Was Rather Duped by Anti-Bush Hoax?

RatherBiased.com ^ | September 09, 2004

[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.

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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 24^th. The 1972 document uses the ordinal 111^st and the other refers to 187^th.

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."

[struwwelpeter]

The 'letterhead' could have been done by the base print shop, but the date is in exactly the same font and spacing. Weird.

Looking back through some old military documents (USAF, USAF Reserves, Army & Army Reserves), I see an interesting evolution in the fonts and date formats.

Alleged letter from W's TANG commander

List of test results from USAF basic training

Proficiency report from USAF

Student rating, Army reserves

Misc. letter, Army reserves.

The TANG letter looks like some of the documents I received in the late 70s, early 1980s. Probably done on an IBM Selectric model from that time period, which didn't have an 'th' character, as I recall.

[Arrowhead1952]

Anyone else wanna play, before Demon-cat shows up?

I figured we would have our share of trolls today. ScoutMockingbird got the ZOT before I got back to this thread.

[Hatteras]

"Damn Font Balls!"

Oh, come now, their great for office parties!

[Palladin]

Sounds like a forgery to me, brought to Dan the Dud by the masters of deceit, the Democrat Natnl Committee, and its operatives McAuliffe, Carville and Begala.

They tried this crap 4 years ago and it didn't fly.

They are desperate, and running out of dirty tricks when they have to recycle old stuff.

Kerry is toast.

[timestax]

RATHERLIES

[Zavien Doombringer]

OOooo, nice posting!

[petercooper]

He typed them up himself.

[Darth Reagan]

I prepared my own forgery of that document. Here's my write up from my site, Federal Review. Links to my version are below:

ARE NATIONAL GUARD/60 MINUTES MEMOS FORGERIES?
That's the theory galluping around the internet today - see Drudge, CNSNews and the first place I saw this, Powerline. It seems that new memoranda, which you can find at CBS's site, are dated 1972 but use a proportional font more common to today's Microsoft Word than to a typewriter in a 1972 Texas Air National Guard office. CBS describes the documents as "previously unseen documents from Killian's personal file." Killian was a Lt. Col. with the Texas Air National Guard. CBS says the docs must be authentic, because "60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic." Who was the expert, Terry McAuliffe?

Take a look at one of these documents, here. You will notice the superscript and smaller "th" in "187th in Alabama". That would be possible with sophisticated typsetting equipment in 1972, but unlikely for a desktop Air Force typewriter.

So, we did our own analysis. Compare this document that I created using Microsoft Word and Times New Roman font. You will notice that all of the line breaks are exactly the same using a 1 1/2" right and left margin (the default) - I did not force the line breaks. I have reduced the document to 93% of the original size to make it look more like CBS's document. You may notice how remarkably similar this is to the CBS "authentic" memo.

Also, you will notice in this memo from Col. Killian that was part of the DOD release, that Killian did have access to the type of typewriter that we would expect in 1972, complete with a non-proportional courier font and a superscript that doesn't look like a word processor's work. This is what we are used to seeing on old government documents.

So, where did the brand new memo come from? Did Killian have access to much better equipment than the Air Force at the time? You can review additional contemporaneous documents here, none of which show the advance typesetting capabilities you find in the CBS memo.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Duped my ass. Maybe selectively ignorant.

WHO were the experts? How did they come to their conclusions? What are the credentials of the "experts". Did he mention the previous sworn testimony of Barnes? Did he mention Barnes dubious political record? Did he mention Barnes was approached by the Kerry campaign to make that tape? Did he document the many contributions Barnes has made? Did he apply the same standards as he did to John O'Neill?

What bites my butt is that Rather thinks we are so stupid as not to demand accuracy and truth. Putz.

[Doogle]

white out back then?

yeah it was called another piece of paper...lmao!!!

Doogle

[Darksheare]

You're stupid.
Can I beat you now, or will you like that too much?

[Old Sarge]

I don't claim the kill shot - who bagged him?

[Rider on the Rain]

I'm not so sure Rather was the "victim" of the hoax. I'd say more likely the "perpetrator."

I agree with that.

[Old Sarge]

I do so like y'all's ZOT pics! Well Done!

[MeekOneGOP]

Good shot, Sarge !

He's dead, Jim.
(Click here or on the pic).

[Rutles4Ever]

Hmmmm.... Are any of my fellow Freepers detecting the aroma of "Bubba" coming from the kitchen?

[Fresh Wind]

Obtaining forged documents by using FOIA?

This is not impossible. Suppose the forger (or an accomplice) just happened to drop the fake documents into the archive files, knowing that an FOIA request was in the pipeline. Once the request hit, an innocent archivist would pull out the papers and process them in the normal manner. The DOD and State Department are just full of people who could and would do something like this.

[MeekOneGOP]

ScoutMockingbird got the ZOT before I got back to this thread.

Here is what he said .....

WOW! You mean the same fonts looked the same in the 70's as they do now? WOW!

[sphinx]

Rather's credibility was already bashed by having Barnes on and soft balling the questions, but CBS getting caught up with forgeries is a little too much to hope for.

CBS being discredited (again) would be icing on the cake -- not that the KoolAide drinkers would pay any mind -- but the real issue is who originated the forgery. Kerry has just reshuffled his staff and strategy, and we've just seen a coordinated, all-points attack. CBS is just a bit player, albeit a willing stooge. Who pushed the pawn?

If this is a forgery, it's a potentially criminal matter. The source will have insisted on anonymity, and I would expect a complicit and guilty CBS to hide behind its lawyers. We may not get an answer for some time, if ever.

Of course, if CBS retains any sense of journalistic integrity, we could have a definitive answer today. Odds, anyone?

[leftcoaster]

**
Looking back through some old military documents (USAF, USAF Reserves, Army & Army Reserves), I see an interesting evolution in the fonts and date formats.
**

Your examples also point out that 2-digit year designations were the norm back then. It was only as we neared the change to the new century where one would use four-digit years on dates. A letter writer in the '70's (NOT "1970's") would not worry about confusing the century. Especially in a memo to himself.

Besides, word processors these days automatically type in the 4-digit year for you. Another indication that the CBS documents were written quite recently, on modern machines.