To Dan Rather, with love

Or should I say fo or fr or f anything? It seems that the character f in all the MemoGate documents overhangs the character following it, as shown in the document below:

Based on information I got from Hugh Hewitt's blog, provided to him from Rice University Computer Science professor Robert Cartwright, I decided to look at the memos for evidence of kerning. You can see from the image above, that the character combination "my" appears to be kerned in one document but not the other. However, I'm willing to write this off as being due to artifacts from the copying process. Also, the default Microsoft Word document that overlays perfectly with the memos does not use kerning.

Even without kerning, the Time New Roman (and other proportional fonts) on the computer has a negative offset with the letter f. That means that the top of the letter f will overhang the next character. This is not something that you would get from a normal typewriter in 1972, event with proportional fonts. The text below was written on an IBM Selectric with proportional fonts, and you can see that there is no overhang of the "f" chararacter on the character that follows

It seems that the only way these memos could have been written in 1972 would be on an IBM Selectric Composer, which was a desktop typesetting machine. There is an excellent analysis of the IBM Selectric Composer on http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html, that shows how close a document created on an IBM Selectric composer could match up to the memos in question. The image below shows the CBS memo overlaid with the output of the IBM Selectric Composer (overlay in red):

The line spacing is off, but if you read the site above, you will see that the line spacing could be adjusted, and you get a pretty good match to the CBS memos. However, this match is not as good as the one produced with Microsoft Word in default settings. To see this, you can look at this Flash animation showing an overlay of MS Word ontop of one of the memos. The animation takes about 30-45 seconds to run, so watch it all.

If you read the commentary at http://shapeofdays.typepad.com/the_shape_of_days/2004/09/the_ibm_selectr.html, you will see the difficulty of creating this document on an IBM Selectric Composer: (e.g. requiring the switching out of font balls to get the superscript or the purchase of a special font ball just to add this non standard character, and the perfect centering of the header which matches identically to the way MS Word centers the same text.

The Boston Globe has interviewed an expert who confirms that these memos could have been created on an IBM Selectric Composer and that the Air Force completed service testing of the IBM Selectric Composer in April 1969. However, using the Composer was not a simple task, and it seems possible but improbable that the Texas Air National Guard would have had one of these machines or that Killian would have typed memos for his personal file on one of these machines. I've heard but do not have any evidence that the Composer was an expensive machine, on the order of several thousand dollars (which would be like $15,000 in todays terms).

All of the other documents in Bush's officially released files were not written with a proportional font, so it's up to CBS to produce other documents written in 1972 by Killian that are comparable to the CBS memos. Certainly, Killian or someone else wrote more than these 4 memos on this complex, expensive typesetting device.

It is possible that Killian wrote these memo's on an IBM Selectric Composer even though:

It's also possible that the Moon Landing was staged in a film studio. It's also possible that there are Alien remains in Hanger 18 in Roswell, N.M. Anything is possible. If CBS were a news organization rather than a Democratic 527 organization, they might at least admit that while possible, the probability is that these are forgeries, and that there is greater probability of finding the Loch Ness Monster than that these memos were written by Killian in 1972.

"I want to emphasize: I stand by my president. We are in a time of war, and I stand behind my president. There is not joy in reporting such a story, but my job as a journalist is not to be afraid, and when we come with facts, and legitimate questions supported by witnesses and documents that we believe to be authentic, to raise those questions no matter how unpleasant they are," Rather said Friday.

I read this and I smelled something: it was the smell of a skunk (once you got past the Barbra Streisand stench).

If his job as a "journalist" is "is not to be afraid, and when we come with facts, and legitimate questions supported by witnesses and documents that we believe to be authentic, to raise those questions no matter how unpleasant they are" then why doesn't he interview the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, the Vietnam Veterans for Truth, Vietnam Veterans aganist Kerry etc., etc.?

He will get the likes of proven liar Joseph Wilson on to make false accusations and hump his book, but cannot seem to find the time to interview the author of "Unfit for Duty," John O'Neill.

Maybe he has another interview with Castro or Hussein lined up.

Can you say putrid partisan shill?

Look particularly at the word "interference", at the beginning of the second line. It contains four 'e's. Two are at the baseline; two are raised slightly above the baseline. It is inconsistent, even on the same line, within the same word.
This isn't an artifact of a fax, or a copy distortion; if that were true, all 'e' elements would be equally misplaced. These character drifts must necessarily exist in the original document. Similar drifts exist throughout, and for other letters.

I wanted to say a word about the lefties' assertion that character drifts are indications of a typewriter. I just got rid of an Epson inkjet because it did exactly the same thing -- couldn't get any lines straight not within a word or without. So a slippery carriage does not a typewriter make. That's all. Thanks for a great analysis all.

Or look at this obvious fake that I created in Photoshop. Once you rotate the text to get the slant from the forged documents, you also get character drift. I can assure that this document was never printed and was not from 1972. We've been assuming this is a direct copy of a Word document, but a forger could easily have done everything seen in the memos using photoshop, even the letter blurring and dots on the page that imply this was photocopied.

Part 2: Dan, You Partisan Slut

Dan will never admit that these are forgeries, and he beleives that proof of forgery lies on the viewer rat^her than CBS having the burden of proof of authenticity

So, for Dan's sake, let's assume that these memos are real. Dan has some Big Questions that he wants answered and he's too lazy to do the work himself, so I'll give him a hand.

Here are the Big Questions he asked last night on the CBS news, and here are the easily available answers:

Rather Lead In: There were attacks today on the CBS News "60 Minutes" report this week raising new questions about President Bush's Vietnam-era time in the Texas Air National Guard. The questions raised by our report include:

--Did a wealthy Texas oilman-friend of the Bush family use his influence with the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives .. to get George W. Bush a coveted slot in the National Guard .. keeping him out of the draft and any probable service IN Vietnam?

Answer: Ben Barnes, Democratic partisan and Kerry fundraiser, has made these claims many times over the years, and his story has not been consisitent. Under Oath, he had to admit that neither George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush asked him to do them any favors. He says it was a Bush friend who asked him to make a call. The person he supposedly called has denied that anyone did any favors to get Bush into the Guard. Ben Barnes daughter has disputed his accounts almost to the point of calling him a liar.

--Did Lieutenant Bush refuse a direct order from his commanding officer?

Answer: Ignoring the fact that there are no official documents reprimanding Bush for refusing a direct order, if we assume that the May 4 memo ordering Bush to get a physical by May 14 is legit, then we also have to assume that the May 19 memo is legit. In it, Killian acknowledges that he and Bush have discussed the physical and that Bush will take his physical in Alabama IF he continues his flight status. There is nothing in this memo about Bush disobeying a direct order, not is there in any other document official or unofficial. While the May 19 memo shows that Killian may be a little concerned about the investment that they have made in training Bush, Bush did serve 5+ years of a 6 year (not a lifetime of indentured servitude) commitment.

--Was Lieutenant. Bush suspended for failure to perform up to standards?

He was not suspended from the Guard, if that's what Dan meant to imply. He was suspended from flying status for missing his physical. He had obviously discussed dropping his flying status with Killian as evidenced in the first sentence of paragraph 2 of the May 19 memo. There were no negative performance evaluations in the official documents. The official May 1972 review was a glowing review with nothing negative to say, including praise of the fact that Bush was working on a political campaign and was a good representative of the Guard in the business community. The official May 1973 review just states that they could not review him because he had been off the base for the time period doing equivalent duty in Alabama. Despite the wording of the August 1, 1972 memo stating: On this date I ordered that 1st Lt Bush be suspended from flight status due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered, there is nothing in the records to indicate that Bush did anything other than miss a physical, which was common for pilots who were not planning to continue flying. If Dan Rat^her has proof, it's up to him to produce it, rather than ask silly questions.

--Did Lieutenant Bush ever take a physical he was required and ordered to take? If not, why not?

Obviously he did not take the physical, and Bush has never said that he took the physical. His flight status was dropped due to missing the physical, so this is not a point of dispute. The May 19 memo does help to show that Bush had discussed dropping his flight status with his supervisor and that his supervisor was ok (if not exactly jumping for joy) about it.

--And did Lieutenant Bush, in fact, complete his commitment to the Guard?

He got an honorable discharge. That should be proof enough, but if you think he didn't it would be good to produce some evidence instead of just asking questions. Since you have no evidence, I can only imagine that you will bring up the disingenuous info from the Boston Globe story last week about Bush not completing his duty to seek alternate training after moving to Boston to go to Harvard Business School. Of course, you'd have to ignore the fact that he did not need to seek alternate training becuase he had asked for and was granted an early release from the Guard 6 months early (which is exactly the same thing John Kerry did in getting out 6 months early). Here is is request for discharge and recommendation for approval in September, 1973. Why would he report elsewhere after being discharged?

These questions grew out of new witnesses and new evidence -- including documents written by Lieutenant Bush's squadron commander.

Answer: Doesn't look like any new evidence to me Dan. Perhaps we would have new evidence if you John Kerry would fill out the Form 180 to release all his military records, as Bush did.

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