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Reprinted from NewsMax.com Saturday, Sept. 18, 2004 9:10 p.m. EDTForged Doc 'Source': I Contacted Kerry Campaign AUSTIN - A retired Texas National Guard official mentioned as a possible source for disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Guard said he passed along information to a former senator working with John Kerry's campaign. Also Saturday, a White House official said Bush has reviewed disputed documents that purport to show he refused orders to take a physical examination in 1972 and did not recall having seen them previously. The long-running story on Bush's Texas Air National Guard service took an unusual...

I have made a discovery this evening related to the 04 May 1972 memo that deserves scrutiny, not previously discussed (as far as I've seen). Having been a professional office machine diagnostic specialist (ok, copier tech, for you dittoheads that will inevitably deluge my mailbox with hate mail) for the last 15 years, an expert in diagnosis, and being well experienced in the capabilities of copies vs. originals, I build my argument as follows: 1. Multiple generation photocopies 'will' result in distortion of the text, both in resolution, and in size, making an overlay impossible to match without significant 'fussing'....

Teddy Bart on his daily radio show, "Teddy Bart's Roundtable" may have given us a clue about who knew about the documents nearly a month ago. It appears that Bob Tuke, who was a guest on the show on August 11th knew that something was about to happen with regard to President Bush's alleged failure to show up for a physical examination. Teddy referenced the episode on September 9th when he said, "listeners to the Roundtable will note that something was going to come because Bob Tuke, who is a Nashville attorney and significant in the Kerry campaign in Tennessee,...

Senate Discussing Nat'l Guard Memos C-SPAN2 Now!

WASHINGTON — A key source who was named to back up CBS News' claims about the authenticity of documents used in a report on President Bush's (search) Air National Guard service has recanted his support, saying the network got the information wrong. Retired Major Gen. Bobby Hodges (search), a key source behind a "60 Minutes" story that claims Bush shirked his guard duty, said that now that he has seen the memos, he does not believe they are authentic. Hodges told FOX News that CBS did not call him until two days before the piece aired on the network last...

Regardless of who wins the election, the campaign of 2004 has already made history. For the first time, a cable news channel -- Fox -- attracted more viewers than a broadcast network when they were competing head to head, covering the Republican National Convention. Was this a watershed for a new partisan journalism in America? I think the real meaning is something else. What happened this summer, and particularly last week, is likely to be recalled as the end of the era of network news. At the very least, mark this as the moment when the networks abdicated their authority...

Note: Newsweek is reporting that the source for the CBS allegations against Bush is Bob Burkett, someone with a grudge against the National Guard and Bush. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5974040/site/newsweek/ Six months ago, the Boston Globe reported major "issues" with another Burkett story that was posted on FR at the link noted. Link to original boston.com (Globe) article is here: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/articles/2004/02/13/doubts_raised_on_bush_accuser?mode=PF First few paras: ++++++++ For at least six years, a retired Texas National Guard officer has maintained that President Bush's record as a member of the Guard was purged of potentially embarrassing material at the behest of high-ranking Bush aides laying the...

A former National Guard commander who CBS News said had helped convince it of the authenticity of documents raising new questions about President Bush's military service said Saturday that he did not believe they were genuine. The commander, Bobby Hodges, said in a telephone interview that network producers had never shown him the documents but had only read them to him over the phone days before they were featured Wednesday in a 60 Minutes broadcast. After seeing the documents Friday, Hodges said, he concluded that they were falsified. Hodges, a former general who spoke to several news organizations this weekend,...

<p>For a couple of days now we've been talking about whether the CBS memos could have been produced using the technology available in 1972 and 1973. We've talked about two typewriters mainly, both widely used at that time: the IBM Executive series and the IBM Selectric series.</p>

According to Powerline Blog, this was reported on FOX News: KELLY WRIGHT: Tony, here's the latest that we're finding out on this story. At least three Pentagon sources believe the documents about President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard are fakes. CBS as you mentioned is standing by its story...

Frank Jones says he's angry about newly revealed memos that indicate President Bush got preferential treatment in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam war, but he's not surprised by favoritism in the Guard. Jones, a Republican from Troy, N.Y., served in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971 before doing 16 years in the Guard himself. As the presidential election nears, Jones says controversy over both candidates' military records and the mounting death toll in Iraq are important issues. "I'm really in neither camp at this point," he said. "However, I do see a direct correlation to Vietnam. The body count...

Talked back and forth with a typewriter collector named Chuck who lives in Redlands, CA. He happened to have a working IBM Selectric Composer Typewriter circa 1972! Here is the scoop I got from him.... IBM had a Roman font element, he said it was called "Aldine Roman." The element I guess is what we been calling a golf ball on here! He said it is very similar to MS New Roman, in fact ALMOST identical. BUT, he said the IBM element Roman font had a observable difference in the capital C. He says he does not see a IBM...

Whenever the topic has turned to the Selectric Composer, it has been dismissed out-of-hand as being far too expensive an item to find in an office on an Air National Guard base: The machine sold for anywhere from $3,600 to $4,400, and fonts were extra and not cheap. Furthermore, the Composer was widely agreed to be far too complicated and slow a machine to use for typing up memoranda, especially ones that were destined to go into a file and not even be distributed. But the nagging question remained: Could an IBM Selectric Composer have been used to produce these...

Someone else mentioned a website that is dedicated tot the IBM Selectric Composer. The link above will take you to that website. Besides being around four times more expensive to purchase than a regular IBM Selectric the website had a bit of information about the IBM Selectric Composer that hasn't been mentioned in anything I've seen so far. It seems you have to type everything twice perfectly when you use the Composer. Here is that section from the ibmcomposer.org website: click here "The first IBM Composer was the IBM "Selectric" Composer announced in 1966. It was a hybrid "Selectric" typewriter...

When I first heard back from Gerry, I felt a little bad for having bothered him. He'd been fielding calls and letters all day, he told me, including an inquiry from CNN. But he was a trouper, willing — enthusiastic even — to help out. I asked Gerry, in a fit of hubris, if he wouldn't mind trying to reproduce a sample from one of the CBS memos on his Selectric Composer. Just over an hour later, he emailed me back a sample, typed up on his Composer using the 11-point Press Roman type ball and scanned into his computer....

As a retired Air Force officer, I humbly suggest that the Killian family release the following statement to the press: Based on overwhelming forensic evidence, significant internal discrepancies, and our intimate knowledge of the husband and father we knew as Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, we hereby declare the documents presented on CBS 60 minutes II to be forgeries. Moreover, any documents of this nature that may exist are not official Air National Guard records, but are the personal records of LtCol Killian and rightfully belong with his family. We did not and would never authorize any documents of this nature...

"In another challenge to CBS, Killian's boss, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, told ABC News that he regards the documents as a computer "fraud," never saw them in the 1970s and didn't validate them for CBS. A senior CBS official had claimed to the Washington Post that Hodges had validated the documents. During his national news broadcast, Rather claimed "partisan political operatives" are challenging the memos but omitted the fact that Killian's widow and son dispute them...” The NewYorkPost has a news story that reveals CBS anchor Dan Rather may have caught in their own fraudulent claims. At issue:...

few weeks ago, Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe was on PBS' ''Newshour'' explaining why the hundreds of swift boat veterans' allegations against John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam was unworthy of his attention. "The standard of clear and convincing evidence," he said, talking to Swiftvet John O'Neill as if he were a backward fourth-grader, ''is what keeps this story in the tabloids -- because it does not meet basic standards.'' Last week, we got a good idea of what Thomas Oliphant's ''basic standards'' are. Dan Rather and the elderly gentlemen at ''60 Minutes'' were all atwitter because they'd come into...

snipped... Saturday, Sept. 11, 2004 10:04 a.m. EDT ' Ms. Mapes explained that "60 Minutes" had already conducted the interview, but was unlikely to include Roome's account in their report, telling Killian Jr.: "We think he is pretty pro-Bush..." snipped

The tide has turned, and the people now have the power over the propagandists: Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos...

This is not the first time Dan Rather has found himself in a serious dispute with a U.S. president. There was this exchange in 1974 during the height of the Watergate scandal with then-President Richard Nixon: Nixon: Are you running for something? Rather: No sir, are you? And there was this exchange with then-Vice President George Bush in 1988 over the Iran-Contra scandal. Rather: I don't want to be argumentative, Mr. vice president. Bush: You do, Dan. Rather: No -- no, sir, I don't. Bush: This is not a great night, because I want to talk about why I want...

Are there any federal crimes involved in the CBS/Rather forgery scandal?  You bet.As a service to my fellow FReepers, here are portions of the US criminal code that may be relevent: 18 USCS § 1001 (2004) § 1001.  Statements or entries generally (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully--    (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;    (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation;...

HODGES SAID HE WAS MISLED BY CBS: Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt." Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".

Tonight, on the AL RANTEL SHOW, he had Bernard Goldberg - author of BIAS and former CBS News producer - as a guest to talk about RATHERGATE. Here are some highlights from a man who knows about the culture over at CBS News: Rathergate. Is Rather biased or duped? The documents. Suspicious. The documents appear to be phoney. However, prime time mags, like 60 MINUTES, have a point of view, which is based on reporting. The POV on this piece is that Bush is a liar and slacker. Problem though. Being invested, being exclusive. All figures into it. Worst part,...

The video available from the CBS News web site suggests that the "th" superscript proof of forgery is debunked by the fact that other documents in Bush's military records contained superscript examples. THE ONLY PROBLEM IS THE EXAMPLE THEY SHOW IS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, AND DOESN'T EVEN LOOK TO BE SUPERSCRIPT The reference example they show at around 1:25 into the video is a closeup a "111th" where the "th" has an underline integral to the glyph, but it is not superscript. It does not get elevated above the normal level of the text. It just sits beside the "111". I...

Authenticity of note to 'sugar coat' Bush record is further questioned 10:57 PM CDT on Friday, September 10, 2004 By PETE SLOVER / The Dallas Morning News AUSTIN – The man named in a disputed memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat" President Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written, his own service record shows. An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Col....

Talk about no chain of custody! Rather seems to have said zero about who gave them these documents and how they allegedly got their hands on them. There also seems to have been no examination of any originals. But even whatever copy CBS was given should have been examined as an "original" piece of evidence.Whose fingerprints were on it? Who has been handling it recently, if not 30 years ago? If these really are copies of originals, when were the copies made?If they were made two months ago, did someone have the originals then? Then where are the originals? If...

Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."

Dr. Philip Bouffard, a forensic document specialist in Georgia who has compiled of database of more than 3,000 old fonts, said people who bought the I.B.M. Selectric Composer model could specially order keys with the superscripts in question. Dr. Bouffard said that font did bear many similarities to the one on the CBS documents, but not enough to dispel questions he had about their authenticity. A spokesman for I.B.M., John Bukovinsky, said he knew only that it introduced proportional spacing to some typewriters in 1944, most notably in the Executive line. At Lexmark, a spokeswoman, Maria W. Gambrell, said typewriters...

Dan Rather vigorously defended his "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's National Guard service yesterday, saying the 30-year-old memos he disclosed on the show this week "were and remain authentic," despite questions raised by some handwriting and document experts.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe today said neither his organization nor John Kerry´s campaign leaked to CBS documents questioning President Bush´s service record, which may have been forged. He suggested White House adviser Karl Rove could be behind the documents. "I can unequivocally say that no one involved here at the Democratic National Committee had anything at all to do with any of those documents. If I were an aspiring young journalist, I think I would ask Karl Rove that question," Mr. McAuliffe said. Asked later if he believed Mr. Rove or Republican operatives were involved, he said: "I...

On Wednesday night, CBS News released four memos it claimed were written in 1972 and 1973 by George W. Bush's commander in the Texas Air National Guard. In one of the documents, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian writes that a Guard official was "pushing to sugar coat" Bush's training evaluation; in another, Killian suspects that Bush is "talking to someone upstairs" about getting transferred. Within a few hours of the CBS report, bloggers were questioning the authenticity of the documents. By today, the doubts were on the front page of the Washington Post.

Times (New) Roman and its part in the Development of Scalable Font Technology By Charles Bigelow Charles Bigelow posted this article to the Usenet newsgroup "comp.fonts" in May 1994 in response to the question: What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman? I am grateful to Prof. Bigelow for his permission to publish the article. I have taken the liberty of retitling it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: comp.fonts Subject: Re: What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman? From: Charles Bigelow Date: 5 May 1994 "Times Roman" is the name used by Linotype, and the name they registered...

Forget the political conventions. When history books are written, bloggers' real contribution to the 2004 election may well turn out to be in providing leagues of amateur sleuths to fact-check political controversy. For the last 24 hours, the Internet has been abuzz with bloggers' claims that the memos about President Bush's time in the National Air Guard publicized by CBS were actually a hoax. Keepers of online journals around the country have been analyzing the memos in excruciating detail, comparing the notes' typography to the technical specifications of early 1970s typewriters. The result? It's too early to say whether the...

A new study shows that CBS and star anchorman Dan Rather are heavily biased against the Bush tax-cut plan. And a report on Rather's 20-year record at CBS clearly reveals him to be a longtime, unashamed propagandist for leftist causes. According to the author of the first study, Matthew W. Sheffield, co-director of the Web site RatherBiased.com, Rather's "CBS Evening News" gives opponents of Bush's tax cuts far more airtime than supporters of the plan get. Based on content analysis of weekday news broadcasts from the time Bush introduced his proposal in January 2000 until March 6, 2001, the report...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said more than a dozen times Friday that President Bush had lied to the American public. "It has become crystal clear that the president has lied to the American public about his military service," McAuliffe said. "What were they covering up?" he added. "This White House makes the Nixon White House look like it was open, honest and trustworthy." But even as he launched the DNC's third day of accusations that the president was untruthful about whether he fulfilled his duties in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam...

Whether or not typewriters in use at the time Killian reportedly wrote the memos could produce such superscripts is an issue in the authenticity debate. Some experts said the typeface used in the documents was Times New Roman, a typeface they said was not available in the 1970s. But CBS reported that the owner of the company that distributes that type style, which it did not identify, said it had been available since 1931. [...] Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software. Lines, a document...

I'm a first time poster but a long time lurker. I LOVE Free Republic. I'm just wondering if CBS is just trying to help Kerry change the focus to Bush's records instead of Kerry's. The longer the controversy continues about the memos, the longer the focus is off of Kerry. It's working! Maybe they don't care if the little people think they doctored documents as long as they accomplish their goal-protect Kerry.

Longtime Democratic strategist Pat Caddell said Friday that if documents aired by CBS newsman Dan Rather Wednesday night turn out to be forged, as alleged by experts, the presidential race "is over."

'KEY CHALLENGES TO NATIONAL GUARD DOCUMENTS ANSWERED' Fri Sep 10 2004 19:03:11 ET The biggest challenges to the authenticity of the documents featured in the 60 MINUTES segment on President Bush's Texas National Guard service are answered in a report to be broadcast on the CBS EVENING NEWS tonight (6:30-7:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. The report states that the type style, typewriter and the superscript function critics claim did not exist at the time the memos from President Bush's former Texas National Guard commander were typed were indeed all available. In fact, similar raised "th" superscripts have...

Posted on Fri, Sep. 10, 2004 CBS Defends Report on Bush Guard Memos MATT KELLEY Associated Press WASHINGTON - CBS News mounted an aggressive defense Friday of its report about President Bush's service in the Air National Guard, with anchor Dan Rather saying broadcast memos questioned by forensic experts came from "what we consider to be solid sources." On Friday's "CBS Evening News," Rather said that "no definitive evidence" has emerged to prove the documents are forgeries. "If any definitive evidence comes up, we will report it," Rather said. The show also showed excerpts of interviews with Marcel Matley, a...

Forget the political conventions. When history books are written, bloggers' real contribution to the 2004 election may well turn out to be in providing leagues of amateur sleuths to fact-check political controversy. For the last 24 hours, the Internet has been abuzz with bloggers' claims that the memos about President Bush's time in the National Air Guard publicized by CBS were actually a hoax. Keepers of online journals around the country have been analyzing the memos in excruciating detail, comparing the notes' typography to the technical specifications of early 1970s typewriters. The result? It's too early to say whether the...

Are Bush National Guard Documents Forgeries? Day to Day audio Sept. 10, 2004 The CBS program 60 Minutes II reported this week that it had obtained documents disputing President Bush's assertions about his service in the National Guard more than 30 years ago. Now, serious questions have been raised about whether those documents are forgeries. NPR's Eric Niiler reports.

I was in the Air Force and now am in the Air National Guard. Looking back at official documents from the late 1980s that I have from the Air Force, I can conclude that the font is definitely different in that period. It appears that Arial was the font of choice. "Tongue and Quill" is book that is used by the Air Force to prescribe formats and methods for producing official documents. I would expect that Lt. Col. Killian would have ascribed to this book. Most telling on these documents, save the superscript, is the date format. 01 August 1972...

Man ... Sean and Bill just slapped Reisch around so hard his grandkids are going to be born dizzy. Reisch was trying to pretend the Republicans were the negative ones, that they had been attacking Kerry, and that the ANG stuff was all major, independent news organization. Bill and Sean would have none of it and kept giving specific examples of hateful democrat attacks on Bush by senior members of the party. When challenged to name equivalent Republican attacks, Reisch first tried to say "the entire Republican convention," then the Swifties, but they kept pressing him and finally the only...

Posted on Fri, Sep. 10, 2004 Man named in Bush memo left Guard before document was written BY PETE SLOVER The Dallas Morning News AUSTIN, Texas - (KRT) - The man named in a disputed memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat" President Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written, his own service record shows. An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Staudt...

The Commission's prohibition against the broadcast of hoaxes is set forth at Section 73.1217 of the Commission's rules, 47 C.F.R. § 73.1217. This rule prohibits broadcast licensees or permittees from broadcasting false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe if: (1) the licensee knows this information is false; (2) it is foreseeable that broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm; and (3) broadcast of the information does in fact directly cause substantial public harm. Any programming accompanied by a disclaimer will be presumed not to pose foreseeable harm if the disclaimer clearly characterizes the program as a fiction...

On Now.

The White House on Thursday accused democrat John Kerry and his surrogates of instigating a new attack on President Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service because Kerry is dropping in the opinion polls. Bush also accused Kerry of refusing to reveal the true impact of his spending promises and said the Democratic presidential nominee would have to increase taxes broadly to pay for what the Bush campaign has calculated as $2 trillion in new spending. “America will reject the hidden Kerry tax plan,” Bush told supporters. After weeks of Republican criticism of Kerry’s decorated war service in Vietnam, democrats tried to...

A compendium of the Evidence Posted by Dale Franks The blogosphere has been all over the CBS documents, but all the information is parceled out in penny packets all over the place. At the request of a reader, I thought I'd try to consolidate them into a single post. This is not canonical, of course, just the stuff I know about. Typographical Arguments 1. The use of superscripted "th" in unit names, e.g. 187th. This was a highly unusual feature, available only on extremely expensive typewriters at the time. 2. The use of proportional fonts was, similarly, restricted to a...