The "real" document would be in Hawaii records and always subject to eventual discovery by someone else. If the "real" document either didn't exist, or said something different, there's no way the White House would ever risk photoshopping one. They'd simply have continued stonewalling rather than run the enormous, unnecessary risk of forging an official state document.
This is a different egg entirely from Rathergate, because that was a document produced by Rather from something other than an official source. This is the White House saying this is an exact, certified copy received officially from the state of Hawaii.
They’d simply have continued stonewalling rather than run the enormous, unnecessary risk of forging an official state document.”
good point
I haven’t read all the posts, but after 28 years in typesetting and graphic arts I have a few questions:
Since this is obviously a reprinted document, supposedly created from an image made from the original document, this should accurately represent the characteristics of the typewriter that created it.
Understand that typewriters all produced documents that had proportional spacing. In other words, depending on the typewriter, there we always 10 or 12 characters per inch. The same amount of space was allotted to a “.” as to a “W”.
Also know that you could tell if something was added later by the fact that it was almost impossible to get the paper back into the typewriter exactly the same way and the new type would be slightly out of alignment.
Also know that typewriters have certain characteristics that allow you to identify documents produced by them. If, for instance, the typewriter places an “I” slightly lower than the rest of the text, it will do so throughout the document.
With this in mind, I have a few questions:
1. The “R” in “BARACK” is lighter and descended. This could be caused by the use of correction fluid and a retyping, but such things were not commonly used on official documents. Also it being descended indicates that this correction was made after the paper was removed and then reinserted.
2. The lower case “a” seems shifted over in just some of document. It is clearly shifted in “Kapiolani”, “Kalanianaole”, “Hawaii”, “African”, and “Caucasian.” It does not seem to be shifted in “East Africa” or “Kansas.”
3. The spacing between the first “n” and second “o” in “Honolulu” is not the same in the two instances of the word.
4. The “K” in “Kansas” is shifted up here but nowhere else on the document.
5. The double “i” in “Hawaii” should be identical, but are not.
6. There are areas of distortion around most of the type consistent with the creation of a new document from an old image, however the amount of distortion is strangely inconsistent. For instance, the first “Honolulu” has very little distortion surrounding it, but the second and third “Honolulu”’s in the document have quite a bit.
There are other issues, but upon cursory inspection I would say:
1. There were two (at least) typewriters used in the creation of this document.
2. Corrections and/or changes were made to the original document.
If I can see this, I would really like to see what professional expert would make of this document...
You may well be correct but why could Neil Abercrombie not find it?
I think you can count on the fact that if there was a "real, original" document, it has since been destroyed.
This whole excercise took place because Trump started to bring up the academic records - Barry now has the excuse to say "You see, it doesn't matter if I release the records - these people will never be satisfied. So I'm not going to waste time releasing any more records."