If these documents were indeed forgeries, as they now seem, the fraud CBS anchorman Rather perpetrated, willingly or unwillingly, on the American public is far worse than anything the former New York Times editor did during the Jayson Blair affair. Rather’s misrepresentation was intended to influence what many consider one of the most crucial presidential elections in our history, taking place during a time of war, when our troops are dying in Iraq and terrorists are murdering innocent people across the globe on a nearly daily basis.
Currently Drudge is reporting: Rather, who anchored the segment presenting new information on the president’s military service, will personally correct the record on-air, if need be, the source explained from New York.
What a pathetic response. Even with a correction, can you imagine ever trusting a word out of Rather’s mouth again? Can you imagine respecting CBS, “Sixty Minutes”?
Not me. If Rather does not resign, those institutions will wither with their anchorman.
And The New York Times, too, is once again in the cross hairs. They are the owners of The Boston Globe which, in its partisan zeal, trumpeted Rather’s lie without the slightest pause to reflect. And it wasn’t the first time either. The paper has scarcely distinguished itself during the Kerry-Swift Boat controversty. And we all know its shoddy record regarding the publication of pornographic prsioner abuse photos which turned out to be fakes. Its editor should have resigned then. If he doesn’t now, the whole affair will not only tarnish the Globe’s reputation, but its already tarnished owner as well – The New York Times.
UPDATE: Ratherbiased (now there’s a site feeling vindicated today!) keeps us current on what’s happening… but meanwhile… importantly… American Spectator (whose service is now “unavailable”) has a detailed article on how this trumped-up story got on the air. You can find it here. (hat tip: M. Simon)
Absolutely correct. The influence of the media is critical in our society, and abusing that privilege (and it is a privilege) is tantamount to treason. Rather must resign, and in disgrace!
Dan Rather must resign.
Rather will burn his source beyond recognition and then follow another new and unexplored story: Bush’s alleged cocaine use. I’m sure the fine folks at CBS have Spanish translators working as we type to determine if the bills of sale, with Bogota addresses, signed personally by Pablo Escobar, and found in a dumpster near Camp David back in ’91, are authentic. Heck, Sydney Blumenthal said they were, and someone talked personally with old Danny Boy over the phone and had a really thick Spanish accent to boot. Who needs document examiners when they have ol’ Ma Bell to do the work for them?
Rather will resign in disgust with the American public after it fails to heed his warnings in November. You can take that check to the bank and cash it.
I have not trusted a damn thing Rather has said since the 2000 elections. That is esp. easy to do since I have not listened to a word he has said since 2000.
He is a joke.
Dan Rather must resign.
Dan Rather must resign.
Dan Rather must resign.
i don’t see Rather resigning. he’ll probably admit that that the documents were a fraudulent and appologize for any inconvenience that the report might have cause.
the appology with probably come at the end of a news broadcast, loaded to the gills with pro-Kerry spin and anti-Bush drivel.
“so what if the documents were forged?” says MSM. “it’s the seriousness of the charge that matters!”
meanwhile, the alligations made by the SwiftVets were ignored for weeks on end. and when they were finally recognized by the old media, they went all-balls out to connect the Swifties with the Bush campaign and characterize Kerry as the aggrieved party. (Kerry was a vietnam vet, y’know)
accuracy and integrity don’t matter a hill of beans to today’s democratic party or their supporters in the media and elsewhere: what matters to them is taking back the White House, consequences be damned.
And the apology will be how long…10 seconds, 30 seconds? Hidden at the end of a broadcast? After billboarding an entire show on the lie, CBS finds a seconds long buried apology equivalent to a lengthy vile smear? Having worked with this 60 minutes crew before, including the vile George Crile, I must conclude that this isn’t the least bit surprising to me.
After Don Hewitt’s and Mike Wallace’s fundraisers for Clinton on Martha’s Vineyard during his final election, attended by Cronkite, what should we expect? An expose is in order for ‘all of CBS as well as ratherbiased,’ who clearly outed himself on-air during the Clinton election win when he declared: “We won!”
Hmm….swiftboaters ignored, but a solitary and compromised anti-Bushie gets a whole show.
Somehow, media critic Kurtz–and even Kaus–gave Dan a pass on that one while defending the networks ignoring the swifies. Thank the lord for the blogosphere, Roger, Volokh and Insta, LGF and Powerline, among others.
Time to retire Dan…course, that leaves us with John Roberts (google his latest incredible and unsubstantiated attack yesterday on Bush for a preview of what Republicans can expect the next CBS anchor regime.)
(BTW, I just defended Bush in Afghanistan on CBS radio, broadcast from Kerryland tonight…to little effect, I fear.)
Slightly off topic, hey…what’s with the A prime in my moniker? What’s with this signin company? Can’t seem to remember my name?
But we’re not _really_ in a war, you see, so it doesn’t matter. We have to dump Bush so this war talk will end, doncha know.
Instead of reporting on Beslan, or the latest Zawahiri video, Rather decided it’s more important to spread fabricated stories about 30 years ago.
Bias, incompetence, rigidity, wishful thinking, arrogance, treachery.
Off with his head!
I want my cake NOW! The sweet crumbs of schadenfreude!
Am afraid that Dan Rather would have to be hanged upside down from the fifth story window before he would offer meaningful apology.
However, in case of such happy event here is a template for a good apology:
“All right, all right, I apologize. I’m really, really sorry. I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact and was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.” – John Cleese as Archie Leach, hanging upside down from the 5th story window, in ìFish Called Wandaî.
JohnA,
welcome back. Weren’t you the one going to Afghanistan? How did it go?
And here’s John Podhoretz in the NY Post,
link.
Katherine
LOL! Perfect!
Earlier this year Walter Cronkite, who could lie and get away with it before the internet, say TET, Walter, folded his newspaper column with a screed against the new media, internet, blogs, etc. Hewit, 60 Minutes long time producer, recently rode off into the sunset.
That left Ratherbiased as the 800 lb gorilla at CBS. If Bush had it in for Saddam after GW1, Ratherbiased certainly has it for the Bushes. Bush 41 made him look like a sap. Ratherbiased decided to help McAwful meet his pledge of making Bush’s TANG service a cornerstone of the Kerry campaign.
I don’t know how long this hit has been planned but CBS/Viacom has been conducting a Long March campaign against Bush. Just this year, Viacom owned entities have published books critical of Bush by Secretary O’Neill, Joe Wilson, and Richard Clark. Interestingly enough, those earlier efforts have been shown to be a tissue of lies. Viacom also tried to get the Reagan biopic staring Streisand’s boy toy aired in prime time but had to back off that one.
Based on what I’ve seen, this was a conscious, planned smear. Ratherbiased had full knowledge of it and helped plan and direct it. The goal was to influence the election. This is Manchurian Candidate stuff, or, in Kerry’s case, Cambodian Candidate.
Meanwhile, the credible charges made by the Swift Boat Vets are ignored or characterized as unprincipled lies. I suspect that’s why Ratherbiased felt secure in spreading his own lies, ‘they’re lying, so I’ll do the same.’ Who’s going to challenge me? Turns out it is the pests that Cronkite abhors, you know, the little people with a keyboard and a modem.
Since several of the Swift Boat Vets charges have been proven true, I’m surprised some enterprising reporter hasn’t started to dig more deeply into this. I recognize that nuanced journalists sporting Kneepads for Kerry couldn’t be bothered, but there must be at least one REPORTER amongst all those J’School grads out there. I’m waiting.
Yes, Ratherbised should do the right thing and resign. He won’t until advertiser pockets start shrinking. If he does resign, look for him to be a regular feature at Charlie Rose’s chestnut table with Howell Raines and Sumner Redstone as this group of old Lefties gather to toast each other with clove flavored Victory Gin and express their love of the Internet.
If the memos are ultimately proven forgeries…
Dan Rather’s resignation may bring some cosmic justice to the whole thing, but I’d rather he stuck around to answer some questions before sinking into his retirement spider hole.
1. How did CBS come to know about the memos?
2. From what source did CBS obtain the memos?
3. Did CBS pay for the memos?
4. What were CBS’ precise procedures for verifying the memos authenticity?
5. Who did CBS call in as an “expert” to verify the memos? How did they find these experts? Did anyone in particular recommed them?
6. Was there any internal debate at CBS about the memos authenticity? If there was, how did that debate proceed? If there wasn’t, why did the whole organization accept them so credulously?
7. Who specifically at CBS signed off on accepting the memos as significant?
8. Why did “60 Minutes” decide to dedicate so much air time to the allegations about President Bush’s National Guard service while refusing to investigate the claims of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?
9. With the nearly instantaneous de-bunking of the memos on the Internet, when did CBS itself start doubting their authenticity?
10. How has CBS re-investigated the memos since the allegations have come forth?
CBS News and “60 Minutes,” despite occasional lapses (remember “unintended acceleration” and the Audi 5000?) are not irredeemable institutions. At least that’s my assumption… but the only way to know for sure is for the organization to open itself to outside scrutiny and explain the run-up to, airing, and aftermath of, this despicable event in a forthright manner. They need to feature the same transparency we should expect of (and rarely get from) our government.
Sure they’ll apologize – but they’ll never show any contrition. It’s just like how the NY Times constantly misstates the content of UNSC Resolutions 181 and 242. In one year they misstated the content of 242 no less than 12 times, always to the benefit of the terrorists/Palestinians and to the detriment of Israel. And yes, they dutifully printed corrections when called upon to so, buried in the back where nobody read them. How did they keep making the same mistake? Simple really, the “reporter” just wrote what she “knew”. She (it was uually a she) just wrote what she thought the resolution said, or what she thought it should say, or what Noam Chomsky told her it said… who knows really.
“Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict; ”
NOT “the territories”
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/un/un242.htm
I haven’t mainlined this much schadenfreude since Robert Fisk was beaten by a Pakistani Mob.
I was talking a bit with Joe about this. He worked for years in information security for the Defense Dept. I was mentioning the technical aspects of the documents: fonts, spacing, superscripts. etc., and he said he himself didn’t deal specifically with those technical things.
But when there was some disinformation running around, or a leak, his expertise was in discovering the general source through wording and such. Like one abbreviation being used instead of another for a weapons system could pinpoint a specific area within the defense establishment as a source.
The same with documents that did not originate from us. He said being a spycatcher was mainly boring desk work like that. Hunting down and matching formatting, word patterns, vocabulary, style, etc., from various sources. I don’t think he ever wore a trenchcoat in his work, let alone a hat like Roger’s.
Along these lines, there’s a letter from a reader posted at Powerline familiar with the protocols of writing such things in the ’70′s which demonstrates the formatting errors in the forged documents such as:
It would be interesting if someone could figure out when/if the person who faked these documents worked in the military. Is the formatting of the fake documents consistent with a certain service at a certain period of time? Or possibly a mishmash of different formats/styles such that it is apparent that the perpetrator was guessing and only had seen official documents of others over the years without ever having authored or signed any himself.
Roger,
I don’t get cable out here in rural Arkansas. I offer this broadcast update as of 0230 cdt: CBS overnight feed is still trumpeting the Bush Awol story; while ABC’s overnight feed is debunking it.
This leads me to conclude that either: CBS’s news is a dinosaur slow to react, or they’re trying to spread the lie as widely as possible before they’re called on it.
Neither is flattering. But then I knew that already.
MSM is a pathetic bloodsucker surounded by a million stakewielding bloggers.
Craig
The absolute baseness of CBS and Rather to air such things, letalone the other stuff listed above, and the obvious attempts at discrediting a man who is our Commander in Chief and leader of the free world..in a time of war no less, as Roger says..is almost too appalling to sink in totally…yet.
I’m getting there, especially when I think of all the news stories generated around the globe after the CBS piece was aired. The personal attack on Bush will be believed. How many of the outlets will also run a piece saying ‘Oops, it was lie’?
The lie will play in the Middle East like F911 and Hezbollah will preen and point and laugh.
But I’m not quite to the point of abject outrage yet…though I’m only a hair away. And that’s because I’m still laughing my ass off.
Small apartment, and I’ve already awakened Joe twice with my hysterical giggling.
I want to be allowed to laugh before total anger replaces the guffaws.
Bush fans deserve their share of laughter. We’ve fought long and hard for the chance.
It’s such a relief after fighting all the crap the past two years.
I want to laugh every time Begala opens his mouth, or Kerry, or Edwards, or Estritch, or any ABB person who dares speak to me.
The Dems and their supporters have crossed a line and were caught. (Though in truth they crossed that line long ago.) They may stick their fingers in their ears and not listen. Well I’ll go one better. I’ll laugh at them. Every word they utter will get either a chuckle or a guffaw or outright hysterical laughter from now on.
Halliburton? Ha Ha!
Blood for Oil? chuckle
Wrong war wrong place wrong time? Heh heh heh
Where’s Osama? LOL!
AWOL? ROTF!!!
Go Read NewsMAX Article titled Ben Barnes Daughter: My Dad Lied About Bush
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/9/9/202100.shtml
I am not sure if the women REALLY was Amy Barnes but it would pretty much SINK the Kerry SWIFT BOAT!
This lady right here has instructions on how you can directly petition CBS for Rather’s resignation:
http://annika.mu.nu/archives/045191.html
Short, easy instructions.
Oh, by the way, not to toot my own horn, but as I note right here:
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1094806220.shtml
The Boston Globe is running the story of how the new documents about Bush’s record cast new questions on his service and how the Democrats are going after him over it.
Not one single word about forgeries.
We’ll see how long it takes them to correct it, but, you’re obviously right, Roger.
Oh, I posted my note… just in the wrong thread.
I can’t wait until we hear from Al Gore again. Do you think he’ll still be whining about “digital brownshirts”?
I have not trusted a damn thing Rather has said since the 2000 elections.
I haven’t trusted a thing Rather has said since the early 90s.
1. Do you think that if just TWO real Republicans had been in the CBS news (?) department that this fakery would have seen the light of day?
2. The real story is WHO leaked this stuff? The Democrat high command? Some flunky in the Pentagon? A Republican operative bound and determined to make CBS look bad?
Only extreme Left people think CBS news is remotely reliable any more. We all know it’s part of the DNC propaganda machine.
As someone who worked as a typist and typesetter during the era in question, I have to say the documents (they are posted on the CBSNews website)look, to me, like they were created by a Selectric II typewriter. The Selectric was introduced (by IBM) in 1961, the Selectric II just a couple of years later. By the early 70s this was the first typewriter of choice in most offices.
The Selectric featured a removable typeball instead of a typebar that vastly improved the appearance of the type on the page — making it look much closer to set type than had ever been possible before with typewriter technology. In fact, the type appearance was so good that people began using these typewriters for what we would now call “desktop publishing” tasks. In 1970 I worked for one of the largest direct marketing houses in the nation — producing, for a variety of clients, flyers, brochures and mailers using nothing more than a Selectric II for body type and a strip printer for headline type.
The Selectric II offered the ability to change type SIZE within a document, and, of course, the ability to use sub and super script. (Also specialized mathmatic and scientific symbols).
This is an opportunity so golden, it may have been sent from God. A grand jury should be conviened to determine who will be tried and for what. This must be kept in the public eye till November. ATTENTION, G.W.Bush. You are tough on your enemies outside the borders, now be equally tough on those inside. This is the wish of the American voters who support you. Take action, damn it !
While CBS and Rather fight their rear guard action, Associated Press just keeps on keepin’ on……..
The bias from this ” news wire service ” has become patholgical. Here’s this morning’s AP lead story on the matter, courtesy of Matt Kelley:
Unbelievable. The Watergate-style dirty politics of employing forgeries as a means of smearing an opponent takes a back seat to the sleazy implication that Bush may have been a lousy pilot! What fanaticism on the part of AP! It reminds me of the Monty Python scene from the Holy Grail movie, where the knight, having lost both arms and legs in combat, still remains determined to keep fighting any possible way he can. That’s the AP. Despite having their arms and legs cut off in the bid to get Kerry elected, they fight back with whatever is at hand, even if it is ” Bush was a lousy pilot.”
Also note the other tactic to lessen the impact from the forgeries. Kelley cites one document expert as having examined the documents and determined them to be forged, deliberately omitting that numerous other experts have reached the same conclusion.
esmense:
Did you really? So many other experts disagree with you. However, I am not going to get into details that I have only read about and would merely be parroting back to you.
However, I am old enough to have a experience using a Selectric and Selectric II typewriters. I also have experience in writing both military and civilian evals. I also am an engineer who has written papers in graduate school using multiple balls. From this experience I can assure you that no Lt Col writing a fitrep or other official communication would spend the time to change balls for a couple of letters and other special typographical effects in a simple letter to a subordinate. Yes, they do this now because it is so easy using MS Word or Word Perfect. Nor would anyone in that era spend time to make a perfect copy free from errors of any document. As you well know, even the best functioning self-correction key leaves distinguishing marks on the paper. Unless Lt Col Killian was a perfect typist, there would be evidence of corrections. The bottom line is the “operational” factors support the notion that this is a forgery not an authentic document. And by the way, the quote marks on the Selectric were straight up and down not ì ë ì as in the text.
esmense says…
Well, only if you replaced the typehead ball (or whatever the devil you call the ball with the characters upon it). I would be really surprised if a clerk-typist would go through that amount of work for a standard memorandum.
While I wasn’t in the Alabama Air National Guard in the early ’70s, I don’t think they would have made upgrading their typewriters to the most modern available would have been in the budget. I know that the Active Army had Selectrics all over the place in the early ’80s, but I don’t know when the first ones showed up.
Gee Roger,
Maybe you’re being too tough. The NYT has an editorial up that still draws attention to the “memos”. It does mention that their authenticity has been challenged but only gives it a line.
Surely the august Times wouldn’t stoop to maliciously spreading a known flase hood. Why, that would put what remains of their integrity in question.
It’s not just Rather that needs to go.
BTW – Kaus isn’t covering himself with glory either. He can steal a headline from one of Dennis’ comments here but can’t quite bring himself to mention the forgery. I hope his DNC check continues to clear.
esmense, was the Selectric capable of ligatures? Did it have a superscript “th”? Did it do kerning?
Why do so many expert document examiners think they’re fake?
Why does a Word document with the default settings precisely match the “memo”?
Why do the CBS “memos” look so different from the other memos and letters from the same officer around the same time? Why is the tone so different?
Why won’t CBS name the source for the docs? Or the examiner they consulted?
Mike
If he was such a lousy pilot, why wasn’t he grounded immediately instead of letting him continue to fly? This kind of logic is really hard to follow.
Surely the august Times wouldn’t stoop to maliciously spreading a known flase hood.
Never fear, the Truth wil;l be served. Two weeks from now the NYT will have a 3500 word article, complete with a handy-dandy chart, connecting the programmers of Microsoft Word to the Bush campaign.
Lola:
Hope my post didn’t sound like I was conceding Bush was a lousy pilot. There seems to be plenty of documentation to the contrary. Even if true, it’s completely irrelevent. To everything!
My point was the fact that AP chose to make this the lead theme of its article, rather than the devastating (devastating to Kerry, AP, and all the rest of the pro-Kerry media) news that the documents are likely forgeries.
Robert Crawford –
Yes, the Selectric could produce the supercript “th.” As for kerning, an examination of the type in those documents shows they are not kerned but rather “proportional” a feature of the best electric typewriters of the era.
Jerry –
It is not very likely that, in that era, Killian would have typed those memos himself. Few men in that era even bothered to learn how to type. He probably dictated his thoughts on a dicta-belt or dicta-phone, or, perhaps even more likely, just jotted down some rough thoughts for the typist to put in presentable form.
Would a typist take the time to change the type ball to use a super-script? Why not. Most offices had several different typeballs for use with their Selectrics.
Interesting… yesterday I was over at selectric.org looking at the type samples. Today I see this message from the site owner:
esmemse:
Try again. The nature of the letters (personal memos for the record), which by the way are the wrong format, would dictate that the CO would type them himself. Any officer at the squadron level would do a lot typing himself. And no, even if an admin was typing them he would not bother to change balls to make a fancy subscript. Putting TH as th superscript was not requried by the correspondance manual and nobody is going to get fancy with routine correspondenc. Nice theory and it is better then some I have heard [like MS word is based on selectric type fonts] but it doesn’t wash.
esmense, let’s see proof that there was a type ball with the ‘th’ superscript. Also, proof of the curly apostrophes being on the type ball. Lastly, please address the kerned text issue.
Syl:
I know what you mean. The Democrats are like a bad dream.
I think of Kerry windsurfing and shaking his skinny keester and I just howl, snicker and snort.
The insanity of the Bush haters is very telling. So now we are to believe that Bush is a lousy pilot. All the memos that said he was great are suddenly garbage and we are to believe this miracle of a memo that says he sucks. Why?
All the PhDs that have come along and said this memo is not right are full of crap and we are to believe the likes of esmense who says otherwise. Why?
Why should I believe Dan Rather? Who the hell is he to me? When Killion’s pissed off widow says that her husband thought Bush was a good pilot why shouldn’t I believe her instead of Dan Rather who as far as I know never even met the man?
These people just assume I have to listen to them. That it even matters to me what Bush did in Alabama 35 years ago.
But when it is their guy that is questioned, oh my it is altogether different.
I won’t have it, Kerry said. He will not have it. The peasants will not question him.
Now let’s get back to the question of whether or not Republicans eat their young.
I’ll go out on a limb here, but I believe the F-102 was notoriously touchy on landing (brutal high stall speed requiring a power-on landing) and that successful pilots were measured by body tempature vice the number of single-pass landings.
The line that jumped out of the memoes to me was “critical slot”. F-102′s a “critical slot” in 1972? Please.
Dan Rather will resign only when his viewership has declined. He’s not a journalist, he’s a figurehead, an avuncular news-reading entertainer.
Here’s the copy of my comment to CBS, as suggested by Annika via Dean:
It is with great interest that I have been following the CBS News coverage of the Killian memos.
Sadly for your news organization, it’s looking more and more like these documents are forgeries–and not very good ones, at that. I would be very interested to know where the documents came from and what was done to authenticate them.
Your organization is losing an enormous amount of credibility on a minute-by-minute basis, as Mr. Rather is obviously very biased against President Bush and his family, and he comes across as petty and vindictive, looking for any mud to fling, regardless of its origin or authenticity.
Mr. Rather has betrayed his biases again and again, and were he to re-read the journalists’ creed, he probably wouldn’t understand its vital importance any longer:
“I believe in the profession of journalism. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that acceptance of a lesser service than public service is a betrayal of that trust.
“I believe that the journalism which succeeds the best–and best deserves success–fears God and honors man; is stoutly independent; unmoved by pride of opinion or greed of power; constructive, tolerant but never careless, self-controlled, patient, always respectful of its readers but always unafraid, is quickly indignant at injustice; is unswayed by the appeal of the privilege or the clamor of the mob; seeks to give every man a chance, and as far as law, an honest wage and recognition of human brotherhood can make it so, an equal chance; is profoundly patriotic while sincerely promoting international good will and cementing world-comradeship, is a journalism of humanity, of and for today’s world.”
It is certain that much of the mainstream media is miles away from this dictate, and Mr. Rather is leading the pack.
Because of this, I cannot see any reason for Mr. Rather to remain employed as anchorman of the CBS Evening News, or indeed in any news-making or reporting capacity at all.
Therefore, I respectfully request that you require Mr. Rather’s resignation from your organization immediately, or failing that, that you fire his biased ass and throw him bodily out of the building.
Thank you.
Rather will wade through this river of crap without getting much on him. He’ll offer a quick apology and then immediately move on to something else. Meanwhile, the story is out there and I doubt the apologies or admissions of fraud will spread very far. The story will just disappear, leaving the desired visions in as many heads as possible.
The few people out there who still feel CBS and Rather are impartial (and as Lileks said, they number in the high dozens) won’t be fazed either.
The efforts and speed of the blogosphere has just been mind-boggling throughout this story. We’re in a new age…
Esmense–
You are reaching. There are serial flaws with the memos, many of which have nothing to do with the typeface. The letters are kerned (snuggled next to one another) for one thing, which is physically impossible for a typewriter to do. (A typewriter can’t “know” which letter is next to the one it is imprinting.) Moreover, the abbreviations are wrong in some cases, military format is not followed and there is no SSCI code. Go to Powerline and read all the posts there, then try to rebut them.
By the way, Esmense, aren’t you the one with the alleged “paratrooper” relatives? Nice try, faker. We have long memories here and we don’t appreciate Moby tactics. Run along, girl.
Roger:
Dateline,CBS News- After consulting their handwriting experts, Dan Rather is reporting that they have documents proving that Karl Rove was the source of the phoney Bush National Guard docs. The crayon that the new documents were written with were compared with Rove’s Kindegarden crayon style and were found to be a perfect match.We report, you decide.
Esmense:
Even if one were to ignore all the font/kerning/superscript/spacing arguments (which I am not prepared to do) this thing does not read like a military memo. The language is to informal, the abbreviations are wrong, there aren’t enough capital letters. Due to inertia in the military mindset memos produced today, on computers, often look “clunkier” than these.
esmense:
1) Men in the military surely did type, if they were assigned to office duty. My dad was in the army reserves about that time, and whenever I asked him what he did, he always answered that he did the same thing for the army as mom did at her office — type.
2) The proportional-spacing typewriters didn’t do proportional spacing the way modern word processors do — they only had 2-5 different widths to work with, while modern fonts use thousands. The odds of such a crude proportional type system matching a modern word processor with such a very accurate modern spacing system is very very remote, …
3) Which leads me to kerning. I’m afraid we’re going to have to disagree on the kerning — I helped write a commercial postscript interpreter in the late 80′s (for the Printware 1200DPI platemakers), and spent many months poring over text with a magnifying glass making sure the Bitstream fonts were implemented correctly (including Times New Roman, which is owned by Bitstream), and the document certainly looks kerned to me. This may be an artifact of the digitization process, but I don’t think so, since the MS Word mockups *are* kerned and the two wouldn’t match up so closely unless the CBS version was kerned as well. Access to the originals would be nice.
For anyone who paying attention to what Dan Rather has been saying for the past 10 years, I just have five words:
What is the frequency, Kenneth?
Michael P.–
Don’t take Esmense too seriously, she is a DU-er in drag. She doesn’t know anything about typewriters or the military, even less about logic.
So we agree that the documents are forgeries, at least 100% of the people with a brain agree.
So, who do you suppost created those forgeries ?
Dan Rather ? Members of the 60 Minutes crew ?
Ben Barnes ? Members of the DNC under the direction of Terry McAuliff ?
Bonus question: How many years in prison do we give McAuliff ? Remember, the penalty must make YOU feel good.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
If CBS is going to accuse Pres. Bush of not meeting his guard service obligations using these memos it is their responsibility to make their case – they need to prove that the memos are real NOT that the memos cannot be shown to be forgeries with 100% certainty. The memos they received are not originals so some of the very easy ways to document that they originate from a typewriter are not available. So they must go to typewiter/print experts. Supposedly they did but they are not naming sources. Esmene can you name ONE expert who is on the record defending these documents as real? Now none of the many experts quoted from a number of MSM sources can say 100% that these are fake. And you provide a possible explanation of how they might be real (although it appears not to explain away some of the inconsistencies pointed out by other posters and writing experts quoted). But you are really really stretching credulity. And given the maxim I started the post with, it is clear that this story should never have run.
“Rather, who anchored the segment presenting new information on the president’s military service, will personally correct the record on-air, if need be, the source explained from New York.”
If need be? Can anybody think of a situation in which it needn’t be?
Fresh Air:
LOL. And brings back memories of my favorite band of all time – Game Theory – who originated the phrase.
Roger links to RatherBiased. I like his version:
What’s the font size, Kenneth?
Mike, I know you didn’t write the original. I just used your name as an anchor with which to reference the source who passed along that quote.
Reading the American Spectator account, and
the suggestion that Karl Rove is to blame for this media mess, early LeCarre’ and the byzantine schemes of his George Smiley come to mind. But, of course, for those who remember Alec Guiness playing Smiley, there is a certain bland facial resemblance to Rove.
O, forget it, let’s not go there !
wxjames:
Well it was Terry Mc that said months ago he could not wait for his war hero candidate to debate the deserter.
Kinda makes you wonder.
The question is are the Dems that stupid and the answer is: HELL YES.
Sorry Roger, sometimes caps are needed.
wxjames, here’s my prediction:
Someone at the DNC got the documents, by fax, “over the transom” from something like a Kinko’s public fax machine. (I’d bet that they were composed on a public typewrier, maybe in the same Kinkos.)
Some low-level functionary at DNC faxed them to a contact at CBS, probably a late-20′s producer who saw a chance to make a big score, and who already thinks Bush is Satan because you could pity Hitler for his bad childhood.
This same producer was responsible for the “fact checking”.
That producer will be the fall guy.
No one will ever find out who composed the docs originally.
Fresh Air
Sorry to be so ignorant, but I am unaware of what this refers to:
Jamie Irons
Charlie:
Whoever is responsble is probably young and does not remmber what stuff looked like then, but that does not explain Rather’s not noticing these things himself. He is old enough to know better.
What an interesting election this turned out to be!
A few middle-aged veterans do more with a $500,000 media buy than the Democarps could dream to accomplish with $60 million of slick money. Score one for the superiority of the swarming internet communicators.
I would love to see Dan Rather go down in flames for pimpimg phoney documents to sell a petty story that lost its legs many months ago. Fun to see how much and how quickly the other MSM aristocrats toss Rather and CBS under the bus to protect their own dwindling status.
The informal marriage of the blogoshere, talk radio, with a little help from cable TV is changing the way the great unwashed is getting and analyzing “news” and it’s happening so fast that the partisan MSM doesn’t even know whether to fight, flee or change sides. Do we thank Huey Newton for “Power to the People”?
Jamie–
Back in the eighties, Rather went on the air to tell of a bizzare story in which he was beaten up by a strange man in Central Park who repeatedly asked him “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?”
Let’s also not forget for several months (also I think in the eighties) Rather ended his nightly newscasts with the sign-off: “Courage.”
The guy has been one steak knife short of a set for a long time, IMHO.
Esmense ó You say the Selectric II can do something; every technical expert on IBM typewriters I’ve seen quoted on the net says it can’t.
I’ve been a writer and worked in publishing for going on thirty years now; I’ve worked on everything from cast-iron Underwood manuals to Selectrics to a whole range of dedicated word processors, typesetters and computers. I’ve never seen a Selectric II that could do that.
I have, however, seen someone “change font” size on a Selectric. I worked for a man who kept a complete series of font balls for his Selectric and would change fonts and sizes to make it appear as though he was a different person typing. Unfortunately, he was doing this to forge credit references and court documents and went to jail for it, so he might not be your best example.
I was in the army and guard for nine years and by the 1980′s the guard at least still had non-selectric electric typewriters, not word processors. I wrote up plenty of paperwork as an XO myself and can testify to that.
Do you serious suggest that a senior officer with plenty of office-politics experience would write up a CYA memo, label it CYA, and then pass it on to an enlisted man to type up for him?
Please. Peddle it elsewhere.
Someone needs to run the “Protocols of Zion” and the “Donation of Constantine” passed the 60 Minutes crowd and see if they bite.
While I regard this story as a major victory for the blogosphere, the MSM doesnt get it–I have seen little in the MSM that really looks at the issue, or, at best treats it in a cavalier manner. Mara Liasson at NPR this AM failed to mention the controversy over the docs; the NYT devotes a brief sentence–My prediction: The MSM will close ranks, CBS will issue a vague statement which it may publish tonite (a Friday nite is good because of low viewership) and hope to ride out the storm–Sunday talk shows may talk about it a bit, and the MSM will hope and pray the 24 hour news cycle will exhaust itself on this story.
On the bright side, this furor detracts from the campaign and given the internals I have seen, Kerry cannot affort to have that happen.
RogerA:
If the MSM does what you suggest – and I have no reason to doubt it at this point – it will be as effective as their swiftee coverage. Once again they are outflanked.
ABC’s The Note has an interesting timeline–and even mention’s our host’s blog–it also has a very interesting dissection of two conflicting statements released by CBS–
You have to scroll through what looks to me like a bit of a Jeremiad on the state of reporting and the fate of the MSM and democratic party–All in all interesting reading. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote.html
vegetius:
LOL.
They could also run the Big Foot pictures again and mention all the recent sightings of Elvis.
From the Corner on NRO:
THE CBS PAPERS [Jed Babbin]
I spoke to Col. Bill Campenni (USAF ret) earlier this morning. As I’ve written before, Campenni was a member of the President’s squadron and flew with him often. Campenni told me that there are a whole slew of reasons — beyond those being debated now — to question the authenticity of the CBS papers:
1. The 4 May 1972 order and the 1 August 1972 memo both have a letterhead for the wrong organization. Correspondence and orders in those days would be issued in the name of the parent organization — the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group — rather than the squadron. The letterhead is typed. They used printed ANG letterhead;
2. Orders were issued on the standard USAF orders form. (I still have a stack of my old ones. There’s not a “memo” among them). Campenni remembers that orders weren’t issued as “memos” like the 4 May 72 document;
3. The Killian “CYA” memo of August 1973 refers to pressure by Gen. Standt. The problem with this is that Standt retired in 1972. Why would anyone be worried about pressure from him?
4. Jerry Killian, according to Campenni, never went near a typewriter. In the Air Force, in those days, notes — if anyone kept them at all — were handwritten. That raises questions about both the 19 May 72 and the 18 August 73 memos. And, lest we forget, bureaucrats — not fighter jocks — write “cya” memos.
5. Orders — like the purported 4 May 72 order to take the flight physical – wouldn’t normally have been signed by Killian. They would be signed by a senior sergeant “by order of” Killian.
If, as it appears, someone faked these papers they did a bad job of it. I can tell you that in the early to mid-1970′s when I was on active duty, the active service didn’t have anything fancier than the earliest models of the IBM Selectric typewriter, and many offices didn’t even have those. The reserves and national guard had our cast-offs, so it’s terribly unlikely they could have produced anything as fancy as these papers. (Is it just my imagination, or is Dan Rather’s nose growing longer every day?)
It’s increasingly appearing that the most amazing thing about this is not that these memos are forgeries, but that the forger thought he/she could get away with it.
Whoever is responsble is probably young and does not remmber what stuff looked like then, but that does not explain Rather’s not noticing these things himself. He is old enough to know better.
Ergo “fall guy”.
I agree with you completely.
Folks:
The subject line just hit me over the head with a 2×4…No one would write a memoradum for the record with a subject line CYA. It would have read something like Justification for non-observed OER for 1Lt Smuckatelli.
Via Hugh Hewitt this morning, the ABC/Washington Post poll had this interesting internal:
” Young people have led the exodus from Kerry to Bush. Since Aug. 1, Kerry’s support among voters ages 18 to 29 has dropped from 63 percent to 49 percent while Bush’s share of the young vote has increased to 46 percent — a 28-point turnaround in five weeks.”
And as Hewitt says: “This generation of voter is easily the most media savvy of them all, and very attuned to the inauthentic parading before them.† They spit the word “poser” or its newest version with the frequency of bullets from an AC-130H Spectre.† And this group took a look at Kerry and his magic hat and his “seared, seared” fantasies and said no. Bush, on the other hand, is nothing if not authentic.”
http://hughhewitt.com/
______
To the young, the jurassic media (saw that on LGF yesterday and I’m stealing it),†is already a dinosaur. They don’t read newspapers and they sure don’t watch that old fossil Dan Rather on 60 Minutes II, but they’re on line every day. So they never watched the original story, but by now most know all about how bloggers uncovered the forgeries in a matter of hours, and made fools out of the old foggies at CBS. To the extent that they even care, they probably find it funny.
Incredibly, the Kerry campaign still has their front men out there behaving and talking as if the story is still about Bush disobeying an order or whatever, and never mind that documents purportedly proving the allegation have been discredited. The word “clueless” does not do them justice.
I’m beginning to think that these people have collectively lost their minds.
– Bush, on the other hand, is nothing if not authentic.”–
His speech gave them the vision. What we do, what we’re about, who we are.
I always thought 9/11 brought us back to basics. And they were never taught the basics.
But they do understand 9/11.
Why would a letter from “the personal files of” an individual look like a third generation copy? Specifically an _old_ third generation copy.
How many times did he Fax this memo back and forth to himself?
Penwil,
This weeks script was a collaborative effort. The MSM continues to attempt to play its part, just take a look at the AP reports, the NYT editorial page, the tentative remarks concerning the authenticity of the documents on ABC and NBC as well as in the WaPo stories. The story was written up weeks ago in order to draw attention from the 911 anniversary tomorrow. We’re all supposed to be thinking about non-events of 30 years ago rather than about the event that initiated the WoT.
Rather just happens to be the most useful idiot of the moment. Some may call it perfect casting but I really believe that Brokaw or Jennings could play the part as well as Rather did. After all, they do so every evening.
Here’s a nice example of IBM Selectic and Executive vs MS Word TNR.
Which I think settles that once and for all.
Roger:
Dan Rather of CBS News is reporting that their crack news team has discovered documents that show the origin of the HIV virus. After checking the docs with their trained experts the documents show that the disease started with Karl Rove. We report, you decide.
What’s the font, Kenneth?
Thanks thibaud, I’m ROFLMAO
What’s the font, Kenneth?
penwil:
Yeah I know. They don’t seem to realzie that even if it is true people don’t really give a damn and if it isn’t people want to know where this crap came from decades after the fact.
Maybe those same Dems would like to talk about Christmas in Cambodia. But I don’t remember Bush saying anything was seared in his memory in Alabama. I don’t think I ever heard him mention the Guard at all.
Rather is standing pat, but in the meantime, the CBS website has been “stealth rewriting” the whole story since the wee small hours of the morning. All at the original URL and without leaving any footprints, their story title has gone from its original “New Scrutiny of Bush’s Service” to read, “Bush Guard Memos Questioned.” The article’s lede was changed to one referencing the questions over the documents’ provenance; and several new paragraphs were inserted to reference critical witnesses, including a quote, by name and with credentials, of an “independent expert” who says the documents are forgeries. Later in the morning, the defiant statements were then introduced into the middle of the piece about the same time Rather was giving his CNN interview. More details (sorry for link-whoring, Roger, but I figure it’s better than cutting and pasting) here.
No. But then, I haven’t trusted Rather, or respected 60 Minutes, since the 1970′s.
And when will Duuuuuhbya resign for *willfully* using fraudulent documentation to justify his war?