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Many view the United States as having the most sophisticated and capable national defense and intelligence apparatus globally. In totality, this is arguably true. However, often not taken into account is that all of America's capabilities rarely, if ever, come together to achieve a unified objective. Instead, you have constant and bitter bureaucratic infighting, with agencies often distrusting each other and operating as their own fiefdoms. Take, for example, Project GUNMAN. In 1978, the NSA discovered a sophisticated radio transmitter inside a false chimney in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The NSA told the CIA and State Department that the...

CBS Lies. Will Dan Rather Get Away With It This Time? Written by Doc Farmer Sunday, September 12, 2004 Last week, 60 Minutes The Sequel (This Time It's Personal) ran a hard-hitting no-hold-barred investigative report trashing President George W. Bush. This is the fourth or fifth time CBS News has done this. Normally, this is done in the fashion of taking Bush-bashing books being sold by a publisher owned by the parent company of CBS News (Viacom) and doing puffball interviews with the authors. This time, however, CBS decided to raise, ad nauseum, the already discredited canard regarding Dubya's National...

To put a wooden stake in the heart of the vampire that is the IBM Selectric Composer typewriter theory, we've put-together a few graphics to illustrate one of the many reasons why this particular unit could not have produced any of the suspect CBS memos. On an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter, all characters - regardless of font or point size - have fixed "unit values" assigned to them. This means that, while the actual physical space taken-up by a character will change with font and point size, the relationships between characters within that given font and point size are always...

CBS Won't Deny Kerry Link to Forged Docs In a development that could have devastating implications for John Kerry's presidential campaign, CBS News is refusing to say whether the top Democrat, his campaign aides or any other prominent party officials had anything to do with supplying "60 Minutes" with a National Guard memo about President Bush that experts say was forged. Asked about a Kerry connection to the forged memo, a senior CBS official told the New York Post, "I can't answer that question." The unnamed CBS executive then promptly hung up. Since Wednesday, when he first aired the Bush...

September 11, 2004 MEMO TO: AIR FORCE OFFICE OF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS RE: POSSIBLE FRAUDULENT AIR FORCE (AIR NATIONAL GUARD) DOCUMENTS As an American citizen, I am requesting an investigation by the AFOSI into the production and use of documents by CBS News which appear to be probable fraudulent representations of Air Force (Air National Guard) documents. This matter is of particular concern since the contents of the documents are being used by Mr. Daniel Rather in an apparent attempt to defame the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. This activity may also considered as an attempt to...

. . . Though the question has hardly been conclusively answered, the consensus of opinion among interested parties seems to be that neither an Executive nor a Selectric could have produced these memos. My purpose here is not to debate the relative merits of either of those typewriters; that discussion is happening elsewhere. Rather, I want to take a moment to consider the dark horse candidate, the one piece of equipment that is widely believed to have been capable of producing a document similar to these memos, but that has been dismissed as being so improbable an alternative as to...

CBS/AP) Questions are being raised about the authenticity of newly unearthed memos that say President Bush's National Guard commander believed Mr. Bush was shirking his duties. The memos, which were obtained by CBS News' 60 Minutes, say Mr. Bush ignored a direct order from a superior officer and lost his status as a Guard pilot because he failed to meet military performance standards and undergo a required physical exam.

update: I dragged my Executive up from the basement, it's not working too well...but I did type some of the 19 may 72 memo. It doesn't fit on the page using a real vintage proportional spacing typewriter...and it looks different.

McAuliffe Statement on Breaking News About Bush's Military Record Washington, D.C. - Responding to breaking news regarding George W. Bush's military record, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe issued this statement: "George W. Bush's cover story on his National Guard service is rapidly unraveling. "Tonight's CBS New report made clear that President Bush has misrepresented the nature of his National Guard service for decades to the American people. And now that questions are being raised, only Bush can settle this once and for all by answering the unanswered questions about his Guard service. "CBS News exclusively obtained documents that flatly...

Sorry, but due to excessive hits, this page is temporarily out of service.  Please check back after the election. For those who want my opinion...the documents appear to be done in Word, and then copied repeatedly to make them "fuzzy".  They use features that were not available on office typewriters the 1970s, specifically the combination of proportional spacing with superscript font.  The IBM Executive has proportional spacing, but used fixed type bars.  The Selectric has changeable type elements, but fixed spacing (some models could be selected at 10 or 12 pitch, but that's all).  The Selectric Composer was not an...

UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who have written regarding this post. Several have pointed out that the Executive line of IBM typewriters did have proportionally spaced fonts, although no reader has found the font used in the memos to be a familiar one or thought that the an IBM Executive was likely to have been used by the National Guard in the early 1970's. Reader Monty Walls has also cited the IBM Selectric Composer. However, reader Eric Courtney adds this wrinkle: The "Memo To File" of August 18, 1973 also used specialized typesetting characters not used on typewriters. These...