Posted on 09/09/2004 11:14:40 AM PDT by RatherBiased.com
During last night's 60 Minute program 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."
Check this out:
Watch Your Six
Watch Your Six is the term used by military aviators of which CoverYourAss (CYA) is the civilian analog. I put it in as a euphemism for such things as CYA, which is the motivation for things like PearlHarborFile(s). The issue is that when you are directed to do stupid things, you need to be sure that the system isn't setting you up as the fall guy. GetItInWriting is probably one of the related ideas. BlowingTheWhistle is a nice strategy, but tends to shorten your employment and make you unemployable to boot. So the next best thing is to make it obviously dangerous to make you the fall-guy so that such predators will search elsewhere for targets. If this sounds cynical, I've got a lot of experience watching the unscrupulous prey on the unwary. CaveatEmptor is good advice in all domains. -- RaySchneider
So military aviators would not use a term like "CYA", but "Watch Your Six" instead?
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WatchYourSix
For me, Dan Rather lost the little credibilty he had left during election night 2000 when he was obviously trashed. My friend worked at a local CBS affiliate at the time and they were so embarassed by the drunken fool that they switched to CNN for most of the coverage.
The article raises a few details which are difficult to ignore regarding the likelihood that these documents were typed quite recently using word processing software. Even if the doc's are genuine they are irrelevant to which man is the best pick for Commander in Chief, but if they are demonstrably forged it would and should be a very big story.
As with the Swift Boat commanders' expose of Kerry's distortions and lies, the White House will want to avoid any appearance of involvement with exposing Rather as either the victim or the source of a hoax. But it is exactly what this forum and the internet are good for.
BUMPING!
Not really. Just vague references to the usual smears, stuff like that.
They didn't comment on THESE memos.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer (cough) guy. "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"
lol
Clearly, the apostrophes in the documents are curved. I am not familiar with the typewriters in question. If it is true that typewriters from this time period have straight apostrophes, it pretty much confirms a forgery.
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It doesn't matter about "liability"--if this is indeed a forgery, it will be an incredible embarrassment for Rather.
Here's hoping.
| OK, clumsy to do corrections. But this was a fairly high level officer. This could be settled by seeing a handful of documents from the same office and time period. My problem with these threads is that certain facts have been established: a typewriter existed at the time that could have produced these documents; people are confusing proportional type with justification; people are not concentrating on the possibility that the documents might be real but slightly altered. I'd like to know if the originals exist. |
Other threads on this subject have made much of the rank abbreviations in the 60 Minutes documents. Ex-military FReepers have insisted that no genuine military document would use any abbreviation other than "1LT" for a First Lieutenant and "LTC" for a Lieutenant Colonel. However, in the first of the four documents you offered for comparison purposes (and I assume there is no question about the genuiness of this document), which is the President's request for transfer, his rank is abbreviated "1st Lt." and the Colonel's rank is abbreviated "Lt. Col."
Not a killer, mind you, but it does make me wary of experts who are so absolutely certain they are right.
Hiya Troll!
Yes!!!! Next stop talk radio then onto Fox News.
Did they even have "white out" back then?
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