Killian Memos Crumpled and Smoothed Out

little green footballs ^ | 9/14/04 | lawhawk

[finnman69]

Several LGF readers emailed to say that if you open one of the CBS News Killian memos in Photoshop and adjust the levels, crumple marks show up on the paper. So I tried it, and here’s the result:

This was probably done by the incredibly inept forger to increase the apparent “age” of the document, and to make the text appear more ragged.

I’ll bet that if the real printed originals of these documents ever turn up (say, in a dumpster behind MoveOn.org headquarters), they’ll find the idiot’s fingerprints on them.

[flying Elvis]

Has anyone tried this with the legit docs posted on the web? It would be nice to compare the two.

[Buckhead]

Well that IS interesting.

CBS got some more 'splainin' to do.

PDF's have no metadata, correct?

[hoosiermama]

Some of us crashed a long time ago.....We're just typing with our eyes closed.

Good Night BH. Sweet wonderful dreams....of contentment for doing your part.

[concerned about politics]

It's up to rove to prove he is not guilty of this

Don't they have that backwards? Sheesh!

[hoosiermama]

Got something else you should see, I'll ping you to it.

[JSteff]

Excellent thought.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

I’ll bet that if the real printed originals of these documents ever turn up (say, in a dumpster behind MoveOn.org headquarters), they’ll find the idiot’s fingerprints on them.

It wouldn't totally surprise me to learn that the FBI has the ability to recover fingerprints from copies...

[Grig]

The same cumpled patter is on the May 4 AND the May 19 memo, but it isn't as prononced on the may 19 memo. I had to adjust the levels more to bring it out, and even then it doesn't show on the right side.

[Phinanceguy]

One oher point. In military terminology, dates are listed for example as 14 Sept. 04. In some of the memos cited, the dates are listed as for example Sept. 14, 04. You never listed a date like that. Yet, some of the alleged memos have the dates listed like that. Just some additional proof of the fraudulent nature of these documents.

[CurlyDave]

For what it is worth, i just tried it on the same memo, but from the USA today version. No crumple marks.

Also, address is not blacked out..

[Rocky]

Naw, I think Kerry and Rather collaborated the forgeries.

(Hey, I could coin a new use of the word. Well, I would have to give someone at DU credit.)

[plushaye]

No conclusive but interesting. I couldn't find the date out from the pdfs but maybe someone else can. In that blogger discussion I was looking at last night, they talk about this [down around the Sept 12 6:55pm posting]
http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2004/09/rasupthsupergat_1.html

They infer those docs weren't on the awolbush.com site prior to August 10 because another site listing their links do not show the 4 suspicious docs listed. The whole setup is suspect though IMHO.

[Tangerine Time Machine]

Can someone check the contrast on the other docs and see if they same pattern exists, or even better, if it does exist, it is a match?

Good idea, might reveal some surprises...

Holy crap!

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

> Yes, I was looking at the html code of the awolbush.com site:
>
> 1) May 4 Ordered to Report for physical exam (blacking out)
> http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf
> http://www.awolbush.com/documents/BushGuardmay4.pdf

Server timestamp for CBS is 9/09/2004 1:19AM
Timestamp for AWOLBush is 9/12/2004 2:34AM

So clearly AWOL got them from CBS via normal web downloading.

[Grig]

All 4 CBS memos show the same crumple pattern, but none of them show it nearly as much as the may 4th memo. I would conclude that the source papers used to create the PDF files from CBS were all distressed from the same cause, probably while in a stack with the May 4th memo on top.

Also, every single memo from the USA Today PDF file is lacking ANY sign of crumpling. This leads to these possibilities:

- there is more than one set of copies being passed around and CBS & USA Today got different copies, perhaps from different sources

- CBS and USA Today got the same source materials, but USA Today cleaned their scan before creating the PDF. (Adjusting brightness/contrast can remove the crumple)

- CBS and USA Today got the same source materials, but CBS added the crumpling

I'll look into this more after I get some sleep, unless someone beats me to it.

[plushaye]

Ok. Thanks. The innocent explanation goes but I think those folks are a suspicious bunch anyway.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Oh, a couple other things... Since I understand that CBS put the docs up approximately as the show went to air, the CBS server must be on GMT (EDT+4 = 9:19PM, 8SEP) Don't want anyone to think Buckhead had them before CBS put them up :-) One interesting thing about the CBS file timestamps is that they indicate that CBS downloaded them from somewhere. A direct copy from a CD or diskette would have preserved the original modification date in the directory. However, the PDFs were created only minutes before being put up: Meta Data inside PDF /ModDate (D:20040908210832-04'00') /CreationDate (D:20040908210823-04'00') /Creator (Acrobat 5.0 Image Conversion Plug-in for Windows) /Producer (Acrobat 5.0 Image Conversion Plug-in for Windows) >> endobj 3 0 obj << /Type /Metadata /Subtype /XML /Length 928 >> stream 2004-09-08T21:08:32-04:00 2004-09-08T21:08:23-04:00 Acrobat 5.0 Image Conversion Plug-in for Windows Acrobat 5.0 Image Conversion Plug-in for Windows 2004-09-08T21:08:32-04:00 2004-09-08T21:08:23-04:00 2004-09-08T21:08:32-04:00

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

I think the posting software thought there was some html in there. But you can read it if you're really interested.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

You have to remember, they were sitting on them for at least five weeks ;-)

[The Californian]

You know, I wonder if the Clintons are the ones who passed this on to Rather. Perhaps they told him it came from the FBI files. He sure seems adamant that the source is "credible".