So the CBS memo's are authentic, Case closed as far as I'm concerned.

[trumad]

I'd really like to see someone dispute this PH.D.'s conclusions...

CONCLUSIONS

Since current odds hold that the Bush memos are faked, the question of their authenticity turns to whether CBS should have known they were inauthentic – if, in fact, they are. In fact, there seems to be nothing in the memos that indicates they are faked. All evidence points toward a mechanical production process and away from a digital process.

Furthermore, the mechanical process seems to be consistent with typewriters used in the military at the time in question.
If I had been one of the experts advising CBS, I would have advised them that there is nothing physical in the memos implying they are not authentic. All indicators imply they are authentic. I would have told them that from my point of view, the memos are worthy of presenting to the public.

http://imrl.usu.edu/bush_memo_study/index.htm

[Spinzonner]

1. You have got to learn to distinguish

the assertion that they are not inauthentic from the assertion that they are authentic.

All he says is that an analysis of the images and their printed characteristics does not produce any evidence that they could not have been produced on a typewriter of the time frame of the supposed creation of the memos. Furthermore, the analysis also indicates they were unlikely to be produced by any word processing digital printing means of a later period. That is sufficient to debunk the assertions that they were not capable of having been produced by Killian at that time. I.e. that are not proven to be inauthentic on the basis of printed characteristics.

That is not sufficient to prove that they are authentic which would depend upon lots of other criteria that are external to the copies themselves, including access to originals and chain of custody. That seems likely to be unprovable on those criteria. It does not exclude the possibility that they are authentic but that's very different from proving it. Its within the realm of possibility that originals could have been produced in a more recent time frame (vis-a-vis Killian) with access to appropriate equipment. The application of the signatures and thje possible duplication them needs to be addressed in this context and is not done so by his analysis.

[papau]

6. You can't prove the negative - so why do "Journalist" pretend they are

waiting for Killian to come back to life to certify they are real.

Rove can claim lie and our media will always give him the "benefit of the doubt" - something never given Dems.

Wait for the review of the first debate.

It is already written - in reporter talk they say there is a storyline that they do not see a need to change - and the pundits are in front of mirrors practicing the sad look as they say they wanted to see Kerry do well, but too bad he didn't.

Indeed the idea that oh so certain media that asserted that the memos's were "inauthentic" - and that ir was obvious - will NEVER come back and note they were wrong and that they can not prove the memoo's "not authentic"..

The assertion is all you have after the fellow dies - that includes documents released by the US Gov the are asserted to be the ones produced in 72.

That we are having a problem with "the assertion that they are authentic" is BULL CRAP..


But that is just my opinion.

peace

:-)

[Spinzonner]

9. If you wish to exempt yourself from logic that is your privilege

but it renders your OPINION worthless.

They sure CAN prove them not authentic - but the analysis indicates that the current arguments presented to do so are not sufficient for that. So they have not been proven inauthentic. That is different from proving them authentic.

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. Okay, if you were Killian and you really had a strong opinion about

the president's son's ineptitude, AND you had a strong sense of military duty, wouldn't you leave something behind?

I hope, I hope he did. A diary, letters to a personal friend...something that will surface. Our country demands self-sacrifice from the person who has anything to confirm Killian's p.o.v.

[Spinzonner]

11. GHW Bush wasnt even vice-President when the events occurred

and he died before GHWB became President (he was VP then). SO your proposed motivations fail the reality check. And I presume he never would have conceived of GWB becoming President someday.

We have the hearsay of Killian's secretary but of course they Repugs have already decided she's suffering from some kind of mental decline which renders her statements unreliable.

[The Backlash Cometh]

22. Good point on the anachronistic mistake.

However, I disagree that Killian, or anyone else, couldn't see the possibilities. Family ties and political patronage is as old as time. What's new is that those of us who have been held back because of it, are no longer accepting it

[papau]

12. He left behind a Secretary that confirmed those were his opinions and

that she had typed memo's with those opinions that he kept in his desk in a locked drawer.

Sp in 1984 when Killian died do you think the VP Bush was contacted as to what to do with the contents of the locked drawer?

But then one person's logic is not logical to some! :-)

[starroute]

20. A couple of things support the idea they were done 30 years ago

One is the extreme rarity of the appropriate typewriter (probably an IBM Executive) today. Mechanical typewriters last forever -- I still have a couple stored away. But electric typewriters start dying after a certain number of years. The old Selectrics tended to be reconditioned and resold, but the old Executives, which were far more difficult to use and produced a more ragged result, weren't. It would be extremely hard to lay your hands on an Executive in working order today. If the memos were a recent forgery using old equipment, I'd expect them to have been done on a far less distinctive machine.

Second is that three of the memos have a heading (name and address) which is at a definite angle to the rest of the text and possibly also a bit right of center. These headings appear to be perfectly centered from one line to the next, which would be extremely difficult to do on a proportional-space typewriter. Because of these two factors, I believe that someone (probably a professional secretary) made up a template with a heading alone, and that the memos were typed at intervals on photocopies made (slightly crookedly) from that template.

The last of the memos, dated a year later than the others, has a somewhat different heading (for example, the -th- is not in superscript) which is not at an angle to the text beneath it. This seems to me to support the idea of an identical template being used for the other three and a different template for the last one. I cannot imagine a forger going to the trouble of creating multiple templates that would be necessary to produce this result.

[papau]

2. WOW - THE US MEDIA WILL NEVER REPORT THE LAB RESULTS!

Interactive Media Research Laboratory is a small university lab that does scholarly studies and writes about issues involving the impact of technology on communications. Among other things, it is investigates archival and authentication problems. As the principal investigator and lab director I have researched and written on these topics since 1991, with more than 50 peer reviewed publications.

In addition, I served in the U.S. military (Army) from 1963 to 1972. For five of those seven years I was an Army illustrator responsible for short run publications including memos such as those in question. Ultimately, I have a total of almost 35 years experience examining document production, including analyzing and spec’ing type. I have an archive that includes military documents produced between 1963 and 1984 and have access to a repository of military documents here at the university. Finally, I have extensive experience using computers to manage and manipulate images, including type.

Nature of the Studies

I divided the project into steps designed to identify the specific font and describe how the memos were produced.

1. Examine the physical nature of the documents. Do they look like military memos? Can they have been typed? If they were typed, did appropriate technologies exist at the time to have been typed then?

2. Identify the defining characteristics in the font used in the memos, especially focusing on the nature of the serifs but also examining the characteristics of the strokes that would be used to produce the characters. Are the serifs square or spur-like? Do the strokes vary in width or are they of consistent thickness? If some strokes vary, which ones?

3. Identify typefaces that replicated the above characteristics.

4. Identify a manufacturer who produced a typeface that fit the memos and manufactured a machine capable of producing the unique format.

5. Identify any characteristics that would indicate a typewriter and not digital impressions (e.g., worn or damaged characters).

6. Search for any typing artifacts (e.g., strikeovers).

7. Based on the above, establish a hypothesis describing how the documents may have been created and recreate scenarios that successfully reproduced the effects found in the typed memos.

OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS -- NATURE OF THE DOCUMENT

The information available in such poor reproductions is surprisingly significant.

First, The documents are not Times New Roman, or any similar font, nor are they produced with word processing software (or at least, were not printed using contemporary printing technologies). The documents are almost certainly printed using an impact printer (typewriter or daisy wheel) and are not digitally produced for the following three reasons:

1. The font is a common typewriter typeface invented at the beginning of the 20th century and in continuous use until the computer replaced the typewriter. The font’s name is “Typewriter.” Although the typeface was somewhat modified for civilian communities in the 1960s, it remained commonplace in the military well into the 1970s. In short, the Bush memos were produced in a version of Typewriter commonly used in the military at the time.

2. It is possible to find worn and damaged characters. The top left of the “t” is clearly worn to the extent that it seldom makes an impression. The “e” shows clear indications of physical damage. It appears to have three scratches and/or gouges extending diagonally down and across the bowl and across the lower stroke. The “a” and the “s” show similar indicators of wear and damage.

3. Seldom used characters such as numbers, capitals, and the lower case “o,” “q” and “p” (and the other less used lower case characters) show no signs of damage.

4. Overall inconsistency of the characters goes well beyond what one would expect from photocopying and digitizing and indicates that they were produced using an inconsistent (i.e., “mechanical”) process.

5. There are indications of white “blisters” cause by a character typed on paper that was deformed by the impact of a previously struck character.

I will leave it to others to verify my findings with additional physical evidence, but I contend that the memos were probably done in a proprietary IBM typewriter font redesigned specifically for proportional typing. In 1984, I wrote articles on an IBM Selectric that uses an uncondensed IBM equivalent. The font used in the memos is a variant of the font used in Figure 1, below.

[AmanAplanKerry]

3. I assume they are talking about the originals

Somebody needs to cough up the masters and call it a day.

[sandnsea]

4. We caved on this one

People blame our Dems for not having a backbone. But this case shows the exact problem Dems have in this country. We fold under the slightest bit of pressure, US, the people. All the right has to do is hint at an indiscretion, and out comes the "fair minded Dem" who is little more than an anti-everything cynic. That's why the attack game never works for Dems and why we should never do it. The right will line up behind any attack, no matter how wild. We cave and very quickly. I still haven't seen any evidence that these were forgeries, only that an 80 year old secretary doesn't remember them. Would the Pubs let an 80 year old secretary stop them from their attack? Never. We're our own worst enemy.

[Warpy]

5. you won't

CBS was pushed to cave, and they did, and that's the end of the story for the moron in the street. That the memos are likely genuine doesn't matter. The "CBS fakes news/got caught/got hoodwinked" is now part of the moron's belief system.

I don't know who forced Rather to cave, but I would very much like to get him alone for five minutes. This whole thing is unconscionable.

[TahitiNut]

7. This report's conclusions are 100% consistent with my own.

There is absolutely nothing to indicate they're inauthentic. Every proclamation of 'proof' from the reichbot blogtards was totally specious. The 'journalism' on this has been unforgivably corrupt.

[unfrigginreal]

8. Too late

the Repugs got their story out and the Dems let it happen, as usual.

[City Lights]

13. Not that it will matter, but I sent this link to CBS

and also to David Broder who mentioned the "forged" CBS docs in a column he wrote about the media losing its way.

[Gin]

14. the link doesn't work anymore

g

[City Lights]

15. That figures.

What's up with that? Site maintenance? :shrug:

[dweller]

16. i just downloaded a copy

and have it saved.
The site was down earlier and may have just been overloaded?

try again.
dp

[Gin]

18. it worked...must have been overloaded...thanks

g

[A_Possum]

17. I hope CBS will report on this

I have to agree, this analysis shows many things that those of us with common sense could see just looking at the memos--that they were NOT produced by a word processer, but by an impact printer/typewriter.

This doesn't mean they are "authentic" but it does mean that the so-called experts who said they were "forged on a word processor" were talking through their hats. In the feeding frenzy, media outlets like the Washington Post really did a hatchet job on the facts by using "experts" who don't seem to be very expert. It's been obvious from the start that the memos were impact-typed.

[City Lights]

19. I hope they do too.

Hopefully lots of us forwarded this link to them. ;-)

[RollergirlVT]

21. authenticating...

the documents he says, can be done without originals. By examining other documents from the TNAG if he finds that some of those docs were typed on the same typewriter. He is beginning that process now. Just like a ballistic examination of a fired bullet, each gun has specific markings it leaves on the bullet, so goes the keys of a typewriter. So while the job is not complete, it is on the right track.