Journalists, bloggers and tech geeks have been busily dissecting whether the documents published by CBS this week on Bush's Texas Air Guard records may be forgeries. And, yes, I mean real journalists, not Fox News.
It reminds me a bit of the (much slower-moving) controversy over the "James the Brother of Jesus" ossuary box.
The Washington Post airs the doubts of some document experts: Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush Washington Post 09/10/04
But, as the Post article notes, CBS sticks by its story and the validity of the documents. CBS also reports on the claims made challenging the documents: Bush Guard Memos Questioned CBSNews.com 09/10/04
Bloggers have been digging into the story:
Evening Wrapup/The Killian Memos by Kevin Drum 09/09/04
Bush Guard memo "forgery" a hard sell by Jules Siegel 09/09/04 (via Hesiod)
Volly Forge by Hesiod 09/10/04
Executive by Atrios 09/10/04
TANG Typewriter Follies; Wingnuts Wrong by Hunter (Daily Kos) 09/10/04
Killian Memo Update by Kevin Drum 09/10/04
I'm not sure any of us who (1) are not experts in document validation of this particular type or (2) haven't spent the last six months poring over the National Guard documents in painful detail, really know what to make of this.
Kevin Drum, who has followed the story closely and looked hard at some of the documents earlier in the year, expresses caution in the two item linked above. The fact that the Post's experts seem to have doubts as well is certainly eye-catching.
On the other hand, the Post says:
William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" uses as much space as an "m." In the CBS documents, by contrast, each letter uses a different amount of space.
That certainly sounds like an impressive authority. Yet the Jules Siegel post linked above claims that proportional-spaced characters were available as early as 1941, and in wide usage by the 1950s.
Now, it's certainly possible that CBS got snookered. But somebody is being sloppy in all this. At this point, I'll be surprised if the documents turn out to be forgeries. (I'm sure CBS will be, too!)
7 comments:
And still the important thing is and will be that one doesn't need any documents to know that Bush has lied about his service every step of the way. "He says he got into the Guard admirabley," but yet nobody, absolutely nobody has dared to directly force him to answer how someone with the lowest possible score of 25 was able to jump over 150 other candidates. Geez.
I'm certainly not any expert on IDing fonts, but I did come across where someone posted a link to one of Bush's Guard docs that included a superscript "th". Check out 111th in this:
http://users.cis.net/coldfeet/doc10.gif
And anyway, why in the world would the White House have released the copies of the memos that they had been given by CBS if there was no chance that they were valid. If someone had a memo that mentioned me in a derogatory way that I knew wasn't true, I certainly wouldn't pass it on to others.
PS...but what's odd about that doc I just referenced in my previous comment is that they used a superscript "th" once, and plain "th" twice afterwards.
The whole thing is puzzling. Salon.com has an Eric Boehlert piece up saying that one of the main groups pushing the Swift Vet Liars story was behind raising the doubts on this set of documents.
I also agree that these documents don't change the basic story about the gaps in Bush's Guard service. They do add some confirming details. Unless this flap over their authenticity makes the mainstream press totally gun-shy about the story, they won't make that much difference in how the story plays.
The core of the story is Bush missing his physical and losing his authorization to fly planes for the Guard. The fact of his having missed the physical is not in dispute. And the questions about what the consequences should have been for that still remain. The Killian documents certainly didn't raise those issues for the first time, and they don't resolve the questions.
I'm pretty surprised that the questions about the font and spacing can't be fairly readily resolved by forensic experts. - Bruce
CBS says:
In a statement, CBS News said it stands by its story.
"This report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources, interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Colonel Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking," the statement read.
"In addition, the documents are backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts but by sources familiar with their content," the statement continued. "Contrary to some rumors, no internal investigation is underway at CBS News nor is one planned."
And about the guy disputing it:
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=291
And I see that CBS News is set to make a response to those challenging their story tonight.
Here is the link to the Boehlert piece:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/10/forgery/index.html
There's something weird about this dispute. The *Post* quote from the documents expert William Flynn above illustrates part of what that is. The quotation makes it seem like he was unaware of something that seems pretty basic for someone in his position. Actually when you look closely, what he's quoted as saying is that the proportional spacing was something he would want to verify; the article makes it sound like this was very unlikely, which apparently is not the case.
I'm sure I'm not the only person for whom the question of whether "th"s of this kind were common on typewriters in 1972 was a topic which had never entered my mind before this week. It would be nice if the press could give us at least a better idea as to whether the questions about the document are at least plausible ones, as opposed to people just throwing stuff on the wall to see if it sticks. - Bruce
I have a friend who worked in the US Navy as an Intelligence Yeoman in London. He was in the Navy from 1966 to 1972 and he says most of the offices had IBM Selectric typewriters. The "balls" which held the letters were interchangable and you could use an elete ball which had proportional spacing and the "th" thingie that was mentioned. He sees no big deal in the documents being porportionally spaced.
That Happy Chica,
Marcia Ellen
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