YET ANOTHER EXPERT, MORE ARGUMENTS AGAINST (CBS Documents)

National Review ^ | 9-9-04

[ambrose]

YET ANOTHER EXPERT, MORE ARGUMENTS AGAINST [09/09 03:48 PM]

Kerry Spot reader Bruce Webster who has as served as an expert witness in U.S. District Court cases regarding computer document forensics, writes in that the CBS News document "has all sorts of problems... The typefaces weren't available on typewriters in 1973."

The typefaces listed and linked below, by the way, do not have “curly” quotes, only "straight" ones. Oddly, you'll notice the CBS documents, like the Kerry Spot, have both, sometimes in the same document. (On the Kerry Spot, this is a result of transferring text from a word processing program into web-publishing program Moveable Type. (A link using curly quotes won't link correctly, which means every link has to be checked to make sure it has the right kind of quotes.)

CBS had better have one heck of a defense for this.

[Crazieman]

If National Review picked this up, it HAS to be damning.

[RoseofTexas]

Waiting for Hannity to report this!

[Guillermo]

That's what I'm thinking...

I'll wait till some more credible people say they're fake.

[xkaydet65]

I'm more interested in the second blurb that says the embargoed ABC Poll will be "great news" for the President.

[pbear8]

Having a beautiful day reading all of this.

[ThinkDifferent]

I didn't believe this at first, but the evidence keeps piling up. If it really is a forgery I'm astounded, not that the left would stoop to this level, but that they'd be so incompetent.

[mingusthecat]

Paper Falsehoods (sung to tune of Paper Roses by Marie Osmond)

I realize the ways Dan's lies deceived me
with tender looks that I mistook for truth
So take away the forgeries you gave me
the FReepers found lies and now have the proof.

Paper Falsehoods, Paper Falsehoods,
oh, how real those Falsehoods seemed to Rather.
But they're only, Imitation,
like his imitation news that's blather.

Dan thought that this would be a perfect story.
It seemed so full of promise at the start.
But like a big red rose that's made of paper,
there isn't any truth; its just Windows art.

Paper Falsehoods, Paper Falsehoods,
oh, how real those Falsehoods seemed to Rather.
But they're only, Imitation,
like his propaganda that's just blather.

[jrawk]

What if it is fake on purpose? Sort of...

If I was a PA on 60 Minutes charged with creating the digital graphics for this story the following might happen:

After scanning the original documents I find they are illegible digitally. So I retype verbatim screen shot, bring it into PhotoShop, paste, apply a dimestore old XEROX filter, then photoshop out the signature and place it. Deadline met, the stylized graphic for production has been created. In general the networks do not require the actual document be shown, they have often in the past insisted it is ok to display the actual text in whatever format meets their production needs. So long as the content is not changed.

It needs to be confirmed that those images on the web, and in the show are images of the actual documents before this story goes on.

I am just saying we should start with the question are these the real documents? Cause these images are not consistent with the period.

-- l8s
-- jrawk

[mlbford2]

If this is true, Dan Rather's carrer is finished. What a dipsh*t.

[Leatherneck_MT]

Blather and the Clintoon Broadcasting System have been finished for a long time. Nobody has buried them yet is the only problem.

[Republic]

Have sent this to Brit Hume ( special@foxnews.com ) and Hannity and O'Rielly and Rush. Certainly hope Fox News Cable is on top of this and reports on it FAST!

[Sub-Driver]

bump

[rocklobster11]

[Stentor]

I'll wait till some more credible people say they're fake.

I'm waiting for credible people to tell me they're real.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

As a former professional typesetter, I can tell you that the font used in those documents is not Times Roman, so I don't understand what all the fuss is about. In fact, the document isn't clear enough to actually determine the font, but it's of a style called "square-serif," to which font families like Courier and Stymie belong, although there are quite a few similar-looking fonts that could be classified as square-serif.

I poked around last night to see if I could dig up some data on early world processing systems, and while I found that the Selectric wouldn't fit the bill, there was a device made by IBM called the "Composer," that was actually meant to provide an affordable substitute for expensive typesetting systems.

Bottom line is, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions based on type fonts or proportional spacing.

[bushfamfan]

Has CBS given information in how it obtained these mysterious memos? Have they told how this man who has been dead for how many yrs. and all of a sudden these papers turn up? More information should be requested from CBS and CBS had better release those records so they can be inspected. It was incredibly malicious that they put something so sloppily together but they have malicious intentions against this President and that is how they do things. CBS and the media need to answer for this slander. These memos need to be inspected and released.

[Rutles4Ever]

These guys are cooked. First of all, the seed of doubt is growing into a full grown orchard. CBS can claim it's the real deal all they want, but unless they give up the source, and the source gives up the official FOIA paperwork, the thing is DEAD. Furthermore, the curled apostrophes and the superscript "th" are undebatably anchronistic to 1973.

This is unbelievable. Someone's going down, Dan....

[tractorman]

Desperate people do desperate things and there’s nothing more desperate than a liberal out of power.