have known it was a fake right off.

What's worse is that the liberal "wingnuts" are just as bad as the conservative ones. Now its a murmuring campaign about how it is all a conspiracy by Rove as misdirection to avoid some silly charge about drug use? Talk about conspiracy theories.

All you guys are doing is distracting from the issues where frequently your candidate is stronger than Bush. Further you are basically creating a backlash where no one will ever take you seriously. Don't you guys even see this?

I used to respect De Long, but his anger and Bush and blind eye towards Kerry's own failings makes it hard to take him seriously, even when he is right. This move to extremes by both sides really is ridiculous. If anything this obvious clumsy forgery simply illustrates how people will turn a blind eye to truth in preference to what they wish to be true! And conservatives do the same thing.

Here's the problem: the memos are obviously fakes. CBS's story is shredded from almost every conceivable angle, yet we still have the Boston Globe bending over backwards trying to pretend it isn't so. We have the intelligent part of the left-blogospher trying its best to pretend it isn't so. Plainly, the will to believe can be thoroughly blinding.

How much else have these sources peddled is only so because you want to believe that it is so? Soul-searching time anyone?

Associated Press reports, "Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Friday the White House, which distributed the memos after obtaining them from CBS News, was not trying to verify their authenticity. 'We don't know if the documents are fabricated or authentic,' McClellan told reporters traveling with the president to West Virginia."

Beyond bizarre. If the documents are false, it's been (another) very successful operation by the Republican Dirty Tricks Machine. If they are genuine, there are enough "experts" to sufficiently muddy the waters. I'm more interested in if they are factually accurate. Are they?

George writes:

*How much else have these sources peddled is only so because you want to believe that it is so? Soul-searching time anyone?*

Actually, even if the documents turn out to be forged there is no reason at all for soul searching. This is because the distribution of power in society is such that errors of any kind in a story like the 60 Minutes one will be immediately revealed. Meanwhile, gigantic errors in stories of which the right wing approves are rarely noted at all, and even when noted have no consequence for those involved.

For instance, compare the cases of Andrew Gilligan and Judith Miller. Gilligan lost his job over reporting that was largely if not 100% accurate. Meanwhile Miller's reporting was catastrophically wrong, and had immense real world consequences. Yet Miller retains her high profile job. Even more amazingly, Republicans continue to complain about the left wing bias of the New York Times.

Strange that this left wing paper ever employed Miller, let alone defended her atrocious reporting. It almost makes you think that the New York Times isn't liberal -- that it's centrist or right wing and corporate, just as you would expect a gigantic corporation to be. Fortunately, we can discard this actual evidence because we know the conclusion it points to is impossible.

I've got it! Since no human technology at the time could have produced thoses memos, *ancient astronauts forged Bush memos!*

It's those liberal aliens you gotta watch out for...

Since in the mid-70's I worked both with a Selectric Composer and with a Wang word processor system that used a daisy-wheel printer, in later years did a fair amount of work with the PostScript language (even creating images with handwritten PostScript), and today write with MSWord, I must agree with those who doubt the documents were done on a Composer, and that the non-superscripted "th" and "st" instances reek of a naive user desperate to overcome Word's insistence on supercripting them.

But it seems deeply incongruous to me that a forger so competent with the jargon and phrasing would be incompetent with the physical appearance. Would anyone so attentive to and confident of detail to use such idiosyncratic elements as "USAF/TexANG", "147 th Ftr Intrcp Gp", and "review board IAW AFM 35-13" not also take the trouble to examine original memos of the group in that time frame and faithfully mimic their physical appearance? And were they unable to do so, would they be so clueless as to not at least do it in fixed-pitch Courier? Might these memos have been done on a non-IBM machine -- perhaps on one of the earliest Vydec word processors? If I remember rightly, they used Diablo daisy-wheel printers with a print wheel that could have a few customized characters in addition to the basic set (perhaps explaining the tiny superscript "th"). Though one would not expect an officer to be typing on one of those, one wouldn't necessarily expect an officer of that era to be typing anything; in those days, secretaries did the typing, and a secretary pool might have had such a machine. At least as of the late '70s, Wang word processors with Diablo printers did proportional spacing very well, so perhaps an early-70s Vydec could, too (the memos are only proportional-spaced, not kerned).

Regarding the letterhead, in the early 70's it would almost certainly have been on letterhead paper from a print shop. Perfect centering and consistency would be expected. Interline spacing identical to MS Word's would not be surprising -- Word was designed to mimic what people were used to seeing from print shops.

Clarke, I've done not only word processing but graphic design, software design, and software quality assurance as well. Speaking professionally, I'll tell you that one can get surprised by unexpected matches, as well as unexpected deviations. It was possible for a typewriter to produce those memos. It's even possible for them to match MS-Word documents. The signatures match. The content of the documents matches the rest of W. Bush's record. It's not like W. Bush had an exemplary record, either in the Guard or in rest of his life.

I really don't see what the problem is, here. If, for instance, there was all this other documentation which said that W. Bush was a wonderful soldier, he had old comrades speaking up for him, he had commendations from his superior officers, and then this showed up, sure, I'd think they're forgeries. As it is, I (1) know that these memos could easily have been produced on an IBM Executive typewriter, (2) on the basis of the handwriting expert, believe they have valid signatures, and (3) know they match the rest of W. Bush's service records and character at that time. So I believe they're probably valid, and even if they're forgeries make very little difference to my opinion of W. Bush. It surprises me, really, that anyone thinks that this is anything but a distraction.

Ancient astronauts forged Bush memos!

Fritz: Before I can take these documents seriously I need to know that experts had vetted the originals. As a computer professional you know that with today’s technology we can produce virtually any image. As I said in my prior post, a forger can do the signature, and rest is easy. Look, the Hitler Diaries fooled the experts when they focused only on handwriting, and they had three volumes of Hitler’s cursive text to analyze, not just one signature. However, it appears that while CBS can’t authenticate the documents, others assert they can demonstrate forgery on the basis of the image alone. I’ll wait and see on this one because I’m not a typewriter and typography expert. But a few easy experiments should be able to resolve the issue. Yes accidental matches can occur, but one need to know how a “match” is defined, and the probability of match under various conditions.

Randolf, how can you say that they could *easily* be written on the IBM Selectric. People have now printed out the Selectric output from the purported font and it doesn't match in spacing at all. The fonts are similar but it is exactly what I said.

Regarding the handwriting expert, he now says he only looked at one of the documents and refused to establish the other three. Further if we have no original, as CBS is now saying, the handwriting could easily be copied via a computer in MS Word.

Regarding the service record, that is circular logic since a lot of the purported points established rest upon the documents. Most of the secondary sources CBS used now are seriously backing away from what CBS claims they said. In some cases they say CBS misrepresented what they said or outright lied to them.

At what point does the burden of proof rest on CBS?

"But it seems deeply incongruous to me that a forger so competent with the jargon and phrasing would be incompetent with the physical appearance"

The problem was the forger was also incompetent with jargon and phrasing. Recall that outside of the display problems, we have an appeal to pressure from someone who had actually retired a year earlier. Appeals to documents unrelated to what the memo is about. And questionable PO Box numbers. (Although that latter one may be explainable)

Regarding letterhead, one complain people have raised is that the memo doesn't use the proper letterhead at all. And I definitely doubt the spacing on the letterhead would match.

Paul Callahan,

Diogenes can at last retire and collect his pension. We have a first, someone on SDJ not incapable of evaluating evidence.

Congratulations.

Clark Goble wrote, "I used to respect De Long, but his anger and Bush and blind eye towards Kerry's own failings makes it hard to take him seriously, even when he is right."

Clearly, you should take him very very seriously when he is right, and ignore him when he's wrong.

If you fail to take him seriously when he's right then you are messing up.

I'm surprised that so many think it impossible that a retired senior officer would not still have clout in an organisation like TexANG at that time. Frankly, I don't think that the fact that Staudt had retired is really relevant, but he can certainly prove otherwise if he wishes to.

And as we delve deeper and deeper into typewriter trivia, it's interesting to note that whoever typed these documents displays a trait of earlier times - the double-space after the end of each sentence. We don't do that any more.

Wouldn't Bush's strongest argument be, "They're forgeries and they're lies" ... Is this a dog that isn't barking when it should?
~~~~

Bush's strongest course is to be quiet, and let the press turn on itself and decide entirely on its own that it needs a better CBS and Dan Rather. And get pissed all on its own at the great Democratic conspiracy of forgers and mudslingers, incompetents' division. So it will treat all further leaks and plants from the Kerryites with all due respect.

"Never murder a man who is committing suicide."
-- Woodrow Wilson

As I was saying, despite our hysterically screechy little resident troll... actually, all the nitpicking over typeface so far is highly inconclusive compared to the date of Staudt's resignation (on the anti-memo side) and the repeated refusal of the White House to call the memos fake (on the pro-memo side).

One more technical question: does anyone know what the handwritten letters on the upper left and lower right corners of the 5-19-72 memo and the lower right coner of the 8-18-73 memo mean?

And, as a useful reminder that the lies in this campaign are being spread around very widely: Larry Thurlow has now changed his story yet again, and now tells Knight-Ridder that he was urged by GOP ad men to modify his story about Kerry to make him look cowardly. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9633633.htm :

"In a defining moment, on July 9 and 10, dozens of veterans, the group's top advisers and a film-making crew descended on a Marriott hotel in Rosslyn, Va., to film raw material for later commercials.

"Swift boat veteran Larry Thurlow flew in from Bogue, Kan., after the group offered to pay his and his wife's expenses. Thurlow said he was hesitant to become involved but Hoffmann kept asking him to join the group. 'The admiral helped me to see in hindsight what was really going on with Kerry,' Thurlow said.

"The veterans and a Studio City, Calif., film producer, Harry Kloor, moved to a Washington studio to film interviews for a later commercial that would be put together by [GOP political adman Chris] LaCivita and another political ad man, Rick Reed, a member of a team that had worked for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in his 2000 campaign for president.

"Thurlow said the vets were told some of what to say, with the caveat that they weren't expected to say anything they didn't believe. 'I was told to say, "On the river that day, Kerry fled." But "fled" connotes fear and I understood why Kerry left, then returned, so I didn't use that word,' Thurlow said."

Gee, that's odd; he used the phrase "fled the area" (and "sped out of the area") while re-describing the events during his interview with Judy Woodruff -- without ever hinting that Kerry had any justification for doing so other than fear http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0408/05/ip.01.html .

So, Jim, while we're on the subject of "great incompetent conspiracies of forgers and mudslingers"...

"how can you say that they could *easily* be written on the IBM Selectric"

An Executive, which was *not* a Selectric. No standard Selectric did *not* do proportional spacing. The only exception was the Selectric Composer, which I agree has been eliminated (it never was very likely.) The Executive line, available since 1949(!), did do proportional spacing. The Exectives were available with a broad range of typefaces and sometimes had a superscript "th", on a single typebar, connected to a single key.

"People have now printed out the Selectric output from the purported font and it doesn't match in spacing at all."

It was probably an Executive, *not* a Selectric. The Executive was available with any font that IBM could license; the ad Gary Farber found from 1953 (for a Model A Executive, yet!) shows three fonts. So all that no "match means" is "no match so far."

The old ad:
http://www.etypewriters.com/1953-a-exec-3.JPG
Notice the split space bar--the left part made a 2-unit space; the right made a 3-unit space.

"[the handwriting expert] now says he only looked at one of the documents and refused to establish the other three"

When did he say this? I can't find any reputable source that agrees with you.

"Regarding the service record, that is circular logic since a lot of the purported points established rest upon the documents."

Not on these documents--these are only the last in a long series. The earlier documents, though not quite as specific, are damning. Nor has any former comrade of W. Bush's stepped forward to defend him.

That said, I will admit the possibility of a forgery. But it really doesn't seem very likely.

Why do ancient astronauts hate America?

Sorry, this is back to an earlier topic of this thread, but I would love to hear more from Jonathon, 9:20 PM Sept 10, who told us this:

"Oh, and Pouncer, one more thing for your edification: do a quick Google search (that's at http://www.google.com) for "Silver Star with Combat 'V'". Aside from the snide references to Kerry, you'll quickly find a couple of dozen examples of decorated soldiers' biographies on the web describing their silver stars in this manner."

Although I am mostly a member of the lying, crooked Republican Attack Machine, I am also a bit of whore for a story; if I could nail this Silver Star Google search down a bit, I could take down the Silver Star controversy next week (or at least put a *big* dent in it).

My only problem - it may have been quick for Jonathon, but I can't come up with any examples at all.

If he (or anyone) could just type in the words they used for the appropriate Google search, and leave links to a few of the "couple of dozen" examples Jonathon cited, I will use my dark talents to do the rest. Sorry to take up Brad's bandwidth for this - of course, he can use the links to, and we will take down the Silver Star puzzle together.

I am assuming, of course, that Jonathon was not, uhh, exaggerating a bit. And why would he, he's not a righty.

Er, "no standard Selectric did proportional spacing."

Well, Tom and Jonathan, the first 22 entries for "silver star" and "combat v" on Google revealed:

(1) http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Combat%20%5C%22V%5C%22 -- which says that "Awards which are commonly bestowed for valor, such as the Medal of Honor and Silver Star, are never awarded with the Valor device since valor is indicated by the award itself", but that ithe Combat V is added to the Bronze Star "to distinguish those who were awarded a decoration through combat, compared to those who were awarded a medal for support roles or meritorious service."

(2) A lead (thanks to http://www.indystar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75551 ) to the fact that Kerry's official personal description ( http://www.johnkerry.com/about/john_kerry/ ) says that Kerry "earned a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Combat V, and three Purple Hearts." But Kerry's DD 214 form ( http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/DD214.pdf ) does say, apparently mistakenly, that he earned both a "Silver Star with Combat V" and a "Bronze Star with Combat V".

OK. So, if a Combat "V" is implicit in the fact that he got the Silver Star at all, why would he be lying about one being attached to his Silver Star? (Assuming that he IS lying -- it certainly isn't on his personal description on his website now. Was it ever?)

And the headline on the official military website http://www.defendamerica.mil/articles/jul2004/a072004a.html : "Soldier Awarded Silver Star With Valor". Which would seem to indicate that this general kind of redundant slipup is quite common. There may still be suspicious aspecs to Kerry's military records -- I find it very interesting that he still refuses to sign that Form 180, without explanation -- but this isn't one of them. (By the way, Google's cache feature shows no sign that Kerry's personal description ever included a mention of a Silver Star with Combat "V".)

More references to "Silver Stars with Valor" on pro-military websites:

http://www.1id.army.mil/1ID/News/July/Article_48/Article_48.htm

http://www.milehighcaf.org/leader.asp

http://www.techcentralstation.com/080504D.html

http://globalspecops.com/whatsnew.html

http://www.aclassicvoicefilms.com/amateurmilitaryfilms.htm

http://www.cheerleaders.homestead.com/newsclips.html

http://www.glassersunbelt.com/articles.html

http://polkonline.com/stories/061103/opi_prayers.shtml

Which, again, seems to indicate that the "typo" theory of the misstatement in Kerry's DD 214 is highly plausible.

jm: "Regarding the letterhead, in the early 70's it would almost certainly have been on letterhead paper from a print shop. Perfect centering and consistency would be expected. Interline spacing identical to MS Word's would not be surprising -- Word was designed to mimic what people were used to seeing from print shops."

OK, so all we have to do is find out if the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron really did have such pre-printed letterhead matching the document in question. If not, then Chronically Biased's charge stands.

Oh, if you look at the header closely, the letter "x" isn't aligned properly with the rest of the letters - it prints just a touch low. You'd expect that with typewriters and computer printers, but not with print shops. If they're precise enough to perfectly center-align text, they're precise enough to print all characters at the same height.

It's interesting to go back to July 28 1999 when the Washington Post was looking into Bush's Air National Guard service . . . "Bush was sworn in as an airman the same day he applied. His commander, Col. Walter B. 'Buck' Staudt, was apparently so pleased to have a VIP's son in his unit that he later staged a special ceremony so he could have his picture taken administering the oath, instead of the captain who actually had sworn Bush in. Later, when Bush was commissioned a second lieutenant by another subordinate, Staudt again staged a special ceremony for the cameras, this time with Bush's father the congressman – a supporter of the Vietnam War – standing proudly in the background".

I don't think Staudt was available for comment then either.

In case I didn't make clear enough my objection to Jim Glass' theory that the White House has been refusing to deny the truth of the Killian memos because it's waiting for the press to police itself: if the White House is doing so, it's a remarkably stupid thing for them to do. What if the press doesn't do so, or takes a very long time to do so? It certainly took them long enough to discover the provable lies and self-contradictions in most of the SBVT stories, and they still haven't been very good at promulgating the fact. And, as that story I mentioned earlier notes, the Killian memos are already starting to hurt the Administration:

Meanwhile, two more twists:

(1) The Dallas Morning News reports a twist in their earlier story regarding the 1972 resignation of Buck Staudt and the contradiction between it and the "sugarcoat" memo -- although it still leaves that memo very doubtful.
http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091104dnpolguard.117c8.html :

"But a CBS staffer with extensive knowledge of the story said later that [Staudt's] departure doesn't derail the story.

" 'From what we've learned, Staudt remained very active after he retired,' the staffer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. 'He was a very bullying type, and that could have continued.'

"In the 60 Minutes report, Mr. Rather said of the memo's contents: 'Killian says Col. Buck Staudt, the man in charge of the Texas Air National Guard, is putting on pressure to "sugar coat" an evaluation of Lt. Bush.'

"Col. Staudt was the person Mr. Bush initially contacted about Guard service, and he was the group commander at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston when Mr. Bush arrived there to fly an F-102 jet. He later transferred to Austin, where he served as the chief of staff for the Air National Guard.

"In the disputed memo, Mr. Killian supposedly wrote '[another officer] gave me a message today from group regarding Bush's [evaluation] and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it.' It continues: 'Austin is not happy either.'

"The CBS staffer said that the memo appears to recognize that Col. Staudt has retired, since it differentiates between his displeasure and that of Austin, where he served his final Guard stint.

"But another Texas Air National Guard official who served in that period said the memo appears to wrongly associate Col. Staudt with his group command in Houston, and – based on that mistake – the memo distinguishes his views from that of the Austin Guard headquarters.

"Retired Col. Earl Lively, who was director of Air National Guard operations for the state headquarters during 1972 and 1973 said Col. Staudt 'wasn't on the scene' after he left, and that CBS' remote-bullying thesis makes no sense.

" 'He couldn't bully them. He wasn't in the Guard,' Col. Lively said. 'He couldn't affect their promotions. Once you're gone from the Guard, you don't have any authority.' "

(2) The NY Times reports Bobby Hodges now starting to distinctly wobble on his earlier denunciation of the memos. Among other things, he now says only that he assumed the memos wre handwritten -- not that CBS told him so. Also Gary Killian seems to be starting to wobble on his own earlier denunciation of some of them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/12/politics/campaign/12guard.html :

"The commander, Bobby Hodges, said in a telephone interview that network producers had never showed him the documents but had only read them to him over the phone days before they were featured Wednesday in a '60 Minutes' broadcast. After seeing the documents on Friday, Mr. Hodges said, he concluded that they were falsified...

"Mr. Hodges, 74, who was group commander of Mr. Bush's squadron in the 147th Fighter Group at Ellington Field in Houston in the early 1970's, said that when someone from CBS called him on Monday night and read him documents, 'I thought they were handwritten notes.'

"He said he had not authenticated the documents for CBS News but had confirmed that they reflected issues he and Colonel Killian had discussed - namely Mr. Bush's failure to appear for a physical, which military records released previously by the White House show, led to a suspension from flying.

"A CBS News spokeswoman, Sandy Genelius, indicated that Mr. Hodges had changed his account.

" 'We believed General Hodges the first time we spoke to him,' Ms. Genelius said. Acknowledging that document authentification is often not an iron-clad process, she said, 'We believe the documents to be genuine, we stand by our story and we will continue to report.'

"A spokeswoman for the CBS anchor Dan Rather, Kim Akhtar, said that Mr. Hodges had declined to appear on camera. As a result, Ms. Akhtar said, he was read the memos and responded that 'he was familiar with the contents of the documents and that it sounded just like Killian.' He made it clear, she added, that he was a supporter of Mr. Bush.

"Mr. Hodges said that he had not spoken with anyone from the Bush administration or campaign about his views and that he was basing his belief now that the records are fakes on 'inconsistencies' he had noticed.

"He specifically pointed to a memo theorizing that the Texas Guard's chief of staff, Col. Walter B. Staudt, was pressing Mr. Hodges to give Mr. Bush favorable treatment. Mr. Hodges said that was not the case and that Mr. Staudt had actually retired more than a year earlier, though he acknowledged that Mr. Staudt might have remained in the Guard in some capacity after that. Mr. Staudt has not answered his phone for several days.

"Mr. Hodges said he had also begun taking a dim view of the memos after hearing disavowals of them from Colonel Killian's wife and son.

"The son, Gary Killian, said Saturday that he initially believed the documents might be real, if only because the signature looked like his father's. He said he had since been persuaded by the skepticism of some document experts."

I forgot to provide the URL for the story on how the Killian memos are starting to hurt the White House:

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040912_105.html

And, meanwhile, on the Bigger Picture, Michael Dobbs' new piece ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14627-2004Sep11?language=printer ):

"A review of the authenticated documentary record for Bush's guard service, and interviews with former guard members, suggests that the president and his aides have been less than fully candid about unexplained gaps in his military service, and have made misleading and sometimes inaccurate statements that have helped fuel the controversy....

"The White House now says that Bush left Texas, where he was first assigned when he joined the Air National Guard, for Alabama in the spring of 1972 because his priorities changed and he wanted to work in the political campaign of a family friend, Winton 'Red' Blount, who was running for the U.S. Senate.

"But in his 1999 autobiography, Bush omits mention of his suspension from flight status and says only that 'I continued flying with my unit for the next several years' after being turned down in 1970 for a program known as 'Palace Alert' that might have taken him to Vietnam.

"White House spokesmen said there was no point in Bush taking his required pilot's physical in 1972 because he had already decided to move to Alabama, where there were no F-102 planes. To fly another plane, he would have had to undergo extensive retraining.

"Whatever Bush's reasons for failing to take the physical, he seems to have put in minimal service at best in Alabama. According to his official personnel records, made public by the White House and the Pentagon, he failed to show for any drills between May and October 1972, even though Air Force regulations required him to attend 90 percent of scheduled drills, barring events 'beyond his control.'

"The records contradict the claims of a former Alabama National Guard officer, John B. 'Bill' Calhoun, who came forward earlier this year at the behest of 'a Republican close to Bush' to testify to vivid memories of Bush taking part in drills during the period in question. No credible witness has come forward to say Bush was seen performing guard duties in Alabama, despite a $10,000 reward offered by 'Doonesbury' cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

"White House officials said they have had no dealings with Calhoun and were not responsible for his statements.

"The question of whether Bush ever did 'substitute service' for the missing drills is controversial, and hinges on technical points in Air National Guard regulations that are almost incomprehensible to outsiders and are much debated by former personnel officers. The bottom line seems to be that Bush did whatever paper-shuffling duties were necessary to satisfy his superiors...

"Whether or not Bush did the minimum necessary to remain in good standing with the Guard, it is clear his performance fell well short of the depiction in his 2000 campaign biography, which stated that he flew with the 111th until his release in September 1973.

"In a 1999 Washington Post interview, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett was quoted as saying that Bush's release from the 111th was appropriate because the unit had phased out the F-102s, and that Bush was transferred from Texas to a reserve unit in Boston. Both statements appear to be inaccurate.

"Although F-102s were certainly being phased out by 1973, they were still being flown. There is no record of Bush signing up for reserve duty in Boston. Bartlett, now White House communications director, said last week through a representative that he must have either 'misspoke' or been 'misquoted."

Last item for tonight: the following unconfirmable story from one of Bush's Harvard professors ( http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/story/230745p-198181c.html ):

"President Bush's former Harvard Business School prof says his ex-student supported the Vietnam War but wanted somebody else to fight it.

"Yoshi Tsurumi said yesterday that Bush told him his father's connections got him into the Texas Air National Guard. 'But what really disturbed me is that he said he was for the Vietnam War,' said Tsurumi, who has also taught at Baruch College and the City University of New York. 'I said, "George, that's hypocrisy. You won't fight a war that you support but you expect
other people to fight it for you." He just smirked.'...

" 'He was very casual about it,' the professor said. 'I said, "Lucky you, how did you manage it?" He said, "My dad had a good friend who put me at the head of the waiting list." '

"The White House declined to comment on Tsurumi's recollections, but Bush has denied that his father, who was a congressman at the time, pulled strings to get him a much-sought after berth in the Guard."

Look at the th-superscript on, say, the May 4 memo. The superscript is much higher that the rest of the letters on the line; the upper half of "th" is entirely above the top-baseline of "111". But in Microsoft Word, the top of a superscript remains nearly flush with the upper-baseline of the regular letters. Try it, and print it out, in any font, in PC or Mac versions. Conclusion: whether genuine or not, these documents could _not_ have been created in Microsoft Word.

It has also been suggested that that the space between a number and its superscript (eg, "147 th" on Aug 1) was due to the "forger"'s attempting to circumvent Word's auto-superscripting fuction. Two points:
1. It is very easy to reverse this fuction. Simply highlight the relevant text, click "Edit" in the menu bar, and "Undo Automatic Change", and the superscript goes back to normal size. Pretty stupid "forger" not to recognize this . . .
2. There _are_ a number of instances of normal-sized superscripts _without_ a space before them in the documents (every single mention of Bush's rank "1st Lieutenant," for example).

Thus there are two possibilities:
1. Our forger did the Undo Autochange for some of the superscripts; made a space before some of the others; and completely forgot about still other superscripts, leaving them small and raised.
2. There is no Word-using forger at all, and the documents were created on a 1970s vintage IBM Executive typewriter with a custom-fitted superscript key (NOT a Selectric or Selectric Composer, so please don't waste bandwith making comparisons with those models.)

Interestingly, the only superscripts are for "th." Despite the numerous "st" endings in the docs, not _one_ of these is superscripted, not even those without a space before them. Now, gee, why would the _111th_ Fighter Interceptor Squadron order a typewriter with only a "th" superscript key custom-fitted . . .

Landulph: Even given your assumptions, there are at least three possibilities not two. The third being that the memo was typed recently on an old typewriter, the signature then forged or printed from a scan or photocopy of author’s signature. The bogus memo was then photocopied many times. With the original we cannot authenticate, without the original, the memo is largely worthless unless someone can prove forgery from imagery alone.

(1) Looks like you better de-spam your site again, Brad.

(2) Still more puzzling grist for the amateur Holmeses: USA Today says that it has separately received "copies of the same four memos" ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-09-09-bush-guard-memos_x.htm ) -- but in its PDF listings of the memos ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf ), it includes SIX memos, with the two new ones being #1 and #5.

#5 is particularly interesting; it's dated 6-24-73, is a message to some unspecified "Sir" who was supposedly asking Killian to rate Bush (which Killian says he can't do), and is signed (with the capital "K" more closely resembling the one on the 8-4-72 memo than the one on the 5-4-72 memo). Take a look, folks, and tell us what you think.

#5 is very interesting. Looks to me (and a lot of folks on democraticunderground.org) that it was sent to Killian's boss, Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges. The performance ratings in Bush's records are actually signed by Lt. Col. Harris, who served under Col. Killian. According to memo #6, Staudt was torquing Harris via Hodges to inflate Bush's rating.

But #1 also interesting too! It lumps Bush and his TANG pal James R. Bath together, enquiring way back in Feb. 72 about their flight certifications. That was three months before they were both suspended from flight duty, announced in the same letter from Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief, each for missing his regular physical exam.

If you haven't seen Farenheit 9/11, know that Bath's later activities are a key link between Bush and the Saudi royal family, including many friends and family of Osama bin Laden:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/index.php?id=18

Very curious... I wonder how much more like this Dandy Dan has up his sleeve.

I'll backdate but won't rate!

Tim

I wrote:
> That was three months before they were both suspended from flight
> duty, announced in the same letter from Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief,
> each for missing his regular physical exam.

Correction: three months before they even *missed* their physicals. Bush was suspended effective 8/1/72. Bath effective 9/1/72. Six months and seven months later, respectively.

Tim

Well, so much for asking Buck Staudt to clear things up. http://www.tnr.com/blog/campaignjournal?pid=2061 :

"APPROACH THIS MAN CAREFULLY: The race is on to score an interview with Walter Staudt, the former commander of the Texas National Guard and the man the infamous CBS documents allege pressured Killian to 'sugar coat' Bush's performance review. Staudt might be able to clear some things up for everyone, but story after story over the last few days has frustratingly reported that he won't return anyone's phone calls. Time even sent a reporter out to knock on Staudt's door, but the octogenarian didn't answer. It's not a surprise. Staudt doesn't seem to be a big fan of the media or the Guard story. Here's what he told the Spokane Spokesman-Review earlier this year:

" ' "I love the guy," Staudt said of Bush. "I'm so tired of this negative crap about him that I'd like to volunteer to build a barn and take you press guys out behind it and kick your asses." '

"Maybe that Time reporter should get hazardous duty pay."

Of course, the interesting aspect of this story is that Staudt is not actually denying the story, but is instead refusing to talk to anyone at all. Maybe the principle we should keep in mind to explain his behavior is the one Larry Thurlow is now talking about for when the SBVT was formed ( http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9633633.htm ) -- which is also the reason Bush and Cheney insisted on being interviewed together rather than separately by the 9-11 Commission: "If everyone was saying something different it could be confusing. We wanted one version of the truth." Well, that's one way of putting it.

US News & World Report has just opened up an entirely new front in the Bush Guard debate:
www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040920/usnews/20guard.htm

Thanks for the updates, Bruce! Actions not inconsistent with Staudt knowing some stuff, not wanting to choose between telling and lying about it.

Btw, anyone else stumbled across this letter from 1973 yet?:

http://www.ssa.gov/history/nixontoball.html

Nothing earth-shaking historically, just a letter from Nixon acknowledging the resignation of Robert Ball as commissioner of the Social Security Agency. But it was ostensibly typed on a government-owned machine in January of 1973, and the letter shapes look pretty close to a dead-on match for the Killian memos.

Not saying it proves anything... Maybe Rosemary Woods had an early release of MS Word?

Tim

you would think by now someone would have typed up these memos on all IBM machines thought capable of doing the memos and see what happens?

Anyone try to contact IBM - they probably have the machines.

Oh, William Safire has repeated some of the loonier stuff in his NY Times column today. He's actually given the address of the Freeper site.

Whoo-hoo!