Wow. This is THE definitive MSM article so far. They've taken the docs apart and found lots of the inconsistencies that Freepers found!
And Laura Bush is now commenting!!
"Meanwhile, Laura Bush became the first person from the White House to say the documents are likely forgeries. "You know they are probably altered," she told Radio Iowa in Des Moines yesterday. "And they probably are forgeries, and I think that's terrible, really." "
More:
"A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.
The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word. "
It is really interesting, at least to me, to see the "bubble time" involved in this story. I define "bubble time" as the time it takes to get from Free Republic up to the MSM. Right now, it appears to be about 4 days.
"In fact, modern copiers and computer printers are so good that they permit easy fabrication of quality forgeries. From a copy, the document examiner cannot authenticate the unseen original but may well be able to determine that the unseen original is false. Further, a definite finding of authenticity for a signature is not possible from a photocopy, while a definite finding of falsity is possible." -- Marcel Matley, "The Practical Litigator", Sept. 27, 2002
If this guy is talkin' again, then the blogosphere needs to chat him up...
(1) What did CBS ask him specifically to comment on for the camera? Handwriting analysis, document forensics, or both?;
(2) Who else did CBS mentioned in connection with their receiving these documents or their chain of custody (a question any authoritative handwriting analyst surely asked)?; and
(3) Remind Matley what he wrote two years ago about "quality forgeries" and ask him for the probability that these documents were created on a "modern computer printer".
This is interesting too:
from
http://www.polipundit.com/
Driving home from work this afternoon, I listened to the radio, to KSEV AM700, to the Dan Patrick show. The guest I heard was Dr. Jerry Waite from the University of Houston. Dr Waite is an expert on the printing industry, well versed on the history and capability of typewriters, computers and larger commercial printers.
He also believes the memos presented by CBS to attack President Bush are "total fabrications". Dr. Waite is careful to insist the memos are NOT "forgeries", because "the word 'forgery' suggests they are trying to look like real documents". Dr. Waite said the memos may best be described as "fakes... bad ones".
Dr. Waite said the documents could have been produced, but only by an experienced typist on a brand-new top-of-the-line machine, which is in complete conflict with Colonel Killian's inexperience with typing, and distaste for keeping personal files, to say nothing of the National Guard's budget.
Dr. Waite also explained why CBS doesn't want to produce the originals. One quick way to see how a document was produced, is to check the ink on the paper. Toner crystals are distinctive and cannot be confused for anything else, so if a computer printed the documents (if!), the jig would be up immediately.
A caller to the show, however, made the best point I've heard today on this topic. A former Air Force corporal, with experience as a company clerk, made an outstanding point. All typewiters in 1973 used a fabric ribbon for their documents. Why is this important?
Remember, we know the documents received by CBS (and other news sources) were faxed to them. Try this experiment - type a letter on an old-style typewriter with a ribbon, fax it to a nearby fax, and see what it looks like. Ink on a ribbon-typed letter expands when it is photocopied or faxed. So, if the documents CBS received had been typed with a fabric-ribbon typewriter (that is, if they had been produced in 1973), the fax would have resulted in a slightly mushy print. The print is crisp in the documents we see, which proves the documents could not have been produced by a fabric-ribbon typewriter!
For some reason, I strongly doubt we can expect Dan Rather to confirm this discovery on his next broadcast.
posted by DJ Drummond at 10:06 PM Link to this post | Comments (7) | Trackback (0)
The Washington Post has added a new and very important source -- Adobe, the god of fonts.
"And Laura Bush is now commenting!! "
If Rather had any sense left, he'd want to come clean before the President is asked about this at a press conference.
When the Pres. comes out and says the memos are forgeries its going to be TSHTF again for CBS.
And, I noticed in the Drudge article from CBS news last night 'Questions Linger Over Bush Memos' that there was an actual quote from Col. Udell, of the TANG that says: ""I completely am disgusted with this (report) I saw on 60 Minutes,"' Udell said. "That's not true. I was there. I knew Jerry Killian. I went to Vietnam with Jerry Killian in 1968." "
That is the first instance of CBS deviating from the Rather insistance that the Docs are real.
Could CBS be trying to distance themselves from Rather?