Posted on 09/09/2004 6:42:06 AM PDT by Sue Bob
Very suspicious. I believe there are applications which would allow you to modify serifs and such to customize a typeface. The fact that the spacing in the modern document comes out identical to the 1972 memo is beyond suspicious!
I believe it is an IBM Model 4 built in 1941. Just FYI. I don't know how prevalent they were in the military. In 1975 I was using a 1918 Underwood at Norton AFB.... If that's any clue.
"BUT, if they are genuine, wouldn't they be "bad" for GWB???"
no. This is the commander CYAing so they are written from that perspective. He says he wasn't going to sugar coat; so anything official he did w.r.t. LT Bush has to be assumed to be non-sugar coated. I.E. the way he would treat anyone else. These non-sugar coated actions would be in the LT's official file.
IOW these are the commander's personal notes and inputs to his own thinking; any ACTION he wanted taken w.r.t. the LT would be officially recorded and be in Bush's personnel file!
If he wanted to let the system know that Bush was a derelict or something, he would have rated him and said so, no matter how little observation time he had.
No, he wasn't trying to "hurt" LT Bush but to explain himself IN THE EVENT any powerful patrons came down on him via pressure through the chain of command -- which did NOT happen or these MFRs would have appeared long ago.
CYA = personal liability insurance, of sorts for the commander
"didn't we used to put CCs on the bottom of memos?"
yes, if there were any copies; for MFRs, you wouldn't expect copies, would you? Just shows it went into the old man's desk drawer, wouldn't it?
Sorry if someone already asked this, but is it normal to actually write "CYA" on such a document? I've never been in the military, but it strikes me as odd.
I am an idiot when it comes to this, but isn't the machien that wrote the '73 discharge document a downgrade from the one that wrote the '72 memo. That on its face (assuming I am making any sense) coupled with the differences yoe mention seems very, very suspicious.
My family owned an IBA Executive in the late '60s. I used it quite a bit for High School papers and such. It had proportional spacing and various special keys (like the "th"). It was a pain to use, particularly if you made a typing error. When it got older, it produced documents, (carbon copies), that looked just like the 1972 documents in question.
I also worked for the Air Force (Andrews AFB) as a clerk typist during the summer of 1972 and the FAA in '73-'74. (By '72 all of the permanent secretaries/typist had IBM Selectrics. I don't recall anyone using a proportional typewriter but some older models may have been around.) I typed memos and forms for a Captain and a Colonel. Nothing about the wording or look of the three 1972 documents appears out of the ordinary to me. (Although I don't see any hole punches to secure the documents into a file. All "File" copies were secured in files with two holes punched at the top. However, this part of the document appears to have not been copied/scanned. The top margins of the copies just are not as large as they should be.)
However, the "CYA" memo of 18 August 1973 is not something that I can imagine anyone I ever worked with having typed up for an official file. Only a very unusual AF officer would put such a document in a government file, or even have it typed by an administrative worker. Such a memo would have been talked about for weeks by the administrative staff and remembered to this day.
It is possible that is what the ABC reporterette ascribed to the "Bush/Cheney campaign" and jumbled her stories of CBS with the Boston Globe(gack):
MR. McCLELLAN: I think, if you look at the Boston Globe story, the Boston Globe has bought into the line of attack by the Kerry campaign. The paper turned to a Kerry supporter for its analysis, a guy who works for a Democratic front group that backs the Kerry campaign.
Q This is Colonel Lechliter?
MR. McCLELLAN: Lawrence Korb.
Q Korb?
MR. McCLELLAN: Lawrence Korb works for the Center for American Progress.
Q So are you saying their analysis is wrong?
MR. McCLELLAN: The analysis is based on a supporter of John Kerry. And that's why I said that if the President had not fulfilled his commitment, he would not have been honorably discharged.
You forgot one possibility (probability, really); that CBS was an active participant in the forgery.
their not smart enough to pull something like that off.
(they still have rather right?)
Doogle
I doubt that the forgerers, if they are forgeries, would use typewriters that weren't in existence when the forgeries were supposedly typed. That's Forgery 101 right there.
LOL!
lol
Absolutely! And anyone who says the military had plenty of them was in a different military that the one I was in at that time. IBM Proportional Executives were NOT routine machines -- and I doubt many clerks in the Texas Air National Guard were trained in "proportional typing" back in those days.
CBS is showing its extremely desperate side.
"but is it normal to actually write "CYA" on such a document? I've never been in the military, but it strikes me as odd."
No I would not say it is "normal" to patently write CYA on the subject line; but he clearly was writing a CYA MFR. So I do not find it "weird" either . . . He was writing the memo TO HIMSELF for his own future use, so the subject line would be something he would remember . . . a touch of gallows humor perhaps.
It was going in his own files, not any official personnel files. I.E. it was not going anywhere. No one but him would see it. No reason not to be honest about it, IOW. It was a memo to himself for future reference if he were ever questioned about his treatment of the son of GHW Bush.
It is worth mentioning that this is the Texas Guard we are talking about. The National Guard is a state organization, under the command of the governor when activated; not federal unless activated for federal duty.
The Adjutant General of the State National Guard is appointed within the state. Hence, the Guard is waaayyy more "political" than the Army Reserve or Active Army -- as a general statement.
If you were commander of the son of an influential person in the state, you may want to document your actions and reasons FOR YOURSELF, mind you, IN CASE.
IOW such a memo may not be unique to LT Bush . . . we don't have all the other memos he wrote to himself, do we?
The relationship may have been strained only in Killian's mind. From the one memo he allegedly wrote to himself to CYA, it sounds like the guy was a bit paranoid, assuming that Bush is talking to "someone upstairs." Hell, that could be God for all that matters. I just find it rather strange that anyone who had concerns like this, would put them in memo form and keep them in their own personal files. One usually uses a diary for that type of thing, and that would be kept off base at one's home. Whether these were considered his personal files or not, the bottom line is, if they were produced on base, on government-owned paper, with government-owned equipment, and kept in his government office, they are government property.
Being dead for 20 years makes it hard to defend yourself against someone portaying you as paranoid, or to correct the words others now attribute to you.
You need a skankier fax machine that can't scan straight, or jerk the paper around while it is feeding into your fax.
I posted a link to a scan from a real IBM Executive here: http://www.microsparc.com/news.htm
The uppercase 'S,''R,' and 'W' are completely different from the scans on the CBS site: http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf
You can't change the font on a type-bar machine like an IBM Executive.
Also, note that the 1973 discharge document is clearly written on a typewriter - no mistaking it. AND the signature looks different.
And, yes, the Little Green Footballs experiment puts this into the realm of Freakin Miracles: The LINE BREAKS ARE IDENTICAL to a document written in Times New Roman at the default size and margins in Microsoft Word.
I smell chestnuts roasting on an open fire in Cambodia!
Good point. And back in the day, you didn't see everybody learning how to type like you do now; typing classes were considered mainly for future secretaries.
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