THE "New" CBS BUSH DOCUMENTS: Let's do some investigating

www.freerepublic.com | September 9, 2004

[Howlin]

These are the NEW documents "discovered" by CBS with conjunction with their Ben Barnes expose/confessional tonight regarding George Bush's National Guard service.

They've gotten some interesting comments on the Live Thread, so I thought I'd give them their own thread so you people out there with the knowledge can dissect them for their accuracy/truth/existence.

[Howlin]

Isn't it? Some people think it's nothing, but this IS what we do here on FR........interesting stuff!

[Howlin]

No, I did not stay up all night; I stayed up too late though. As usual when something like this happens!

[Howlin]

Look at this:

A spokeswoman for "60 Minutes," Kelli Edwards, declined to say exactly how the new documents were obtained other than that CBS News understood they had been taken from Killian's "personal office file." In addition to the order to Bush to report for a physical, the documents include various memos from Killian describing his conversations with Bush and other National Guard officers about Bush's attempts to secure a transfer to Alabama. Killian died in 1984.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6693-2004Sep8?language=printer

And this:

The new documents surfaced as the Bush administration released for the first time the president's personal flight logs, which have been the focus of repeated archival searches and Freedom of Information Act requests dating to the 2000 presidential campaign. The logs show that Bush stopped flying in April 1972 after accumulating more than 570 hours of flight time between 1969 and 1972, much of it on an F-102 interceptor jet.

White House officials have said there was no reason for Bush to take the annual physical required of fighter pilots because there were no suitable planes for him to fly in Alabama, where he applied for "substitute training" to replace his required service with the Texas National Guard.

[P-Marlowe]

UPDATE 2: Reader John Risko adds:

I was a clerk/typist for the US Navy at the Naval Underwater Systems Center (NUSC) in Newport RI for my summer job in 1971 when I was in college. I note the following with regard to the Killian memos:

1) Tom Mortensen is absolutely correct. Variable type was used only for special printing jobs, like official pamphlets. These documents are forgeries, and not even good ones. Someone could have at least found an old pre-Selectric IBM (introduced around 1962). Actually, I believe we were using IBM Model C's at the time, which was the precursor to the Selectric.

2) I also used a Variype machine in 1971. I fooled around with it in my spare time. It was incredibly difficult to set up and use. It was also extremely hard to correct mistakes on the machine. Most small letters used two spaces. Capital letters generally used three spaces. I think letters like "i" may have used one space. Anyway, you can see that this type of machine was piloted by an expert, and it would NEVER be used for a routine memo. A Lt. Colonel would not be able to identify a Varitype machine, let alone use it.

3) US Navy paper at the time was not 8 1/2 x 11. It was 8 x 10 1/2. I believe this was the same throughout the military, but someone will have to check on that. This should show up in the Xeroxing, which should have lines running along the sides of the Xerox copy.

4) I am amused by the way "147 th Ftr.Intrcp Gp." appears in the August 1, 1972 document. It may have been written that way in non-forged documents, but as somone who worked for ComCruDesLant, I know the military liked to bunch things together. I find "147 th" suspicious looking. 147th looks better to me, but the problem with Microsoft Word is that it keeps turning the "th" tiny if it is connected to a number like 147. And finally......

5) MORE DEFINITIVE PROOF OF FORGERY: I had neglected even to look at the August 18, 1973 memo to file. This forger was a fool. This fake document actually does have the tiny "th" in "187th" and there is simply no way this could have occurred in 1973. There are no keys on any typewriter in common use in 1973 which could produce a tiny "th." The forger got careless after creating the August 1, 1972 document and slipped up big-time.

In summary, the variable type reveals the Killian memos to be crude forgeries, the tiny "th" confirms it in the 8/18/73 memo, and I offer my other points as icing on the cake.

[Southack]

"So I am very suspicious of the use of 111th in one of the memos. Could that be the smoking gun that shows they are false?"

There was a way to manually roll up the paper half a line to fake a superscript back at that time, even when the font itself didn't have it.

But the letter spacing in the memos is too precise and too even to be an IBM Selectric or Executive in 1972. The memos don't have clerk's initials on the bottom, either (Lt. Colonel's in 1972 weren't known for typing up their own memos, either). The memos weren't on TANG letterhead. The terminology is wrong, too. The memos use the phrase "physical examination" instead of the correct term "Medical". The memos didn't have an acceptance box on them (mandatory for formal orders). The signatures differ on various memos, too. The memos are centered on the page. The memos have no CC note on them.

So there is *much* to question about their supposed "Authenticity." They strongly appear to be forgeries.

2 Full Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[F-117A]

Bump!

[Gator113]

Thank you for that explanation.

[Gator113]

Thank you for that explanation.

[Dasaji]

This is a long thread, I have not gone through every post. BUT, as a former graphic designer/typesetter, what immediately (without a blink!) jumped off of the first memo was the little *superscript* th after the third time 111 was typed. The first time they wrote the 111th, they would have had to play with it to keep it from going superscript. The second time, they avoided the th altogether, but third is the charm-MS Word, for all its stubborness in formatting, tossed that little th into superscript, just like Microsoft programmed it to do. THANK YOU BILL GATES!!!

Oh, and it is a lovely Times Roman typeface. . .not Courier. . .not sure there was a typewriter in the world that could handle this font, even with a wheel, in 1972. This is DELIGHTFUL!!!

[mnehring]

It seems to me that some of CBS's competition would love to pull them down a peg or two....
Can someone summarize, include evidence documentation, and start sending to all the major newsgroups?

[CedarDave]

I just read my reply on the screen. I used html to generate the superscripts:

tttt^tttt

They appear damn similar to the ones in the memo. Notice that the superscript "t" is made automatically smaller than the usual "t". If any standard issue typewriter could do that in 1972, I would certainly like to know about it. Even the selectrics, which were state of the art then, did not have that capability as far as I know. Certainly you could go up 1/2 line to make a superscript, but it was the same size. You changed balls when you wanted special symbols, but I don't remember and haven't come across any that not only made superscripts but made them smaller, also. I vote for a forgery.

[annyokie]

I learn so much here. This forum is a treasure.

[Howlin]

I learned to type on a manual typewriter; when the Selectrics came out, we thought we had moved into the Space Age. And I sure do remember "rolling" the carriage for the superscript!

[mabelkitty]

Typewriter - Pica or Elite were the two settings.
Pica was 12 characters per inch (plus space bar and all punctuation), and Pica was 10 (or vice versa, this was along time ago). One had to manually scroll the roll one half turn to get the (th).

Where are we with characters per inches on these documents?

Also, the difference between IBM typewriters (key ball type of striking) and Selectric or Corona (individual key strike) is interesting. The typing would have been light in a Xerox copy, and copied many times, I'm not certain would have shown up as legible (documents I've received through genealogy research prove this). The IBM typewriter, however, would have been used to strike through the many copies of the forms and left deep and dark marks that uphold well through various copies.

That typewriter would have been with the guy or department that typed the form. Would Killiam use the typewriter that belonged to the form typing guy or use his own typewriter if he wrote this memo? He would have one because he would have correspondence. Would have have the expensive ball-key one? I defer my last question to Military folks who know organization and protocol. I don't know how that works.

[Southack]

To get the smaller superscript size back in 1972, you'd either need a special font or else change out the element in the old IBM Selectric or Executive for those two letters "th", followed by changing that ball/element back for the rest of the memo.

Ain't no way. No way that a Lt. Col in 1972 was doing the small size superscript on his own informal memo (and the memo would have to be informal to omit the letterhead and acceptance box and have no CC list and no clerk's initials).

The font spacing is also a dead giveaway, as is the incorrect terminology of "physical examination" instead of "Medical". The signatures are also suspect. In fact, most memos back then WERE IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS.

They're forgeries.

2 Full Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires

[Howlin]

Isn't that the truth! Now if we could just find somebody to tell all this magnificant stuff we know to!

[intolerancewillNOTbetolerated]

"Yes they will hear. First of all FNN is the primary method of getting news. Secondly Rush is a close second. Thirdly It will dome up in the debates. Fourthly the Swift Boats sure got their message out and this has great legs."

This campaign has SOOO many implications...one of which is becoming a showdown between the New Media and the Old Media.

It's a desperate attempt to maintain the grip on the thinking of the public that has been unchallenged for decades, not to mention to advance Socialist ideologies that have been and are being proven failures time after time throughout the world.

Throw in the Islamofacists assault to reshape civilization in their image and these are most interesting and fascinating times we live in.

[FastCoyote]

"Another giveaway on this is the superscript "th" on 111th which appears in paragraph 2 of the "order" memo. Typewriters don't do reduced font superscripts. And if they did, why not do it in the header, too."

Wow, that's a good one. Something I noticed which is odd is that the 'e's aren't all the same, some have the horizontal bar at a slant, some straight, some squashed, some open. I don't know how you do that on a typewriter, much less a laser printer. Maybe you could get that on a dot matrix (which would have not been possible).

[mabelkitty]

I finally got my Adobe running.
Powerblog is spot on.
187th is a mistake.
It would have either been a) on the same line as Killiam typed in previous memos or b) raised one half turn on roller to move higher - it would not, however, have been make smaller than the keys - that is impossible.

Once one gets in a personal habit of typing the alpha/numeric combination of subscripts, they rarely deviate from it.
Mabelkitty, who learned to type using a manual and electronic typewriter just 15 short years ago.

I still have my typing books regarding typewriters, formats, etc., If anybody has a question that they think I may be able to look up, please let me know. I've been blowing this off until 30 minutes ago, so I apologize if I am redundant. I'll quickly read the thread.