the "th" is only one problem
- Col. Killian didn't make notes.
- He didn't type.
- Wrong military abbreviations.
- Standard abbrev (NLT) spelled out
- Wrong address for Bush
- Pressure from an officer who was no longer in the Guard! (Staudt, who retired the year before Rather mentions him).
- The "th" (I guarantee you, no typewriter did a scaled-down superscript. No can do).
- 13-point leading. (First possible with the Mac and Laserwriter, 1987).
- The text EXACTLY matches microsoft word (you can type the exact document yourself)
- Times New Roman font -- the default typeface in Word -- has not been used on a typewriter.
- The odd abbreviation in one case with a missing period in the middle of a three letter abbrev. Type that sentence exactly like that in word, and it looks JUST like that. Add the period and the last word flips to the other line.
- Dates are not in USAF format
- Signature block is not in USAF format and is on the right -- requirement at the time was left justified.
- Document does not match any period doc (and yes, I've seen documents done on that IBM executive typewriter. Citations for the Distinguished Service Cross were done on it as US Army, Vietnam -- it's clearly a different kind of type and spacing).
- Signature doesn't match Killian's signature approving Bush's request for discharge.
- (A big one): While the experts calling BS on the Rather forgeries all have names, CBS makes hysterical claims of "journalistic investigation" with people that don't have names. If I have learned one thing, it's this: a source without a name does not exist. If real experts authenticated CBS's documents, those experts would have provided affidavits which CBS would be trumpeting now. There are no experts. Note also that the people who have come forward and said they talked to CBS have all said they told CBS the opposite of what the Kerry Campaign, 48th Street Division, claims they said.
Look at the way CBS is digging in on this. Folks, CBS isn't defending these docs because they trust their source. They are defending the docs because they know where they came from. They know, because they made the documents, right there in-house at CBS News.
And they did it in a deliberate (if feeble) attempt to throw an election -- there's gotta be some serious violations of 18 USC in there.
To any CBS folks lurking: do not destroy any memos, and especially not the documents that originally came to you. They are evidence in a criminal investigation, and tampering with such evidence will put you in jail. It's time to call the corporate counsel, and bring in an outside special master to investigate (as CNN did when they got caught trying to push the Oliver/Smith/Arnett Tailwind fabrication).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F