Rather keeps spinning the claim that "superscript" was available on typewriters. Well, yes, most typewriters had the capability of half-turning the cylinder to strike a character half-way raised or half-way lowered the main line; but in those cases, you'd still be typing a full-sized character. It would just be misaligned from the main line.

Rather needs to explain how the telltale "th's" were both superscripted and small-font.

Defeat JohnJohn -- offering a $10,000 reward for anyone who can produce a typerwriter capable of reproducing the "documents" -- has .gifs of IBM's own manuals for the Selectric and Composer showing that small-font superscripts were impossible, at least not without a customized ball which had special characters on it.

Thanks again to Hugh Hewitt-- I think. I'm starting to lose track.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (4)
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Not only is he the Boston Globe's favorite source, he's devoted an entire website to pushing the Bush AWOL lie.

But he assures us he's an "independent."

RedState says the entire Boston Globe piece on Bush/AWOL looks like it was simply cribbed from Lechliter (who we know they know of, since they quote him extensively).

And one little tidbit from Mr. Lechliter himself:

In way of background, I am a retired (1999) Army colonel with active Marine enlisted service (1967-69).

Interesting dates of service. I wonder if he's ever been able to, ahem, document his charges.

I'm sure glad that none of the "political partisans" Dan Rather warns us of are being used by the liberal media to drive their story!

Thanks to Hugh Hewitt.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Add Comment
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Newsweek: 50-45 in 2-way heat among registered voters; 49-43 3-way.

Time: still an eleven point lead among likely voters, 52-41 in 3-way heat.

Have two key swing states already swung? USAToday/Gallup puts Bush up by 14 in Missouri, 9 in Ohio.

I don't want to say that Democrats are getting desperate for good news, but Terry McAuliffe just announced that Kerry is up 75%-0% in a poll of Dan Rather's immediate family. (One daughter's voting for Nader, but Dan the Document Man is "working on her.")

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 AM | Comments (3)
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Let's review.

1) Dan Rather refuses to say from whom he got the "documents." Even if he got them on background, usually a background source is identified as to their place of work/field of experience/position in the government.

We have no such vague description for Rather's "source."

Why?

Could it be that Rather dares not provide such a description of his source because by doing so he would tip off his audience that the source his himself a political partisan whose word cannot necessarily be taken as authoritative?

There's some reason he's being kept on deep background.

2) The general rule is that one needs two sources to confirm a story.

3) Killian is dead, and his family denies he wrote the "documents." They are not therefore the sources.

4) Major General Hodges was previously cited by CBSNews as verifying the genuineness of the documents.

5) But the man says on the record he did no such thing, and furthermore, he was lied to to elicit the weak "confirmation" he did provide:

Retired Maj. General Hodges, Killian's supervisor at the Grd, tells ABC News that he feels CBS misled him about the documents they uncovered. According to Hodges, CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and after CBS read him excerpts he said, "well if he wrote them that's what he felt."

Hodges also said he did not see the documents in the 70's and he cannot authenticate the documents or the contents. His personal belief is that the documents have been "computer generated" and are a "fraud".

CBS responds: ""We believed Col. Hodges the first time we spoke with him. We believe the documents to be genuine. We stand by our story and will continue to report on it."

Summing up:

CBSNews needed at least one source (in addition to the actual source of the documents, who is completely anonymous) to confirm the genuineness of the documents if they were to run the story at all.

Hodges had no actual information about the documents.

During the process of interviewing Hodges, a representative of CBSNews lied to him and claimed the documents were handwritten, and that that handwriting had been indpendently verified by an expert.

Based on this lie, Hodges allowed that, if it was Killian's writing, it must be Killian's documents.

Was Major General Hodges one of CBSNews' two "sources" for the validity of the documents?

Dan Rather has previously offered Hodges' name specifically as a source who verified the documents, after all:

In an interview, Rather stressed that CBS had talked to two people who worked with Killian in the Texas Guard -- his superior, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, and his administrative assistant, Robert Strong -- and both described the memos as consistent with what they knew of Killian. Hodges, who told CBS he was "familiar" with the documents, is an avid Bush supporter, and "it took a lot for him to speak the truth," Rather said.

Seems like he was supposed to be the second source to me.

If Hodges was one of the sources, then CBSNews:

1) Violated basic journalistic standards by lying to a source in order to cadge a dishonest and false confirmation.

2) Was not merely a passive dupe in this forgery, but rather took active steps in perpetration of the fraud.

3) Dishonestly reported to the public that there was adequate confirmation for the documents, when in fact its "source" had been lied to and was relying upon that lie when offering his weak "confirmation."

4) Ran a story that therefore does not have two sources -- indeed, since it's likely that the actual provider of these "documents" cannot be relied upon at all (or else they'd offer a description), CBSNews ran a story that doesn't even have one legitimate source.

5) And now that Hodges is recanting whatever dishonestly-obtained false-confirmation he previously provided, they are standing by a story which they know full well now has either one or zero sources.

Dan Rather offers us nothing except his "reputation" as evidence that we should believe this zero-sourced story.

But his "reputation" is actually rather dodgy:

In his legendary book on the 1972 presidential campaign The Boys on the Bus, author Timothy Crouse relayed how many of Rather's rivals on the White House beat resented him for his gung-ho approach to the facts.

"Rather often adhered to the 'informed sources' or 'the White House announced today' formulas, but he was famous in the trade for the times when he bypassed these formulas and 'winged it' on a story. Rather would go with an item even if he didn't have it completely nailed down with verifiable facts. If a rumor sounded solid to him, if he believed it in his gut or had gotten it from a man who struck him as honest, he would let it rip. The other White House reporters hated Rather for this. They knew exactly why he got away with it: being handsome as a cowboy, Rather was a star on CBS News, and that gave him the clout he needed. They could quote all his lapses from fact, like the three times he had Ellsworth Bunker resigning, the two occasions on which he announced that J. Edgar Hoover would step down, or the time he incorrectly predicted that Nixon was about to veto an education bill."

Quote from RatherBiased.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (6)
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Michelle Malkin writes:

Rather says the bloggers who broke the Forgerygate story are savvy "partisan political operatives" presumably affiliated with the Bush campaign and/or RNC, but Jonathen Klein says they are a bunch of guys sitting around the living room in their pajamas.

Umm... can't we be both?

In a Man on the Street interview (my first!) that of course means nothing, I noticed a guy open the New York Post to the below-linked "Rather Forges Ahead" story.

"Crazy, isn't it?" I vaguely offered. That's how conservatives offer their politics in New York-- vaguely, not necessarily committing to one party/point of view or the other.

"It's the most ridiculous hoax," my subject said. "It's the most unbelievable forgery I've ever heard of."

Smiles.

"This is it!" Climactic-Titanic-Sinking Update: Why would CBS lie to Major Hodges and tell him the documents in question were handwritten?

Grab some flotsam and start blowing your whistle, Dan.

Posted by: Ace at 08:47 AM | Comments (4)
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*** MUST CREDIT BILL FROM INDC ***

That didn't take long at all:

Bill's expert, Dr. Bouffard, is angry at the Globe:

"What the Boston Globe did now sort of pisses me off, because now I have people calling me an d e-mailing me, and calling me names, saying that I changed my mind. I did not change my mind at all!"

"I would appreciate it if you could do whatever it takes to clear this up, through your internet site, or whatever."

"All I'd done is say, 'Hey I want to look into it.' Please correct that damn impression!"

"What I said to them was, I got new information about possible Selectric fonts and (Air Force) documents that indicated a Selectric machine could have been available, and I needed to do more anlalysis and consider it."

"But the more information we get and the more my colleagues look at this, we're more convinced that there are significant differences between the type of the (IBM) Composer that was available and the questionable document."

There's more.

Do they think they still have a monopoly on information?

Do they think that they are the only ones capable of picking up a phone and placing a call?

S'okay with me, ladies. If you all want to go down simultaneously, that frankly just saves us some time.

Posted by: Ace at 07:48 AM | Comments (1)
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Unbelievable. How did "I suppose that might be possible" wind up as the headline Authenticity backed on Bush documents ?

Bill from INDC knows they're distoring what the Globe's expert said. How does he know?

Because the Globe's expert is Bill's expert. Bill interviewed him first.

Do they think they still have a monopoly on information?

They're about to be rudely awoken from that dream-state.

More from AllahPundit.

Posted by: Ace at 07:37 AM | Comments (3)
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American Daughter sends along this letter from a Marine:

The proud warriors of Baker Company wanted to do something to pay tribute to our fallen comrades. So since we are part of the only Marine Infantry Battalion left in Iraq the one way that we could think of doing that is by taking a picture of Baker Company saying the way we feel. It would be awesome if you could find a way to share this with our fellow countrymen.

I was wondering if there was any way to get this into your papers to let the world know that "WE HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN" and are proud to serve our country." Semper Fi

1stSgt Dave Jobe

This isn't a newspaper, but still we can get the word out. Awesome picture at this link.

Dave from Garfield Ridge offers his recollections and links to good articles.

Meanwhile, in New York, it's another beautiful September morning. The sky is white and cloudy today, unlike that day three years ago when it was clear and blue, but the air is dry and cool, just as it was before the world changed, or at least until our understanding of the world did.

Posted by: Ace at 07:26 AM | Comments (2)
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Sithery D summarizes the case against Rather and links to an awesome post by Shape of Days.

Ra^ther's defense continues to be that there were some typewriters that maybe could have produce documents that kinda-sorta looked a little like the forgeries in question.

This is like a criminal defense attorney arguing that someone could have shot a man's wife and then planted fiber and DNA evidence implicating the husband at the crime. Yes, it's possible. It's pretty unlikely, though.

Shape of Days tells us just how unlikely:

Whenever the topic has turned to the Selectric Composer, it has been dismissed out-of-hand as being far too expensive an item to find in an office on an Air National Guard base: The machine sold for anywhere from $3,600 to $4,400, and fonts were extra and not cheap. Furthermore, the Composer was widely agreed to be far too complicated and slow a machine to use for typing up memoranda, especially ones that were destined to go into a file and not even be distributed.

$3,600-$4,4000. I assume that's in 1972 dollars, but even if it's not-- seems like a pretty expensive typewriter to be using to type routine memoranda and orders.

And this machine would be used for letters and documents that needed to look highly professional for distribution to the public. Why on earth would someone use this expensive, slow-to-use machine requiring special training to type a memorandum to file that not even a superior officer was supposed to see?

Who was Killian trying to impress?

Maybe Ben Barnes, as it turns out. Maybe he wanted the documents to look really good for when Ben Barnes revealed them thirty years later.

To be fair, Shape of Days does contact an expert on the Selectric Composer, who does compose a letter looking something like the forgery. (But the MS Word 97 version is still closer.)

And the Selectric Composer can even type out the superscripted "th."

But guess what? To type out that superscripted small-font "th," Shape of Days' expert actually had to switch out the ball -- the thing that actually does the character-striking -- in the middle of typing to a smaller 8-point font, then type the "th" after raising it by turning the cylinder a half-click, then switch back to te ball with the regular sized font to complete the letter.

Just to produce that small-font superscripted "th," mind you.

Let's recap:

To reproduce a document that looks something like the document in question (but not so much like it as an MS Word 97 version), one would need a high-end typewriter requiring special training to use costing $3,600-$4,400 and one would need, to type out a small-font superscripted "th," to manually take out the print-ball mid-letter and then replace it with a smaller-font ball, type the "th," then replace the original larger-font print ball to finish the letter.

Ahem.

Yes, yes-- I'm sure lots of military officers and/or their secretaries have typesetting machines and manually replace parts on their typesetting machines simply to type two letters so that they look nice and neat.

And even doing all that-- the MS Word 97 is still much closer to the document in question.

And then there's a little bit more at Shape of Days-- how on earth did the creator of these documents precisely center his top-caption on two different documents within a milimeter of true center?

Shape of Days' expert proposes an experiment to him:

Something that I think would be a good test for your website may be to reproduce the centered heading using MS Word and Times New Roman. If you can produce centered text that matches identically to the letterhead, it is, in my opinion, a true hoax. The reason is, because even if they were able to center text with a typesetting machine such as the composer, a PC (and good word processor), will center the text even more precisely, not at the "point" level, but rather on the twip level (1/1440th of an inch or 1/20th of a point).

Can you guess what the outcome of this experiment might have been?

Dan Rather Retirement Watch Update:

It actually gets worse now that we know precisely how difficult and expensive a process it would have been to even approximately duplicate the "documents" in question.

At the tone, the Dan Rather Retirement Watch displays a time of

(bong)

11:51PM-- three minutes closer to midnight (retirement)

Reproducible Results Update: Chronically Biased also did the centering experiment.

Same result or vindication for Dan Rather?

Take a wild flipping guess. Or, just click on the link.

Posted by: Ace at 06:15 AM | Comments (9)
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That headline isn't nearly as good as the New York Post's:

Rather Forges Ahead

It looks like a pun, but it's actually not. Rather really is "forging" ahead in the criminal meaning.

They give it Rather, but only with one barrel. I'm still waiting for the definitive Old Media double-barrel blast:

He produced a man named Marcel Matley as the document vetter.

But Matley is primarily a handwriting expert whose expertise in document evaluation has been challenged by the head of the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners.

Matley spoke only about a signature and initials purported to be those of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — "they are his signatures" — though two of the four memos are unsigned.

...

In another challenge to CBS, Killian's boss, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, told ABC News that he regards the documents as a computer "fraud," never saw them in the 1970s and didn't validate them for CBS.

Wasn't this the man whom CBS had previously claimed had "validated" the documents?

A senior CBS official had claimed to the Washington Post that Hodges had validated the documents.

Well, there you go.

During his national news broadcast, Rather claimed "partisan political operatives" are challenging the memos but omitted the fact that Killian's widow and son dispute them.

...

A key issue is whether the documents were made on a 1970s-era typewriter or are forgeries done by computer because of their proportional spacing and raised superscripts on ordinal numbers like "111th."

Rather last night pointed to an undisputed document from Bush's National Guard files and claimed it has a superscript, so they were available by 1968.

But that document is in a different typeface and experts say it was made on a different type of machine without proportional spacing so it proves nothing.

"It could be a superscript, it could be a correction with a letter showing through white-out, but in any case it's absolutely irrelevant . . . It doesn't prove a thing," said document expert Bill Flynn.

So I wasn't reaching.

...

Flynn said it's "very unlikely" that the memos are legit, adding that he knows of no typewriter fonts using proportionally spaced Roman type with a raised "th" available in the 1970s.

Rather didn't identify any machine capable of producing the documents.

I have to say I'm perplexed by the fact that no old media I know of has just posted pictures of the "document" compared to the same text written in MS Word 97 as Little Green Footballs did. Why do they repeatedly refuse to simply publish the smoking-gun evidence of the crime?

You don't need to be a document expert to see those two are identical.

LGF's Point: LGF attempts to reproduce the "document" with Apple TextEdit. He shows that even with Times New Roman font at the same size as in the "document," even a similar word-processing program creates a much-different document than the Rather "document."

We know, then, that not only was this "document" created with a computer, but it was almost certainly created specifically with MS Word 97.

It cannot be the case that Killian's "supertyperwriter" just happens to be the one device in history that perfectly duplicates MS Word 97 documents.

Except, of course, until the actual advent of MS Word 97.

Thanks to commenters for explaining that to me.

Dan Rather Retirement Update:

Dan Rather has staked his, and CBSNews', credibility on this transparent forgery. He could have simply admitted yesterday that he was conned and taken a hit to his credibility. Instead, he chose to lie to his audience, offering up the flimsiest evidence in rebuttal while deliberately suppressing telling his audience about the strongest evidence of forgeries.

This will not stand.

At the tone, the Dan Rather Retirement Watch displays a time of

(bong)

11:48 PM -- four minutes closer to midnight (retirement)

Posted by: Ace at 05:45 AM | Comments (9)
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