The Bush "Guard memos" are forgeries! (Nonpartisan printing expert weighs in)

http://www.flounder.com/bush.htm ^ | Joseph M. Newcomer

[not_apathetic_anymore]

First off, before I start getting a lot of the wrong kind of mail: I am not a fan of George Bush. But I am even less a fan of attempts to commit fraud, and particularly by a complete and utter failure of those we entrust to ensure that if the news is at least accurate. I know it is asking far too much to expect the news to be unbiased. But the people involved should not actually lie to us, or promulgate lies created by hoaxers, through their own incompetence....

This is a long page with many graphics...click on the link

[js1138]

This is a very technical article and it uses a lot of difficult language, but the bottom line is you can't duplicate the CBS letter spacing without using TrueType fonts or violating Apple Computer's patents.

I think it is quite ironic that a technology developed for Steve Jobs will be the undoing of CBS News.

I did a quick test on MSWord just a couple of minutes ago and could see the difference between kerning on and kerning. The CBS documents were done with kerning off, but they still have some of the spacing features associated with kerning.

This is CRITICAL. The spacing in the CBS memos COULD NOT POSSIBLY be done except in a TrueType font.

[Dan Evans]

The author, "Joseph M. Newcomer", returns about 3,300 hits on Google.

[Techster]

I would be great if Fox or anybody other than cbs would get an interview from this expert.

[John Jorsett]

That's hilarious. I love how the web brings out the creativity in people.

[js1138]

I might add that in 1986 or so, I used a Unix based word processor that output PostScript files. I made a screen shot macro that could scale to any size.
All the included fonts scaled exactly to within 1/1000 of a point. It did proportional spacing, but not kerning.

[N. Beaujon]

If someone had come forward presenting a “lost” painting by Leonardo da Vinci, which used acrylic paints including Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White, art experts would roll of the floor laughing at the clumsiness of the forgery!!!

Thank you! Bless this guys heart!! This is the perfect analogy because any of us who were working in the creative fields (pre-press, production, advertising,print production) could tell these were frauds. This man is older than I am and he knows. I've been working with linotype and desktop publishing since the early 80's and there is just now way, no way these docs were done in the 70's. We would have had to take them to pre-production people and typesetters to get those results in the 80's! In the 70's, in a field office in the Texas National Guard? I mean LOL.

The metaphor this man used was perfect about Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White. The IRONY is these fogeries have been filtering through newspaper offices and every linotype guy and press person on staff know what is what. Go into any printing press room over at USA Today, the "New" New York Times, or any of these MSM media con artists and these guys on the line know these docs are a crock. But Dan Rather couldnt figure it out? Or his producers? OR his graphic artists? I mean, let's get real here. Again, let's get real!

[YaYa123]

did you see this?

[mikegi]

OK guys. This explains a lot. FReepers have been arguing for days that the CBS documents are kerned. I have been biting my tongue because I saw what I thought were obvious instances where the CBS documents were not kerned. Yet FReepers and others wer able to point out instances where something more sophisticated than proportional spacing occurred.

I've been biting my tongue, too, but for a different reason (I worked on the GDI/TrueType code for Win95). My reason: the scanned versions from CBS are just too low resolution to get anything meaningful out of them. They're faxed and faxes screw up things royally. For instance, I don't see the ABC spacing in the word "from" in the Aug 18, 1973 memo. There's definitely no kerning in the "CYA" from that memo because the A would be tucked in under the Y. CBS could clear up most of these issues if they would release high-resolution scans of the original documents.

Not only was it not invented until 1989, but it is patented. No one but a True-Type licencee (read Microsoft) can produce the CBS documents.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Anyone who writes a Windows app can do ABC spacing and kerning. The ABC spacing is automatic, eg. GDI asks the font how far to move to the next character origin ( = A + B + C ). The only time an app needs the ABC widths is when it needs to deal with negative A or C values. Kerning is done at the application level and more involved because you need ask for kerning based on pairs of letters.

Do I think the docs are faked? Yes. I don't think a LTC in the TexANG would have a sophisticated typewriter nor the typing skill to manage the typography tricks used in the memo (multiple centered lines is the gotcha for me). These things are automatic now - we don't even think about it - and that tripped up the forger.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

...it would be easier to believe that a time traveller...

shhh... don't give Dan Rather, Terry McCauliff or the DUers any ammunition. ;-)

[not_apathetic_anymore]

I don't know if you've been pinged to this thread, but I should have done that right away.

You knew they were fake when you saw the memos. Here's a very detailed explanation. (AT least very detailed to me)

[B Knotts]

This is a very technical article and it uses a lot of difficult language, but the bottom line is you can't duplicate the CBS letter spacing without using TrueType fonts or violating Apple Computer's patents.

Agreed. That's why I suggested the time traveler.

Looking at the latest pathetic PC Magazine article, it's kinda good CBS hasn't fessed up...the longer they take, the more leftist fools they will ultimately take down with them.

[CyberAnt]

"How could anyone believe these memos are other than incompetent forgeries?"

WOW! This is a very telling statement .. and confirmes to me CBS/Dan KNEW THESE WERE FORGERIES and they accepted them as valid anyway.

[wildbill]

This is the most technically detailed article I've seen and is by a man who has a resume on font technology second to none.

This case is closed.

[airborne]

check out his resume!

CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY, PITTSBURGH, PA
Ph.D., Computer Science

SAINT VINCENT COLLEGE, LATROBE, PA
B.A., Mathematics

[longshadow]

Thanks for the ping.

FWIW, according to his resume, this guy was on staff in the CompSci department at my alma mater during my entire undergrad tenure at that institution. I checked out his photograph on his website, and though I don't specifically remember the face, chances are good we passed each other at some point in the bowels of Science Hall, if not on the sidewalks outside on campus.

In my defense, I will say that ALL the CompSci geeks in the early 70's looked just about the way he does; its just so hard to tell one computer nerd from another. Sigh.

That said, his expose on the documents is about as authoratative as you can get.

[js1138]

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Anyone who writes a Windows app can do ABC spacing and kerning.

Did you read the whole article? Either the author is wrong, or you and I are miscommunicating.

Letter spacing will remain constant, even in a low-res scan. The fact that it is easy to overlay an MS Word document with the CBS document is nothing short of a miracle, considering that no other kind of document can meet this standard.

Here is the nuts and bolts of the argument: a kerned document will not match the CBS document. A document produced by an IBM Executive will not match the CBS document. A document produced by an IBM Composer will not match the CBS document. Only a document produced with a default TrueType font will match the CBS document.

TrueType was not available before 1981. The spacing in TrueType is neither kerned nor straight proportional. It is something of a kludge, a computationally easy enhancement to proportional spacing.

Any document that matches TrueType spacing could not have been printed prior to 1981 or 1982.

[js1138]

Anyone who writes a Windows app can do ABC spacing and kerning.

I'm sorr if I have not expressed myself clearly. I suspect that any program using TrueType, NS Word or brand X, could duplicate the CBS memos. I bet you could do it in Wordpad.

[delacoert]

From the beginning of the discussion of the memos here at FreeRepublic, it was clear to me that the memos were forged.

I, like many others, typed the 01 AUG 1972 memo out in MS Word on 9 SEP when I first read about the discovery as posted here. It matched perfectly.

It was a pleasure to read the expert analysis provided by the author of the article that was the lead into this thread. It tied up the last loose end about kerning.

On the other hand, it has been extremely aggravating to read the incessant squabbling of pseudo-experts with 30-minutes experience in some posts on this forum. In particular, there were those that posted screen captured images of extremely distorted text from the memo who held forth that they showed definite evidence of kerning. It was clear to me that those images did not prove kerning.

The author's explanation about trutype fonts ends the controversy about kerning. Lectures from someone who signed up at FreeRepublic just today don't really help me out.

[js1138]

Word doesn't kern by default. Word TrueType fonts do.

TrueType spacing is not true kerning. Fire up a good word processor and compare the text with kerning on and kerning off. There is a difference. The CBS documents were done with kerning off, but there are still some "pseudo-kerning" effects. This is absolute proof that the documents were done with a TrueType font.

[js1138]

I was told early on to look at the "CYA" for evidence of kerning. I looked and didn't see it. I said nothing because I could see some places that looked like kerning.

This essay explains the difference between TrueType and kerning and simple proportional spacing.