BUCKHEAD REFUTES MARY MAPES ON RATHERGATE DOCS

How Did Buckhead Know? ^ | Monday, November 21, 2005 | Buckhead

[kristinn]

Ever since the controversy over the CBS use of forged memos erupted, those disappointed by the exposure of the forgeries have wondered if the whole thing wasn't some sort of set up perpetrated by the Dark Lord, Karl Rove. Integral to this paranoid theorizing was their slack-jawed amazement that anyone could have observed and commented that the documents were fake based on typography as quickly as I did. How could anyone not on the inside have articulated a technical and convincing explanation that the documents were fake within a few hours of the broadcast? Well, here's your answer. It's probably too late to make any difference, but I am no longer able to stifle myself now that Mary Mapes' has written a several hundred page book parading her venomous disregard for those who exposed her lies and her delusional self-image as the Joan of Arc of investigative journalism.

So, how did I know?

The short answer is that I am 47 years old and I am not a blithering idiot.

A more elaborate answer is  this:

I have been interested in computers since 1979.  I have  used dot matrix, mainframe line printers,  daisy wheel,  ink jet, & laser printers.  I have worked in an office environment  from 1980 forward, except for 3 years of law school from 1982-1985.  I  have typed thousands of pages on IBM Selectrics, and a few hundred on various  mechanical and electric typewriters of the conventional variety.  I have changed the type ball and  pitch on Selectrics many, many times.  I have changed the daisy wheel on  daisy wheel printers.  I have typed at least a thousand pages on a Wang  word processing system, and had typed for me many thousands more.  I was one of two people in our small firm that  spearheaded the purchase and installation of a Apple Macintosh computer network in 1989.  I was the office computer geek for 8 years.  I  read the manual for Microsoft Word 4 for the Macintosh.  The manual has a  discussion in the beginning explaining that with personal computers, word processing software and laser printers, typeset print quality and  proportionally spaced fonts were available to everyone and not just those who  could afford typesetting machines, and how this was a Great New Thing.   The manual distinguished between monospaced fonts and proportionally spaced fonts.  I immediately began using proportionally spaced fonts and have done so to this day.  The distinction between monospaced and proportionally spaced fonts is very noticeable to me.  

I have been typing my own documents in various versions of  Microsoft Word, using proportionally spaced fonts, since 1989. In the 16 years since then, I have myself typed, prepared, and signed many thousands of pages using MS Word.

In my work career,  especially the law practice, I have reviewed several hundred thousand, maybe more than a million, pages of  documents prepared by businesses and government agencies from many time periods prepared on all manner of machines.  I have many times reviewed  documents that were multiple generation copies of the original, and bear the  distortions that go along with that.

I have  been a litigator for 20 years.  I have encountered a lot of fancy and not so fancy lies.

In 1999, I filed a brief  with the U.S. District Court, Northern Dist. of Ga., in Times New Roman 12. I  used that font, which is rather small, to fit within the page limit, which I  could not otherwise do using my preferred font, Palatino 12.  (Most courts now specify font and type size by rule to preclude this ruse.   Ask any litigator.)   In any case, the other side objected to the brief on the grounds that it did not comply with the local court rule specifying that there could be no more than 10 printed characters per  inch - a rule of which I was not aware at the time.  I filed a brief in  response to the objection. Trust me, the prospect of losing a contingency case over a font rule when you have invested years of work in the case will galvanize your attention on the subject of fonts.  A pdf scan of a certified copy of that brief  is available here at the link above to "1999 Brief."   Compare what I said about typewriters, monospaced fonts and proportionally spaced fonts in the brief filed in 1999 with what I  said in post # 47, on 9/8/04.  I knew what I knew a long time ago, and the brief proves it definitively.   So long, conspiracy theory.

I relied  upon  no one and nothing other than what I already knew and what I saw when I looked at the documents.  I acted entirely alone, with no advance  knowledge or warning of any kind or nature whatsoever from anyone anywhere at  any time prior to the post.  After the post, the blogosphere was on the  case, and I was no longer alone at that point.

The notion that the ability to spot these memos as fakes for the  reasons I articulated in that post is some kind of dark art limited to a select priesthood of credentialed experts in forensic typography is totally false and, on a moment's reflection, completely ridiculous.  Any person  who worked in an office before, during and after the desktop printing revolution and who was awake for more than a few minutes during that period could tell immediately that the documents were not from 1972.  There are many millions of such people. If  you read the thread you will see that less than seven minutes after my post  another poster, NYCVirago, said "You're exactly correct."  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts#49. There are many  such comments later in the thread and in a later research thread on the subject,  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210702/posts.  Many such comments were posted before 6:00 AM the following morning,  which proves that the knowledge is common and widespread. The outpouring on the rest of the web, at Powerline, Little Green Footballs, INDC Journal, etc., proves the same thing.  The problems  with the documents that I identified were obvious to millions of people and  that is one reason that the story took off like it did.  That it was me  rather than someone else who first noticed the font problem is pure  coincidence.  It would have been picked up  by someone else in a few  minutes if I just gone to bed instead that night.

But I didn't, and so Mary Mapes hates Buckhead along with everyone else that has participated in refuting her lies.

[Airborne1986]

"In 1999, I filed a brief with the U.S. District Court, Northern Dist. of Ga., in Times New Roman 12. I used that font, which is rather small, to fit within the page limit"

Finally, a name I can attach to the previously anonymous villain who prompted Courts all over the country to adopt font-size and margin rules, which, in turn, enabled Clerks of Courts to be ruler-wielding despots.

[tuff_schlitz]

Anyways! Buckhead makes a great point. I was about 2 weeks into a desktop publishing class at college and I knew these were fakes (I had just learned about proprtional spaced and monospace fonts that week). I can't believe how much "wanting" a story to be true can blind someone so completely. I mean, this was the poorest forgery ever to come down the pike (hell, they didn't even bother to take it off the DEFAULT FONT!). Makes me wonder...if they would have used a monospaced font (remember the one NewsMax used to use for printer-friendly article versions), would this smear have worked?

[Lancey Howard]

I agree with Buckhead's assessment that was only a matter of time before plenty of other people noticed the forgery. I also worked in an office environment and used IBM Selectrics and every other manner of typewriter. Heck, I remember using the original "fax" machine (I forget what it was called) in the early '80s where you put your phone in a cradle and your document on a drum which spun around.

After Buckhead's alert, I looked at the document on-line and could easily see that it just wasn't right.
Early '70s? No way.

[aShepard]

Buckhead is pure evil!
How can a lawyer, in his pajamas even, ever refute the $ millions that Rather and crowd had invested in this expose of the evil GW Bush??

Off with his head, and pour pigfat in his grave, as he exposed the main premise of the First Amendment, which has been controlled by the media!

Buckhead, our undying thanks!

[Lakeshark]

Checked the threads and some blogs the next morning and was sure they were fakes, the info and evidence was already overwhelming. When the Little Green Footballs guy posted the overlay of his default word document and the Mapes document I knew it was over.

Wonderful to see history so close up. Al's internet sure is cool.

[Southack]

Buckhead did great.

The first clue that the documents were fake was that they came from someone who had already been discredited (circa 1996 by Texas Monthly and 2004 by the Boston Globe), Bill Burkett.

The second clue was that CBS didn't have any originals and couldn't obtain any originals (a point that the NY Times still deliberately ignored in their book review for Mapes **this past week**).

The third clue was the language. The forged memos used words such as "physical" instead of the correct military term "airman's medical."

But the damning proof was what Buckhead cited: the proportional font and superscripting...items not available in the 1970's outside of room-sized print shops...certainly not to lowly Guard office clerks and Colonels (especially one who didn't know how to type, must less typeset).

[fedupjohn]

Great Job Buckhead. I Lurked,real time, as your thread broke. It was fascinating. Happy Thanksgiving.

[Tzimisce]

I'm wondering when we got to a point that press stories are true only if they can't be proven wrong.

Still think the MSM is unbiased?

[Buckhead]

Actually, it's zipped, not corrupted. The website did that automatically when I uploaded it. I just checked it, and my machine unzipped it and displayed it correctly.

[Buckhead]

Right you are.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

BUCKHEAD for head of the CIA!

[BoBToMatoE]

Way to go Buckhead!

[southernerwithanattitude]

I bet dandy Dan and little miss Mary are cussing Al for inventing this internet thing! lol

[reagan_fanatic]

Buckhead rocks! Thanks, Kristinn!

[shield]

We certainly have some smart knowledgeable FReepers. God Bless Buckhead. ;o) That's how good conservatives are; dealing with facts not the fiction the libs deal with.

[The Old Hoosier]

Either way, I bet the documents came from Rove. It's brilliant in a Rovian sort of way...

[Buckhead]

Lost the case in the trial court, won it on appeal and then we settled.

[Southack]

nice point in your #24

[The Old Hoosier]

It's really obvious that those documents look absolutely nothing like any of the others in Bush's entire file. I don't even think you need to understand proportional fonts to notice that.