CBS News source says papers fake - Former Guard commander says documents were not shown to him

Houston Chronicle ^ | September 12, 2004 | New York Times

[N. Beaujon]

Thank you, Cboldt. Can everyone see by comparison the use of the courier font (now called "courier new" on your MS word doc) vs. the Times Roman in the "questionable" docs. That is the font that standard IBM's, even the standard IBM selectric "ball" used back in the old days in fact the ones that all typewriters used. If there was any other font it would have been an anomoly.

Also notice there is no superscript to be found anywhere on the doc that you linked to. That is what a doc of the time looked like.

I find it REALLY difficult to believe there was an IBM selectric in a field office and some TANG purchasing agent or higher up who was interested in paying thousands extra (in TEXAS, no less) for some swishy font ball add-on for someone like Jerry Killian to write up his field memos.

As far as all the memo's now present on USA today, how many are deemed to be forgeries and how many do we believe are authentic? I have only been focused on that one doc, which is an obvious forge.

[Amelia]

RATHER: ...I want to make clear to you if I have not made clear to you, that this story is true, and that more important questions than how we got the story, which is where those who don't like the story like to put the emphasis, the more important question is what are the answers to the questions raised in the story, which I just gave you earlier.

Au contraire, if he can't prove that the story is true, questions raised by the story are quite irrelevant.

I'm sure that if I raised a story about Dan Rather, he wouldn't worry at all about the questions raised by my story unless the quality of my "evidence" was impeccable.

[johnny7]

Uhh... the implications of this go much farther than just the outcome of the 2004 election...

We knew the BS networks, CNN, MSNBC and PBS were pro-Democrat and somewhat socialist in their news broadcasting.

What the Rather story does is question the validity of the information we are being subjected to... it also shows lies and fraudulent documents used to damage a presidential candidate 6 weeks before the election.

This brings on the question... in what other ways could CBS have issued false stories and not been challenged.

Does their political agenda interfere with their ability to bring the 'full' news to the American people. Has our vaunted 'free press' been compromised by individuals who have a vision of a 'socialist' American democracy which can only be acheived by electing liberal Democrats to high office?

This is the real issue in the CBS debacle.

[Eaker]

I have never seen a slow motion train wreck before. This is fun to watch.

LOL!!!!!

[Cboldt]

As far as all the memo's now present on USA today, how many are deemed to be forgeries and how many do we believe are authentic?

None of them. The forensics (especially space between lines) are inconsistent with typewriter line spacing. Also, each of the documents have substantive errors that indicate they are not authentic.

The Selectric cannot do proportional spacing, so the "type ball" inquiries are up a dead-end alley.

IBM typewriter with proportional spacing was introduced in 1941.

IBM announces the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a printed page, an effect that was further enhanced by a typewriter ribbon innovation that produced clearer, sharper words on the page. The proportional spacing feature became a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters.

http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941.html

On the Executive, you could optionally have removable type-bars. This is somewhat like later Smith-Corona portables which have removable type-slugs on the two outermost type-bars, with corresponding changeable keytop caps. In this case, though, it's the whole type-bar.

http://www.geocities.com/wbd641/TypeManuals2.html

[Wil H]

The next question we should ask is

are these forgeries from the same source as the one that created Kerry's fictional "Silver star with a V"?

[jerryrivers]

I "feel" that Dan Rather is a Black American". I will pay anyone $ 10,000 if they can get me to not feel this way.

[mvpel]

The Selectric cannot do proportional spacing, so the "type ball" inquiries are up a dead-end alley.

The Selectric Composer and the Selectric Executive could do proportional spacing, as has been established in other threads.

[Cboldt]

There is no such thing as "Selectric Executive," as other threads, and IBM literature make abundently clear,

[Bob]

Bush was within his allowed time for a physical - he had until his birthday to comply -

I've read reports that the deadline was the last day of his birth month rather than his actual birthday. From gut feel, that strikes me as more of a 'military-thinking' way of doing it.

I'll try to find a link to the story that had that info.

[Doc Savage]

So your a Bush Supporter. You get a phone call from CBS which you should know is virulently anti-Bush, and you have two choices. Tell Mary Mapes to shove it, or answer their insipid questions. Is this guys nuts????

[NewsGal]

Dan Rather claims they have been investigating this for 4 years and they call their so-called expert on the phone the night before they relay their bombshell to the world????

No comments whatsoever from the wife and son they also talked to prior to airing the show.

Anyone that disagrees with CBS is a partisan hack. They are pathetic.

[N. Beaujon]

wow, cbolt. Excellent analysis. Thank you so much. So you mean to say that NONE of those docs are real? Because my attention was turned to the one doc from Killian that they kept flashing by on TV (I guess you could say the CYA doc.) and perhaps one other.

But NONE of them are now considered real based on only the proporational spacing element? I find that utterly incredible. Why would they have bothered to at least make a few look passable then so badly screw up the CYA doc? Was there actually MORE than one dim working on this job? I always thought it was one poor slob working alone in the basement of the DNC. If all of them are considered forged than more than one person has done it.

Am I somehow missing the point?

[N. Beaujon]

I'm just not sure I believe that USAT would have cut down their text illustration merely to match what CBS had reported the night before. This just doesn't add up.

Timeout, I'm inclined to agree. A lot doesnt add up- my questions come from analyzing the docs themselves. You're saying that you cant believe USAT was covering the CBS story rather than covering the actual facts? That they were staying with the same docs that the Rather story was featuring rather than the docs that were supposedly at issue?

What does all this suggest to you? At his point I'm just...well, I dont have the word for it.

[MOgirl]

Hello,

I think they will (or have) tied this accusation to the Kitty Kelly accusation of cocaine use. "...hey, Bush couldn't take a physical, his drug use would come out..." Pathetic, and rather (pun intended) early for the expected October surprise. If I am correct, this looks like all parties colluded with each other, with one ultimate (and false!) goal in sight. This is my take anyway...

Glad to be here, MOgirl

[N. Beaujon]

You know I just have to add, some of you "freepers" are simply incredible. You're research, attention to detail and grasp of the facts trumps all. You put the MSM to shame and as for as their "experts", it's a joke to watch some of these paid clowns (are you listening "Marcel") call themselves experts when the blogesphere just shoots them down.

Sure, they will try to paint us all out as nuts and sluts but the scary thing is that this just isnt true. You guys and girls know your sh*t. Too bad for Dan Blather and pals we're made hell and we're not going to take it anymore.

OMG, wasnt that from the movie "Network"? Has anything really changed?

[mvpel]

There is no such thing as "Selectric Executive," as other threads, and IBM literature make abundently clear,

So sue me, it's just "Executive," not "Selectric Executive."

[Cboldt]

So you mean to say that NONE of those docs are real? Because my attention was turned to the one doc from Killian that they kept flashing by on TV (I guess you could say the CYA doc.) and perhaps one other.

But NONE of them are now considered real based on only the proporational spacing element?

Correct. All of them have the same line spacing (distance between lines, not distance between characters) is a piece of forensic evidence common to all 6 documents.

I find that utterly incredible. Why would they have bothered to at least make a few look passable then so badly screw up the CYA doc? Was there actually MORE than one dim working on this job? I always thought it was one poor slob working alone in the basement of the DNC. If all of them are considered forged than more than one person has done it. Am I somehow missing the point?

The forgeries could still be the work of one person. Passing them along obviously involved more players. But it was necessary to create more than one document in order to put more than one point into play.

[charleston1]

"I was following that thread last night just b4 I went to bed. I immediately wondered if it might be a troll...something didn't seem right. The person who posted the thread had just signed up yesterday...."

"...I believe the two new memos may be hoaxes. Could be that a troll is trying to get us off on a wild goose chase to discredit the legitimate investigations we've already done. Did they hack into USAT? Is that why I couldn't download the pdf files for over an hour last night?"

This is the sort of stuff that incites flame wars on usenet where I have posted for a few years predominantly on scientific groups. Nevertheless, let me be clear, I have not hacked into anyone's website. That would be criminal and I don't know how to do it anyway. Stop with the silly paranoia please. Just because someone is a newbie does not make them bad or evil incarnate. I will be happy to discuss my activities/thoughts as I did on the two threads of interest yesterday, but the truth is my thread had over 4,500 views within just a few hours and most of those were early on. A swarmed USAT site is likely why you had difficulty last night.

[charleston1]

"He was talking about how they could have been a little more original with the numbers on the P.O. Box (3-4-5-6-7). Has anyone checked, or do you know if there is there a way to check if this P.O. Box existed back then."

Yes, I checked it Thursday. It is legitimate per other contemporaneous documents. It is those other documents that are publicly available that the apparent forger used to create their happy little world of six or more little memos and letters.