CBSBushMemos

So what IS the deal with those darn

Updated 2/17/05
Update Notes
"Disclaimer"

Everything you've ever wondered about CBS's "fake" memos,
Bush's Guard service and more -- much more...

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to
get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better
myself by learning how to fly airplanes" -George Bush
(1990 - Dallas Morning News)

Preface

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.
- Jacques Ellul

This web page is about one particular recently "aroused" mythical belief: that the memos CBS used in a 60 Minutes Wednesday report back on Sept. 8, 2004 were forged, presumably as a means to make George Bush, Jr. look bad and perhaps undermine his re-election campaingn against challenger John Kerry..

For all the massive amount of press coverage, accusations, and discussions that the forgery charges provoked, it was both bizarre and very disturbing to see utterly innane, confused and incompetent our much ballyhooed "free press" was in dealing with the matter across the board. The whole point of having a free press is to have an unencomberedly informed public -- which means the news media has to get off their collective asses once in a while and do some actual investigating, as opposed to, say, oh...just shooting off their mouths and word processors about things they know little about, or posing reporters in front of stuff and having them comment on things that they too know as little about.

At the time of the full fury of the memo storm, I don't seem to recall there being a nationwide shortage of news interns for at least some elementary fact checking and research to be done. And given the resources available to even moderately sized news organizations, the overall piss-poor, dumbass, and clueless "coverage" of the situation was totally inexcusable. While you expect something like FOX News to be laughably biased and incompetent, you usually can and should expect more from the likes of CNN and the New York Times.

And it's a huge, huge mistake to look at the memos episode as being some sort of triumph of the new media -- aka the blog sites -- over the old. If one of the bottom line responsibilities of journalism is to sort out truth from fiction and then clearly present the facts to public, the memos episode demonstrated not only a complete failure of mainstream journalism, but how the big blog sites offer an even poorer alternative -- news by mob rule. There is no true "new media" involved here -- just newer methods for spreading propaganda and bogus accusations by governments and like-minded individuals. Political groups have long done things like post posters and spread newsletters to get their views across and disparage & mock the oppostiion. Are political blog sites fundamentally different in any significant way whatsoever? One part selected truth, five parts rumor, ten parts utter nonsense, and twenty parts opinion do not a good news source make.

In terms of the memo controversy, how could daisywheel printers and dedicated word processors be so overlooked and utterly forgotten about despite once so ubiquitous in the 70's and early 80's? They were always prime suspects, but even normally well-read, well-informed average Americans had no clue that such things even existed back then -- and who's fault is that? People not being suspicious and Googling enough? Do individuals have to be their own investigative journalists now if they want to know what's really going on? Could it be that the ranting, nonsensical commentary and specious, tabloid news reporting of FOX News is the model now for any news desiring maximum viewership/readerhip and profits? After all, pretty much all major news organizations are now beholden to large, profit-minded corporate owners or are large, profit-minded corportate entities themselves, so.....

If the mainstream news media has become akin to a restaurant that serves chicken soup without there being any actual chicken in it, bloggers at best tend to "compensate" by dumping in cans of cat food. You might get your little bit of chicken, but....

In any case...

Introduction - The Main Points

Now that CBS has publicly retracted its authentication of the memos, it’s case closed, isn’t it? The memos were forgeries created in Microsoft Word using Times New Roman, were they not?

Nope.

It was all just some unconscionable, tacky conspiracy to besmirch our President's totally honorable years of service in the Air National Guard, was it not?

Nope.

Why bother with this anymore? Rather has been thoroughly discredited and he's retired, and Kerry lost.

Well, it has been a time-sucking bother, but....

What's that "Not Observed" stuff on the left?

You'll see.

This webpage is very, very dense with content and links, but I wanted to be thorough and preempt any nitpicking.
Let’s start with the main points, shall we:

- Were those Killian memos forged?

No.

- What about all that evidence and all those people saying that they were?

There never, ever was any good evidence, actually, and all “those people” were either right-wing or government stooges, incompetent and lazy-ass investigators and/or news personnel, outright liars, the badly misinformed, the generally not very bright, or some combination thereof.

- What about that CBS Panel Report?

That was no more than yet another example of incompetent investigation with its main focus evidently just on facesaving and scapegoating.

- What about how the proportional spacing and superscripting shown in the memos were not available on anything other than expensive and complicated typesetting machines at the time?

That was just no more than an example of incompetent investigation and journalism. The now long obsolete IBM Executive typewriter for one was still commonly used then, and that could proportionally print, be bought with different fonts, and had interchangeable typebars for special characters. Super/subscripting was also easy enough it: you just roll the platen a half line -- a "click" -- in either direction. I myself was pretty gung-ho on the memos being created on an Executive until I got my hands on an extensive sample to analyze, only to discover that its proportional spacing didn't match up at all with that shown in the memos.

So I then turned my attention to another device around in the early 70's fully capable of creating the memos as they appear, another long obsolete although it was near universal office staple for years until being displaced by laser printers during the mid-80's: a daisywheel printer. And in this particular case, given the timeframe of the memos, specifically a Diablo model "Hytype I."

- What about how the memos could easily have been created on Microsoft Word?

Actually, they can’t. This has been the biggest lie -- both the spacing and the fonts themselves don’t match up well at all under close scrutiny. Most proportional, serif fonts have a family resemblance in terms of appearance and spacing, so finding approximate matchups is easy, especially when you're deliberately resizing and overlaying to achieve the best looking matchup, as has been the case with ALL all the pro-Word people. But closer you look at the details of the spacing and fonts, the more you notice consistent discrepencies between the original memos and the would-be Word replicas .

- But I’ve seen samples on the Internet and read/seen experts saying otherwise…

Those samples are evidently bogus or at best extremely misleading, as well as those alleged experts.

- Isn’t there a long list of other problems with signatures, improper formatting, terminology, how Killian wouldn’t have scheduled a medical exam on Mother’s Day, and so on and so forth, which also indicate how the memos were likely forged?

There aren’t any such “problems” – those reported as such have all turned out to be entirely frivolous, erroneous, or just plain dambass lies: the signature was one of the few things a CBS document expert verified; the formatting of Killian's "Memorandum for Record" is exactly in keeping with Air Force standards; disputed terms like "billet" are widely used in the Air Force/Air National Guard; Killian never scheduled Bush for a medical exam on Mother's Day, and all of the so on and so forth crap is exactly that, crap. And further more, the contents of the memos are 100% consistent with other, more official documents, right down to the little details in references to names, forms and regulations. The time frames all match up as well.

- But what people like Killian's former secretary, Marian Knox, and Killian's commander at the time, Bobby Hodges, saying that the memos are likely fakes even if they do admit the contents are true?

For one thing, of the three people who would know for sure if the memos are fake or authentic, two are dead and third has been very conspicuously (to those who pay attention) non-talkative. The dead include Killian himself of course, and his colleague, Lt. Col.William Harris, who was Bush's squadron commander

- Brave -- or stupid -- words, but can you prove any of this?

I'll prove all of it. Keep reading.

A Brief Summary of Findings

At the time of the memos, there were 3 basic devices capable of proportional printing and super/subscripting: the IBM Selectric Composer, the IBM Executive typewriter, and Diablo/Qume daisywheel printers. For all that initial inane talk of Selectric typewriters and the overly complicated Composer, the most likely candidates were always the then common Executive and daisywheel printers. Executive typewriters barely got a mention by the mainstream media even though they had been around for decades, and daisywheel printers none at all even though Diablo daisywheels had been around since 1969 (both Diablo and Qume were founded by David S. Lee) and became widely and quickly adopted, especially by law offices as part of dedicated word processing systems. I was able to obtain and examine a lengthy technical manual that had been composed on an Executive. And while the manual was proportionally spaced and had full superscripting in small fonts, the spacing didn't match up. That left having a some model of daisywheel as being the most likely device that the memos were created on. I was able to locate an extensive ribbon cross reference

As far as the contents of the memos go, again the news media completely botched up in doing its homework -- the contents and the timelines of the memos are completely backed up by official DoD documents. Indeed, the contents of one of the supposedly forged documents is actually directly backed up by 4 separate DoD records and indirectly by a 5th. Even the much-maligned format of the memos turns out to be entirely in keeping with Air Force/Air National Guard standards and recommendations: a Powerpoint presentation titled "Introduction to Air Force Correspondence" can be found here. (I put some relevant screen captures here.)

Being frustrated by the ineptness of the media and tired of just getting in pointless online arguments, I decided to bite the bullet and do the homework. I created this web page back in October and have been updating it since periodically, even after Bush became re-elected -- which was a very, very sad day for well-informed people who like this country.

Part One -- The "Created by Word" Lie.

A) The superscripting problem

For starters, try this little test: bring up Microsoft Word and type -- do NOT just copy and paste -- in the following:
187th 111th 1st 147th 9921st

Note what happens to the th's and st's:

The above represents the default behavior of Word -- it will automatically superscript instances of "th" of "st" when they immediately follow a number.

Now look at the pattern of superscripting I extacted from all 4 CBS memos compared to how they appear in Word equivalents:

Note how none of the st's are superscripted. While most can be explained away by an inexplicable gap preceding them,
there are 2 with no such gaps and they still aren't superscripted. The results for the "th" superscripting are obviously very mixed: 3 are superscripted; 2 are unsuperscripted with a preceding gap; and 2 are unsuperscripted even without the gap.

The first group of non-superscripts came from the Aug.1st, 1972 memo. The fogery believers might try to explain this away by claiming that Word's auto-superscripting was turned off. Do you know how to turn off auto-scripting in Word? Why don't you take a break and try to figure it out. If you don't want to or can't, this is the precedure: while in Word, click on the Tools menu, and then AutoCorrect Options->"AutoFormat As You Type" and then finally uncheck the check box next to "Ordinals (1st) with superscript."

Simple, eh?

But this turns off all superscripting. What about that second group of super/non-supercripting samples, which are from the May 4th, 1972 memo:

It's obviously mixed. Now try typing this in Word and see how convenient it is to skip superscripting on the first "111th" and the "1st," but then have it on for the last "111th". A bit awkward, eh? And does it make any sense? Only if superscripting
was a manual operation and if, say, the printwheel only had a small "th" character" and not a small "st" -- as well may have been the case with a daisywheel printer attached to an old dedicated word processor.

This inconsistency in the superscripting is not characteristic of any modern word processing system.

Now let's get to the second problem with the created-with-Word Times New Roman scenario:

B) The Letterhead Problem

This is something I just noticed and figured very, very recently. I would feel stupid about not thinking of it sooner, except no one else apparently thought of it.

First look closely at the letterhead printing on two of the memos:

Ironically, yet again, the centering on the letterhead had been brought up as more proof of forgery -- not only are these proportionally spaced but are perfectly centered as well. What possible device in 1972 could do such things? Well, actually, again Diablo daisywheel printers could -- like proportional spacing, centering is built in. And these letterhead are actually extremely damning evidence against the created-by-Word scenario.

First note two things -- the "th" isn't superscripted in either as it would have been in Word; and look how close the letterheads resemble each other. Many of the forgery faithful have already noted the over close matchup, and very, VERY mistakenly took this as yet more proof of forgery.

But before I go further, let's first go over a few points.

The pro-forgery people have said all along that the memos were artificially aged by rerunning them through copier and/or fax machines, and that this accounts for the poor print quality of the memo. As I note further down, the widely quoted Joseph M. Newcomer, Ph.D excused his having to use an oddball font size, 11.5-point, to allegedly dupe some of the memos (he doesn't actually show his results) because of "an accident of the many levels of transformation from the original (wherever that is) and the photocopying, scanning, document conversion, and re-printing. The 11.5-point font could represent a reduction to 96% of the original size in the various transformations."

So in this scenario, the forger created each memo on Word and then ran it through some fax/copier combination, which introduced some distortion as well as the desired 30-yr-old doc look.

So let's suppose the above two memos did start off as two pristine Word documents. Then Nth generation copies were made via some copier and/or fax machine.

Time for a trick question: if the Word originals were still around, and considering only the letterhead section common both memos, what logically would have the closest match-up: the Word original and its Nth generation decendent or the two Nth generation copies?

Think carefully before answering -- I can wait....dum, de dum, dum, de dee....

Answer: the Word original and its decendent.

The logic shouldn't be too hard: each recopying introduces a some amount of random distortion, both in copying process itself and in the feeding-in of the documents. We don't know exactly how much, but if you use the same fax or copier each time and with the same technique in feeding-in/lining-up the documents, it'll likely be some roughly consistent amount -- let's call that X. So after 10 generations of photocopying, your distortion is approximately 10X from the original. They should sitll match-up so some degree -- modern copiers and fix machines are pretty precise, even though they break down as often as the old models.

Now remember that in this scenario, there are two original Word documents, each with the same letterhead. Given the precision of modern laser and inkjet printers, there should be a virtually perfect matchup between the Word letterheads.

Now if you recopy the second memo exactly as the first, you would likewise introduce approximate 10X of distortion relative to the original.

The weak-minded might think, "Well, if the originals are identical to each other, and if each copy is distorted 10X from its original, then both final copies are 10X from the original and therefore likely identical."

Nope -- the correct answer is that the two final copies are closer to having 20X of distortion relative to each other. The copies deteriorate in a way similar to how two initially new 1-dollar bills do relative to each other with each use -- they're not going to get wrinkled, folded or stained in the exact same way, even if they get used to buy the same item at the same store and from the same people. This deterioration process is a form of "entropy," which is a fundamental part of the "Second Law of Thermodynamics" - a rather important tenet in Physics.

Now, let's suppose the memos aren't forgeries, and that they were created with, say, a Diablo daisywheel printer. I should mention that I actually suspect that the above memos were created on preprinted letterheads, and I'm not the only one who thinks this. But whether preprinted or created on a Diablo, the letterheads on the original documents should also match up extremely well since Diablo's were heavy duty, precise printers.So, again, you start off with two memos having virtually identical letterheads, but in this case NOT created by Word.

Time for the 2nd trick question: in this scenario, what logically would have the closest match-up regarding the letterhead text: the above two memos, each having been photocopied/faxed independently an unknown number of times, or a Word recreation and either of the two memos?

Again think carefully before answering -- I can wait....dum, de dum, dum, de dee....

Answer: the two memos. It doesn't matter if Word Times New Roman approximates the proportional spacing used on Diablos, it's a different printing system separated by 30+ years from the originals. So even if there was a large amount of distortion introduced to the memos over the years though photocopying, the Word recreation should still have a different "fingerprint" from those of the memos.

So in other words, if either of the two letterheads in those two memos above match up closer to a Word recreation, the memos are very, very likely forged. But if the letterheads match up closer to each other than a Word recreation, then the memos are very, very likely authentic.

So here are the two letterheads, extracted and colorized:

And here are they merged:

A not-bad match-up, eh?

Now here's a Word recreation:

And merged with the blue copy:

And after color shifting to blue, merged with the red original:

Hmm...look at that: even after very careful resizing and matching up, and despite it being a small amount of text, the result is obviously inferior to the memo-memo matchup.

Not clear enough for you? Here are all three again, enlarged, sharpened, and the colors more saturated:

The lower image even more clearly shows how the letterheads on both memos are a dead-on perfect match, indicating that the "X" amount of distortion is very minute. The two upper images just as clearly show a "consistent inconsistency" with trying to match up Word recreation with either of the originals, most noticeably on the second line.

Therefore, according to those rules of logic and physics I laid out, the memos weren't forged.

Yeah, I know other people on the Internet have claimed a perfect matchup between Word and the letterheads, but while you can get a fair matchup like I did, it's definitely not perfect and without a doub clearly inferior to the memo-memo matchup. And as I demonstrated, if the memo-memo matchup is better then the Word-memo matchup, the memos weren't forged, at least with Word.

Actually, between this and the superscripting issue, I'm pretty done proving that Word wasn't used to forge the memos, if the memos were forged, (which they aren't) but I still have to address the contents and all those other, pretty nonsensical claims of evidence for forgery.

But I should, for thoroughness, not only solidly nail the coffin for the created-by-Word theory, but also dig the deep hole and bury it...

B) The Font/Spacing Problem

You've likely seen those seemingly convincing overlays where someone manages to fit a Word-created replica of the CYA memo over the "original," something like this animated overlay by Charles Johnson from the Little Green Footballs blogsite:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526_Bush_Guard_Documents-_Forged
http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12551_One_More_CBS_Document_Example

Pretty impressive, eh? And convincing proof for at least the infamous CYA memo being an obvious forgery, no?

If it were true --it's actually bogus, though. It's faker than Michael Jackon's nose or FOX News's claim of being "Fair and Balanced."

Here's an enlarged version of the CYA memo.

Now if you carefully recreate the above in your Word (the version doesn't matter - every version from 2K, Windows or Mac will work), you should get something like this:

Note that you need to double-space after the periods and the colon (yes, this is unusual these days), and "SmartQuotes" has to be on.

Now if you blend or overlay this with the CBS original and adjust for best fit, you should get something like this (I used blue for the original and red for the Word version):

Hmmm....a little bit different looking from Johnson's version, eh? Actually, if you look very, very carefully at how the individual characters shift and move in that animated overlay he created, you should notice that even that has a lot of
inconsistencies despite him resizing and overlaying for the best possible fit.

It might be argued that the inconsistencies in spacing could be caused by the distortion introduced by all the faxing and/copy of the original, but there is a simpler explanation -- Word wasn't used.

And we get to the final issue with the Created-by-Word scenenario:

Background

Bush's National Guard service record has been an object of criticism and suspicion since his days as governor of Texas, but became much more of an issue when Kerry's Vietnam service and post-Vietnam antiwar activities came under attack by Republicans, starting back in April of this year with "questions" about when Kerry tossed some of his medals during some antiwar protests. This escalated into attacks from both sides about which candidate was more honorable during the days of Vietnam. From any neutral viewpoint, Kerry by a huge factor has the better resume, especially for that time period, in war and out, including being a public figure in the news, on talk shows, and even appearing in Doonesbury; consequently, the attacks on Kerry's record have been far more relentless, petty, and deceptive, reaching a crescendo of sorts with a series of ads by "The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," a group of Vietnam veterans having little or no connection to Kerry during the war (or apparently to truth in general), but having a whole lot of connections currently to the Republican party. The group is headed by an old Vietnam-era nemesis of Kerry named John O'Neill, whom President Nixon once used to "get" John Kerry. The basic truth is that Kerry did his job in Vietnam and was fully deserving of his medals.

While there was some media investigation of Bush's Guard service towards the beginning of the year, the spring offensive against Kerry drew attention away for a while, but not completely.

Aside from the extensive Wikipedia link, there are some good summaries of Bush's National Guard record based on information to date are here, here, and here.

A very nicely well-documented and detailed comparison of Kerry and Bush's service records, with timelines, can be found here.

The issue of Bush's Guard service really came roaring back, though, on September 8, 2004, when CBS's 60 Minutes did a little story involving some old memos....

Alrighty then…

Let’s start with the main points, shall we:

- Were those Killian memos forged?

No.

- What about all that evidence and all those people saying that they were?

There never, ever was any good evidence, actually, and all “those people” were either right-wing or government stooges, incompetent and lazy-ass investigators and news personnel, outright liars, the badly misinformed, the generally not very bright, or some combination thereof.

- What about that CBS Panel Report?

That was no more than yet another example of incompetent investigation with its main focus evidently just on facesaving and scapegoating.

- What about how the proportional spacing and superscripting shown in the memos were not
available on anything other than expensive and complicated typesetting machines at the time?

That was just no more than an example of incompetent investigation and journalism – there was at least one device from the early 70's fully capable of creating the memos as they appear, a long obsolete one that had been, though, a near universal office staple until being displaced by laser printers during the mid-80's: a daisywheel printer. And in this particular case, given the timeframe of the memos, specifically a Diablo model "Hytype I."

A comment:

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.
- Jacques Ellul

For all the massive amount of press coverage, accusations, and discussions that the forgery charges provoked, it was bizarre how daisywheel printers, once so ubiquitous in the 70's and early 80's along with their NEC Spinwriter cousins, could have fallen so far from group memory. But the whole point of having a free press is to have an unencomberedly informed public -- which means the news media has to get off their collective asses once in a while and do some actual investigating, as opposed to, say, oh...just shooting their mouths and word processors about things they know little about, or posing reporters in front of stuff and having them comment on things that they know little about. At the time of the full fury of the memo storm, I don't seem to recall there being a nationwide shortage of news interns, and given the resources available to even moderately sized news organizations, the overall piss-poor, dumbass, and clueless "coverage" of the situation was totally inexcusable. While you expect something like FOX News to be laughably biased and incompetent, you usually can and should expect more from the likes of CNN and the New York Times. On the other hand, ranting, nonsensical commentary and tabloid-style psuedo-news as been very, very lucrative to FOX, and all the major news organizations are beholden to large, profit-minded corporate owners or are large, profit-minded corportate entities themselves, so.....

And it's a huge, huge mistake to look at the memos episode as being some sort of triumph of the new media -- aka the blog sites -- over the old. If one of the bottom line responsibilities of journalism is to some sort out and then clearly present the facts of some murky situation of public interest, the memos episode demonstrated not only a complete failure of mainstream journalism, but how the big blog sites represent no more than news by mob rule. There is no true "new media" involved here -- just newer methods for spreading rumors, gossip and disinformation by like-minded individuals. Political groups have long done things like post posters and spread newsletters to get their views across and disparage & mock the oppostiion. Are political blog sites fundamentally different in any significant way?

If the mainstream news media has become akin to a restaurant that serves chicken soup without there being any actual chicken in it, bloggers at best tend to "compensate" by dumping in cans of cat food. You might get a little bit of chicken, but....
End of comment.

In any case, Diablo Systems was founded in 1969 by David Lee and set the standards for subsequent daisywheel manufacturers, so much so that many of the later dot matrix and early laser printers came with a Diablo-emulation mode. In its early years Diablo was exclusively an OEM manufacturer for other companies, most notably "dedicated word processor" manufacturers like Lexitron, CPT and Vydec. A dedicated word processor was a specialized computer that resembled but predated personal PC's and, as its name implies, it did word processing and little else. It was a very expensive device costing upwards to $20,000, but was quickly adopted by businesses with high-volume document needs, most notably law firms. Diablos and true Diablo-compatibles could fully proportionally space, center and right justify, and super/subscript with a huge selection of easily interchangeable printwheels. A Diablo "Hytype I" was by far the most likely device that created the memos since it both fits the timeline and that its default proportional spacing setting evidently matches up rather well with that shown in the memos.

- What about how the memos could easily have been created on Microsoft Word?

Actually, they can’t. Both the spacing and the fonts themselves don’t match up well at all under close scrutiny. Ironically, the superscripting, which the clueless initially pointed to as being proof that the memos couldn't have been created on a typewriter, doesn’t match up at all well either if you look at all the memos.

- But I’ve seen samples on the Internet and read/seen experts saying otherwise…

Those samples are evidently bogus or fraudulent, as well as those alleged experts.

- Isn’t there a long list of other problems with signatures, improper formatting, terminology, how Killian wouldn’t have scheduled a medical exam on Mother’s Day, and so on and so forth, which also indicate how the memos were likely forged?

There aren’t any such “problems” – those reported as such are entirely frivolous and erroneous. The contents of the memos are 100% consistent with other, more official documents, and both the format and terminology are not only entirely in keeping with Air Force/ANG standards, but even match up with recommendations for those types of memos.

- Brave -- or stupid -- words, but can you prove any of this?

I'll prove all of it. Keep reading.

3) The Font Problem

This is the section of the CBS CYA memo that caught my eye immediately and was the primary reason why I was so instantly dismissive of the Word Times New Roman claim:

Note: how the "S" drops slightly below line; how uneven "Hodges" is; the height and shape of "t"; and how funky the "ss" is in "pressured"

Now see which, if any, of the following matches up best with it:

Only one of these fonts is actually Word Times New Roman. The less slow will be able to figure out what is what pretty quickly, but not through the print samples. One is Garamond, one is Goudy, and one was created with WordPerfect for DOS.

Times New Roman is an old newspaper font created in 1932 and Garamond is even much older. Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, and other word processors are themselves merely replicating these and other established fonts.

Now, some people have noted that the poor quality of the memos made font identification a little problematic, but that hasn't stopped some supposed typography experts this Dr. Joseph M. Newcomer character here from proclaiming firmly that the CYA memo was morally, ethic'lly, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably created with Word Times New Roman. Hmmm...not so fast there, Munchkinheads.

If you look at the CYA memo, you will notice that there are three instances of "Harris" nicely spaced apart. What if we took all three out and compared them to each other and to a Word-created one:

Hmmm... Those three CYA Harris's seem rather surprisingly consistent, don't they: a blocky "H", a left leaning "a", a distorted "rr", an "i" with pigeon feet, and a pretty loopy "s". They don't really seem to match up so well to the Word version on close inspection, do they?

Actually, I personally think the "a" sort of looks more like this one:

Which I just happened to have noticed here.

If you want to do your own forensic analysis, use any old good photo editor/paint progam to pull out and enlarge individual letters for comparison. The trick is to look for consistent differences, as with those Harris samples. It just takes only one letter to be consistently different from Sample A to Sample B, however subtle, in order to pretty much eliminate a font correspondence.

Look at this other "evidence" I lifted from Newcomer's site here:

He resized his Word Times New Roman sample so that things lined up horizontally, but for all the effort and verbiage he spent on longwinded and mostly pointless tangents, including his supposed expertise, he apparently failed to notice that the fonts in the Killian memos don't really match up very well with those of Word Times New Roman. Also he made this rather bizaare statement in regards to his attempts to recreate some of the memos in Word: "I was a bit annoyed that the experiment dealing with the 18-August-1973 memo was not compatible, until I changed the font to an 11.5-point font. Then it was a perfect match, including the superscript 'th'".

An "11.5-point font"! Try to select 11.5 as a point size in Word Times New Roman. Can't figure out how? Here's the trick: while in Word, click on the Format menu, then Font, and then type in 11.5 in the widow just below Size. Simple, eh?
Newcomer rationalizes this with, "However, this might be an accident of the many levels of transformation from the original (wherever that is) and the photocopying, scanning, document conversion, and re-printing. The 11.5-point font could represent a reduction to 96% of the original size in the various transformations."

And if pigs were antelopes, we could have pork on the range.

Also, while he says he got a perfect match, Newcomer's very lengthy website has no proof of this. And for all his claims of being an expert, a pioneer, blah, blah, blah...he apparently never heard of daisywheel printers -- there's not a single mention of them on his website despite them fitting the timeline of the memos and having fine proportional printing control and full super/subscripting capability.

As has been the case with all the so-called experts involved in this sad-ass affair, Joseph M. Newcomer, Ph.D shows no demonstrably useful expertise here.

The bottom line is that the font in the Killian/CBS memos does not match up well with Word Times New Roman.

So what does? Well....

Diablo Daisywheel Printers

1) Could a Diablo daisywheel printer print like that in the memos?

Yes. Diablo and true Diablo-compatible daisywheel printers were fully capable of proportional printing and full super/subscripting since their inception. They also came with a huge variety of fonts via easily interchangeable printwheels. Special characters varied printwheel to printwheel, and the printwheels themselves could he customized with whatever special characters the customer wanted. Proportional printing could be done either via the built-in standard proportional setting with a simple command, or under complete software control -- Diablos could increment to as little as1/120th of an inch horizontally, which is more than fine enough to handle any character map.

Since daisywheel printers have been long obsolete (Windows doesn't even support them), getting a good, appropriate proportional print sample from a Diablo or Diablo-compatible printer has been tricky. A friend and I were able to get an old DEC daisywheel functioning, and while it was made by Qume, who mostly made Diablo-code compatible printers, DEC's codes were used instead and they did not include a simple proportional print command. Evidently any proportional printing would have had to be done via software control.

Searching for print samples on the Internet was not productive. I was finally able to dig up some old PC Magazine "Printer Torture Test" issues that included daisywheel printers. There was unfortunately not many useful print samples available, but I did find these two:

Note how the length of the word "Proportional" matches up with that of the words "Pica Bold" above it in both printer samples. Not exactly a lot to work with, but good enough to extrapolate from for a test. "Pica" refers to one of the two common pitch sizes that are/were used by typewriters, with the other called "Elite." Pica printed at exactly 10 characters per inch; Elite at 12. Also the default line spacing for typewriters and daisywheel printers at the time was 6 lines/inch and de

n old corresponds to Courier 12 on modern printers so that gives a reference point for the proportional printing of these two samples. I looked at all the fonts available in my version of Word to find one that would match up with Courier as displayed in the samples

with their speciBut I was

But if you still want to believe that the Word version is sort of close enough, remember that font descriptions are very, very precise. Times New Roman and Times Roman, for instance, are trademarked names for specific fonts with an accompanying description of how each character should look, as well as its spacing and kerning (an extra adjustment of spacing between certain pairs of letters to make them look more balanced.) There's no such thing as "Sort of Times New Roman" -- there's virtually no printed character that doesn't belong to a distinct font family. The Goudy, Garamond and WordPerfect samples from the previous comparisons also imply that they too sort of, kind of, look like they could have created the CYA memo.

A good introduction to fonts can be found here:
http://graphicdesign.sfcc.spokane.cc.wa.us/tutorials/process/type_basics/type_families.htm

There are some animated overlays of a Word CYA memo on the original floating around the Internet. The idea was to show how near identical the two versions are, but if you focus on how individual characters shift and change, it actually helps with identifying the differences between whatever the CYA font is and Word Times New Roman. I have a good one here.

The font stuff is kind of tricky, I admit. Most serif fonts used in business tend to look much alike, but Times New Roman is Times New Roman....

Another guy, David Hailey did a preliminary but fairly comprehensive analysis of memo fonts and came to the conclusion that the memos had to have been typewritten based on telltale signs of mechanical artifacts. He did a cute experiment where he created a character-by-character replication of on of the memos using typewriter characters:

Close, but not quite there.... He needed to investigate further to see if there existed devices at the time that could both replicate the appearance of the characters and do so proportionally. I should mention that Hailey was attacked for his analysis by morons like this and this and this.

Also I should give a mention to this guy who went the extra mile to run a Word CYA copy through a fax and copier a few times to simulate the aging process in the CYA original. It's not bad at first glance:

But, again, the details are in the details. Looked how it's warped: unlike the real CYA memo, there isn't unevenness in individual letters -- here they are warped in groups of letters, especially if you look hard at the Harris's in this case. Actually, if you duplicate the Harris comparison, you end up with this:

Even though the "H's" indicate clearly that there much more fax/copier distortion in this case, there is a much better match-up to their clean Word sibling at the bottom -- the "i's" match up very well, the "a's" are straighter, the "rr's" much less distorted, and the "s's" have the odd flattening. A nice try, but it ends up hurting the Word argument much more than it helps, again if you look at the details. All these characted by character comparisons make all such pro-Word arguments flounder a bit.

Again very interesting, no?

Much, much more later...

Now that CBS has publicly retracted its authentication of the memos, it’s case closed, isn’t it? The memos were forgeries created in Microsoft Word using Times New Roman, were they not?

Nope.

It was all just some unconscionable, tacky conspiracy to besmirch our President's totally honorable years of service in the Air National Guard, was it not?

Nope.

Why bother in any case – Rather has been thoroughly discredited and Kerry will lose, right?

Well, Kerry did lose, but....

What's that "Not Observed" stuff on the left?

You'll see.

Quick Index
            1) Introduction
            2) Background
            3) A Brief History of the CBS Memos
          4) Proportionally Printed Record Released by the DOD
          5) Summary of Bush's Guard Service
          6) Bush's Point Records
            7) Bush's Guard Service Timeline
            8) Preface/Rant
            9) Evidence - Logic
          10) Evidence - Fun with Fonts
11) Evidence - What devices could print proportionally, superscript, etc, at the time of the memos?
          12) Evidence - How would Killian have access to a daisywheel printer?
          13) Evidence - Why would Killian use a law firm?
          14) Conclusions

Introduction

This webpage is very, very dense with content and links, but I can tell you that at the time of the memos, there were 3 devices capable of proportional printing and super/subscripting: the IBM Selectic Composer, the IBM Executive typewriter, and Diablo/Qume daisywheel printers. For all that initial inane talk of Selectric typewriters and the overly complicated Composer, the most likely candidates were always the then common Executive and daisywheel printers. Executive typewriters barely got a mention by the mainstream media even though they had been around for decades, and daisywheel printers none at all even though Diablo daisywheels had been around since 1969 (both Diablo and Qume were founded by David S. Lee) and became widely and quickly adopted, especially by law offices as part of dedicated word processing systems.

As far as the contents of the memos go, again the mainstream media did not do its homework at all -- the contents and the timelines of the memos are very much backed up by official DOD documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as well as the recollections of people who were around at the time, most noticably Killian's secretary Marion Knox and Killian's friend and collegue, Robert Strong. Indeed, the contents of one of the supposedly forged documents is actually directly backed up by 4 separate DOD records and indirectly by a 5th.

Being frustrated by the ineptness of the media and tired of just getting in pointless online arguments, I decided to bite the bullet and do the homework....

A Brief History of the CBS Memos:

Wednesday, September 8: a 60 Minutes report (well, actually, closer to 12½ minutes) with Dan Rather described how Bush got special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard when when he wasn't "fulfilling his commitments." For proof, four memos were brought up that are described as being "from the personal files of the late Col. Jerry Killian, Bush's squadron commander." Rather also reports that 60 Minutes consulted a "handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic."

Prior to the airing, CBS provided copies of the memos to the White House and interviewed White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett regarding the issue. Bartlett doesn't deny anything in the memos, but claims the issue is no more than "partisan politics." The White House e-mails copies of the four memos in the 60 Minutes report to reporters and editors across the country. These are the same memo copies they got from CBS the day before.

USA Today also gets copies of the memos, but directly from the source that 60 Minutes used: former National Guard Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett.

The memos immediately started getting dissected on the Internet, most notably by the right-wing blog site, Powerlineblog.com. But Powerline was just following up on a post at another right-wing blog site, Freerepublic.com, by someone using the alias "Buckhead." (The Los Angeles Times later uncovers the identity of Buckhead: he's actually Harry MacDougald, a right-wing Republican lawyer from Atlanta, Georgia.)

The following day, the 60 Minutes story gets decent news coverage across the country. Charges that the memos CBS used were forged start to spread through the Internet. The forgery charges start to appear in the mainstream press the day after. Experts of all dubious stripes were brought out to comment on the memos. Most if not all of the "analyses" were, well, pretty damn stupid, and indicated little or no research into the type of office equipment that was available back in the early 70's. (You would have thought that before computers, there was only this thing called a "Selectric"...) Regardless of this, CBS's credibility started coming under serious attack from both Internet and mainstream sources.

Wednesday, September 15: a week later, Rather interviews Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox. She tells him that she did not type the memos and believes they are forgeries, but that "the information in those is correct." This doesn't exactly help CBS's case.

Monday, September 20: CBS, in the face of all the criticisms and attacks, backs down. They reveal that Burkett was their source and that he admits to deliberately misleading CBS about where he got the documents from. Rather apologizes with an "I'm sorry."

Thursday, September 24: More documents are belated released by the Department of Defense without any good explanation for their delay. In this collection is this little gem. Here's a very interesting excerpt from that document:

Notice anything funny about it aside from it being a little bit warped? Try lining up the characters vertically. Better yet, count out the first 10 characters, including spaces, for line 3 and then do the same for line 2 above and line 4 below. You will see that lines 2 & 4 have only 9 characters for line 3's 10. Even better, do the same for the all-caps bottom line -- you will then see that you get only 7 characters for line 3's 10. This is because narrow characters, like a lower case "i," are taking up less space than wider characters, especially capitalized letters, in this document. That means one thing.

Yes, this is a proportionally spaced document!?!
(For the fuzzy-eyed, I've created a rulered version here.)

This is actually a proportionally spaced document that should have been released back in February along with the bulk of Bush's records. It somehow instead ended up being held all the way through the attacks on CBS, most of which centered on the proportional spacing issue. And when it finally does appear, it's just 4 days after CBS had given up on the memos. Draw your own conclusions.

By the way, it looks to my now fairly expert eye that it was composed on an IBM Executive typewriter.

Tuesday, November 23: Dan Rather announces that he will step down as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News in March, 24 years after his first broadcast in that position. Most news coverage of this has been more or less balanced, touching upon highlights of his lengthy career, but the memos "controversy" always gets the most prominent mention. Of course, there were also plenty of moronic "fake memos" comments from the usual sources like Fox News (John Gibson) and places like this.

I personally feel that he always meant well, which makes him a better person than at least 98% of his right wing critics, but aside from that, I'm still not very happy with him and CBS in general, to put it mildly, over their total mishandling of the Killian memos -- that essentially took Bush's Guard service off the table as an election issue, and in an election so close.....

A Summary of Bush's Guard Service
Culled from a Myriad of Sources:

In May, 1968, over 300 American soldiers were being killed on average each week in Vietnam. Yale soon-to-be-graduate George W. Bush was only twelve days away from losing his student draft deferment when on May 27, he enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard ("TANG") for a 6 year stint. At the time Bush graduated from Yale, his father, Bush Sr. was a Texas Congressman, which very likely was a teensy bit of a factor in how Bush Jr. managed to make it to the top of a waiting list of 500 trying to get into the Texas Guard despite poor scores on his pilot aptitude test -- Bush had only scored in the 25th percentile, the lowest possible passing grade.

In 1999, Ben Barnes -- who was speaker of the Texas House of Representatives in 1968 -- testified under oath in an unrelated lawsuit that he had put in a good word for Bush with Guard officials at the request of a Bush family friend, Sidney Adger.

Adger had two sons in a very special unit of TANG, the 147th Fighter Group, a "Champagne Unit" that also included the son of former Gov. John Connally, both sons of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, Bobby Sakowaitz (a wealthy Houston department store owner), the grandson of H.L. Hunt, and supposedly at least seven members of the Dallas Cowboys football team. And it was this unit that Bush Jr. ended up joining.

Regardless of the reasons or what strings were pulled, Bush Jr. in, by all accounts at least acceptably performed his duty duringhis first few years of Guard service. He completed pilot training in June 1970 and was rated to fly an F-102, an interceptor jet. There is a widely quoted and widely disputed George Magazine article from October, 2000 that presents a pretty benign view of Bush's Guard performance and service. But other evidence suggests otherwise, that Bush had trouble with the F-102 and was put back on flying a T-33, a training jet.

It's Bush's service record starting from about mid-1972, the beginning of his 5th year of service, that's much more dubious and sketchy, and where the bulk of the controversies lie (so to speak), including the CBS memos. The military paper trail rather inconveniently (or conveniently, depending on your viewpoint) falls off from about this point.

Click to enlarge.

The Air National Guard had a point system based on duty time, and there was a minimum of 50 points that all Guardsmen had to accumulate per year to meet minimum requirements. During Bush's first two years, he did very well: 253 points for his 1st year and then 340 for his 2nd. His points fell off a bit during his 3rd and 4th years: 137 and then 112. For his 5th year, 1972-73, beginning on the anniversary on his enlistment in May, he only got 56 points, just 6 over the minimum, but this includes an automatic 15 "gratuitous" points just for being a Guardsman. He apparently only accumulated the bare minimul 50 points for his 6th and last year of service, 1973-74. (It's been reported elsewhere that it was another 56 points, but a copy of an official record I have below indicates only 50.)

Bush's point records for his last 2 years of service:

Points collected by Bush for his 5th year of service. He needs to accumulate a minimal
of 50. The above totals to only 41, but that doesn't include the 15 he gets automatically
just for being in the Guard so the actual total is 56.

Points collected by Bush for his 6th and last year of service. By my math, he
just barely makes it: 35 + 15 = 50. Also note how only 3 months are involved,
with the bulk of the points coming in July.

Correction. It has come to my attention that since Bush left Guard service early ,
he was not entitled to 15 gratuitous points for his last year -- just 5. This means
his true total is actually only 40 points -- 10 less than the minimal! This is
reflected in Bush's "ARF Retirement Credit Summary" prepared Jan. 30, 1974.

This is the pertinent excerpt:

Do the math: 19+16 = 35 35 + 5 = 40!

Bush's Guard Service Timeline

The following are the highlights of Bush's last 2 years of service, including
where (and how well) the CBS memos (in red) fit in. Also USA Today included
2 additional Killian memos in their strangely fuzzier PDF collection of the
CBS memos (yeah, I know that doesn't make sense), so I've included those
in this color.

February 2, 1972: A brief note from Killian asking Harris for an update about the flight qualifications of Bush and some other guy named Bath..

May-November, 1972: Bush in Alabama worked on the Senate campaign of family friend Winton Blount.

May 4, 1972: Killian orders Bush to report to Ellington AFB no later than May 14th for his annual physical.

May 19, 1972: Killian notes a phone discussion he had with Bush. Bush wanted to "get out of coming to drill from now through November" and to get a transfer to Alabama in order to work on a political campaign. "The issue of the medical test is discussed."

May 24, 1972: Bush applies for equivalent training at 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Alabama's Maxwell Air Force Base, and this is approved by Lt. Col. Reese H. Bricken, commander of the 9921st, a couple of days later.

Summer 1972: Bush attends GOP convention in Miami with his father.

(FYI -- the Watergate break-in occurs June 17)

July 31, 1972: the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, the final approval authority, rejects Bush's reassignment request to the 9921st, stating that as "an obligated Reservist" he could only be "assigned to a specific Ready Reserve Position."

August 1, 1972: Killian orders Bush suspended for failing to taking the required physical.

"1. On this date I ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended from flight status due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination (flight) as ordered."

2. I conveyed my verbal orders to commander; 147th Ftr Intrcp Gp with request for orders for suspension and convening of a flight review board IAW AFM 35-13."

August 1, 1972: Bush is verbally suspended from flying status for failing to take his annual physical.

September 5, 1972: Bush again requests a temporary transfer to Alabama to "perform equivalent duty," this time to serve September, October, and November with Montgomery, Alabama's 187th Tactical Recon Group. This is also the date that his suspension becomes official.

September 15, 1972: Bush's transfer request is approved by Capt. Kenneth K. Lott. Bush is ordered to report to Lt. Col. William Turnipseed at Alabama's 187th Tactical Recon Group. His "Unit Assembly Schedule" is set for Oct. 7-8 and Nov. 4-5, and at 7:30am - 4:00pm for each of the days.

October 7-8, November 4-5, 1972: Bush is supposed to report for duty in Alabama, but doesn't show up. The only record tying Bush to the 187th is a dental exam in January, 1973. Records released by the White House show Bush's late1972 duty was performed not on the days ordered, but on Oct. 28-29 & Nov. 11-14. One possible mitigating factor for October is that Bush's grandfather, though, former Sen. Prescott Bush, dies of cancer, October 8th and Bush serves as a pallbearer at the funeral in Greenwich, Connecticut.

November, 1972: Winton Blount loses his bid for the Senate, and Bush moves back to Houston, but apparently not to Guard duty (see the following May 2nd entry.) The Winton Blount campaign is mentioned in Bush's transfer request from earlier in May to be reassigned to the 9921st.

January 6, 1973: Bush has a dental exam at the Donnelly Air National Guard base in Alabama. This is apparently the only official record, aside from nondescriptive points records, showing Bush to be on base in Alabama at any time.

May 2, 1973: The annual rating (evaluation) report for Bush, covering his 5th year (May 1, 1972 - April 30, 1973),
states that he could not be rated because "he has not been observed during the period of the report." This report was signed by Lieutenant Colonels William Harris and Jerry Killian.

June 24, 1973: Killian reponds to a request from the 111th for an evaluation of Bush. His response is virtually exactly the same as the authenticated May 2nd document above, that neither he nor Lt. Colonel Harris can rate Bush since he was not with the 111th since April, 1972. (aka "not observed").

June 29, 1973: An official request is made by Master Sgt. Daniel P. Harkness for an explanation or more information regarding the missing rating report. "This officer should have been reassigned in May 1972 since he no longer is training in his AFSC ("Air Force Service Category") or with his unit of assignment."

August 18, 1973: Killian's now infamous "CYA" memo basically complains about the pressure to cover for Bush's absence during his rating period. "Bush wasn't here during rating period and I don't have any feedback from 187th in Alabama. I will not rate. Austin is not happy today either."

September 5, 1973: Bush again requests a discharge from TANG and a reassignment to the air reserves (ARPC) in order to attend the Harvard Business School.

Note: it's unclear when Bush moved to Cambridge, MA to start his Harvard classes. Most sources have it vaguely as September, 1973, but classes for the MBA Program actually begin before the end of August, with orientation a week before that. So it's likely that Bush was living in Cambridge by August, 1973.

October 1, 1973: Bush is officially discharged from TANG and becomes a reservist, almost 8 months before his contracted separation date of May 26, 1974.

November 12, 1973: Harkness's request was evidently denied by Major Rufus G. Martin, and with not much of an explanation:

November 8, 1974: Bush sends in his resignation letter from reserve duty, a copy of which only very recently mysteriously appeared.

November 21, 1974: Bush receives his full discharge from all military obligations.

Important Note:
Even though Bush was evidently reassigned to the Alabama 187th, official records about his service there are very noticeably lacking, to the point that it doesn't get a mention at all both in his official "Chronological Listing of Service" and in this undated, but Pentagon-supplied "Military Biography." This is an excerpt from the Biography:

Where's Alabama?

Also take note of the superscripting, which you might remember as being one of the supposed issues that stirred the forgery charges. The Service Chronology also has a superscripted "th," but you really have to look for it.

As you can see from the above, ALL of the supposedly discredited memos fit perfectly, in both date and content, with all other information, including the documents released by the White House.

Now to the font/superscript/proportional spacing BS....

Preface/Rant

There was a huge journalistic lapse on the CBS memos story, but not in the way that's now become virtual folklore. The biggest failure was by CBS -- for the lack of courage they showed in the face of a mostly a right wing attack campaign, and not really for valid journalistic reasons. The attacks focused on minor oddities in the documents while disingenuously ignoring how the actual contents were extremely well supported, to say the least, by all other evidence, from official military records to the vast bulk of recollections of people from that time and place. The forgery notion was extremely illogical from the get-go. The contents of the memos simply added to the still growing evidence that Bush had a very sketchy attendance record during his last couple of years in the Guard. This in itself would not have been a big issue at all if Republican strategists and their proxies hadn't made such a big effort to slander -- and "slander" is the correct term -- Kerry's vastly much more noteworthy and noble military service.

Some Democrats have floated the idea that Republican strategist Karl Rove might have been behind the forgeries. That's not such a reach at all IF the CBS memos were forgeries -- you would just have to look at the basic economics of who would gain the most:

1) If they were forged but undetected
They are a minor news item. Before the forgery accusations took over, the CBS memos were widely disseminated as just shedding "new light" on Bush's Guard duty, but not adding anything really new. There were already piles of evidence for Bush having a very, very dubious record of service: he was suspended in 1972 for skipping a required physical and never flew for the military again; there are discrepancies in his pay records; he resigned early from the Guard because he had "inadequate time to fulfill possible future commitments"; and numerous records are inexplicably missing. Aside from the details of Bush's resignation -- the actual letter mysteriously was "found" at the end of September -- this was stuff already known when CBS aired the memos story. All the memos added were a few more details and some dollops of Killian's opinions regarding Bush and issues surrounding him -- all very minor points in context and unlikely to hurt Bush and/or help Kerry much if at all.

2) If the they were forged and detected
You have a very, very different situation, as has been the case so far: the right wing gets a club to attack an old favorite target, Dan Rather, as well as CBS News and all of the "lying liberal media" in general; a shadow is cast on all of the other records, however impeccable and official, showing Bush shirking his Guard duty, thereby creating a wash of sorts (if only for the weak-minded) between Bush's military service and Kerry's; and conspiracy charges, however totally baseless, can be brought against the Kerry campaign. All of which amounts to a much , much bigger bonus for the Bush campaign than the first scenario would be Kerry.

3) Following the money
If you go by who would have the most to gain and the least to lose by forging the memos, the Bush side would be the most suspect: little or no loss if the forgery is undetected; a big gain if it is.Whereas if it was done on the Kerry side, the converse would be true: little or no gain if the forgery is undetected; a big loss if it is. Always look at who gets to win big.

It would have been a brilliant, if totally underhanded, tactical move on the Bush side except for one little thing: the memos weren't forged. At the very, very worst, they're transcriptions.

The Evidence Against Them Being Forgeries

1) Logic

As I have hopefully demonstated, the contents and timeline of the memos are extremely well collaborated by other sources. I will go in one of the memos in more detail to demonstrate it even further.

This is one of the CBS memos that has now been "discredited":

So Killian, as Bush's commander, orders the suspension for failing to take the annual physical exam. This was a verbal
order, but was conveyed to the 147th Fighter Intercept Group commander, Colonel Bobby Hodges, as per "IAW 35-13," which I assume are the regulations that apply here.

Now this is an authenticated document released by the White House:

Besides confirming the Bush suspension, it also shows that the official order comes from the 147th Fighter Group
commander, Bobby Hodges, and that the order was effective on August 1, 1972, the same date on the Killian memo.

And this is another supporting document -- look towards the bottom of page 2.

This is the pertinent excerpt:

Note again all of the corresponding points from dates to cited regulations.

Now also the 3rd paragraph in the "fake" memo -- this says that Killian had recommended transfer of Bush to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron in May, and forwarded his AF Form 1288 to the 147th Fighter Intercept Group headquarters, but that the transferred was not allowed.

Again, this is backed up 100% by DOD records:
Bush's AF Form 1288 application for transfer to the 9921st
Rejection and return of Bush's AF Form 1288 transfer request

Lastly, note how this particular memo is basically all military serious and contains no personal criticisms or asides as was with the CYA memo. The closest is "Officer has made no attempt to meet his training certification or flight physical," but that appears to be exactly the case, and hence an official observation. Since this memo contains no information that doesn't appear somewhere else, why "forge" it then? Seriously, what's the point if it doesn't contain anything whatsoever above and
beyond other, more authenticated DOD records? The CYA memo at least had some nice extra little personal comments about "pressure," "sugercoating," and how people were unhappy with the Bush situation, but this memo is all dry business.

Again, what would have been the point of forging it?

How do you like them apples?

By all accounts, Killian was meticulous about writing exactly this sort of memo and then saving it away as a journal record in case of any questions up the road. So logically, Killian would have written up a memo exactly like this. Bush didn't show up for a required physical, apparently without a good reason, Killian verbally suspended him, relayed the order and the reasons for it to the base commander, Hodges, and then brought up the need to find a replacement flier. This is exactly the sort of stuff that would be noted down and filed away. So if this isn't the "true" Killian memo, then where is the "real" one, along with all the others that Killian's secretary, Knox, said she typed up regularly for him? While Knox says she never typed up those particular memos, she's on record saying “The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones ...I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another.”

Robert Strong, an old friend of Killian and who was an administrative officer at the base at the time, is likewise on record saying, "Well, they are compatible with the way business was done at that time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being....I didn't see anything that was inconsistent with how we did business...It looked like the sort of thing that Jerry Killian would have done or said. He was a very professional guy."

Again, you have both DOD records and close associates of Killian totally vouching for the contents of the memos.

So in order to believe the forgery story, you would also have to believe that:

1) The forger had access to both official military records and inside information not in any official records in order create the contents of the memos. All that was added aside from what already known was a few references to protective favoritism towards Bush.

2) That the forger, having taken the time time to gather up all that information, would skip using one of the many, many IBM Selectrics still in service and instead type them up in Microsoft Word.

3) The the forger would re-re-re-photocopy and/re-re-re-fax them to make them look old and then arrange for them to be passed on to CBS.

4) And that the forger would make all that effort, including one very sloppy mistake, just to create what was basically a rehash of existing information.

5) As I pointed out earlier, the most to gain by all of this effort would be the Bush side, but that would imply an intelligent cunning that's not otherwise exactly obviously present. Deviousness, yes, but cunning....no.

So where is the logic in the forgery premise if the contents are real?

2) Fun with Fonts

A quick close scrutiny of the "CYA" memo by anyone with any sort of extensive knowledge of computer printers, old and new, would have thrown an awful lot of doubt on the Word Times New Roman "theory" to say the least.

Here is the CYA memo in full:

3) What devices could print proportionally, superscript, etc., at the time of the memos?

Such an basic question in all of this, but one that has provoked the most bizarre "answers." When all these alleged experts came out of the woodwork and started talking about Selectrics versus Word, alarm bells should have gone off. There were many, many brands and models of typewriters then, and a good many of those with special features. It says a lot about the quality of research that was done when it was Killian's former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, who broke the news that it was actually easy to superscript because her old Olympia typewriter at least had a simple key to do a superscripted "th".

My own research quickly brought in two likely suspects: the IBM Executive typewriter and, um, something else.

The IBM Executive Typewriter

I actually have a friend who not only use to have an old IBM Executive, but still had a copy of a manual he created on it.

He thinks this Model "C" looks closest to the
model he had (it came out in 1959):

This is his description of it:

The "AutoTest 704" manual I provided was typed with an IBM Executive electric typewriter, which I believe used the "IBM 12-point boldface No. 1 - proportional spacing" font. I think it was a model C (see picture below). It was a proportional-spacing conventional (not Selectric) typewriter commonly used for publications work. It had interchangeable type bars (the striker levers with the keys) which contained various characters, such as, for example, a superscript or subscript "2", copyright or trademark symbols, etc. I remember there were a few levers -- two to four on each end of the basket -- that could be quickly snapped out and replaced with special characters. I recall having a "rack" of type bars with special characters on them.

All the equations and superscripts in the sample I sent were typed directly on the typewriter (e.g. nothing was cut-and-pasted into place). Because the type was 12 point, the original was typed on oversize paper (larger than 8.5" x 11") and reduced. I'm not sure of the reduction of the samples I provided, but I think it was between 80% and 90%.

And these are some samples from his "AutoTest 704" manual:

Some full page samples are here, here, and here.

Now look at these two samples. The first is from Word, the other is from the Executive sample above:

And then look at this excerpt from the CYA memo:

Look very carefully at the "m", "r" and "u's" and compare them to those in "Shutter time." It's those little details...

So, Selectric, Schlectric -- basically the much more conventional looking IBM Executive could proportionally print, super and subscript, it came with a variety of interchangeable type bars, and the shape and style of its characters are more in line with the memos than MS Word Times New Roman is.

But...

I did an experiment where I tried to duplicate a section of the manual in Word:

The top is from the Executive, the bottom is the Word copy. While both are proportionally spaced, Word does it more tightly. It is possible that a different typeface might have made a difference, and if it was a Model D (which came out in 1967) instead of a "C", but I don't think so. You really need a device with true microspacing, like, say, something like this:

This is a Diablo Systems daisywheel printer/terminal

Diablo came out with is daisywheel printers in 1969. It's founder, David Lee, sold the company to Xerox in 1972, and he ended founding another daisywheel printer company called Qume in 1973. Diablos and Qumes used the same interchangeable daisywheel type element and there were hundreds of type styles available, not including custom ones. I came across a couple some Xerox printwheel sample sheets, including this:

Another descriptive sheet of printwheel fonts is here.

Pitch, proportional spacing, kerning, etc, was all done under computer control. Before laser printers came, daisywheel printers (and later one, NEC Spinwriters using a thimble-shaped print element) were "the" way to go for LQ (letter quality) printing.
They were initially connected to large computer centers and dedicated word processors, and then later were very commonly used throughout the early CP/M and DOS computer days. The once popular WordStar word processing program fully supported Diablo and Qume printers, which allowed complete control over document appearance.

As another experiment, that same friend who had the Executive also had some old daisywheel printers in a shed. One was a Qume, and two were Qumes modified by Digital Equipment Corporation (LQP02). He also still had a copy of WordStar. The first Qume, though, only gave out a puff of smoke when we plugged it in. We had much better luck with one of the DEC Qumes, but that had a completely different set of control codes from the standard Qume, so WordStar was useless. We also only had two printwheels, Bookface Academic and Prestige Elite.

I took the DEC Qume home with me to try a few things out. It would have been great if I could get it to proportionally print but nothing I had, including WordPerfect for DOS, supported it, and I wasn't about to program my own character map. I tried sending a code for 12 pitch while still using the Bookface printwheel, which is suppose to be 10 pitch. That was interesting and I got this before I ran out of ribbon at the end:

Not proportional, but not too shabby. I think I would need a custom printwheel for the superscript "th" but not bad.
overall.

4) How would Killian have access to a daisywheel printer?

Short answer: a law firm.

While daisywheels were quickly adopted by computing centers, they were also very popular with law firms, typically combined with a dedicated word processor, a large bulky computer that did nothing except word processing. In the early 70's, brands like Vydec, Lexitron and Linolex got things rolling. Later on WangWriters and IBM Displaywriters became very popular.

Vydec Model 1800 Word Processor at the Rhode Island Computer Museum

If Killian did indeed use a lawfirm to type up and presumably file away some memos, this might well explain where the memos came from and why nobody is talking.

5) Why would Killian use a law firm?

The timeline I came up from all the records indicate that Bush was a problem soldier for his last 2 years of duty. I personally don't know how serious or how common it was for people to blow off their guard duty, but Bush obviously did so to some extent and apparently was able to get away with it aside from his suspension for skipping a physical. If this was a serious issue, but Bush was being protected by powerful family connections, Killian may well have felt a bit antsy about having anything to do with it in case of possible scapegoating or blowback down the line. Consulting a law firm would have been a very prudent action. His memos, which he apparently used for a journal records, may then have been retyped up for clarity.

If you were in Killian's place, what would you do?

Also if the memos were created at a law firm, that might explain where they came from -- the memos that Killian's secretary had type up and kept on base were all evidently trashed or destroyed at some point. A law firm, though, would have been much more likely to have archived them in some fashion.

Conclusions

CBS News, as well as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and such had the resources to at least have a few earnest, bright interns do a little bit of research before blindly and timidly accepting the laughably inadequate analyses being done by highly dubious bloggers, experts, and people and organizations in general looking to discredit both the story and Dan Rather, as well as throw doubt on all the other much less suspect evidence to Bush's Guard duty or lack thereof.

What is REALLY lamentable was that those interns may have discovered that the contents of the August 1, 1972 memo where Killian writes about suspending young Bush for failing to show up for a medical exam is directly corroborated by four other authenticated military documents, as well as indirectly by a 5th.

Trickier, but those theoretical interns may have also discovered that the individual fonts used in the CYA memo actually didn't match up that well at all with not just Word, but with any modern PC/printer combination. Indeed the nature of the very noticeable unevenness in the printing of the CYA memo strongly implied that an old mechanical system was being used. So the question then should have been: what possible typewriter or printing system could have existed in 1972/73 that could proportionally print and superscript like that?

We all have become seduced into thinking that you can find anything on Google if you look hard enough, but Google can only index information that people have made an effort to put on the Web in some form. If you're talking about a technology that was obsolete before there was even a Web, things can get very sketchy.

But I'm not feeling particularly pleased with myself about what all my research and sampling has uncovered -- it was really, REALLY time consuming and I have other things I much rather focus on. And it wasn't my job -- it was CBS's. And the Boston Globe's, and ABC's, and the New York Times', and CNN's, and basically any "news" organization that prides itself as being responsible journalists who do their homework and try to keep its viewers or readers as well-informed on facts as much as possible.

The true lapse in the National Guard story was how news organizations failed so miserably in this case. Instead of concentrating some resources into digging deeper to reconcile the central "mystery" of how the contents could be true but not the documents themselves, they all took instead the tabloid route to report only on the specious he said/she said aspects of a wholly contrived controversy, or else simply relayed some of the bogus analyses of the memos without really looking at what they were relaying.

And when the Pentagon quietly released more of Bush's records on Sept. 24th, apparently nobody in the press paid much heed, even though one of the documents was proportionally spaced -- the central reason for the origin of all those forgery charges leveled against the CBS memos.

Bush himself has been acting exactly like a thoroughly guilty man who got off on a technicality or through some ethnically dubious wheeling and dealing. He's been mostly standing back and letting others, including his wife, spin things with the basic mantra going something like "He was honorably discharged, end of story."

There have been direct answers whatsoever in regards to how very sketchy his Guard service evidently was during his last two years of service. And even basic questions about the authenticity of the CBS memos have also also been deflected.

For example, check out the "answer" White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett gave to "Stephen from Colorado Springs" when asked about the CYA memo during an "Ask the White House" Q&A session.
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/ask/20040921.html)

*********

Stephen, from Colorado Springs, CO writes:
"Dan, Why is it that the president or you will not declare that the documents (CYA Memos) are false and untrue? Certainly if the documents are fakes, then the information in them is false as well."

Let's hear you and Mr. Bush say they are false and untrue accusations and we can settle all this mess.

Dan Bartlett:
"We don't have the technical expertise to determine if they were fake or not. Remember, these supposedly came from the personal files of man who died more than 20 years ago. Thankfully, a lot of expert bloggers and other news organizations did get to the bottom this growing scandal."

*********

("Expert bloggers!!??")

It wasn’t CBS’s failure to sufficiently authenticate the memos that was the cause of the dark day for journalism – it was the totally spineless, confused and researched-challenged behavior of both CBS and the more responsible media that allowed rumors, outright lies and conspiracy theories to completely overwhelm whatever facts there were, as well as basically allow the bad guys to win the day. If a right wing newsperson like Bill O’Reilly says something that’s not quite true – even if it’s a whopper – liberals and leftists in general will likely only roll their eyes. (“Well, what do you expect – he’s Bill O’Reilly”) but liberal-leaning newspeople like Dan Rather (and "leaning" is the right word when you compare his mostly dry rhetoric over the years to any conservative newsman, leaning, falling, or otherwise), regardless of how seldom they make mistakes, get crucified when a mistake is made. “Rathergate” indeed.

The memos and the consequent firestorm illustrates how very difficult it is for the average person to be well informed on anything these days. Instead of being authoritative and making good use of their much greater resources, the mainstream media ended up being no more than faces in an increasingly large crowd of information peddlers – dubious and otherwise

But the big issue isn't about the poor service of the press, or even really about Bush's Guard service from over 30 years ago. He wasn't exactly the only rich boy from a very influential family who was able to escape being sent to Vietnam via National Guard service, and who was later able to get away with slacking off as the Vietnam War wound down. It was this whole recent business with the CBS Killian memos that really speaks volumes about Bush's true moral character. He, far better than anyone else, knows what he did and didn't do while he was in the Guard, and yet he chose to stay silent on the key issues throughout the entire turmoil over the memos, letting others to confuse, deny, and outright lie in his behalf. Regardless of what he did or didn't do back then, if he was an honorable man now, he would have stood up and owed up to his past actions instead of letting others get into trouble over them.

And just what was up with that withholding of the proportional spaced document?

And I think that's it, except to say that no smart, well informed and ethical person voted for Bush this year.

-BC