CBS' secret source on Guard documents

[quaoar]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9967-2004Sep9.html

CBS News released a statement yesterday standing by its reporting, saying that each of the documents "was thoroughly vetted by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity." The statement added that CBS reporters had verified the documents by talking to unidentified individuals who saw them "at the time they were written."

< snip >

A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said that a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone, and that Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."

"These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."

The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.

[Chichiri]

1. Keep this one kicked for a while.

Better yet, put it on the home page. (Being a newbie, I'm not sure it would be proper ettiquite for me to nominate it myself, would it?)

[Walt Starr]

2. BAM!

Washington Post just kicked it up a notch!

[KittyWampus]

3. Next Freeper Lie- Hodges Didn't Actually Work With Killian

:eyes:

[AlCzervik]

14. I'm sure Major General hodges is just another flaming liberal

like all the rest of the military. Just all out to get *. Just a bunch of freedom haters.

[The Ref]

87. Bad news!

The word is that Hodges is lying about being a Republican and that he gave $2500 to Dean. If I'm not mistaken, that's illegal, because it's over the $2000 limit. But I'd sure like to hear the allegation he's a Dean supporter killed.

[lunarboy13]

78. Hodges is a Forgery!

Matt Drudge has done it again! A close inspection of the DNA from "Hodges" reveals tell-tale signs of a forgery. See the way the double helix rotates to the left more than to the right? Huh...Do you see it?

He is not real! Therefore, anything he says or writes cannot be beleived!

Close your eyes and ears America! Don't look behind that curtain! Don't let the Democrats trick you into thinking for yourselves!

Stay on the yellow brick road...and when you get to the big glass house, be sure to drink the cool-aid.

[The Ref]

88. :D

OK, smarty.

[enigmatic]

4. Cool!

Can we please put this "forgery" stuff to bed now?

[A_Possum]

5. Also keep in mind that CBS knows where they got these documents

Presumably they were not tossed through a window from a '56 white caddie passing at 50 mph.

[KittyWampus]

9. Now That's Funny!

:D

[Frodo]

6. Hmmmmm.

Interesting.

Back to undecided I go.

[KittyWampus]

15. If You Go To Freeperland... I'm Sure You Could Find Some Fools

figuring out a way to "debunk" this too.

Then you can go back to being "decided".

[Frodo]

20. It isn't "debunkable"

any more than the son saying it ISN'T what his father would say.

It's just evidence one way or the other that makes the story a little less credible to me.

I still have serious doubts. Right now I'm wondering why he wrote that a general was preasuring him to review Bush favorably when that general retired a year earlier.

[aquart]

25. Because a retired general still has clout.

Especially a recent retiree. All his people and his chain of command are still intact.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

31. WEsley Clark is a retired general...ya think he has no clout when he

calls now?

[Frodo]

36. I think "general" and "general" don't mean the same thing

with every general. :-)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

40. Ever been on a military base? I have...general means general

retired or not.

[Frodo]

43. Yes, and with plenty of general officers (if not generals per se)

And a 4-star SAC-NATO general is not at all the same as a one star.

Not even close - not in the same league - not even the same sport.

[Trajan]

71. SWEEEET ! ....

Kick for Truth !

[roseBudd]

90. I think the wife and son being clueless is meaningless

I think the mistress is the source and she typed the docouments because she was his secretary...

[amandabeech]

56. I did--They either ignore it or say that Hodges lied.

It's hard for them to integrate information that doesn't fit with their world view.

[AmerDem]

7. I wish this will shut those up here that are taking repuke talking points

Damn, enough already!

[senseandsensibility]

16. We can dream, can't we?

I wouldn't count on it though. It's very depressing when our side has factual documents that could hurt *, and some on this board can't wait to discredit them. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?

[dmr]

52. Yes, it does make you wonder, sense.

It's not uncommon to CYA. I always did. I wrote in my calendar whenever I was given a directive or something didn't smell right at work.

Some professions are dog eat dog. People tend to be territorial, or they look out for themselves and damn the others. I got burned once, and that's when I took my boss's advice to: "To document, document, document!"

Not often did I have to refer back to my notes, but there were times when I was thankful I had them. I could produce dates and who said what.

I definitely understand someone CYA'ing in this instance.

[Imalittleteapot]

8. kick

[Prodemsouth]

10. Kick- take that you defeatist elitist!

You know who you are. "read em and WEEP"

[dennis4868]

11. Kick

[LynnTheDem]

12. Kick it

up!

[seabeyond]

13. what i needed, grinnin. thanks

i was all confused. got on the board reading numerous threads. was confused.

with you all

[speedoo]

17. Cool. I'm thinking CBS has more to disclose.

And it's not going to be good for the coWard.

The legs on this AWOL issue are good at keast until the debates.

[merh]

I hope CBS has more and now they are really PISSED OFF

and will let the shrub have it - wonder if Walt Starr's research will be part of their next story (heeheeee)

"while the Bush administration refutes the documents and alleges they are forgeries, we question who is the fraud."

Then the show idiot in uniform and focus in on his medals, then whammy, Walt Starr's research and findings!

[EST]

18. Cool

Good thing I have such a wonderful sense of humor-otherwise I might get upset about all this. Give em hell WP. The beauty of all this is that one or two "reporters" actually might start to notice there is some substance to good reporting!

[dennis4868]

19. bam.....back to the top!

[grytpype]

21. "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."

Another witness!


This is big!


Or it would be if more than 45% of registered voters paid any goddamned attention to the facts!!!!!

[hexola]

61. Weak, very weak -

Says nothing about the authenticity of the documents...only corroborates on content...

[democrat_patriot]

73. The content is what is important.

* was ORDERED to take a physical, he refused.

Who gives a sh*t about some memo.

[Catherine Vincent]

22. I just read this same article over at FR and they were peeing in their

pants at the excitement of the article title. They are just having a party over there. Dumbasses!

[Gold Metal Flake]

23. The comparison from LGF is damning.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/

Maybe the text is real, but the PDF from CBS is suspect. Be careful with this possible tROVEe-jan horse.

[Walt Starr]

27. The guy from Little Green Footballs is a moron

He has no typography experience, only experience in computer generated types.

What he fails to tell you is Word Processors, by design, emulate the typewriters of the seventies. Word Processors were intended to replace typewriters, so they had to function identical to typewriters.

[Protected]

32. That identical, though?

I printed out his Word document, and then scanned it back in. It matches CBS' PDF file almost perfectly, though the digits in the PDF seem to be a bit different.

[frylock]

39. take a look at this post..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x779692#779807

[Must_B_Free]

41. Can you overlay in photoshop and reproduce the Little Green Footballs test

I would be interested in seeing another implementation of that test to see if it is real. Walt Star says they are idiots at LGF.

[salvorhardin]

45. They are not the same typeface

In the graphics below the black-on-white characters are from CBS's PDF file. The white-on-black letters are Times New Roman in Microsoft Word.

To me they look like two different typefaces. Notice the differences in the descender on the 'g' in 'August'. Also the base lines of the 'T' in 'SUBJECT'. Other differences include the offset from center leading diagonal line in the 'v' in 'obviously' and the greater upturn on the bottom curve of the 's' characters in 'pressured'. There are lots of other differences too, such as the capital 'Y' in 'CYA'.

[Must_B_Free]

55. Clearly the typewriter has a heavier, cruder serif

It looks almost like the courier serif. No tapering to the serif lines.

[Anaxamander]

69. Case closed... look at the "i" in "File"... completely different (nt)

[Protected]

47. Here it is

I used their Word document

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/eljay001/bushdoc.html

[Teaser]

51. They don't line up so good....

Or so my lying eyes tell me.

[Walt Starr]

62. It's not even CLOSE to being identical

The 1's are COMPLETELY different.

Overlaying makes the two blur together. They are completely different fonts.

Seriously, look at the two documents side by side before the electronic "overlay", the two are not even close!

[snippy]

65. I agree that the overlay blurs the two. Has anyone done an overlay

using two different colors? The differences may be more readily apparent if different colors are used.

[demwing]

81. I suggest you review your scan

If you typed it in Times New Roman.

The fonts are close, but NOT the same.

[Gold Metal Flake]

34. OK, thanks for that.

I can't help but be skeptical. However, his comparison is effective if only for the ease of forwarding the pix. I can guarantee that overlay will appear on some tv show, or in a newspaper. If it can be discounted, great. But someone better come up with the proof and have it ready. The simple visual is all the rightards need.

[MisterP]

50. say hello to the LGF quiz!

http://www.drmenlo.com/lgfquiz/

[Zen Democrat]

24. Thank God for CBS. It seems to have all we have left these days.

BUt they are still a powerhouse of old-school journalism and still
have some real professionals who are trying to carry the mantle of
Edward R. Murrow.

Go CBS!

[A_Possum]

26. This was on 60 Minutes

How many scammers has 60 Minutes dealt with over the years? They've been OUTING scams and fakes for decades. I find it pretty hard to believe that Rove could pass 'em a set of fakes and they'd just say, "Oh, doh, guess we'll take your word for it, mister-we-don't-see-you-behind-the-mask-Rove."

[IdaBriggs]

28. Kick. Good job! nt

[Clinton Crusader]

29. kick

:kick:

[Leilani]

30. After all the years that 60 Minutes has been around

& all the breaking stories they have handled,

& all the controversy their stories have created,

do you think they would be DUMB enough not to have checked this out as thoroughly as possible?

And they probably have a huge team of lawyers.

This is the Prez...you bet they checked this out!

[napi21]

37. Your right, anf they aren't about to risk their own credibility

for anybody! I don't ever remember 60 Mins having to retract any statements they've aired either.

I also heard somewhere don't remember where) that it was the Lt. Col.'s wife who gave these docs up. They were in her husbands personal files.

[Miss Authoritiva]

42. You're right and you're right.

All of us amateurs could think of at least two dozen different things to check out about the documents, the paper stock used, typical rate of paper decomposition, the typefaces, handwriting analysis, photocopier toner chemical composition, pen ink chemical composition, correct-for-the-time post office boxes and zip codes, etc in less than two minutes -- so I'm sure a bunch of top-notch professionals wouldn't have a problem.

[fob]

66. How about you just dust the damn things for fingerprints!

If Killian's are there, then everyone should STFU and start asking bush* WHY HE DISOBEYED A DIRECT ORDER!!

[murielm99]

44. 60 Minutes has been sued successfully only once in all the

years they have been on the air.

General Westmoreland was the one who sued.

They have a pack of lawyers who vet everything thoroughly. I wouldn't worry about them doing their homework.

CBS is the only one left who is not in the clutches of the GOP. They broke the Israeli spy story, the Abu Graib pictures, and now, the documents on 60 Minutes.

Given that, I am pretty sure they have a deep distrust of Rove. They would probably consider all the possibilities we have, and then some.

[Skip Intro]

33. kick

:kick:

[Longhorn]

35. I trust CBS.

I honestly don't believe Dan Rather would knowingly be involved in something fraudulent.

[bobbieinok]

38. see the AWOL thread at salon tabletalk whitehouse

they've got some people doing very careful study

[Name removed]

46. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[quaoar]

48. Oh for Christ's sake

They have nothing. Nothing but innuendo -- wild claims of forgeries.

Get a fucking grip.

[Guaranteed]

49. No, it doesn't.

It's all speculative- well we don't THINK this type of typewriter was around in the military blah blah blah..."I know my husband even though I wasn't even in his office" blah blah blah...

Hodges, the man in the memo, says it himself!

[The_Casual_Observer]

54. Sniff Sniff

Do I smell a freeper?

[RhodaGrits]

53. kick

[bklyncowgirl]

57. Folks, read the entire article. This is not necesserally good.

Personally I think that the documents are real. If I were trying to forge 70's era documents I'd use a 70's era typewriter--easily available at any thrift store.

Still there are enough anomolies to raise questions and these questions will be raised and probably never fully resolved. This will be enough to raise doubts in the minds of people who are not rabidly skeptical of anything Bush and his pals say AND discredit CBS and 60 Minutes--a major mainstream critic of the administration.

I'm not trying to be negative here but the longer this campeign goes on the more convinced I am that we are up against truly vicious and desperate people who are very good at what they do.

[Rich Hunt]

67. Rove might be....

Perhaps Rove is good as what he does, but he and the neo-con elves have created a lot of zombies whose looniness will be their ultimate ruin. These people are so foolish, I almost feel sorry for them. They assume first and investigate later. Lots of people aren't going to come out of this with their sanity and credibility in tact.

It's become like a cult - those on top take advantage of people who are excessively fearful, insecure and threatened by 'others'. These people are looking to believe something, and the cynics are there to provide them with bullshit. They're being seduced and robbed, and yes, they are painting themselves into a corner, with the lone white spot representing what's left of their sanity.

They should read Richard Hofstadter's The paranoid style in American politics , but they're probably too far gone to consider it.

[mistertrickster]

72. EXACTLY! That was my first thought. I'm typing this on a computer of

course but we've got TWO working IBM Selectrics up in the front office.

How dumb would you have to be to type a forged document from 1972 on a fricking WORD PROCESSOR?

Look, for those of you who are too young to remember typewriters--

1. the keys strike into the paper with A LOT of force. You could easily see if the paper has been struck or had ink applied to it as in a laser printer.

2. how would you explain the signatures if the documents were forged?

3. the paper itself could be tested to see when it was made. What are the watermarks? Is it standard gov't issue paper like other memos written by Killian?

4. some of the Selectrics are pretty sophisticated and might have superscript functions--again, not that hard to check.

**********

The wife and the son are wholly irrelevent. If I were being asked to lie for some politician's POS son, I wouldn't pass that on to my family either. It's shameful and demeaning.

I just can't believe that 60 Minutes would put this on the air if the memos were laser printed--doesn't make sense. Where the hell did these "experts" come from all of a sudden?

And why aren't they tracking down the anthrax killers?

[bushwakker]

58. gorilla dust

:kick:

[dweller]

59. tippity tappity tip tap tap

:kick:


didn't know i could tap dance did ya?

dp

[npincus]

60. kick-a-poo

[meow mix]

63. kick, thanks!

good to see this, the freeps have painted themselves into a corner.

[Iceburg]

64. Kick for the truth

[Joanne98]

68. michael dobbs from the WP was just on CNN saying dics are forged....

Did he write this WP article?

[CarinKaryn]

70. Another kick for the truth!

oust resident shrub!

[Judi Lynn]

75. Kick!

Careful, there, Pops.

[cheshire]

74. I see we have decided the docs are authentic. Good last night folks

were flipping out in here.

[mistertrickster]

76. Okay, I printed off the PDF of Bush's annual physical. Then I typed

a few lines on an IBM Selectric. They don't look very similar. Other than the typeface being about the same size, you can definitely tell that the memo has proportional spacing and the typed lines don't.

On the other hand, could it be possible that this is not a direct scan of the original memo, but a reconstructed "digitized" version using "Twain" (which "reads" the original and converts it to computer text.)

The thing I noticed is that the memo doesn't exactly look like it's been computer generated either. For instance, "Texas" under the "MEMORANDUM" line is not perfectly level in the line. It looks as if the paper has floated a little while the typist was going at it (a common problem in those days, especially if the typist was working fast.)

***********
On edit--as the documents appear, they look very much to me as though they would have had to have been run through a computer at some point.

CBS and their document people just aren't that dumb, though. There is some explanation for this, we just don't know what it is yet.

The key point is that the WH is NOT disputing the veracity of the memos. You know damn well that if there were errors in the facts, they would be jumping all over it.

[mistertrickster]

79. Okay, thankfully, I was wrong--The Daily Kos has it nailed.

Turns out there's a machine called the IBM EXECUTIVE that can do everything we see on these memos. Not only that, the typeface etc. match memos that THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE ITSELF HAS RELEASED.

Here's how you can tell it's not a computer--

QUOTE FROM KOS

For instance: In the original CBS document, some letters "float" above or below the baseline. For example, in the original document, lowercase 'e' is very frequently -- but not always -- above the baseline. Look at the word "interference", or even "me". Typewriters do this; computers don't. Granted, if you are comparing a lowercase 'e' that is only 10 or 12 pixels high with another lowercase 'e' that is only 10 or 12 pixels high, you're not going to see such subtleties. That doesn't prove the differences aren't there; it just proves you're an idiot, for making them each 12 pixels high and then saying "see, they almost match!"

END QUOTE

That's what I noticed too--the words weren't perfectly level to the line always.

Of course, this now means that Bush/Rove knew that and didn't tell anyone . . . hmmm . . .

Oh well, thanks for keeping the controversy alive, you poor, dumb FREEPERS!

And you're losers too.

[Scorpious_Maximus]

77. Analysis

I think we are compelled to examine this a little closer.

It is my contention that the documents are genuine, however the process by which they came to CBS News is something that we should consider.

Could the source be within the government itself? Perhaps an intelligence agency pissed off about having their funding cut off and a new National Intelligence Director named?

Recall history; This is about power. And those in power, especially in Washington, don't like to give it up.

If we accept that the documents are legitimate, then we must ask the following;


1) Who stands to benefit by their release?
2) What impact do they have on the big picture of the campaign?
3) When - Need help here.
4) Where have the documents been all these years?
5) Why release them now?


The big questions is why. Someone wanted these documents out. Someone wanted the media to question the veracity of the documents.

This has moved quickly, almost like it was planned this way.


Any ideas are welcome.

[Mousketeer]

80. Let act our ages

The memos are in fact forgeries.

Salvor Hardin makes a valiant effort to differentiate between the font used in the documents and the Times New Roman on his computer, but he is on the wrong track. The documents have been copied, faxed, and scanned so many times that minor differences (like the placement of serifs) are just not dispositive.

Ditto for solutions like fingerprints and paper analysis.

The inescapable point is that the memo look exactly like what you would get if you started up Microsoft Word and typed the text in, without changing the font, tabs, margins, spacing, or anything else about the program. The odds against this happening by chance, even if 1972 equipment were capable of doing this (which they weren't), are astronomical.

But ... so? So some ying-yang made a juvenile forgery and the fools at CBS bought it. So freaking what?

Not Kerry's fault. Not the DNC's fault.

It doesn't make Bush's war in Iraq more successful or his tax cuts a better idea.

It doesn't even mean that Bush showed up for his TXANG services (not that that should matter to us adults either).

[demwing]

82. Thanks for popping in with your first post

to tell us to act like adults.

Bite me. :)

[Mousketeer]

85. Sorry to be acting superior

But, well, I am superior.

:-)

Seriously, when I see the amount of heavy breathing on sites like this and Kos to defend what we admit, in unguarded moments, to be not just forgeries, but amateurish, juvenile forgeries that wouldn't fool a tollbooth clerk (print out some of the dozen of ordinary military documents that this election has extracted from both sides and try to convince yourself that they and the Killian memos are from the same decade), I worry for the success of the whole progressive enterprise.

Shouldn't Kerry just have said, "Publicizing blatant lies about the actions of young men serving their countries 30 years ago is not just unethical, it's pointless and distracts us from the real problems: Iraq, the economy, health care,..." Slam the book closed on this and the SwiftVets mess too.

Imagine we had no information at all about Bush or Kerry prior to, say, 1999. They just dropped out of the sky. Now who would you vote for?

Go forth and convince the undecideds.

[demwing]

86. Thats rich!

Well thanks for descending to the level of the merely mortal to make your (highly suspect) judgments on DUers.

Listen, you don't have to believe that the documents are authentic, but you should be a bit more respectful.

You may make a show of a publica persona, and in unguarded moments act in a manner which contradicts your highly superior image, but that doesn't mean that everyone else does as well.

In my unguraded moments I scratch my body parts. Sometimes I fart. I do all sorts of things that are, wel.., unguarded.

What I don't do is pretend I believe one thing in public, then privately contradict myself. That type of behavior reminds me less of DUers than it does of Freepers.

We disagree. That doesn't make you better than me.

It just makes you wrong. ;)

[GoldenOldie]

83. L Col Killian's wife, son, daughter dispute????

Mrs. Killian states her husband did not write small details (?) down but had a very good recall and left things to memory. This does not jive with the Aide or officer that remembered the COL as an ethical man who caught between two opposing forces.

Having been around the military with many of them being of high rank from 1LT thru General/Admirals, the military is a very political organization within it's own entity. The CYA was used often to protect themselves from adversaries or those that might attempt to use events or issues against them. Many of these memo's were handled personally and maintained within their own personal files.

I kinda think someone got to the COL's family. They seemed to appear a little to quickly and were to expedient in brushing this off.

[GoldenOldie]

84. L Col Killian's wife, son, daughter dispute????

Mrs. Killian states her husband did not write small details (?) down but had a very good recall and left things to memory. This does not jive with the Aide or officer that remembered the COL as an ethical man who caught between two opposing forces.

Having been around the military with many of them being of high rank from 1LT thru General/Admirals, the military is a very political organization within it's own entity. The CYA was used often to protect themselves from adversaries or those that might attempt to use events or issues against them. Many of these memo's were handled personally and maintained within their own personal files.

I kinda think someone got to the COL's family. They seemed to appear a little to quickly and were to expedient in brushing this off.

[obiwan]

89. Not specifically related to this link, but...

...it's "open season" on the Swift Boat Liars at Amazon.com. They have suspended their normal rules regarding reviews, so head on over and unload your thoughts. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/write-a-revie...

Happy hunting!

A True Believer