[immadashell]

“I believe them to be genuine,” he tells The Daily Beast, holding forth in his corner office at his weekly HDNet magazine program, Dan Rather Reports, in a musty old building off Times Square. “I did at the time, I did in the immediate aftermath of it, and yes, I do now ... And I think the longer we go, nobody has ever proven that the documents were not what they purported to be, and after this length of time and given the controversy and high profile of it, my view is that if they were not genuine, by this time somebody would’ve come forward and said here’s the proof that they’re not. Nobody has done that.” (Unfortunately for Rather, nobody has come forward with proof that they are in fact legitimate, and the preponderance of the available evidence continues to cast doubt on their authenticity.)

As I recall, it took the "guys in the basement in pajamas" less than a day to start questioning the validity of the printed records. If rather Dan is right (no, he's really left) they were typed on the beta version company of the future Microsoft on the really beta version of WORD on a computer that wasn't even a beta prototype at the time the documents were purported to be written. But that's alright Dan, we believe you -- now please just take your medicines and you'll feel a lot better.

[Oztrich Boy]

As I recall, it took the "guys in the basement in pajamas" less than a day to start questioning the validity of the printed records.

Faster. In fact one of the Ratherist "defences" against the FR analysis was that Freepers were crying "fake" in posts timemarked before the CBS segment went to air. OF course FR posts are timemarked Pacific time and the program ran 3 hours earlier on the East coast. IIRC correctly the MS-Word computer overlay match using the pdfs from the CBS website was one item that beat Hollywood Time.