The metadata for the BushGuardmay4 doc regarding creation and modification dates is identical between the AWOL Bush version and the CBS version, further indicating that AWOLBush got them from CBS.
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Sept. 17, 2004, 11:17PM
WASHINGTON - It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service — a technical explanation posted on the Internet within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.
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But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes and who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Los Angeles Times has found.
The identity of "Buckhead," a blogger known previously only by his screen name on the Web site freerepublic.com and lifted to folk-hero status in the conservative blogosphere since last week's posting, is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.
GOP officials have denied involvement in debunking the story.
"You can ask the questions but I'm not going to answer them," he told The Times. "I'm just going to stick to doing no interviews."
Until The Times identified him by piecing together information from his postings over the past two years, MacDougald had taken pains to remain in the shadows — saying the credit for challenging CBS should remain with the blogosphere.
" 'Freepers' collectively posess more analytical horsepower than the entire news division at CBS," he wrote in an e-mail, using the slang term for users of the freerepublic site.
MacDougald is a lawyer in the Atlanta office of the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice and is affiliated with two prominent conservative legal groups, the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, where he serves on the legal advisory board.
"The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software and personal computers," MacDougald wrote on the freerepublic Web site. "They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.
"I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."