Saturday, September 11, 2004
Backspace from the Future
How is it that a forgery can be so plain, and there be so much dispute about it?
How is it that a top forensic expert says he has serious doubts about the authenticiy of the originals, but is working from a copy and must limit his opinion until he has more information; and the Boston Globe reports this as "authentication"?
UPDATE UPDATE INDC JOURNAL UPDATES!
Brouffard, the misquoted expert above, SPEAKS. And he is PISSED at having his opinion twisted into the opposite. "He did not change his mind, and he and his colleagues are becoming more certain that these documents are forgeries."
GO READ BILL.
The common resolution of all but one expert (CBS's, a handwriting expert), bloggers-on-the-case, and just about anyone else who has seen a default settings Word document superimposed over the CBS memos) is that it is more likely the documents were created using a word-processor, specifically Microsoft Word.
The Globe hung their hat on a few straw men, notably the superscripted "th" issue and the existence of an IBM machine capable of producting a *similar* document in the early seventies.
If it is possible that similar documents could be produced on this one machine ( IBM Composer) THE WHOLE FORGERY ARGUMENT FALLS APART! If superscripting appeared in 70's documents, THE WHOLE FORGERY ARGUMENT FALLS APART!
Except it doesn't.
Just because such a machine existed doesn not mean it is at all likely it was used.
And it is NOT likely that is was used, or available for use, in that setting by that person for those routine memos.
Killian's office mate reports that there was only an old manual typewriter in the office, which was mainly used by the secretary. Killian didn't like to type and avoided it when possible. No similar beyond-reproach memos about Bush or any other soldier have been located. The ones that are out there are different...different font, language, format, etc.
A similar document is not an identical document, the kind of identical matching produced with WORD for each of the four CBS documents. Twip level, I believe it's called. Thus far, the Composer has not been able to exactly reproduce any of the memos though it has made similar-looking documents.
If the machine requires a complicated set-up and tweening to produce anything similar, and required the document be typed twice.
Dispatching the superscript business:
The issue is,no manual or (ordinary) electric typewriter of the period could produce THAT PARTICULAR superscripted "th" in the CBS documents. It had to be an available feature on a typewriter that could type the rest of the document
Whether any typewriter had a "th" key or an interchangeable symbol ball with a "th". It has to be a raised-above-the-line superscript is not the point and is a straw man designed to distract. Only the Composer can come close, and it takes more effort than would realistically been expended, and even with a great deal of effort the machine still is prone to flubbing the spacing.
Experts have hung back from declaring the memos absolutely impossible to produce in the early Seventies, but even so would not be able to affimatively authenticate the documents, because it is so unlikely that the only machine that could have produced them would have been available to, or used by the author or anyone helping him with routing typing task.
They may yet declare it to be impossible after having a chance to examine both differences and similarities between the Word font, the Composer font, and the font in the CBS memos.
Without being able to view the original documents, affirmatively authenticating the documents is never going to be possible, and there are no originals. CBS never had anything but copies (and probably second generation copies) to work with.
Declaring them forgeries may not be possible on the sole basis of them being impossible to produce by any available period office equipment. However they can be declared suspect, and they have been.
So of course, that's all the DNC operative wrote. Except it's not.
Content - Anachronistic format, language, and pressure-bearing officers have all been noted. The format is like that used in the early 90's, as if the writer had some familiarity but not dating back 30 years. Abbreviations are wrong.
Provenance of the documents is key, yet is unknown, CBS has not revealed any source.
Killian's family denies he kept such records, and disputed the sentiments expressed in the memos as inconsistent with Killian's high opinion of George Bush.
CBS employed a backhanded trick to 'test" the validity of the memos with Hodges, and so their claim of sources who "saw the memos" or "knew the thinking process of Killian" is very suspect.
They asserted the memos were handwritten and authenticated, and read him the contents over the phone. He did not contradict them,
but he had no personal knowlege of their contents or the dead man's "personal" feelings 30 years ago. CBS twisted that lack of dispute into some kind of proof the letters were in fact real.
No authentication, no sources, no provenance, and evidence of fudging the truth at CBS.
Yet this doesn't matter because the memos "raise questions that should be answered".
Well they do. The first one is, Why isn't Dan Rather out of a job?
At this point I won't be surprised to find out Micah Wright himself typed the memos.
How is it that a top forensic expert says he has serious doubts about the authenticiy of the originals, but is working from a copy and must limit his opinion until he has more information; and the Boston Globe reports this as "authentication"?
UPDATE UPDATE INDC JOURNAL UPDATES!
Brouffard, the misquoted expert above, SPEAKS. And he is PISSED at having his opinion twisted into the opposite. "He did not change his mind, and he and his colleagues are becoming more certain that these documents are forgeries."
GO READ BILL.
The common resolution of all but one expert (CBS's, a handwriting expert), bloggers-on-the-case, and just about anyone else who has seen a default settings Word document superimposed over the CBS memos) is that it is more likely the documents were created using a word-processor, specifically Microsoft Word.
The Globe hung their hat on a few straw men, notably the superscripted "th" issue and the existence of an IBM machine capable of producting a *similar* document in the early seventies.
If it is possible that similar documents could be produced on this one machine ( IBM Composer) THE WHOLE FORGERY ARGUMENT FALLS APART! If superscripting appeared in 70's documents, THE WHOLE FORGERY ARGUMENT FALLS APART!
Except it doesn't.
Just because such a machine existed doesn not mean it is at all likely it was used.
And it is NOT likely that is was used, or available for use, in that setting by that person for those routine memos.
Killian's office mate reports that there was only an old manual typewriter in the office, which was mainly used by the secretary. Killian didn't like to type and avoided it when possible. No similar beyond-reproach memos about Bush or any other soldier have been located. The ones that are out there are different...different font, language, format, etc.
A similar document is not an identical document, the kind of identical matching produced with WORD for each of the four CBS documents. Twip level, I believe it's called. Thus far, the Composer has not been able to exactly reproduce any of the memos though it has made similar-looking documents.
If the machine requires a complicated set-up and tweening to produce anything similar, and required the document be typed twice.
Dispatching the superscript business:
The issue is,no manual or (ordinary) electric typewriter of the period could produce THAT PARTICULAR superscripted "th" in the CBS documents. It had to be an available feature on a typewriter that could type the rest of the document
Whether any typewriter had a "th" key or an interchangeable symbol ball with a "th". It has to be a raised-above-the-line superscript is not the point and is a straw man designed to distract. Only the Composer can come close, and it takes more effort than would realistically been expended, and even with a great deal of effort the machine still is prone to flubbing the spacing.
Experts have hung back from declaring the memos absolutely impossible to produce in the early Seventies, but even so would not be able to affimatively authenticate the documents, because it is so unlikely that the only machine that could have produced them would have been available to, or used by the author or anyone helping him with routing typing task.
They may yet declare it to be impossible after having a chance to examine both differences and similarities between the Word font, the Composer font, and the font in the CBS memos.
Without being able to view the original documents, affirmatively authenticating the documents is never going to be possible, and there are no originals. CBS never had anything but copies (and probably second generation copies) to work with.
Declaring them forgeries may not be possible on the sole basis of them being impossible to produce by any available period office equipment. However they can be declared suspect, and they have been.
So of course, that's all the DNC operative wrote. Except it's not.
Content - Anachronistic format, language, and pressure-bearing officers have all been noted. The format is like that used in the early 90's, as if the writer had some familiarity but not dating back 30 years. Abbreviations are wrong.
Provenance of the documents is key, yet is unknown, CBS has not revealed any source.
Killian's family denies he kept such records, and disputed the sentiments expressed in the memos as inconsistent with Killian's high opinion of George Bush.
CBS employed a backhanded trick to 'test" the validity of the memos with Hodges, and so their claim of sources who "saw the memos" or "knew the thinking process of Killian" is very suspect.
They asserted the memos were handwritten and authenticated, and read him the contents over the phone. He did not contradict them,
but he had no personal knowlege of their contents or the dead man's "personal" feelings 30 years ago. CBS twisted that lack of dispute into some kind of proof the letters were in fact real.
No authentication, no sources, no provenance, and evidence of fudging the truth at CBS.
Yet this doesn't matter because the memos "raise questions that should be answered".
Well they do. The first one is, Why isn't Dan Rather out of a job?
At this point I won't be surprised to find out Micah Wright himself typed the memos.
