jean phouqin keri's @zz belongs to the Swifty's...
Dan RATher's @zz belongs to FreeRepublic!!!
Posted on 09/11/2004 9:43:06 AM PDT by JCEccles
In my first Air Force assignment in the 1970s I served as administrative communications officer and assistant chief of central base administration for the 92d Combat Support Group at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. For two years I was directly responsible for ensuring that all units at Fairchild, including an attached Washington Air National Guard wing, complied with Air Force regulations and policies governing the preparation and filing of official correspondence including letters and memoranda. My review of the CBS Texas Air National Guard documents convinces me they are fraudulent for reasons that other critics have not yet discussed in any great detail.
Bowing to the virtue of brevity, I will resist the temptation to discuss all the failings of the memoranda and will instead concentrate on the unsigned memorandum dated 18 August 1973 (which I will call the “Staudt memorandum”), and in particular its page formatting.
As has been pointed out by many observers, twelve pitch Times Roman font in Microsoft Word automatically and precisely generates the superscript, line breaks, and letter spacing (including kerning) of the Staudt memorandum if the left and right page margins are set at one-inch on 8.5 x 11 paper (Word’s default settings). That’s a problem.
The Air Force and Guard did not adopt 8.5 x 11 paper until the early 1980s. The standard paper width in 1973 was only 8.0 inches. The half-inch difference is critical.
If page formatting is resized to one-inch margins on 8.0 inch paper, Microsoft Word breaks the sentences at entirely different points in the text, after “trouble,” from,” “wasn’t,” and “I” versus “running,” “regarding,” “rating,” “is,” and “either” in the CBS memo.
The line breaks themselves are powerful circumstantial evidence that Microsoft Word generated the Staudt memorandum using Word’s default settings of one-inch margins on 8.5 x 11 paper. There are two possible rebuttals to this common sense conclusion.
First, it might be argued that the Texas Air National Guard—or at least Lt Col Killian, the purported preparer of the memo—used nonstandard 8.5 x 11 paper in 1973. That is unlikely. Paper stocks at Air Force and Guard units in the 1970s were ordered and maintained by the office of central base administration, a headquarters-level staff office, to be distributed to individual units and squadrons as needed. Units and squadrons got their stocks of paper exclusively from central base administration for two very good reasons: first, official regulations required it, and second, the cost of paper came out of a headquarters budget—not the individual unit or squadron’s budget. It would make no sense at all for a squadron commander to use nonstandard paper for an official memorandum in 1973.
Second, it might be argued that Lt Col Killian used by intention or pure accident nonstandard three-quarter inch margins for the Staudt memorandum. Again, this is highly unlikely. The mechanical IBM typewriters used by the Air Force and Guard in 1973 were by regulation and routine set at one-inch margins for 8.0 inch paper. It defies common sense to believe that in 1973 Lt Col Killian used nonstandard three-quarter inch margins on 8.0 inch paper that by astounding coincidence would produce the exact line breaks generated by Microsoft Word 31 years later using Word’s default one-inch margins on 8.5 x 11 paper.
While CBS blithely continues to defend the Staudt memorandum, common sense and Occam’s razor (the simpler explanation is to be preferred over the more complex) are slicing and dicing CBS’s credibility like an onion in a cuisinart.
GREAT article - I love this article; it's not speculative in any sense, it states the facts in a clear and devastating manner. Dan Rather brought back a dead man to destroy President Bush, but this article drives a steak into the heart of Dan Rather's ghoulish hoax.
Hope you are right but history doesn't argue for you. The only scandals that have legs are scandals involving conservatives. The tone of FOX's coverae is now dismissive.
Not to pick nits... but the standard default margins in Word are as follows:
Top = 1", Bottom = 1", Left = 1.25", Right = 1.25"
The default left / right margins are not 1". Has been this way in every version of Word that I've ever used.
You are totally right about this. BUT, a too clever by half forgerer might have reset the Word margins to 1" if he/she knew that standard military margin would have been 1". In that case, NOT knowing that standard military paper stock of that epoch was 8", and not 8 1/2" becomes the fatal flaw in the attempted fraud!
jean phouqin keri's @zz belongs to the Swifty's...
Dan RATher's @zz belongs to FreeRepublic!!!
Of course, by now, we have all figured out why Rather was 'given' and used copies in smearing President Bush.
There were NO originals. There never were unless you consider the "Masters" the forgers ran off on their HP printer and later shredded and disposed of.
But one has to 'delve' a bit deeper in deductive reasoning to see the purpose of 'giving' Rather 25th (excuse my lack of Superscript here) generation copies to purport as real.
Why has no one asked Rather to produce the originals?? It's a simple question. Original documents would quickly and clearly either substantiate his smear or repudiate it.
Surely the criminals who 'stole' the documents from the estate of Lt. Col. Killian would possess the originals. I should think they would be awarded high paying government or DNC jobs in a Kerry administration for their efforts in defeating President Bush if they would only bring them forth.
Using copies provides Rather with the obvious defense that the copies were made from the 'originals' and so we should rest assurred that if Dan wanted to bring forth the originals he would only have to wave his magic wand and poof, they would appear. But of course he can't since there are no originals.
Imagine for a moment the conversation with "Deep Font" and Rather as they discuss Deep Font turning over these stolen documents:
Dan: So you have the documents?
DF: Copies. I have copies.
Dan: OK. Copies are good. I can smear Bush with Copies. But what if they start asking where I got these and why I don't have originals. What do I say??
DF: You tell'em what Teresa Kerry said, Shove it!
Information on the CBS fraud should always be front page news IMHO.
If you're ever in doubt, check with Admin. and ask for exception to keep on front page.
the same people that think those docs are legit
think oj was innocent
I completely agree that the documents are frauds. I think the issue is that the documents were typed with the default Word margins. Just tried it myself, and at 1.25 left and right, using Times New Roman, the document formats exactly as the forged memos.
I've posted the last couple of days to alert folks that the copies I have were done on regulation 8 x 10.5 paper. I can't remember where I got the PDF copy but it clearly shows the originals as 8 x 10.5 although the copy is on 8.5 x 11 paper. The orginal has a grey tinge to it with a quarter inch whiter margin around the outside with the exception of the 8/1/72 memo which has a grey area 9.5 in length for some reason (width is 8). It appears from my copies that the various items were done on standard military size paper for that era.
Lando 
In sum, the cleanest, clearest, and most elegant explanation--the only explanation that fits all the evidence without being forced unnaturally--is that the document(s) were prepared with Microsoft Word at either its default 1.25" margin setting on 8.5 x 11 paper or one-inch margin setting on 8 x 10.5 paper.
Admin moderator, you might want to pull this until I can rewrite it to bring its accuracy up to speed.
BTTT
Because today's FAX machines and copiers use 8 1/2 inch paper. Thus one could copy an 8 inch sheet onto an 8 1/2 inch one. It could be centered, more or less, or it could be offset to one side. Either way, the paper would still be 8 1/2 inches wide. The Margins would then be seen to be 1 1/4 inches rather than 1 inch. They are 1 inch. More properly the text is contained in 6 1/2 inches, not 6 inches as it would be if the original was done on 8 inch paper with 1 inch margins.
Argument still holds if one allows for the extra width margins, except that now the Word version's text would be contained in 5 1/2 inchs while a standard AF memo would be 6 inches. In any event, no matter what then available machine, paper or margin settings were used, it would not be identical to something produced by Microsoft Word. It is, to within the limit of being faxed, therefore it's a modern fake.
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