Yer Little, And Yer Yella
Tim Cavanaugh | September 14, 2004, 1:05am
RatherBiased.com, the site that's having Christmas in September this year, claims to be experiencing server overload and requests concerned citizens to mirror its transcript of Dan Rather's Monday night response to his docucritics. I've been curious about how CBS Evening News is handling the brouhaha but have not gotten around to watching the broadcast (or more importantly, checking on Dan's ratings—I assume this thing must be giving him a boost); so it's an interesting passage. And I'm also pleased with the commercial segueway at the end, which indicates Dan is taking an interest in the real problem of theft by TSA employees:
DAN RATHER: Coming up on the "CBS evening news," more on the controversy the president's national guard record. It's tonight's "inside story." [commercial break]
Besides checking on John Kerry's service record, CBS has been checking president Bush's service in the national guard, including whether or not he did or did not fulfill his commitment. We're gathering information, asking questions and probing. CBS is also addressing questions about documents used to corroborate some of the information in our reporting. Documents used to corroborate some of the information in our reporting. Some of these questions come from people who are not active political partisans. It is tonight's inside story. At a democratic national press conference today, some of the shots fired at military men were aimed at president Bush's national guard service.
But official records showed he skipped a physical and was grounded. Do you know how hard it is to get your annual physical? I took 37 of them in a row.
RATHER: There has also been criticism of the new documents obtained by CBS. But CBS used several techniques to make sure these papers should be taken seriously. Talking to handwriting and document analysts and other experts who strongly insist that the documents could have be created in the 70s.
Everything in those documents that people are saying can't be done, as you said, 32 years ago, is totally false. Not true. Like I said, proportional spacing was available, superscripts was available as a custom feature. Proportional spacing between lines was available. You could order it any way you like.
RATHER: Richard Katz, a software designer found other indications in the documents. He noticed the lower case l is used in documents instead of the actual numeral one. That would be difficult to reproduce on the computer today.
If you were doing this a week ago or a month ago on a normal laser jet printer, it wouldn't work. The font wouldn't be available to you.
RATHER: Katz noted the documents have the superscript "th" and a regular-sized "th". That would be common on a typewriter, not a computer.
RICHARD KATZ: There is one document from may of 1972 which contains a normal "th" at the top. To produce that in Microsoft word, you would have to go out of your way to type the letters and then turn the th setting off or back over them and type them again.
RATHER: CBS news relied on an analysis of the contents of the documents themselves to determine the contents authenticity. It is in line with is known about the service and dates.
For instance, the official record shows that Mr. Bush was suspended from flying on august 1, 1972. That date matches the one on a memo given to CBS news, ordering that Mr. Bush he be suspended. Shortly after "60 minutes" broadcast the new documents last week, "usa today" obtained another new document. In the memo dated February 2, 1972, Colonel Killian asked to be "updated as soon as possible on flight certifications, specifically Bush." That appears to be in line with newly released white house documents that indicate changes in Mr. Bush's flight certification in early 1972. An analysis shows that instead of exclusively flying the f-102 he'd been certified in, the president began additional training in a lower level plane and flight simulators.
CBS news asked the White House today to answer a number of questions: Did a friend of the Bush family use his influence with the Texas house speaker to get George W. Bush into the National Guard? Did Lieutenant Bush refuse an order to take a required physical? Was he suspended for failing to perform up to standards? And did he, in fact, complete his commitment to the guard?
In reply, a White House spokesman told CBS's John Roberts: "As you know, we have repeatedly addressed these issues, including during the interview you conducted on behalf of Mr. Rather last Wednesday." The White House and the Bush-Cheney campaign always point out President Bush received an honorable discharge.
What is in the "60 Minutes" report CBS news believes to be true and believes to be authentic. Straight ahead on the "CBS Evening news," they're supposed to inspect your bags, not steal from them. He got caught red handed.
Mona | September 14, 2004, 11:08am | #
The entire WaPo piece bears reading; it leaves no room for a reasonable person to defend either those forgeries, or CBS:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18982-2004Sep13.html
Excerpts:
--A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.
The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word.
"I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake," said Joseph M. Newcomer, author of several books on Windows programming, who worked on electronic typesetting techniques in the early 1970s. Newcomer said he had produced virtually exact replicas of the CBS documents using Microsoft Word formatting and the Times New Roman font.
...
A detailed examination of the CBS documents beside authenticated Killian memos and other documents generated by Bush's 147th Fighter Interceptor Group suggests at least three areas of difference that are difficult to reconcile:
• Word-processing techniques. Of more than 100 records made available by the 147th Group and the Texas Air National Guard, none used the proportional spacing techniques characteristic of the CBS documents. Nor did they use a superscripted "th" in expressions such as "147th Group" and or "111th Fighter Intercept Squadron."
In a CBS News broadcast Friday night rebutting allegations that the documents had been forged, Rather displayed an authenticated Bush document from 1968 that included a small "th" next to the numbers "111" as proof that Guard typewriters were capable of producing superscripts. In fact, say Newcomer and other experts, the document aired by CBS News does not contain a superscript, because the top of the "th" character is at the same level as the rest of the type. Superscripts rise above the level of the type.
• Factual problems. A CBS document purportedly from Killian ordering Bush to report for his annual physical, dated May 4, 1972, gives Bush's address as "5000 Longmont #8, Houston." This address was used for many years by Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. National Guard documents suggest that the younger Bush stopped using that address in 1970 when he moved into an apartment, and did not use it again until late 1973 or 1974, when he moved to Cambridge, Mass., to attend Harvard Business School.
One CBS memo cites pressure allegedly being put on Killian by "Staudt," a reference to Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, one of Bush's early commanders. But the memo is dated Aug. 18, 1973, nearly a year and a half after Staudt retired from the Guard. Questioned about the discrepancy over the weekend, CBS officials said that Staudt was a "mythic figure" in the Guard who exercised influence from behind the scenes even after his retirement.
• Stylistic differences. To outsiders, how an officer wrote his name and rank or referred to his military unit may seem arcane and unimportant. Within the military, however, such details are regulated by rules and tradition, and can be of great significance. The CBS memos contain several stylistic examples at odds with standard Guard procedures, as reflected in authenticated documents.
In memos previously released by the Pentagon or the White House, Killian signed his rank "Lt Col" or "Lt Colonel, TexANG," in a single line after his name without periods. In the CBS memos, the "Lt Colonel" is on the next line, sometimes with a period but without the customary reference to TexANG, for Texas Air National Guard.
An ex-Guard commander, retired Col. Bobby W. Hodges, who CBS originally cited as a key source in authenticating its documents, pointed to discrepancies in military abbreviations as evidence that the CBS memos are forgeries. The Guard, he said, never used the abbreviation "grp" for "group" or "OETR" for an officer evaluation review, as in the CBS documents. The correct terminology, he said, is "gp" and "OER." --
------------------------------
The Dr. Thomas Newcomer, cited in WaPo's devastating debunking of Rather, has a string of relevant alphabet soup after his name, and does a highly detailed (but at times humorously sarcastic), overwhelmingly persuasive techno-geek take-down of CBS/Rather here at his web page: http://www.flounder.com/bush2.htm
--Mona--
joe | September 14, 2004, 12:11pm | #
Wow, did another astroturf alert go out? Welcome back, Mona. I wouldn't talk about memos about Bush's absence from the Guard mysteriously appearing if I were on your team.
None of the gotcha points you present are particularly revealing, either. Small raised th vs superscripted th? So what - both are commonly referred to as superscript. The TANG may have used an old address after Bush moved. This is significant because...? It's considered odd that a politically connected, retired high level officer could put pressure on his former subordinates? Why is that?
Still don't know which way this is going to come down. Someone may have conned Dan Rather - I'm sure CBS paid well for the documents. OTOH, the assertions of "proof" of the documents' forgery keep turning out to be less than meets the eye, themselves. What we end up with is nothing proven, nothing disproven, just vague "clouds" over the documents' reputation.
If they are a forgery, their appearance immediately after the guy who pulled strings to get Bush into the Guard goes public, and the appearance of ads featuring people who he should have been serving with but didn't, is just as suspicious as the alternate scenario Mona repeats.
Sorry, Doug, I don't really have a dog in this fight. It's just that I lived through the 1990s, and thus developed a spectator's interest in right wing railroad jobs.
My prediction: there will be sufficient doubt cast on the documents to raise legitimate suspicion, and Bush surrogates in the right wing media will overreach and undermine their own cause, just as with impeachment.
I see Mona and her "investigative reporters" have already begun.
Steve | September 14, 2004, 1:15pm | #
I'm shocked, shocked that joe thinks the memos are probably real.
I actually am kinda shocked, because while I know joe is a Kerry partisan, he (joe, not kerry) seems like a reasonable guy.
Just step back and ask yourself, joe: what's more likely--that these memos were produced on a very expensive and pain-in-the-ass typewriter, in such a way that they look just like something typed in MS Word; or that they were typed in MS Word? Plus there's the signatures, which don't look anything like Killian's actual signature.
I think the burden of proof is on CBS, especially since they don't seem to have the original documents.
This story shoud erase any reasonable doubt about the memos:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18982-2004Sep13?language=printer
("Expert cited by CBS says he didn't authenticate papers")
I know that joe thinks the underlying claims about Bush's service record are more important than the authenticity of the memos. Maybe that's true. Personally, I just don't care about whether Bush got favorable treatment in the TXANG. It seems obvious he did, but to me, it's even less interesting than the question of whether Kerry was a war hero or just sort of heroic. I. Just. Don't. Care.
On the other hand, as a politics/media junkie, I find the CBS forgeries completely fascinating. If the Kerry campaign is linked in any way to the docs, I think Kerry could be toast. That would be actual proof of Nixon-level dirty tricks. It would look very, very bad.
Whether Kerry's people were involved or not, CBS/Rather/60 Minutes looks pretty screwed.
