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.
Wow. That document is amazing. Looks just like the ones from CBS.
There seem to be baseline shifts in the original document (could be an optical illusion, though, due to the poor quality of the copy). This could be because they were typed on a typewriter, or it could be because they were done in a program that allows for baseline shifting, or it could be a Photoshop filter. I can think of no explanation for the smart apostrophes, though, except for the computer angle.