# This just keeps gettin better and better every day.



## racer66 (Oct 6, 2003)

CBS has defended the authenticity of the Guard memos, which were supposedly produced by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian (search), who died in 1984.

But one of Killian's fellow officers, an independent document examiner and Killian's own son doubted the veracity of the memos.

In an interview with FOX News, Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father and retired as a captain in 1991, said he is "very dubious" about the genuineness of the documents.

He said his father was "not in the habit of keeping secret files," didn't have a home office, didn't work after leaving his office and didn't have available to him at work the kind of typewriter that was apparently used to compose the documents.

Gary Killian said the sentiments in the documents didn't reflect his father's "true feelings" about Bush, and that if his father had actually written the papers, he would have signed them using his full name, not just "CYA," which is on the documents.

He also said his father would have typed such a document himself, "hated" typing and was a "very poor" typist. "He did not type memos to himself," Gary Killian added, saying it was "too much effort" and "very dangerous &#8230; not a good practice."

The personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake.

"They looked to me like forgeries," said Rufus Martin. "I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years."

Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records to The Washington Post as "a farce," saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and that he did not "keep files." She said her husband considered Bush "an excellent pilot."

"I don't think there were any documents. He was not a paper person," she said, adding that she was "livid" at CBS journalists who did not, she said, ask her to authenticate the records.

Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word. Lines, a document expert with the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (search), pointed to a superscript - a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" - as evidence indicating forgery.

"I'm virtually certain these were computer-generated," Lines said. She produced a nearly identical document using her computer's Microsoft Word software.


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## Remmi_&amp;_I (Dec 2, 2003)

:eyeroll:


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

I guess it shouldn't but it does surprise me the length that Dan Rather and CBS will go to in order to attempt to undermine George Bush.


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## Plainsman (Jul 30, 2003)

I watched that last night also. There is so much evidence against it that it is nearly certain the document is a forgery. The democrats begin salivating a little to early. It isn't the meat of Bushes rear end they have in their teeth, it is egg on their face.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

CBS'S BIG BLUNDER?

By JOHN PODHORETZ 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email Archives 
Print Reprint

September 10, 2004 -- THE populist revolu tion against the so- called mainstream media continues. Yesterday, the citizen journalists who produce blogs on the Internet - and their engaged readers - engaged in the wholesale exposure of what appears to be a presidential-year dirty trick against George W. Bush. 
What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report on Wednesday night's edition of "60 Minutes" about the president's National Guard service in the early 1970s.

These were "previously unseen documents . . . obtained by '60 Minutes,' " the network bragged Wednesday night on its Web site. Their author, supposedly, was Bush's squadron commander, Jerry Killian, who died 20 years ago.

They "include a memorandum from May 1972," CBS reports, "where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about 'how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.' " A document dated "18 August 1973" complains that Killian is being asked to "sugar coat" Bush's record. "I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job," the document says.

Liberals went wild with glee about the story, especially after the onslaught on John Kerry's Vietnam record by his fellow Swift-boat veterans.

Kevin Drum, the most talented of the left-wing bloggers, wrote: "This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift-boat controversy and the National Guard controversy. Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but . . . in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true."

Drum simply assumed that the documents were above-board. So did The New York Times and The Washington Post, both of which put the story on its front page on Thursday.

They were doubtless swayed by the fact that CBS said " '60 Minutes' consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic."

Maybe "60 Minutes" should have tried another expert or two.

CBS made the four documents available in their original form on its Web site Wednesday night.

And by yesterday morning, they were being examined with a fine tooth comb.

The Minneapolis lawyers who run powerlineblog.com were on the case early. Two of the blog's readers directed their attention to a note left on an Internet bulletin board on the freerepublic.com Web site - the 47th posting on the topic there.

Post No. 47 pointed out that there was something off about these documents from the 1970s: The spacing between the letters and the words was proportional, and only a few IBM electric typewriters could achieve that effect back then.

From there it was off to the races. Once anyone who had had experience writing and typing in the 1970s began examining the documents, it was impossible not to see some weird anachronisms that suggested they had been crafted not on a 1970s typewriter, but using Microsoft Word.

Charles Johnson, who runs the wonderful littlegreenfootballs.com, simply typed one of the memos over using Microsoft Word's New Times Roman font and, lo and behold, the document came out exactly identical to the one on the CBS site, down to the letter spacing.

The documents contain such features as superscript lettering, which is done automatically by Microsoft Word, and curly quotation marks. A brief glance at a Web site called selectric.org, run by an amateur typewriter fanatic, reveals dozens of IBM electric typefaces - and none of them has curly quotation marks.

By 3 o'clock, the very careful and honest Jim Geraghty, who produces invaluable material every day on nationalreview.com's Kerry Spot, was saying flatly, "CBS had better have one heck of a defense for this."

Yeah, it had better. *I thought on Wednesday that it was scandalous for "60 Minutes" to turn over a good deal of its time on Wednesday night to one Ben Barnes, a one-time Texas political powerhouse who now claims he got George W. Bush into the National Guard. *

The problem is not, as some would have it, that Barnes has raised half a million dollars for Kerry. The problem is that Barnes has already lied about this on videotape, and I use the word "lied" without difficulty, where he says he pulled strings for Bush when "I was lieutenant governor of Texas."

*The thing is that George W. Bush was sworn into the National Guard in May 1968. Ben Barnes didn't become lieutenant governor until 1969. *
:eyeroll:

From the lies of Ben Barnes to the apparent forgeries of who-knows-who-did-it - why has "60 Minutes" exposed itself in this way?

*We all know why. Its producers and others in the media think George Bush deserves to be beaten up now because of the beating administered to John Kerry in August. In some weird way, the editors and producers believe this is fairness at work.* :eyeroll:

Instead, they have unmasked themselves. Or rather, they have been unmasked by ordinary people who can see what they and their hired experts evidently could not. :lol: :lol:

E-mail: [email protected]


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## MTPheas (Oct 8, 2003)

Bush's Guard Service and the Right Wing's 60 Minutes Mythology

On Wednesday of this week, CBS's 60 Minutes aired a segment which shed some light on President Bush's failure to fulfill his military obligations to the Texas Air National Guard. 60 Minutes Later, the Right Wing punditry started to respond...

The documentation that 60 Minutes used as the basis for their story included the following:

A memo ordering Bush to take a physical

A memo discussing "options of how Bush can get out of coming to drill from now through November." And that due to other commitments "he may not have time."

A document suspending Bush for "failure to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards and for failure to take his annual physical as ordered."

A memo from Bush's squadron commander where "he is being pressured by higher-ups to give the young pilot a favorable yearly evaluation; to, in effect, sugarcoat his review. He refuses, saying, 'I'm having trouble running interference and doing my job.'"

Within hours of the airing of the 60 Minutes segment, a user named "Buckhead" posted to the FreeRepublic.com web site asserting that proportionally-spaced fonts were not common in 1972, and that the 60 Minutes story was a forgery.

This post was picked up on the blog LittleGreenFootballs.com, and went from there to the CyberSpace News Service where it spread via the drudgereport from whence it was sucked into the right wing press outlets such as Fox news and the Weekly Standard as gospel before finally making it's finally into the mainstream media including the AP, LA Times, and Washington Post.

Holding aside the journalistic credibility of the original sources for this story, "littegreenfootballs.com" and "Buckhead", a cursory glance at the facts of the matter show that the entire right wing line is built on a foundation of decepton. The general line of the right wing attack machine is as follows:

Don't deny the story outright. Just raise the possibility that the documents *might* be faked. This gives partisans something to latch onto and a talking point to start regurgitating in the right wing press. Repeat the lie often enough and some people will regard it as the truth.

Of course, that only works if people don't take the time to debunk the lies. So with that in mind, let's deconstruct the four major planks of the right wing's attack on the 60 Minutes Story:

1. Times New Roman Fonts did not exist in 1972

The Times New Roman font was developed in 1931 by Stanley Morison, Typographical Advisor to the Monotype Corporation who adapted the font to the IBM selectric Typewriter in 1947.

2. Documents back then didn't have superscripted 'th' characters

Superscripted fonts appear on other documents in Bush's flight school record, and had been available on IBM electric typewriters since 1947.

3. The document used proportional spacing which was not available in 1972 
Proportional spacing had been available on typewriters since 1941. Press advertisements dating back to 1952 and 1953 suggest that the feature was widely available, and was even used on Richard Nixon's resignation letter in 1974.

4. The document used curlycue apostrophes which did not exist on typewriters in 1972.

Print advertisements for the IBM Exectuive typewriter show that curlycue apostrophes were used as early as 1953.

Proof that the air force was using typewriters capable of producing documents as early as 1966 can be found here.

The story is a cautionary tale about the effectiveness of the right wing smear machine at obfuscating facts and using outright lies to manipulate the public and to punish those who attempt to hold President Bush accountable for his actions.


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## Militant_Tiger (Feb 23, 2004)

"1. Times New Roman Fonts did not exist in 1972

The Times New Roman font was developed in 1931 by Stanley Morison, Typographical Advisor to the Monotype Corporation who adapted the font to the IBM selectric Typewriter in 1947. "

convoluted contradictions batman!


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## FACE (Mar 10, 2003)

IBM Selectric typewriters came out in 1961!


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## mr.trooper (Aug 3, 2004)

wow. another sad, sad attemptby the Dems to sling mud, and defame others. why is this there only tool? and its not just a recent thing. shure there is mud slingng by bolth sides, but the Dems have ALWASE used it as there primary weapon. the entirety of there campane is based on HATE of bush.....wouldnt it be wonderfull to have a president whos platform was birthed, and founded on hate? in you thing so, then yo know what to do!


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

Now, the latest. All CBS had to do to make the case that these documents were real was to come up with a typewriter capable of producing these documents in 1973. *Oh ... and it has to be a typewriter that one could reasonably expect a National Guard Lt. Colonel who doesn't type might have available for his use. * So, Saturday night CBS did just that. They came out with a report that the IBM Selectric Composer could produce the type and the effects that were found on Killian's memos. The Boston Globe also reported Saturday that their document expert said that the documents could have been composed on an IBM Selectric Composer which was available at the time the documents were written. U.S. News & World Report is getting in on the action by referring to an "IBM Selectric Composer typewriter which [was] commonly used in 1972.z'

Not so fast. *Even though CBS referred to the IBM Selectric Composer as a "typewriter," that's like referring to a Mont Blanc as a "ballpoint."* Just do a little Googling with the words "IBM Selectric Composer" and you'll find that it isn't just a "typewriter,"* it's a typesetting machine. It was used to produce justified camera-ready copy for publications. The price for this machine in the early 1970's was from $3,500 to $4,500 dollars. * In 2004 dollars that would be from $16,000 to $22,000. *If you want to believe that a National Guard Lt. Col. typed memos in 1973 on a "typewriter" with an equivalent cost of $20,000, you go ahead.* You should know, however, that the Air National Guard, then and now, generally receives much of its equipment as hand-me-downs from the Air Force.

CBS, the Boston Globe and other media outlets have a problem. They are institutionally dedicated to the idea of doing everything they can get away with to make sure that George Bush is defeated in November and that John Kerry becomes the 44th president of the United States. 60 Minutes, which, by the way, has quite a history of using false and forged documents in its stories, apparently has done so again. *Dan Rather and his associates know that if CBS steps forward and admits that it was duped, that they used faked and forged documents in a story designed to attack the credibility of George Bush, the assumption is going to be that those documents came from the Kerry campaign*. :eyeroll: Now I know of no evidence whatsoever that Kerry or his campaign staff was behind these forged documents, but millions of Americans, Americans who may now be on the electoral fence, are going to think that's the case. *How, then, does CBS come forward and admit that they were duped without creating a backlash against Kerry?*

I suspect that they're working on that problem at this very moment. 
I talked to a retired IBM Salesman who told me his sales quota for the Composer was ONE per year and it took a one week training class to learn how to operate it. HE also said that the Composer was not bought by the military both because of the cost and that fact that its capabilities were not needed.


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