"FORGERY" DEBUNKING THREAD - Please re-post all evidence HERE

[Stephanie]

All of you who have posted evidence to debunk "forgery" BS, please re-post here. Let's have it all in one place, so our visitors can pick it up easily.

I have seen IBM ads touting proportional type. I have seen examples of the font used in the docs. This stuff is spread over various threads. Please post what you have here as well, for easy reference.

Not a debate thread. Just an evidence collection thread. Thanks!

[qanda]

1. I sure wish the media had done as much research...

Into the forged Niger documents.

[LTR]

2. The IBM Executive typewriter with proportional spacing - from 1941

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=782639&mesg_id=782639

[Stephanie]

3. Thank you

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/09/executive.html

[janx]

18. Two points: Notice the distinct "curly cue" apostrophes that

freeps and others swear don't exist on any typewriter.

Also, if my memory serves me correctly, the superscript "th"--which was available in a smaller point size on those Selectrics--often came out with an UNDERLINE, just as you see in the original Killian memo.

[underpants]

4. I'll ask here-Are these the same documents that the White House released

that night? Or did they find OTHER documents that haven't been released in the other two times they released all of W's records?

[Stephanie]

37. Yes, they are the same. From CBS:

The White House distributed the four memos from 1972 and 1973 after obtaining them from CBS News. The White House did not question their accuracy.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml

[underpants]

44. Well then-WHY IS DID THE WHITE HOUSE ISSUE FORGERIES?

THat is the question that needs to be answered IF they are forgeries which they aren't.

[Stephanie]

5. History of IBM Selectrics and their features

http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/255/ibmrd2505ZH.pdf

http://www.etypewriters.com/history.htm

[Stephanie]

6. IBM selectric font example

posted by nomad1776 in another thread:

[Warpy]

7. That's one font

As I recall, you could change fonts by changing the ball.

I worked for an insurance company in the late 60s and they used Arial.

[troublemaker]

11. This is not the face. Checks the 4s

[Stephanie]

8. Contemporaneous Witnesses:

______________________________________

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

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 a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone and 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."
______________________________________

http://cbsnewyork.com/topstories/topstories_story_254080625.html

Robert Strong was a friend and colleague of Killian who ran the Texas Air National Guard administrative office in the Vietnam era. Strong, now a college professor, also believes the documents are genuine.

"They are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being," says Strong. "I don't see anything in the documents that is discordant with what were the times, what was the situation and what were the people involved."
______________________________________

[girl gone mad]

9. This is a dupe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=782122&mesg_id=782122

[Stephanie]

10. That thread is full of debate

This is for evidence alone.

[displacedtexan]

12. The White House cites one of the memos as evidence Bush* was...

"working with his commanders to comply with that order."

Excerpt and link on my blog: http://ascrivenerslament.blogspot.com/

If that doc is a forgery, Bush*'s alibi dissolves!

What do you want to bet that every doc EXCEPT THAT ONE is called a forgery?

[troublemaker]

13. REVIEW: Please find this...

Don't worry about anything having to do with formatting -- proportional spacing, alignments, centering, etc.. That's a red herring since business machines were well capable of all of that.

Try to find this type face in an actual TYPED sample:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/06/politics/main641481.shtml

All that matters is basic letter shapes. (Proportion and weight and shapes of strokes cannot be determined from degraded xeroxes. Only the most basic letter forms can.)

We want an IBM type ball face that looks like the memos The face must have a closed top 4 with no foot serif and a 3 with a rounded top (not a flat top)

[Stephanie]

15. Have you checked all the docs at

www.awolbush.com ? USA Today posted most of the FOIA docs as well - I don't know if they're still up.

[Stephanie]

14. Sandra Ramsey Lines - "forensic expert" - is a Republican operative

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=782832&mesg_id=782832

"Independent document examiner" Sandra Ramsey Lines is sponsored by this Republican funding org: http://www.thewishlist.org

[Stephanie]

56. Correction - she donated to this org, not sponsored by them.

Regardless, she is not "independent"

[NewYorkerfromMass]

16. another definitive post (actually the whole thread is prertty good)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=782122&mesg_id=782334&page=

[indie_voter]

17. from dKos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/34914/1603

[geek tragedy]

19. That dKos thread seals it.

Good night, Freeptards.

[Blecht]

20. Somebody should just sticky a link to Daily Kos

at the top of this forum. You can't do any better at debunking than what's there.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

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

[complain jane]

27. wonder if the Freepers hacked it

or am I wearing my hat

[Stephanie]

29. Points debunked by KOS:

______________________________

First Claim (LittleGreenFootballs): "The documents can be recreated in Microsoft Word".

What the LGFer did to "prove" this was to type a Microsoft Word document in Times New Roman font, and overlay it with the original document. As he says: <more>
______________________________

"This typeface -- Times New Roman -- didn't exist in the early 1970s."

There are several problems with this theory. First, Times New Roman, as a typeface, was invented in 1931. Second, typewriters were indeed available with Times New Roman typefaces.<more>
______________________________

"Documents back then didn't have superscripted 'th' characters"

That one was easy. Yes, many typewriter models had shift-combinations to create 'th', 'nd', and 'rd'. This is most easily proven by looking at known-good documents in the Bush records, which indeed have superscripted 'th' characters interspersed throughout.
______________________________

"This document uses proportional spacing, which didn't exist in the early 1970s."

Turns out, it did. <more>
______________________________

"OK, fine, but no single machine had proportional spacing, 'th' characters, and a font like that one."

No, again. <more>
______________________________

Much, much more at link

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/34914/1603

[AngryAmish]

21. It is on Drudge

Ergo, it is false.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

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

[spooky3]

34. Take a look at all the other posts questioning your "evidence."

[jpgray]

23. Side by side comparison with TNR

Note how different the "i"s are in "File". In the memo, the "i" has a straight-across top to it, whereas in Word the top is slanted. The "F" and "i" almost touch each other in the memo, whereas in Word they come nowhere close. Note also that the dot of the "i" in the memo matches with the top of the "l", whereas in Word the dot is much higher. What horseshit.



Here you can see the "g" is noticeably flatter and more condensed in the memo version--the bottom loop has an entirely different shape.

Thanks to salvorhardin for posting these images originally.

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

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

[jpgray]

26. Sorry, it can't make an oblique top of an "i" into a straight top

That's impossible. It can't fundamentally change the shape of a "g" either, or bring two letters measurably closer together. Nor can it move the dot of the "i" higher than it was before.

[OilemFirchen]

32. And the bottom serif of both lower-case "t"'s

is angular in the memos while curved in the Word sample. Pretty whacked out copier, if it can do that consistently...

[geek tragedy]

35. Ahem. *Points to the post count* n/t

[Stephanie]

30. This not a debate thread

You can take your Talking Points elsewhere.

[snippy]

28. The fact that those pushing the forgery theory have lied about the

existence of proportional spacing and the superscript function is evidence that they are lying about everything else.

[Dems Will Win]

31. From Democrats.com:

From Democrats.com forum, Posted by Siannan:

Okay, I have to respond to this because I heard it on Hannity on the way home (by the Gods, I hate him), I knew what they were up to.

I started my career as a typist at AT&T. And not to pat myself on the back, but I was good.

Now, let's discuss "Ms. Document Expert". She knows nothing. The IBM Selectric was issued in 1961. In 1964, the IBM Selectric Composer was issued. If you had the right component parts and knew how to work them, you could make a document that would sing. Give me a '64 Selectric Composer and I can recreate that document too. The fact that the "th" is in superscript is meaningless. It could be done with a Selectric Composer, and it was even easier with a Selectric II, which came out in 1971. So there!

These guys obviously think that there is no one around who knows anything about typewriters used in the late 1960's and early 1970. I had a 64 Selectric Composer until it crapped out last year.

Document forgery? Bah!

http://community.democrats.com/forums/discussions.cfm?forumid=170&topicid=135152 (second post down)

[spooky3]

33. Anyone who used a Selectric can tell you how to do superscripts or

subscripts. You just held the platen with your left hand, then turned it slightly up or down, and typed in the character, then released the platen to its original position.

It was not done electronically. It could be done manually on the most basic of machines. Ask any clerk in a law office, or any graduate student from back then, as they had plenty of footnotes to type.

[rastignac5]

36. Help- need proof that IBM Selectric was used in national guard

[cthrumatrix]

38. already on another thread

[skip fox]

39. Thousands of memos and reports on that SAME MACHINE!!

There must be thousands of other memos, reports, etc., as well as carbon-copies in the hands of former guardsmen
of the period. All CBS has to do is find one with the same font. (Every typewriter, by the way, has unique
"fingerprints" as the FBI well knows.)

One painless way of telling the truth is as simple as finding another piece of paper that went through that machine,
many of which must be available to any reporter worth his or her salt. So instead of hours spent arguing, a reporter
need simply look.

Someone already knows the names of all the pilots at that time and place. A reporter might ask one of these former
airmen to see his file (or to release records), etc. It's embarrassingly simple, one would think, . . . but we're living in
a world where reporters seem increasingly beyond embarrassment.

[SidDithers]

40. Superscript on another Bush document...

Josh Marshall had this yesterday, from the documents posted here at USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/9-Miscellaneous.pdf

I rotated the document to make it easier to read.





Sid

[Stephanie]

41. Posted in another thread by someone who installed Selectrics in the 70s:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=783048#783369

Neshanic (630 posts)
Fri Sep-10-04 11:38 AM
Response to Original message

20. I worked at IBM installing Selectrics in the late 70's

The practice was that the Selectrics were delivered to the client, and then me, an IBM newbie would go to the account and "install" it. They were bolted by wingnuts to a very hard base in the box, and had explicit instruction that the client not open the box, until the IBM representative came. The vast majority of people complied with this.

I would do this all day, and all Selectrics have a serial number, that was recorded and taken back to be recorded at the branch office.

All military Selectrics were in my experience taken out of the box, ignoring the IBM instructions not to do so. This was because at the recieving area, the military would attach a small metal plate to keep track of it.

All someone would have to do is find the record of the Selectrics at that base, and compare them to the IBM list.

I highly doubt a Composer was delivered to a base at that time. Composers were quite pricey and in my experience the Government agencies did not get anything but the Selectrics. Only later did they even get the Selectric II that had the white-out tape.

[Bridget Burke]

42. I vote for the IBM Executive

It had proportional spacing & was quite available in the early 70's. The Selectric Composer was a beast--meant for "typesetting", not office use.

[Name removed]

43. Deleted message

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

[Qutzupalotl]

45. I'm working on it, but noticed something else.

Someone typing this in Word would get the automatic numbering when they got to #2, with indentation. It can be undone with a keystroke, but why would they do that and not fix the superscript?

On edit: the word "not" at the end of paragraph 1 would normally not break; by default, it would appear at the end of the line above it, when using Microsoft Word.

On second edit: Yet another discrepancy. The line spacing does NOT match. I'll post the composite image shortly.

[Stephanie]

46. "Forgery" accusation promoted by Swift Boat Liars PR people:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x785150

Forgery charges promoted by same source as SBL lies

according to Eric Boehlert in
http://salon.com
excerpt:

But there is clear evidence confirming that the same conservative operatives who have been busily promoting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smears of Kerry are now engaged in pushing the story that CBS's "60 Minutes Weeknight Edition" aired forged documents in its Wednesday night report on Bush and the National Guard.

Creative Response Concepts, the Arlington, Va., Republican public relations firm run by former Pat Buchanan Communications Director Greg Mueller, with help from former Pat Robertson Communications Director Mike Russell, sent out a media advisory Thursday to hawk a right-wing news dispatch: "60 Minutes' Documents on Bush Might Be Fake." Creative Response Concepts has played a crucial role in hyping the inaccurate, secondhand Swift Boat allegations, with Russell serving as the group's official spokesman. A company spokesman could not be reached for comment.

[Qutzupalotl]

47. Here it is!

The black type is from MS Word. The colored type is the document from CBS. This is clearly NOT a match. The line spacing is off; the word spacing is off; the superscript is lower in Word; and as I noted earlier, the word "not" near the end of paragraph 1 would appear on the line above by default in Word; I had to manually break it. When typing in paragraph 2, Word wanted to make an indented numbered list; I had to undo that. And, as others have noted, the font does not match, especially the capital Y and lower case i.

[Stephanie]

53. That's great, thanks!

Nice job!

[Walt Starr]

48. The signatures are not faked

Yep, it's corroborative and Killian signed it. See it for yourself here:

The document in question:



A second CBS released document with a signature:



From Bush's discharge request:



Bush's 1971 Evaluation:



and finally, Bush's 1972 evaluation:



So, if indeed the first document was forged (the one brought into doubt over the typeface and superscript), Killian forged it himself and MUST have done it prior to his death in 1984. That EVIL Jerry Killian positioned his documents to come out and harm George W. Bush's chances for re-election TWO DECADES AGO OR MORE!

[Stephanie]

51. Excellent! Thanks!

That's the clincher.

[Shopaholic]

49. Has anyone sent any of this stuff to the media?

The usual cable network 'ho's and such? I know they probably won't pay attention to it but you know damn well they're too lazy to go out and look for it themselves!

[Stephanie]

55. Please have at it

It's easier to copy & paste a thread if you go to print view - click at the top of the page.

[Chili]

50. here's my 2 cents to this...

...and then I'm done with this, not going to waste any more time or ink or paper on this.

Somebody said that if you copy it over and over and over again, it will look like the CBS document.

WRONG. It will look like this (original printout from Word document typed on a Dell computer, printed out on an HP PSC750 five times - the original printout is on top):







...which is not even remotedly like this, the original:







If you copy a Word printout over and over and over again, all it will do is make the letters FATTER and DARKER, not faded and distorted and pockmarked... and all still perfectly aligned. That's it.

This is the silliest thing Drudge and those asses have come up with, and we've fallen for it hook, line and sinker. It's a DISTRACTION from what the records really show, that's all this is!

Done and gone.

[Stephanie]

52. Thanks! Well done.

I agree it's ridiculous but so was the Smear Boats. Debunk early, debunk often!

[Chili]

54. UGH!

:)

[Walt Starr]

57. But if you make the CBS doc a litte smaller

and superimpose yours over theirs, you'll see that yours will hide the uniqueness of theirs and you too can drive the media.

If you're a Republican, that is.

[Joanne98]

58. CBS just said that the 'th" was in typewriters in the 70's.......

the "th" debate is OVER. Thank GAWD.