Bush Service Memos Questioned 619
Twirlip of the Mists writes "Last night, CBS News released a set of memos dated 1972 and 1973 that are purported to raise questions about President Bush's National Guard service. Some are saying those memos might have been produced with a computer. Blogger Scott Johnson ran with the story first this morning, raising questions about the typography of the memos. Blogger Charles Johnson (no relation) went one step further, actually reproducing one of the memos in its entirety using Microsoft Word's default settings.
Matt Drudge is running the story now with a link to a CNS News article that includes quotes from typography experts at font foundries Afga Monotype and Bitstream.
There's a round-up of key facts about the story on this blogger's web site." The experts in the CNS News story and others could come to no conclusion, and even if the documents are not originals or photocopies of originals, that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't faithfully retyped copies of originals. CBS continues to assert the documents are authentic.
Try this (Score:5, Informative)
I've made a superimposed image [vt.edu] of Word vs. the documents. They have been lined up according to the period after the '1' in the first paragraph. The 'originals' are in red, the Word version in blue.
Re:Try this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But why from the WHouse? (Score:4, Informative)
More Fuel for the Fire... (Score:3, Informative)
The conservative blog Powerline has a roiling debate or series of charges that the documents published by CBS last night are forgeries.
The basis of the claim is that the sort of proportional font spacing evidenced in the memoranda wasn't available at the time in question. It only came later with word processors and computers and laser printers. Basically, they say, all people had back then were old fashioned block-type typewriters.
On the face of it, that sounds logical to me. But the editor of the site has now posted the comments of at least one reader who says such machines were actually widely available at the time.
It seems worth noting that the White House accepted the documents as genuine and even began releasing them to other journalists yesterday evening -- though it's not clear to me whether they were releasing their own copies or simply passing on what CBS had given them.
The deeper point is that CBS reported that they had handwriting experts scrutinize these documents to ascertain their authenticity. It seems hard to imagine they'd go to such lengths to have experts analyze them and not check out something so obvious as seeing if they'd been written by a typewriter that was in existence at time. (Hard to imagine or, if true, unimaginably stupid.)
One way or another, I doubt we'll have to speculate about this for very long. This question about what sort of typesets were available in 1973 should be easy enough to settle.
List of websites: (Score:4, Informative)
UPI: breaking news [washingtontimes.com]
littlegreenfootballs.com [littlegreenfootballs.com]
AllahPundit here [allahpundit.com] and here [allahpundit.com] and here [allahpundit.com].
indcjournal.com [indcjournal.com]
cnsnews.com [cnsnews.com]
command-post.org [command-post.org]
hftp.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
Re:Try this (Score:5, Informative)
I then scanned it back in [xenoveritas.org] and wound up with a document that looked surprisingly similar to the "original document [xenoveritas.org]." Specically, look at the "187th." It's practically identical.
Oh, and for added fun, try this animation [xenoveritas.org] I created showing a copy in Word fading in with the PDF. Note that the PDF is ever so slightly tilted, so things don't line up quite correctly after the first line. But the animation makes it very clear that the two are very similar.
Anyway, to sum up:
- Original document [xenoveritas.org] (mirrored on my site)
- Scanned copy I made [xenoveritas.org] - this is not an original, it is a copy I typed in Word, printed, and scanned back in to a PDF
Very supicious.Re:Try this (Score:3, Informative)
Though proportional-spaced typewriters existed then and were quite common (despite claims to the contrary by some people here), they were still mechanical devices. There were only 4 (perhaps 5) letter widths possible, and the numbers (the "en-space") were 3 units (this is for the IBM Selectric I am familiar with). This produces obvious alignement vertically between far more letters than the Word output, as there is a 1/3 chance of a letter aligning with one below it. TrueType fonts have 1000 or more possible widths (I may be thinking of PostScript Type 1 fonts).
It is extremely unlikely that a TrueType font matches the widths used by the Selectric for every letter, too.
Since the documents were covered with dirt and distortions, that would indicate an attempt to make a forgery. No excuse about somebody retyping is going to fly.
PS: I'm going to vote for Kerry anyway. Still somebody is being made a fool here. CBS is really going to lose if these are fake, even retracting their claim is not going to help. The Dems can get out of this easily by saying somebody tried to discredit them with fake documents.
Re:Try this (Score:3, Informative)
I posted this somewhere else, but just compare the original [xenoveritas.org] (note: mirrored on my site) with a scanned copy [xenoveritas.org] I made. The copy is simply a retyped version of the memo [xenoveritas.org] that I printed to a laser printer and then scanned using a sheet-feeding scanner - similar to a fax machine.
They look like they're identical, including the 187th part. The only thing my copy's missing is the dust and dirt on the paper.
An analysis (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not saying this is the only possible explanation, but this is what I thought of when I looked at the Bush documents in PDF format [washingtonpost.com] that can be seen on the Washington Post web site. The documents brought back strong memories of working with those machines.
Typeface and font used in the letters. -- Much is being made of the proportional font used in the letters. People are saying the proportional spacing is an indication of forgery, because the letters look like Microsoft Word documents.
However, I've often had the experience of walking into a military office and being shocked by the office equipment there. There are numerous ways that people in the military get things that they don't really need. For example, a general may requisition something and then discover that his secretary doesn't want to learn how to use it. So, then it is available to an office of lower rank.
The fonts are consistent with those sold with a kind of upscale IBM Selectric typewriter that was actually a low-cost typesetting machine. (Typesetting was what it was called before everyone could do it on a personal computer.) These machines had a one-use carbon ribbon. The impression of each character was clearer than the clearest laser printer.
I'm a bit confused about the model numbers of the typewriter. It could have been called a Selectric costing then about $2,500, I believe. I seem to remember that they had another name for the more upscale, true typesetting machines. (I wrote computer manuals which I typed on a Selectric and were prepared on those machines.)
There were usually some odd symbols and characters like "th" on the type balls used by the Selectric family of typesetting machines. That's because of the design of the balls. Whereever there was room, there were characters, partly to assure that the balls would be balanced, I suppose, and partly just because there was room.
There's a funny side to the self-consistency in my guess about the machine used to prepare the memos. Back then anyone writing and publishing computer user manuals really struggled with the publishing. Whenever something needed to look professional, we had it typeset. To do that, we did what is called "spec type". On one occasion I spent 11 hours specifying typesetting values for one particularly complicated page.
After you have spent many, many hours worrying about the look of type, you begin to be extremely sensitive to everything about it. (Either that, or you wouldn't be successful.)
Looking at the letters discussing preferential treatment for George W. Bush brings back strong memories. The Selectric was an unbelievably complicated machine that needed frequent service because it depended on everything being adjusted to extremely fine tolerances.
Anyone familiar with this can see something funny about the letters immediately. It's obvious to me. Whoever had the typing machine did not have the maintenance contract. It's easy to know this because the letters are not all level with the baseline. That's what would happen when the Selectric or other typing machine from the same family was not adjusted.
The funny self-consistency is this. It's easy to guess that they got the machine from the general's office after some civilian secretary there decided that the new machine was too complicated to learn. But, since an office of lower rank was not allowed to have such a machine, they did not have the maintenance contract. That could be why the baseline of the type is so messy.
Someone said that the letters were forgeries because they were obviously done with Microsoft Word. It is impossible to simulate the variation of baseline with Microsoft Word; Word is too basic a tool, it is not able to do many of the functions of real typesetting. People who are sensitive to the beauty of type certainly don't use MS Word.
I use Ventura Publisher. It is possible t
Re:But why from the WHouse? (Score:5, Informative)
The IBM Executive had proportional fonts in 1942, it was the workhorse typewriter for much of business for that exact reason. A Lt Colonel is exactly the type of person who would want correspondence to be written in an impressive typeface. The clerk would use the same machine to write all memos regardless of importance.
There were many variations of the typefaces. A business would be very likely to want special characters such as $ and yen, pounds etc. A law firm would have different requirements and so on.
Since these were mechanical machines it was quite easy to change individual striking levers to add special characters of the customers choice. Eva Braun used an earlier IBM typewriter with a special symbol for the SS with the lightning bolt glyphs.
Superscript th was not an unusual requirement. Even if the machine started as stock it was the type of upgrade that happened regularly in the field. The striking pins have to be accessible because every so often a machine will jam.
The arguments about Word documents mean absolutely nothing. The alignment of the two documents does not look all that good to me, the resolution of the images is way less than the difference I would expect.
When self proclaimed 'experts' start making categorical claims such as proportional spacing typewriters did not exist at the time and those claims are proved false it is time to discount their expertise.
Re:Try this (Score:3, Informative)
It was EXTREMELY uncommon. The superscript "th" type ball was only available from IBM by a custom order. It was machined to order and sold for an outlandish price.
And the typewriter it fit into could not do proportional letterspacing.
having a proportional printing typewriter was not uncommon either
It was very uncommon; you mean to say that it was not unheard-of. But the typewriters that could do proportional letterspacing did not have removable type balls and therefore could neither have typed the superscript "th" character nor have produced a memo in Times New Roman.
Setting aside the fact that no typewriter on Earth could have produced a memo written in Microsoft Times New Roman.
I would not expect a fancy typewriter in the typing pool, but in a senior officer's private office, hell yes.
A $20,000 desktop typesetter like the IBM Composer? Not a chance. Aside from the fact that these devices required special training, they took much longer to use because everything had to be typed twice. They were used for camera-ready copy for reproduction, not for memos.
The signature looks exactly like what you get when you do that.
Except it doesn't look like any of the other memos that we have that were signed by Lt. Col. Killian in 1972 or 1973.
It is an established fact that Bush did not show up for his medical, nobody disputes this.
That's not the point of these memos. The point is the memo titled "CYA," the one that purports to provide evidence for Ben Barnes' as-yet-unsupported story of influence peddling in the TANG.
Ordering Bush to take the medical is exactly what you would expect his commanding officer to do.
Yes, you would order a junior officer to attend to his medical, but you would do it with an order, you know, a letter, not with an interoffice memo. And you would do it in the month that the junior officer's medical was scheduled (his birth month, in other words), not two months earlier.
Re:But why from the WHouse? (Score:3, Informative)
I can only find one other case in which Dr Philip Bouffard has provided advice concerning a typewriter font on the net. It involves wierd UFO shit [ufoevidence.org] and Bouffard appears to be supporting the claims made by the UFO believers.
Bouffard is mentioned in a number of places in connection with a classification scheme for 4,500 typewriter typefaces. This is not actually a very large number and the system does not appear to be widely used or for that matter used outside Australia. The databases used by the FBI and most international law enforcement agencies list over 80,000 typewriter faces.
The biggest reason to doubt the bouffard claims is that the gif image that has been posted is of such a miserable resolution that it is impossible to see what is going on at all. If the claims had any weight then a better image would be provided.
I do not even agree that the font is definitely Times Roman and it is certainly impossible to make any statement about Kerning given the original resolution on the CBS site. The WH copies are even worse having been faxed in between.
Other damning evidence (Score:4, Informative)
However, there is plenty of other evidence [glcq.com], based on the documents that the White House released earlier [glcq.com], that show that Bush did not complete his service legally, and even that the Air Force pointed this out to his ANG unit.
Now, I know tons of people here are saying "So what, this happened 30 years ago", and that it doesn't matter anymore. However, lying about it over and over and over again, _does_ matter.
And, as for this kind of trivial issue is distracting us from the bigger issues, you'd be right if this wasn't part of a larger pattern of contemptuous lying from Bush to the public. Basically, the guy lies about anything so that he can just do whatever the fuck he wanted to in the first place:
1) Didn't want to go to ANG duty, but still want to be elected? Lie about your service.
2) Want to secure Iraq's oil supply, but populace won't support outright imperialism? Lie about your reasons (and scare the crap out of them).
3) Want to get credit for cracking down on terrorists, but didn't do squat to actually prevent September 11th? Lie about what info you had earlier in 2001.
Bush is a pathological liar, and a danger to this country. He will say whatever needs to be said to push through his agenda. And, that makes it important to stop him, and makes this issue non-trivial.
Re:The actual documents seem to be slashdotted (Score:2, Informative)
That would be the cretin you want to get elected to the Whitehouse.
Several people are claiming that they used Selectric golfballs with proportional pitch. Wether or not they are correct is another matter, but I certainly don't see how you claim to know the exact capabilities of every typewriter owned by the US military.
IBM sold selectric golfballs with the th superscript at the time. There is no reason why they could not have offered their IBM Executive series machines with a similar option. In fact it would be even easier since instead of having to machine a custom golfball for an entire font all they would need to do is to substitute a single strikebar.
And no, the typeface is not MICROSOFT anything, Microsoft has never designed a typeface ever. The Microsoft fonts are from Monospace corp.
The 'expert' you refer to is not regarded as such outside the US republican party. There is only one google hit for Bouffard and typewriter that relates to a forensic case and that is a crank case involving UFOs. If he was the ultimate expert in the field you would expect rather more comment on his work.
Washington Post and ABC News (Score:4, Informative)
and ABC News [go.com] now have stories about it.
From the ABC News article:
CBS seriously screwed up on this one.
Re:The Hand of Karl (Score:1, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/~Futurepower(R) [slashdot.org]
For someone who didn't start posting until the 6th of September of this year, all of your posts are very anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and anti-government (blame the Republicans).
You are nothing more than a troll.
Re:An analysis (Score:5, Informative)
That's kind of an oversimplification. Okay, it's not really an oversimplification as much as it is out-and-out wrong. "They" have been saying since early Thursday morning that superscript type balls for the IBM Selectric were available, but only by custom order to IBM and at great cost. "They've" also been saying that the only typewriter that could produce the superscript "th" seen in the CBS memos could not have produced proportional letter-spacing.
I think it will be helpful for everyone to be very clear on exactly what is claimed to be anachronistic
The list is not a short one. Basically everything about these documents is wrong. The format is not correct. The typography is impossible with 1970's-era equipment. The signatures on the two signed memos do not match the signing officer's actual signature. One memo refers to an Air Force manual, AFM 35-13, that never existed; there was a regulation AFR 35-13, but it dealt with supplemental pay for soldiers who were proficient in a foreign language. And, of course, the contents of these memos is suspect because it doesn't jibe with any other account.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
I think the jury's still out on this.
Oh, technically it is. But we're not convicting a man of murder here. There's no reason to err on the side of caution -- either way. Do these documents appear to be forgeries? Yes, definitely. Is there anything about them that suggests they're not forgeries? Nope. Ergo
It is possible that some obscure custom typebar for the IBM Executive was in use
It is not possible, actually, according to representatives of IBM's media relations office. They have the records, and they say that no such custom-made Executives were ever produced.
Right now it looks to me like CBS screwed up bigtime.
Yes, either by passing off obviously forged documents