Posted on 11/21/2005 2:17:55 PM PST by 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.
The substance falls apart as well. Lieutenant Bush wasn't due to take the exam until August, and there are existing documents which support that his command did not expect him to take the exam until August.
Further, pilot qualification is voluntary.
Further, one does not not give orders for a member of the one-drill-a-month National Guard to not only make arrangements for an appointment but to further have the appointment at a hospital which is not always fully manned, for a specialized test to be done contrary to standard operating procedures, within two weeks. One also does not refer to a fellow officer by only their last name in anything intended to be presentable. Further, if "orders" are not delivered to the intended recipient, they are not orders.
We could go on and on...
Being despised by the traitorous socialist leftists is a very distinguishing badge of honor. Buckhead should wear that badge with pride. He is now in a very select/elite group, and he has our full support and admiration. I daresay there's not one Freeper who would not come to his aid if he needed or asked for it.
Happy Thanksgiving, Buckhead!
.....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....
by XEROX, one of the many inventions that they developed, and got away from them. What a great technical company, with absolutely no vision for what their inventions could become.
I installed these innovative units in our branch warehouses, to get shipment details back to HQ, so I could invoice them the next day, improving "Days Sales Outstanding" by three days, but I had to develop a long plastic envelope to hold all the shipping docs for one days activity
Amen, Thank you Buckhead!
Bump.
Dang. I have post #93 on the Buckhead thread, and I managed to produce two (at least) typos.
Let he who is without sin on scamming page limits cast the first stone.
BTTT ;^D
Historical BUMP!
And thank you, Kristinn, for posting this!
I was thinking in a hazy sort of way that the documents didn't look right - because my husband was in around the same time frame - but couldn't put my finger on it. You marshalled the facts and got it out there. Well done.
I read it this morning on Powerline. I am so proud to be a part of this group.
I don't know why, but that always catches my eye for some reason......one of those pet peeve things.
The short answer is that I am 47 years old and I am not a blithering idiot.
A more elaborate answer
You had me at "Buckhead."
Of course, I was 10 hours late, so credit goes where it is due. But my experience working in a office environment during the period 1985-2004 was all the experience I needed to pick up the font in a moment's observation. Checking the type font is a quick way to ascertain the "era" of a document, and most folks who have been dealing with documents over the past twenty years pretty much do it automatically.
I was in print media advertising beginning in 1962. I knew that proportional typesetting with kerning could (until desk-top publishing) only be done in professional typesetting houses. And that was on machines costing $20,000 and up -- recall that a compact car, then, was only $2,000 -- and no Texas Air National Guard unit woul; Alld EVER possess such a machine for production of anything, much less memos to file.
Buckhead is right. Anyone with a modicum of experience with typesetting (millions of people) would have seen the fraud immediately. We're just so used to automatic typesetting that someone had to have what Robert Frost called, "A keen eye for the obvious." That role fell to our friend, Buckhead.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column: "What If the French Had Pulled a 'Murtha' in 1781?"
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