R.I.P. Rathergate

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged. Those
of you recalling this and familiar with at least some of the
how's and why's of my claims would probably grudgingly admit
that I do my homework, if nothing else. Well, I did some more
homework recently, and that led to a, um, somewhat interesting
and surprising discovery that apparently eliminates even the
possibility that the memos could have been forged. But I'm
curious to get some feedback and comments first before
going much further with it.

First, though, I should recap some very lengthy (sorry) but
important background info:

When the forgery charge started spreading like crazy after
the original CBS report, which I never saw and only noticed
as a minor news item in the general news (it had virtually
coincided with a release of more Bush military records from an
AP FOIA lawsuit filed earlier in the year, which made the CBS
report seem more a me-too news item), I looked up the PDF's
of the memos and noted that they showed the characteristics of
an impact printer like a daisywheel or NEC Spinwriter (how I
would know this is none of your business). The claims by the
pro-forgers were mostly absurd and factless, especially in
regards the 70's era office technology (which made it sound
like there were only these ancient devices called "Selectrics"
which were then replaced later by laser printers and Microsoft
Word.)

Things got more serious when Charles Johnson of LGF overlaid
one of the memos, the "CYA" one, with a Word recreation he
made on his MAC, supposedly using just the default settings,
and got what he and subsequently the entire right wing
blogosphere claimed was a perfect match, ergo the memos were
fakes meant to make Bush look bad, and that this was done
deliberatly by evil, liberal CBS and Dan Rather in collusion
with the Kerry campaign.

I took a look at the "perfect" overlay and deconstructed the
animated GIF image that Johnson made that alternated between
the original and his MAC recreation and found that, surprise,
surprise, it wasn't nearly an exact match. The proportional
spacing used in Word Times Roman (in the MAC version) and
Word Times New Roman (in the Windows version) is very, very
close to what's been used by prior word processing systems
using any sort of Roman or Times-style font or typeface for at
least decades prior, so you would expect some match-up if you
resize and line-up to get the best fit. The individual characters,
though, did not match up that well and there was some drift in
the spacing in the middle of the document that indicated that
the memos used proportional spacing that was very similar but
not identical to that used by Word.

By this point, though, the forgery charge had spilled over
from the right wing blogs into the mainstream corporate media,
which mostly just repeated the forgery claims and covered CBS's
response to them. What "research" and investigation there was
into the matter was laughably and disturbingly incompentent
and almost as confused as the stuff being bounced around by
bloggers, with Selectrics and the Selectric Composer being the
focus of any discussion of 70's office tech.

Reluctantly I got involved by doing some slightly more serious
research, and I started off by showing how the contents and
dates of the memos are fully supported, and to a very fine
degree, by the DoD records regarding Bush's Air National Guard
service kept he
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_records/index.html

I've also pointed out serious problems with the "created by
Word" scenario, first by pointing out how the superscripting
pattern shown in the memos -- none of the st's, as in "1st" are
superscripted, and only some of the th's, and while some of
this can be explained away with an archaic gap, the others
can't -- is not a characteristic of any modern Word processor,
including Word. This is, however, the characteristic of very
old word processing systems where super/subscripting was a
manual operation and how the "th" was commonly the only
supercripting character available on Daisywheel printer print
wheel or even a typewriter like Miriam Knox's Olympia. Indeed
the only superscripted characters on the DoD site were also
just th's, as in this case:
http://aheckofa.com/FoolMeOnce/BushBiographySSc.jpg

And the other main part of my argument was showing how all the
claims of how there was nothing commonly available in the 70's
capable of printing the memos as seen was complete and utterly
confused BS. Word processing systems were actually common by
the mid-70's with a slew of now long forgotten manufacturers
making them like Redactron, Lexitron, NBI, etc., and with
capablilities not much different than from what we have today:
proportional printing, super/subscripting, file storage,
interchangeable font/typefaces, automatic centering, right
justification, and so on.

I have a website for all of this that I initially set up in
October of 2004 and have been updating periodically since:
http://aheckofa.com/FoolMeOnce/CBSBushMemos.html

My last major update was back in November, after having gone
to the Boston Public Library to dig up more info on 70's office
tech. Even Google has very little since all that was stuff had
been long obsolete before there was even a world wide web. The
only good references you'll find on Google to the early word
processing systems are ribbon cross-reference sites like this:
http://onlineshop.jpd.ch/sp/farbband...al-schwarz.asp

I also went all the way to the Minnesota to rummage through
the archives of the Charles Babbage Institute, which maintains
a vast archive of tech documents, brochures, obscure magazine &
newsletters, and such that are normally never saved by anyone
since they are not exactly collectors items even in a world of
gonzo collectors. Of particular interest to me was a donated
collection that included many internal documents from Redactron,
one of the early word processor companies, formed in 1969 and
having sold its 10,000th word processor by June of 1975. Some
internal memos discussed Xerox and Xerox's at the time recent
purchase of Diablo Systems, which had been making custom OEM
daisywheel printer mechanisms, and it was indicated that the
first Redactron word processors using a daisywheel printer came
out at the end of 1972 and started selling in quantity in 1973.

This was very, very useful info, because while the earliest
memos dated back to 1972, my best working hypothesis for where
the memos came from, where they might have been stored all this
time, and even why they were printed out the way you see them,
has them being created all at once in 1973 at some law firm or
JAG office that Killian consulted with out of concern with an
USAF inquiry into the long delayed "Not Observed" rating report
on Bush that was evidently backdated to May 2nd, 1973. Both
Killian and Lt. Col. William Harris signed off on the report,
and then apparently only under pressure. The report, though, as
described in thr CYA memo, did not actually rate (evaluate)
Bush, noting that he was "Not Observed" on all the preformance
checkmarks and noted that: "Lt. Bush has not been observed at
this unit during the period of report. A civilian occupation
made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery, Alabama. He
cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing
equivalent training in a non-flying status with the 187 Tac
Recon Gp., Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama."

The USAF has authority over the Air National Guard, so if
Killian was indeed the stickler for proper procedure as he's
been described, this business with Bush's rating report,
covering May 1st, 1972 - April 30th, 1973, very likely put him
in a very uncomfortable situation, one in which seeking some
sortof legal advice about what best to do would have been very,
very prudent. And if anyone out there has ever consulted a
lawyer over any sort of dispute, you know that they always ask
you to bring along any relevant documentation that you may have
on the matter, which they then normally photocopy for their
records. And for things like hand notes and memos that may not
be that legible and clear, they would often be typed up by a
secretary and then likewise filed away. So my scenario has
Killian contacting a lawyer, either JAG or one familiar with
military issues, about the USAF inquiry over a rating report
for a well-connected but duty-shirking pilot he and his co-
commander were being pressured over. This puts the memos in
question being typed up and filed away off-base sometime during
the summer-fall of 1973, which meant that I only had to go back
to mid-1973 for a word processing system capable of creating
the memos as they appear. Since lawyers were always quick and
early adopters of word processors, including the old 60's era
IBM Mag systems, any word processing system on the market by
June of 1973 would be fair game as a possible creator of the
memos, that is if it had the capabilities.

The only thing this tentative theory doesn't fully account
for is that two of the memos have letterheads that "look" as
though they were pre-printed. And a big, BIG complicating
factor is that IBM magnetic card and tape systems word
processing systems were very common and all over the place
since the 60's. While only the early 70's models could
natively proportionally print, many systems could read and
write the info that IBM media. So you could have something
typed and saved to a magnetic card on an IBM system in, say,
1970 and then print it out later in 1973 on a different, more
advanced system, either by IBM or a competitor. What would
happen if a document was created and saved on a system with
no proportional printing capabilities and then later read
and printed out on a system that could proportionally print
is unknown, although it's likely it would print out with the
the default settings on the newer system.

As part of my inquiries into 70's tech, I had aquired not only
a Diablo-compatible Qume daisywheel printer on eBay (for cheap,
as you might imagine) but also a very, very rare HyType I
proportional print wheel that works with it (the later word
processors that people barely remember, like Wangs and IBM
Displaywriters, apparently had simpler formatting capabilities
than the earlier mid-70's units and used fixed pitch print
wheels exclusively whether they could print proportionally or
not.)

So the main thrust of my recent efforts have involved tech
related stuff. The typographers have insisted that any suspect
printer needed 18-unit resolution (a combination of horizontal
spacing resolution and size of the font) to print a Times or
Roman style font as depicted in the memos. Daisywheel printers
in the 70's had horizontal resolutions from 1/60" (not quite
good enough for 12-point) to 1/120" (perfect), so I've been
trying to find out which systems came with printer models that
had the better resolution. Even with the research I had already
done, this was very difficult. Even the docs at the Charles
Babbage Institute were very spotty and incomplete in details
like that.

But the tech stuff hasn't been all I focused on recently. I've
still looking for any more match-ups between the info in the
memos and that in the DoD records. Some of the match-ups are
obvious, but some are very, very subtle and need some tricky
analyzing of the DoD records to discern them. A very good
example is the date on the "Not Observed" rating report --
May 2nd, 1973. The CYA memo says that this report was backdated,
so is there anyway to tell if this was actually the case? Well,
if you look at the dates of all the other rating reports for
Bush, they are dated May 26th. Is there anything special about
May 26 as opposed to May 2? As it turns out, yes, there is: the
rating reports are issued based on the anniverary date of when
the pilot in question started his/her service. Bush joined the
Texas Air National Guard on May 27, 1968, which made May 26
the annual deadline for submitting rating reports for his
service. Which in turn makes the May 2nd date on the "Not
Observed" report an anomaly that is best explained as a back-
dated entry, just as the CYA memo described it.

Even more subtle stuff comes about from one of the two Killian
memos that CBS had but never used for their report (USA Today,
though, had posted them). This is a very short, one line memo,
dated February 2nd, 1972, from Killian to Harris and all it says
is, "Update me as soon as possible on flight certifications -
specifically Bath and Bush."

While it may be very short, it has two bits of interesting info:
one in that it mentions Bath, aka James Bath, a then future
business partner of Bush who was verbally suspended by Killian
exactly one month after Bush and for the exact same listed
reasons; and that there was some sort of issue with Bush (and
Bath) meeting the requirements for retaining their pilot
certification.

The mention of James Bath by the memo is mostly interesting
because Bath's name is redacted in the current records at the
DoD site. But this was not always the case:
http://sugarinthegourd.com/redacted.html

Very curious stuff, but its main interest to me is that a forger
could not have soley relied on current DoD records to create the
info in the memos. But the business with the Bath redaction was
mentioned briefly in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 so it was
hardly an obscure secret.

The mention of flight certifications and the rumor that Bush had
crashed a jet while drunk one time go me to do what was an
especially tedious analysis: enter the all the pertinent info
from Bush's flight records on DoD into a spreadsheet or some sort
of database program and look for anything to indicate a problem
with cerification or even perhaps a lost jet. The raw records
themselves don't tell you much because they are a mess: hard to
read, out of order, and with some apparently impossible entries.
And besides regular F102A flights, there were also entries for
runs on simulators and trainers.

But I did do it, and ended up with a spreadsheet where I could
sort things, add hours, chart, graph, and the usual stuff. While
nothing overtly suggesting a crashed jet came up, I did discover
a sharp rise in training flights in February, 1972 that matched
up perfectly with the date of that brief February 2nd memo.

Since that particular analysis, I've using these types of utterly
unobvious match-ups between the contents of the memos to obscure
info in the DoD records as pointing out how absurd the forgery
charges have been from the get-go.

Still, though, even among people who agree, however reluctantly,
that while all of this may possibly be true, it still doesn't rule
out completely that the memos could have been forged with enough
time and resources, and that my research actually sort of shows
that it conceivably could be done, however difficult and tricky
it may be, and that the only real way to prove anything is for
CBS or whoever to come up with a chain-of-custody record for the
memos that goes back to when they were created.


So much for the background, now for the good stuff, finally.

As probably all of you reading this know or heard of at least,
Google did a major of upgrade of Google Groups recently that had
a few snags. In my case, long posts would not be posted on the
first attempt despite a message saying that they were; all of
my posts from early February to October disappeared, and I the
"Option" button to see thread in tree view was not visible on
some of my PC's. Out of frustration, I mosied over to the Wizbang
blog site to see if there was anything there of interest to get
into an inevitable flame war with right winger over. They got on
me like ants on an anteater, and with predictable consequences,

For the most part that is.

The last Wizbang thread I got on started off with a blog posting
mocking Ted Koppel, and when I joined in, it quicky got off the
main topic, and someone thought to snipe at me by bringing up my
CBS memos website. I posted some summaries of why the memos
could not have been forged, and used the flight records analysis
as an example to show how absurd the idea was for someone to go
through the messy flight records just to forge a one line memo
about flight certification. Someone pointed out that since I did
it, a forger could do it. I pointed out that without that little
Feb 2nd memo, there would be no indication whatsoever suggesting
that there was anything in the flight records to indicate that
Bush needed extra training time to meet certification. But it was
still basically suggested that if someone had analyzed the flight
records as I did, looking for whatever, they could had figured
out that Bush had a problem meeting certification (what this has
to do with Bath....)

This is link to the graph I made from the records:
http://aheckofa.com/FoolMeOnce/MiscS...Flights400.png
(The yellow lines are training flights -- note the Feb. surge)

But all that rehashing of the fight records gave me a nagging
feeling one morning that I might have overlooked something a bit
basic, and then it hit me what that might have been. I had to do a
teeny bit of research. First I looked up the dates when CBS got
the memos. That otherwise worthless, scapegoating Thornburgh-
Boccardi panel report has CBS getting 2 of he memos on Sept. 2nd,
2004, and the rest on Sept. 5th. See:
http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/htdocs/p...CBS_Report.pdf
(Page 8 by the report numbering, page 18 with a PDF reader)

I then looked up when the flight records were released by the
DoD, and guess what:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politic...-records_x.htm

They were released on September 7th, 2004, the result of an FOIA
lawsuit filed by the AP earlier in the year, and days after CBS
had obtained the memos.

The hypothetical forger could not have used the flight records to
forge the Feb. 2nd, 1972 memo because there were no flight records
to use. And there aren't records or documents anywhere in the DoD
even hinting at Bush needing more training. Indeed, the rating
report a few months later, for the May 1st, 1971 - April 30, 1972
period is very complementary, starting off: "Lt Bush is an
exceptional fighter intercepter pilot and officer."

At no point are flight certification issues even vaguely referred
to. See:
http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/bush_rec...sonnel_pt2.pdf
(Pages 36-38 by a PDF reader count)

The memos could not have heen forged as is with the information
that was available at the time they were handed to CBS. And if the
memos could not have been forged, then what is to be concluded?

Well, there is this thing in logic called "disjunctive syllogism"
that basically goes that if you only have two possible answers, A
or B and if you disprove one, say A, then B is your answer.

I do believe there is agreement that the Killian memos were either
forged or not forged, and not come combination of both. So this is
a classic case of "disjunctive syllogism" and if the memos could
not have been forged, then the only remaining answer amounts to a
defacto authentication of them.

As I wrote in the Wizbang post, all of this tedious, geeky sleuthing
could have been avoided if certain people who were around at the
time of Bush's miiitary service, and in on what was going on at the
time, had simply spoken up truthfully and honestly. This includes
former base commander, Bobby Hodges, the former personnel officer,
Rufus Martin, and of course and most especially, George Bush himself.
Bush and his official spokespeople have so far avoided making any
comments in regards to whether the memos were forged or not (Laura
Bush made one allusion to them as being "probably" forged, but that
was just her personal "opnion" and not anything at all officially
representing her husband.) Since Bush would have obviously remembered
enough of the details to have confirm or refute the memos, his
silence
was a damning testimony to both his guilt and his craven allowing of
Dan Rather, Mary Mapes to be so publicly villified, smeared and
mocked.

Bush so needs his sorry ass impeached and removed for so, SO many
reasons.

Ipso facto and that good stuff.

-BC

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, BC wrote:

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged.

Not "seemingly".

KK wrote:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, BC wrote:

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged.

Not "seemingly".

I've seen a lot of blogs that claimed that the documents were forged but
no real proof, just repetition. Have you seen actual proof? If so could
you provide a link?

--
"For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed." - William Topaz McGonagall

Cory Bhreckan wrote:
KK wrote:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, BC wrote:

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged.

Not "seemingly".

I've seen a lot of blogs that claimed that the documents were forged but
no real proof, just repetition. Have you seen actual proof? If so could
you provide a link?

Yes, Rather's resignation.

On 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, in a place far, far away, "BC"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

I took a look at the "perfect" overlay and deconstructed the
animated GIF image that Johnson made that alternated between
the original and his MAC recreation and found that, surprise,
surprise, it wasn't nearly an exact match. The proportional
spacing used in Word Times Roman (in the MAC version) and
Word Times New Roman (in the Windows version) is very, very
close to what's been used by prior word processing systems
using any sort of Roman or Times-style font or typeface for at
least decades prior, so you would expect some match-up if you
resize and line-up to get the best fit. The individual characters,
though, did not match up that well and there was some drift in
the spacing in the middle of the document that indicated that
the memos used proportional spacing that was very similar but
not identical to that used by Word.

The Occam's Razor explanation for that is that the faked (not forged)
documents had been faxed (perhaps more than once). Make as good a
duplicate of them as out-of-the-box default Word does using a
typerwiter that would have been plausibly used at an Air National
Guard base by a secretary in the early seventies, and get back to us.

massive snip

Also, get a life.

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:56:27 GMT, in a place far, far away, Cory
Bhreckan made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

KK wrote:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, BC wrote:

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged.

Not "seemingly".

I've seen a lot of blogs that claimed that the documents were forged but
no real proof, just repetition. Have you seen actual proof? If so could
you provide a link?

They weren't forged. They were faked. ("Forged" implies that they
were copies of something that already existed--at this point, it's
almost cosmically certain that no real such memos ever did.)

On Mar 18, 4:00 pm, CC56 wrote:
Cory Bhreckan wrote:
KK wrote:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, BC wrote:

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged.

Not "seemingly".

I've seen a lot of blogs that claimed that the documents were forged but
no real proof, just repetition. Have you seen actual proof? If so could
you provide a link?

Yes, Rather's resignation.


Yeah the whole sorted issue was that CBS had gutted the research
department who would have noticed the forgeries and Rather made do
with what he had to work with.

I seriously doubt that CBS or Rather were the instigators of the
documents but they were the ones responsible for presenting the story
without suitable research.

It is interesting that "no one" wants to admit to where George Jr. was
during this time....he certainly was not where he was supposed to be
Considering his past history of alcoholism and drug use, it doesn't
take a genius to figure out that his substance abuse was responsible
for his absence. Poor little rich boy...he's lucky that he has a rich
and powerful daddy in a sub par IQ Red State.

It is also surprising and sad that the public would allow someone like
this to be elected to the White House. Considering that everything he
does seems to turn to crap, I consider the public should not be
surprised by the results.

TMT

CC56 wrote:
Cory Bhreckan wrote:
KK wrote:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, BC wrote:

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged.

Not "seemingly".

I've seen a lot of blogs that claimed that the documents were forged
but no real proof, just repetition. Have you seen actual proof? If so
could you provide a link?

Yes, Rather's resignation.


How is this proof? Please explain. I have seen no authoritative
investigation that established the documents as forgeries. If you have
access to any please share them with the rest of us.

--
"For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed." - William Topaz McGonagall

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:00:52 -0400, in a place far, far away, CC56
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

Cory Bhreckan wrote:
KK wrote:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:58:07 -0700, BC wrote:

Some of you folks might rememberl my periodic, seemingly
quixotic claim that the Killian memos were not forged.

Not "seemingly".

I've seen a lot of blogs that claimed that the documents were forged but
no real proof, just repetition. Have you seen actual proof? If so could
you provide a link?

Yes, Rather's resignation.

He didn't resign. He was fired, while attempting to let him keep
whatever dignity he had left.

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 22:18:18 +0000, Cory Bhreckan wrote:

How is this proof? Please explain. I have seen no authoritative
investigation that established the documents as forgeries. If you have
access to any please share them with the rest of us.

The way to prove that they're not forgeries is to authenticate them as
genuine.

Since they've been disavowed by CBS, and the people who allegedly
provided them to CBS have serious political motivations, there's no reason
to think that they're genuine.

A legitimate trail of posession or an original (non-faxed, non-copied)
would go a long way towards making your point.