Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Toward Identifying The Font Used in The Bush Memos (POOF That they are real....NOT!)
Interactive Media Research Laboratory ^ | Unknown | David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D.

Posted on 09/26/2004 7:20:50 AM PDT by OSHA

The following evidence from a forensic examination of the Bush memos indicates that they were typed on a typewriter:

1. The specific font used is from a typewriter family in common use since 1905 and a typewriter capable of producing the spacing has been available since 1944. 2. The characters “e,” “t,” “s,” and “a” show indications of physical damage and/or wear consistent with a well used typewriter. 3. The characters that are seldom used show no signs of damage or wear. 4. The quality of individual characters is inconsistent throughout the memos beyond expectations from photocopying and/or digitizing but quality is consistent with worn platen and variations in paper quality.

[Snip]

6. Critical indicators of digital production or cut and paste production are missing.

Implications are that there is nothing in this evidence that would indicate the memos are inauthentic. Furthermore, from the point of view of the physical evidence in the documents (excluding any rhetorical evidence or external evidence, which is not examined in this study) no amount of additional research on the part of CBS would have lead them to exclude the documents from their 60 Minutes report.

[Snip]

First, The documents are not Times New Roman, or any similar font, nor are they produced with word processing software (or at least, were not printed using contemporary printing technologies). The documents are almost certainly printed using an impact printer (typewriter or daisy wheel) and are not digitally produced for the following three reasons:

[Snip]

None of the fonts available on the Internet seem to be exact matches, however. It is unlikely that a digital typeface could have produced any of these memos. Specifically, the quality of strike between characters is inconsistent, and the effect caused by photocopying and digitizing are inadequate to explain the differences.

(Excerpt) Read more at imrl.usu.edu ...


TOPICS: Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: hailey; killian; rathergate
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-90 next last
To: tuff_schlitz

BTW... if the copies that CBS posted are any indicator of their current condition...how many generations of copying have occurred to the copies in existance? Even one generation of copying would obliterate many of the fine details of the documents. So how can this fellow see these subtle differences in the paper, subtle flaws in the letters...etc...? And I'm sorry, the variations in the lign straigtness can be more easily explained by someone trying to yank the documents out of a printer while it's still printing...or a bad clutch on the document feeder on a fax machine, etc...(I used to fix copiers and faxes for a living, and know about all kinds of "special effects" you can get off those things, especially when they're not working right).
This guy doesn't seem to pass the smell test.


21 posted on 09/26/2004 7:36:30 AM PDT by tuff_schlitz
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: OSHA
Forgeries.

As for Dr. Hailey, I like his own words:

"My motto, "cogito ergo falsus sum," means "I think, therefor I am wrong." I say it often to remind myself that my opinions are always suspect; I am unqualified to judge the ideas and opinions of others. If I am unqualified, as far as I am concerned, so is anybody else. (That statement is made with the full knowledge that I am unqualified to make it.)"

Typical post-modernist, the-truth-is-whatever-I-think-it-is, relativist namby-pamby.

22 posted on 09/26/2004 7:36:35 AM PDT by Dales
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OSHA
no amount of additional research on the part of CBS would have lead them to exclude the documents from their 60 Minutes report.
OTHER than Staudt retiring in '72 and one memo CLEARLY showed a date in '73?

C'mon - how stupid do you think we are?

23 posted on 09/26/2004 7:36:36 AM PDT by _Jim ( <--- Ann C. and Rush L. speak on gutless Liberals (RealAudio files))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OSHA
a typewriter capable of producing the spacing has been available since 1944.
No typewriter I ever saw was able to do anything approximating kerning the way Microsoft Word - and the machine which produced these "documents" does.

Any typewriter which did do it would be more complex in operation than a standard manual typewriter.

There is no claim that any secretary typed these purported "documents," and not only is all available information to the effect that the colonel who supposedly did type them could not type - yet there is no sign of an erasure anywhere. And, it has to be said, in the pre-WP era being known as someone who could type had a tendency to erode your professional standing (I should know).


24 posted on 09/26/2004 7:37:22 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: atomicpossum
Proof of the ironic truth that institutions of higher learning are often just hiding places for stupidity.

This is not stupidity, but deception.
25 posted on 09/26/2004 7:37:49 AM PDT by Freepdonia (Victory is Ours!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: OSHA
"Figure 5. The above is an example of a bush memo and my replica based on using Typewriter condensed as my font of choice. Note that the match is exact."

No it isn't. It isn't even very close. Spacing is off and you had to use/omit extra periods and characters to get it line up. Even your first line does not match.

26 posted on 09/26/2004 7:38:15 AM PDT by bluecollarman (And the 4 mos that he served, Had shattered all his nerves,And left a little rice grain in his ass.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OSHA

Fine, there are plenty of these old typewriters in museums, closets and probably National Guard offices.

It's time for these idiots, or CBS, or Berkett, or anyone to reproduce the memos on a typewriter from that period, much like the bloggers did with MS Word.

Come on, trot em out.


27 posted on 09/26/2004 7:39:08 AM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Freepdonia
I can't believe there are still people out there willing to embarrass themselves so as to destroy a president they can't stand.

These are people that do not believe in Truth, they believe in a "cause" which to them supercedes truth. They are not dumb, ignorant, or stupid people, just selfish and arrogant.

28 posted on 09/26/2004 7:39:23 AM PDT by sirchtruth (Words Mean Things...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: sirchtruth
They are not dumb, ignorant, or stupid people, just selfish and arrogant.

Can't argue with that.
29 posted on 09/26/2004 7:41:11 AM PDT by Freepdonia (Victory is Ours!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: Dales
Another great Hailey quote,
I agree with you that too often we (I mean people, not writers) assume that we are qualified to do things when we aren't.

Do tell, Dr. Hailey.

30 posted on 09/26/2004 7:43:59 AM PDT by Dales
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: OSHA

This is so bad it is laughable.

He has a picture of a page written on a 1932 Underwood that looks nothing like the typeface on the CBS fraud.

He also does not address the remarkable coincidence of the tabs and word-wrap being identical to MSWord defaults.

He is an "Associate Professor" and he should know that becoming a laughingstock is a career-limiting move.

Let's dig up the sources of this guy's grant money: imrl.usu.edu


31 posted on 09/26/2004 7:45:36 AM PDT by eno_ (Freedom Lite, it's almost worth defending.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: tuff_schlitz

Ph. D = Piled higher and deeper


32 posted on 09/26/2004 7:45:48 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (Heinz-Kerry: "The common man doesn't look at me as some rich witch.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: sirchtruth
CBS has now moved on to the 'yellow cake' fraud perpetrated by France to hide the fact that they were indeed attemtping to sell enriched uranium to Iraq.

CBS was planning on reporting that we went to war based on those fraudulent documents.

Can they really be that stupid? However, simply by announcing that they are not going to run that story they put the lie out there again for the wackadoodles.

33 posted on 09/26/2004 7:48:37 AM PDT by OldFriend (It's the soldier, not the reporter who has given US freedom of the press)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: OSHA
When I first saw those memos, I opined on this forum that they weren't Times New Roman, as everyone was saying. I based this on my past experience as a typesetter. What I failed to take into account was the fact that the documents had been reproduced several times; once probably by fax. The resultant "gain" tended to make the characters look representative of a font style called "square serif," of which Times Roman most definitely is not a member.

Then I tried an experiment in which I ran off a duplicate of the memos, produced in MS Word in Times New Roman, then copied it twice and faxed it once. The result was distorted in the same way as the memos.

But one factor that couldn't be distorted was the unique spacing characteristics, which match identically--IDENTICALLY--with the MS Word default settings in Times New Roman.

In order for the documents to be genuine, the person who produced them would have to have known those default values and painstakingly applied them in a manner in which he would have had no interest in doing.

34 posted on 09/26/2004 7:48:58 AM PDT by Mr Ramsbotham ("Ich glaube, du hast in die hosen geschissen!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: OSHA
"Using the hypothesis established from examining the Bush memos, it becomes possible to create a virtually flawless replica "

Totally wrong.

Look at the numbers, such as the '7', used in the original and the typed line underneath.

The '7''s are different. The 'new 7' being more slanted and slightly larger (bolder).

Also in the heading,'MEMORANDUM FOR 1st, Lt. George W. Bush', the 's' character is also different.

Not by much, but it is different.

The spacing, although very close, is not and 'exact' duplication of the memo.

This author may have found a typeface 'similar' to what the memo's used, but by making on side by side comparison, he seems to have fallen for the same trap as the the memo author, and that is he used a 'computer' for the final analysis, which would have skewed the results.

The biggest problem is that he doesn't take things like the 'date' of the memo, or the fact that the person, who should have been the 'typist' for Killian has already disputed them as being 'fakes'.
35 posted on 09/26/2004 8:05:41 AM PDT by Bigh4u2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Freepdonia

Mad professor smoking crack alert!


36 posted on 09/26/2004 8:05:46 AM PDT by AF68
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: tuff_schlitz

You might also note that there is evidence of multiple levels copies being made on the same copier: "Stray" marks repeat themselves.


37 posted on 09/26/2004 8:06:04 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: OSHA

DUUHHHHH!!!! PIN HEADS!!!!
38 posted on 09/26/2004 8:07:55 AM PDT by FesterUSMC
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: _Jim

This clymer should be willing to reproduce the documents on a typewriter in public and show that it matches exactly like the word documents does.


39 posted on 09/26/2004 8:08:07 AM PDT by chainsaw (Vote American - Vote for BUSH)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: OSHA

Time: Just another busy night.
Location: Some dark dank slimey cavern
of the DNC's Central Planning Committee.
Carville: "We've worked harder than we've ever had to work
these last five years
stirrin' this stench, er.. ah.. I mean DNC brew".
McAwfulif: "Gosh, I thought it was you all these years I've been smellin'.
As soon as Joe can dig up the font we need
we can get Dan Rather and CBS off of our backs.
He's so anxious to get his greasy lips around this."
Carville: "Yeah, we had it a lot easier with newts...and starrs
now fonts...hey Joe, where are you..?
Must be yakkin' with that feller down there in Texas,
Burkitt...rebit...rebitt..
Hey, McAwfulif, that sure makes my belly yearn for toads..."

40 posted on 09/26/2004 8:09:42 AM PDT by harpo11 (Go Team BUSH--Bush Doctrine--A Weapon of Mass Terrorist Destruction!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-90 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson