Posted on 09/19/2004 9:21:37 PM PDT by Andy from Beaverton
I Am Buckhead": Newspaper Exposes Blog Folk Hero
By E & P Staff
Published: September 18, 2004
NEW YORK It was the scoop of the day in the presidential campaign (which tells you something): The Los Angeles Times found Buckhead.
The paper reports that it has solved the mystery of who exactly posted the very first (and in some minds, very suspicious) blog blast at the credibility of the "60 Minutes" Killian memos. But as the Times put it, "it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought."
Buckhead, as he was known at the Free Republic site, has been unmasked as Harry MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes. He even helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
His identity, the Times says, "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 this.
Reached by telephone by the Times on Friday, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he is Buckhead but declined to answer questions.
MacDougald, a lawyer in Atlanta, is affiliated with two prominent conservative legal groups, the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, where he serves on the legal advisory board.
Suspicions that MacDougald may have been tipped off have arisen because his quick comments on typography seemed to go far beyond his reputed expertise. He wrote that the memos purportedly written in the early 1970s by the late Lt. Col Jerry B. Killian were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman....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. "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."
Godspeed and good luck in your fight.
I don't believe I was denigrating you when I mentioned that you lived in Boston. Since I don't know if you are male or female I used, "it." Sorry if that offended you and, of course, I misspoke when I referred to your sister-in-law as your sister.
I do hope you are able to come back and explain your comments soon.
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