Posted on 09/18/2004 8:51:41 PM PDT by kristinn
An Atlanta lawyer, Harry W. MacDougald, has become a key figure in the controversy over whether CBS News relied on forged documents to question President Bush's service in the National Guard.
Writing under the nickname "Buckhead" in a posting on FreeRepublic.com, a conservative Web site, MacDougald was the first to question the authenticity of documents, purportedly written in 1972, because the proportionally spaced fonts used in the memos were not used in typewriters at that time.
"I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old," he wrote in a message posted less than four hours after the Sept. 8 broadcast of "60 Minutes II" in which the documents were revealed.
Overnight, "Buckhead" became an Internet hero to conservatives as his five-paragraph posting touched off a cascade of questions about the documents. One suggested he be named "Freeper of the Year," using the name FreeRepublic posters call themselves.
On Democratic blogs, meanwhile, questions were being raised about how "Buckhead" could have analyzed the typefaces so quickly, and whether the questionable documents could have been a Republican plant.
MacDougald, 46, confirmed he was "Buckhead" after the Los Angeles Times traced his identity through biographical hints posted on the Web site. He declined to comment further to the Journal-Constitution or to the Los Angeles Times.
MacDougald serves on the advisory board of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, and as a sole practitioner was involved in two of the foundation's high-profile cases: a challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, and the Arkansas disbarment proceedings against former President Bill Clinton.
He also wrote an amicus brief for FreeRepublic.com in a breach of copyright case brought against the Web site by the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.
Phil Kent, a former president of the foundation, said he was "tickled" to learn of MacDougald's involvement.
"He's always been kind of an Internet watchdog," Kent said. "Harry's a jack-of-all trades. He's very aware of a lot of things most of us wouldn't pick up on."
Former Atlanta City Councilman Lee Morris, who was deposed by MacDougald as a friendly witness in one of several whistle-blower cases he successfully litigated against the city, described him as a "meticulous" attorney, who "seemed like he was fired up for the right reasons."
Former Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Colin Campbell, who interviewed him several times about the whistle-blower cases, said MacDougald struck him both as "a man of integrity" and "someone who loves to stir the pot."
While several associates referred to MacDougald as a prodigious researcher, none knew of any experience he has had in identifying forged documents.
MacDougald works for Womble, Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, a North Carolina-based firm that opened its Atlanta branch in 1993. He's a graduate of Brown University and the University of Georgia Law School.
He's also a member of the Atlanta chapter of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group from which a number of the Bush administration's federal judicial nominees have been drawn.
The memos reported on by CBS were allegedly written by Bush's Texas Air National Guard commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, suggesting that Bush had received preferential treatment and failed to show up for a required physical.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Bill Burkett, the former Guard officer suspected of providing the documents to CBS, contacted former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) in August to offer the same information to Sen. John Kerry's campaign. Cleland confirmed that he told Burkett in a brief phone conversation to contact others in the campaign.
Burkett wrote in a Web posting that the Kerry campaign didn't call him back. The Post also pointed out several words and phrases that were repeated in the alleged Killian documents and in Web postings made recently by Burkett.
In addition to the speed with which the typeface discrepancies were pointed out, Democrats have questioned the immediate release of copies of the documents by the White House, which had obtained them from CBS.
As more information filtered out, "Buckhead" became more cautious than he was in his initial post.
Congratulations were "premature," he replied to one admirer on Sept. 9, saying his conjecture was "not 100% conclusive because the IBM Executive and IBM Selectric Composer would do proportional fonts."
Later in the day, "Buckhead" wrote to another poster that he felt additional information was confirming his suspicions.
"As for my part, this tsunami would, without any doubt whatsoever, have happened w/o me, so it ain't no big thang," he wrote.
"I will have a cold one tonight, though."
Buckhead, I just have to say you're a damn good dawg!
Give that dawg a bone!
Gooooooo Dawgs! Sic 'em! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!
Atlanta is proud.
It looks to me like Ashcroft is getting pretty tired, after his surgery and all. I think Buckhead would make a good AG - it'd be fun watching him get questioned by the likes of Ted Kennedy
I am honored to be on the same board!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1220090/posts
In case you missed it...Howlin put together the various posts "For The Record"
It must be astounding to know your name will go down in history.
Prepare yourself yourself for a 500+ reply thread.
Your next for a media outing.
You ready?
It was the LA Times that first published his identity - perhaps as payback.
That aside, this was a surprisingly good article.
Yeah, sure, the Air National Guard sends memos instead of letters when they order someone to do someting.
And then locks them up in a drawer so no one can see them.
That's not the slant of the article, that stuff is just newsprint "filler."
The main point of the article, in the old guard news media's own peculiar way, is that they are taking a bow to the new kid on the block, the blogosphere...and tipping their hat to Buckhead for taking down one of the old lions of the pride, Dan Rather.
The AWB Has Expired - Gun Owners Have Won Again For All Americans!
What idiots. A lawyer would be very likely to notice the typeface. Lawyers look at old documents all the time. For that matter anyone who has large quantities of old files should think it odd that a memo written in 1972 has proportional spacing.
L.A. Times is still trashing Buckhead today in its newspaper.
I'm no typographical genius, but I lived through the era in question, was involved with advanced computers and the military, and could easily see the anachronistic qualities of the documents. No discredit to Buckhead, but anyone with eyes and the proper background could have done what he did. He happened to be the first to comment on it, and he deserves all the kudos he's getting. As for "planting" this stuff, puhleeze. If I'd been commissioned to produce forgeries, I would never have done it with a word processor, because I'd never think CBS would fall for them in a million years. Who could have predicted that CBS would ignore the warnings of its own experts and take their authenticity at face value? Unless Karl Rove has astounding powers of thought control, clouding CBS' minds to eliminate all judgement, the "planting" theory doesn't pass the laugh test.
I'm betting that if we ever find whoever produced these, it'll be someone no older than early thirties. They'll have never known a time when there was no proportional spacing, auto centering, laser printing, etc., so they'd have had no idea how to produce an authentic-looking document.
Evidently, Smogger, outing Buckhead is a good thing after all, as long as it is accompanied by left handed, insincere faint praise! Who woulda thunk! Vive le MSM!
Bid things have happened from GA this election cycle. Like Zell, Buckhead.......GA just rocks
The big question is.....
Has Buckhead ever tried a case in his pajamas?
"Unless Karl Rove has astounding powers of thought control, clouding CBS' minds to eliminate all judgement, the "planting" theory doesn't pass the laugh test."
Maybe Karl Rove is really Lamont Cranston in disguise.
In case anyone has any doubts about Burkett having his hands on the documents in question, the Washington Post reveals the truth of the matter here:
"The Washington Post reported Saturday that Bill Burkett, the former Guard officer suspected of providing the documents to CBS, contacted former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) in August to offer the same information to Sen. John Kerry's campaign. Cleland confirmed that he told Burkett in a brief phone conversation to contact others in the campaign." [Emphasis mine]
There's a thread making the rounds today that lays out the whole chronology of FReeper analysis. It started long before Buckhead and included everything for doubts based on prejudice against CBS, to oddities in the language and formatting of the documents.
Buckhead deserves some special credit because he nailed the one feature of the documents that turned out to be the killer.
I argued for several hours that proportional typewriters existed, as did the small "th". I was gratified to see, as the day wore on, that more and more technical experts piled on with irrefutable evidence. I was personally convinced by the demonstration of centering. I recognized immediately that this was not done on a typewriter.
The evidence of language and formatting is icing on the cake, but if the twit who made the documents had taken five minutes to change the font, we'd be out in the MSM cold, talking to ourselves. Experts might agree, but they would be ignored.
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