"Animated GIF image comparing what CBS claimed to be a 1973-era typewritten memo with a 2004-era Microsoft Word document made with default settings"
From here:
Posted on 12/10/2013 7:13:45 PM PST by robowombat
Dan Rather was once among the most powerful figures in American media. Which is why watching him today is a particularly poignant and painful thing.
Consider Mr. Rather’s appearance with CNN’s Piers Morgan Monday night. When asked about the recent, erroneous Benghazi report on 60 Minutes that led to a leave of absence for reporter Lara Logan, Rather compared that story to the one that ruined his career:
“With our story, the one that led to our difficulty, no question the story was true. What the complaint… was ‘Okay, your story was true, but the way you got to the truth was flawed. The process was flawed.’ That’s not the case with the Benghazi story. Unfortunately, and there’s no joy in saying this, they were taken in by a man who was a fraud.”
Now for some context.
Mr. Rather’s 44-year career at CBS (24 years of which he spent as the anchor of the CBS Evening News) ended because of his role in a story that blew apart. The 2004 story was meant to smear President George W. Bush a few months before his reelection. The problem is that it was based on forged National Guard documents that were almost immediately revealed as such. Yet Rather insists to this very day that the forged documents were accurate.
This claim is a hallucination, as this 224-page Report of the Independent Review Panel (convened by CBS) makes clear. But Rather would not let it go. After being fired in 2006, he filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS and its parent company, Viacom, claiming he had been made a “scapegoat,” which was subsequently dismissed in its entirely. Mr. Rather of course appealed. And in 2012, while promoting his book Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News, the former CBS reporter continued to insist the forged documents were accurate. “I believe them to be genuine. I did at the time, I did in the immediate aftermath of it, and yes, I do now,” he said.
This story fascinates me in part because of its insight into human psychology. Mr. Rather is emotionally unable to accept that the National Guard story was false and built on lies, that his effort to bring down an American president brought him down instead. And so he keeps returning to the scene of the crime, hoping to clear his name, convinced that one more adamant declaration that his story was true will magically make it so. Unfortunately, and there’s no joy in saying this, Rather doesn’t have the self-awareness to know that each time he does this, he becomes a more pitiable figure.
“To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.” These are the words of Captain Ahab as he tosses his harpoon toward the great white whale. But they could just as easily be Dan Rather’s.
Someone please refresh my memory about the letter.
Was it the original letter? If so it was typed on a typewriter. As a college student in the fall of 1969, I was part of a group of college students that visited FBI Headquarters. The agent giving us the tour told us that the FBI had at that time every make and model of typewriter produced. Certainly, Dan and company could have compared the letter with a typewriter in FBI storage and proved the case against George W. Bush.
Within hours of the segment, the authenticity of the documents was questioned by posters on Free Republic, a conservative Internet forum, and discussion quickly spread to various weblogs in the blogosphere, principally Little Green Footballs and Power Line.[55] The initial analysis appeared in posts by "Buckhead," a username of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta attorney who had worked for conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation and who had helped draft the petition to the Arkansas Supreme Court for the disbarment of President Bill Clinton.[56] MacDougald questioned the validity of the documents on the basis of their typography, writing that the memos were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman," and alleging that this was an anachronism: "I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."
Typewriters cannot proportionately space their fonts. Only a computer does that.
GENESIS!
Yes I remember that an Freeper was the first or one of the first to break the fabrication story.
Great post...
ping
“Typewriters cannot proportionately space their fonts. Only a computer does that.”
Actually, no.
Early typewriter proportional spacing, while not as exotic as computer word processors of today, could do proportional spacing. For example, the earliest proportional spacing was a mechanical advance on the print carriage advance mechanism that adjusted the carriage advance based on the letter being typed.
An “i” or “1” would get one unit of advance, a “w” or “m” three units, and most other letters two units.
By the way - there actually was one typewriter in the Texas Air National Guard in Bush’s era that could do a simple proportional spacing. But it was located at headquarters in Austin, not in Houston.
It was used to make full lines for awards certificates so the text would look pretty in the certificate often used for framing by the receiving awardee. Or his mom.
Dan Rather should have said that when Jerry Killian wanted to write memos to himself, he got in the car and drove 336 miles round trip to Austin to use the headquarters typewriter.
Oh, that Robert Strong guy Rather used on his 60 minutes show claiming he was a buddy of Killian and could verify the memos? He was also 168 miles away in Austin, as a ground pounding little lieutenant. I’m sure Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian was a confidant of that pipsqueak.
Poor Dan. Still no luck finding Lucy Ramirez?
Did it do superscript “th” too?
I thought that Rather was dead.
BUMP! This is an important read.
Actually I first read it in the 60s back when posts on Free Republic were typed in courier, and then when you clicked “post” they were printed in Times New Roman.
Courage, Dan....Courage.
"Animated GIF image comparing what CBS claimed to be a 1973-era typewritten memo with a 2004-era Microsoft Word document made with default settings"
From here:
That’s pretty good. I had not seen it.
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