The LookHere's what the first of these memos looks like, all garbled up:
A Typewriter?Verbal orders, suspension - etc. But frankly, it looks like something typed in with MS Word, using Times New Roman as the font, or at least Palatino or something similar. And this was actually that very complaint 'bloggers' expressed in the first few hours after these .pdfs were released on the web.
Nevertheless, some saw these very degraded 10th, 11th, whatever generation copies, re-FAXes, whatever they are, as showing evidence of waviness, seen in this small section just below. This was taken from smaller-size .pdf file available on the web, perhaps that released by the Whitehouse after CBS had further FAXed only four of the memos over to them. Some thought the uneven character baseline was in keeping with the look of a manual typewriter of the early 1970s. But compare the same section with what appears to be an earlier generation copy at the top, where the line waviness is hardly apparent. It's straight across.
So, for those who did take the wavy version as being some offer of proof, particularly that it was from a typewriter in the early 1970s, for them the first irony is that if one goes into a Kinko's (a West Coast photocopying/etc. chain) and sticks the bank card into the slot, those machines are so 'smart' and fully automated that the copy may look better than the original, and without all the dust and particles, and certainly not the distortion you see on the top, and particularly the section on the bottom. You'd have to run it through a lot of times to get a copy that 'aged' using modern copy machines in an actual photocopy shop. Perhaps the above result was had with a particularly cheap FAX machine, simply sending the document back to the sender himself. The second irony is that to explain the obvious proportional spacing, and ruling out Wang machines as using only fixed spaced fonts, defenders of these memos are pointing to an IBM Composer (typesetting typewriter) or IBM Executive electric, not manual, typewriters.
Here is another signed CBS memo:
IBM ComposerLook at the centered headings, first of all:
1 AUG 1972
4 MAY 1972
The font for the PO Box, on 1 AUG, appears to be an open 4. And the "3" also looks different than the line just below. But again it could just be an artifact of repeated FAXing. But to explain the centering, it's possible that these headings or letterheads were pre-centered, set-up and stored on tape, or else copied from a single original produced using an IBM typesetter, introduced in 1967, called the Selectric Composer (shown here with magnetic storage, model MT/SC (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Composer)), which could center and justify text, with some difficulty. A neat machine, a little ahead of its time, and still with its own band of enthusiasts, now in the spotlight somewhat over all this. The IBM Executive couldn't do all that, but it could still produce proportionally spaced type, in a limited number of character widths. And, in fact, the same 'freeper', named Buckhead, who spotted the proportional spacing, and started everything off, was also quick to point out the possibility that this could be an Executive, or even unlikely, a Composer (before anyone had a chance to really doublecheck - but . . This guy . . ).
The Composer was not exactly trivial to operate. Justification took two passes of manually typing the same line. And perhaps centering was much the same. But perhaps it wasn't used with two-pass justification for the body of the text, again to give CBS the benefit of the doubt. In any case, this wasn't a pre-desktop computer. It wasn't a replacement for an office typewriter. It appears to have been an effort by IBM to chip away at the printing/typesetting business of the early 1970s, by selling this instead to the publications departments of large corporations.
Continuing to give the benefit of the doubt here, the rest of the memo again is proportionally spaced. The IBM Executive might have been used for these. At least it had proportional spacing, which IBM had introduced prior to the Selectric, decades before. It might have been - as an outside possibility - a Composer used only for the typeball and proportional spacing. But was a 'golfball' available for either model which might have matched the typeface shown in the CBS memos?
Times New RomanThe best bet would be if IBM had a typeball which used a font based on the actual print or 'book font' Times New Roman, used since the 1930s, also upon which the Times New Roman TrueType font is based. And I believe they did. The IBM font for this was called, Press Roman, as far as I know (still unverified, however). First, here's an example from someone who put at least one typeball in an old IBM Executive, but perhaps one only similar to the Press Roman ball:
The ball chosen for the Executive, while proportional, is crude by comparison. IBM had a lot of these 'walnut's (typeballs) in their catalog. They may have had a Press Roman ball for the Executive model, which would have been much more likely used as an office typewriter than the Composer typesetter. Regardless, the instruction manual for an IBM Composer included some type samples that appear to be this very Press Roman font:
It looks promising. It was available for the Composer, in the early 70s. Perhaps someone simply used/abused an expensive top of the line commercial typewriter typesetter as the office typewriter? Just another example of government waste? If one didn't need to justify the text, all the set-up and justification hassles would be irrelevant. And to repeat, again, perhaps this same typeball was available for the Executive, as well?
MS WordBut there's a problem, for either Composer or Executive. In the second line, here's an enlargement of the first line from the sample text, scaled to match the first line which is the exact same text typed into MS Word 2000 using Times New Roman, with font size of 16:
The opening "T" and closing dash basically match up. Unfortunately, it's obvious that the inter-letter spacing is not the same. That "a"s in "and" just about align. But the "e"s in "easily" just before clearly do not. More space is allowed the "i" in MS Word than in the sample of non-justified text found in the manual for IBM Composer, just as one example. In short, the spacing is different.
Yes, but perhaps the spacing in the CBS memos matches the Press Roman IBM 'walnut' or typeball, and does not match MS Word's Times New Roman (which it has better not). It can't match both. The old IBM proportional type font and today's TrueType Times New Roman simply do not match. Anyone can check against MS Word and TrueType fonts. So, let's look at the first sentence of the 18 AUG CBS Memo:
The MS Word, of course, is the top line. The bottom is scaled and copied from within the Adobe pdf viewer, maintaining aspect ratio. The first and last letters align. Problem is - so does every other letter.
Many people in the last few days have done exactly this. Here's yet another example:
There are many of these overlay examples all over the web, now. All show the same precise match with text supposedly typed in with a top of the line IBM Selectric Executive or Composer in the early 1970s. Again, as can be seen, even in the unlikely case that an Air Guard Colonel, or his secretary, or a 'memo office' even, utilized a Press Roman IBM typeball in a proportional spacing typewriter, A) samples from IBM documents of the period show that the letters were spaced differently than MS Word and B) MS Word provides pretty much an exact match with the CBS memos.
But to conclude this section, Gerry Kaplan of ibmcomposer.org, apparently did have not just an old Composer, but an 11pt Press Roman IBM typeball. And he typed in a few lines of the memo, with his Composer, just this week, and sent it over to the 'blogsite', Shape of Days.
So Jeff Harrell at Shape of Days decided to overlay, in red, that Composer sample with what everyone has seen in whatever .pdf version of the CBS memo:
And it's the same problem. In fact, it's even worse. The line feed distance is not the same. The Composer lines were more closely spaced. But look at the top line. First letter and last align. But the text between does not. See "to commander" and "not later". And far worse, the second line is completely off. It starts off badly because the "M" width of the 11pt Press Italic IBM 'walnut' is only 2/3rds as wide as what you see on the CBS memo. The letters look very similar. But the letter width and spacing is all wrong. In addition, the superscript is not proportionally spaced, nor even kerned, as it appears in the CBS memo.
Same conclusion. Everyone finds an effortless and bulletproof match when done in MS Word using Times New Roman, today in 2004. But it doesn't match when typed out using arguably the only possible machine available at the time that could even conceivably have been used for informal office memos. That is, the last grasp for CBS defenders might be to argue that the very same 11pt Press Roman, or some similar but presently unknown typeball, would have produced proper line and letter spacing if used in the more likely to have been used, Executive model, rather than IBM Composer. Yet it can't be denied that, ultimately, it's MS Word that matches the CBS memos.
Superscript
This is that superscript "th", found at the "2." of the 4 MAY CBS memo, above. While it's possible that these may have been available on certain typeballs for a Selectric, for a Composer, for an Executive, is this really what they looked like? The fact is, MS Word 2000 automatically converts "th" to uppercase small text automatically. It's default behavior, if one types "th" following some number. If one isn't careful, it'll happen every time. And this is not the default behavior for "nd", "st", or "rd". It is also the default behavior in Word 97 (perhaps). What's more, this literally appears to be the right size and position as automatically converted by MS Word, using Times New Roman.
That is, it seems more likely that with so many instances where "th" not superscripted in these supposedly authentic documents, that this simply got by a very sloppy forger. He or she got all the other instances, but somehow missed this.
There was a counter-example offered by those defending CBS:
A copy frozen in 1972. And there's a single superscript "th" in the 4SEP68 line. Lest one think it just garbled copying/FAXing, another shot of the same form, after more had been entered some time later, was also released:
But the obvious problems are three. A) why was the superscript never used after 1968. B) there are three other instances of "th" on the very self-same form, not to mention a hundred or more other places on various documents. And not a single one is superscripted. C) and bottom line, it just doesn't look like that in the CBS memo. Rather - and not to make a pun - that "th" superscript in the CBS memo looks just like what you'd expect from MS Word.
But there was yet even another example:
It's unsigned and not on any preprinted form. The FOIA was passed in NOV 1974. So, nonetheless, if this is a legitimate document from the era, the newly passed FOIA would have seemed a novelty and worth the mention, as shown at the top. But by Christmas 74/75 it is also possible that word processing equipment was being adopted by the services. This comes only a few years before the first Tandy and Apple micro-computers, after all. Bottom line, this "th" is not a proportionally spaced font, and it does not have the same appearance as that above, nor does it look like that in the CBS memo. The two above are, indeed, examples of "th" superscripts. Even assuming the Biography was typed in late 1974 or early 1975, again the fact is that the first superscript from 1968 is never seen again, and what superscript from 74/75 A) postdates the CBS memo by a couple of years and B) simply doesn't look the same.
Signature
Okay, first - why the two signatures both for AF 77 on 27 MAY 1971, and for NGB 89 on 24 AUG 1970? If you look at both versions of each form, the content is identical. But the typing and signatures are different. It would appear that two separate copies of each were produced and signed on the same days. It's apparent that Killian's signature varied a bit even on the same day. So you see verified signatures taken from .pdfs released by the Whitehouse. And you have three signatures taken from the CBS memos, clearly identified as such.
The hook on the top of the "K" is to the right in the verified signatures, but to the left for the CBS memos. Obviously the capital "J" tilts left in the verified signatures, but is straight-up vertical in the CBS memos. The second "l" in Killian does seem to drop in some of the signatures, but not in all.
Bottom line, the 6 SEP 72 signature might be the most important. It actually postdates the two signatures from the four memos sent from CBS to the Whitehouse. The third from 24 JUN 1973 was apparently not sent by CBS, but was available on the USA Today site, and was apparently available to and used by CBS. That 6 SEP signature generally matches the other six verified. If signed in at a bank, the teller would likely not require another signature for further verification.
However, the mere initials in the 1 AUG CBS memo, and the signature on the 4 MAY memo, differ markedly from the seven verified. And again, what's more, that 6 SEP signature, written after both of these from CBS, itself matches those verified, previously. It's consistent. The CBS signatures are not. It seems unlikely Killian would have drastically altered his signature and then, within a month or a few months, suddenly reverted to his old hand.
The clear conclusion has to be that the signatures in the CBS memos are not those of Lt. Col. Killian. It's all the more remarkable since CBS has now admitted they possess only photocopies of these documents. The forger must have been particularly clumsy not to simply cut and paste one of the existing Killian signatures available on the web, or not to at least have taken one moment or two to study these and forge a more convincing signature.
ConclusionSo, obviously, the question is why are these forgeries so obvious? Why did it not occur that MS Word overlays would almost exactly match the text? Why did it not occur that anyone could pull up the publicly released .pdfs of Bush's ANG record to compare Killian's signatures, both before and after the dates shown on the forged documents? Why did they simply not catch that superscripted, th? Why, oh why? Did they wish to get caught?
I think it's something else. They didn't necessary wish to get caught. They simply were sure, they wouldn't get caught. In other words, they could toss the most shabbily produced forgeries at CBS, and CBS would somehow find a way to verify the documents as genuine, and then eagerly run with a story slamming the Bush Campaign, with less than two months to go in an election year.
The old rule attributed to William of Ockham, fairly or unfairly, is known as Occam's Razor, or rule. It states that the best explanation is that which most simply fits the facts at hand. It would seem the simplest and most accurate explanation for the existence of the CBS memos is that they were produced specifically in MS Word, sometime in the recent past (perhaps even for the 2000 campaign), repeatedly FAXed back to sender to distort and 'age' them, and then verified according to 'journalistic standards' in order to smear President Bush. Typical Democrat 'dirty tricks' is really the most likely explanation. Simple, crude forgeries, from simple-minded and crude people.
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