Shame and disgrace on CBS
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| Fri, 09-10-2004 - 10:05am |
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Killian's son said he doubted his father would have written an unsigned memo which said there was pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's performance review.
"It just wouldn't happen," he said. "No officer in his right mind would write a memo like that."
The personnel chief in Killian's unit at the time also said he believes the documents are fake.
"They looked to me like forgeries," said Rufus Martin. "I don't think Killian would do that, and I knew him for 17 years." Killian died in 1984.
Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software. Lines, a document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, pointed to a superscript — a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" — as evidence indicating forgery.
Microsoft Word automatically inserts superscripts in the same style as the two on the memos obtained by CBS, she said.
"I'm virtually certain these were computer generated," Lines said after reviewing copies of the documents at her office in Paradise Valley, Ariz. She produced a nearly identical document using her computer's Microsoft Word software.

Bev
From ABC today:
President Bush and the National Guard: the politics of the documents:
Whether these documents are valid or not, the debate over them has certainly pushed questions about Bush's National Guard service to the background. (And other things — did the politico-media world really process how the House rebuked the White House on overtime rules yesterday? Or actually read the Kaiser report?)
Just ask any reporter you know who works in politics were they focused on the curlicues of apostrophes yesterday? Or on whether Bush knew that he was (allegedly) being coddled by superiors?
Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue their push to question the president's Guard service, irrespective of the CBS situation.
Top Democrats vow to continue to lead the charge against Bush along these four lines
1. Bush allegedly got special treatment
2. Bush allegedly was suspended for missing his medical exam
3. Bush allegedly didn't fulfill his requirements
4. Bush allegedly didn't release all the documents he said he'd release
But they acknowledge that it might be more difficult to break through the clutter of questions surrounding the documents' authenticity.
In less guarded moments, some Democrats express a sense of utter loss at the seeming turn of events in this story.
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America" that "a lot of Democrats think this might have been a set-up" by Republicans — a sentiment we are likely to hear more of in the days to come.
Meanwhile, Republicans can rightly ask about the confluence of all the DNC, outside group, and media focus on revisiting the Guard story.
And Democrats can rightly say that Fox News Channel seems to like the "forgery" story more than the original CBS version.
And, meanwhile, Bush Republicans manifestly want to stay out of the way of this one and let the media work its magic. The sense one gets is that the White House — having disseminated the documents — feels the prospect of forgeries is too good to be true — or is it?
They will watch their friends at CBS twist in the wind, and keep repeating that the president was honorably discharged and all these attacks (get ready to lump the Kitty Kelley book in there!!!) are political and desperate from the side that is behind in the polls.
IF — IF these end up being forgeries, one of the interesting subplots will be the timing and method by which they were exposed.
We always favor looking at the content and substance over WHO is offering up the information, but in the war that will ensue about WHO gave CBS the potentially phony documents, it is interesting to Note that the right (Drudge, Fox, right-leaning blogs, others) led the way in pointing out the questions we have all been asking — and they were onto the questions, with remarkable detail, relatively soon after the documents were made public.
Here's part of how this story got here . . . from a little Marc Ambinder back-lurking on the blogs . . .
At 8:00 pm ET Wednesday night, CBS News does the story . . .
at 8:59 ET — before the broadcast is finished!!! — the documents come into question via a poster named Buckhead on the Free Republic Web site: LINK
Buckhead seems well-read on his forensic document examination skills.
"Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old."
Well, this is bandied about by dozens of Freepers, as they're called and is picked up at 8:30 am ET and added to by www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ — this little green football guy is a very popular conservative blogger . . .
It's expanded upon by www.powerlineblog.com/ in the early morning:
and also by www.spacetownusa.com/hmmm
and here, at 10:36 am ET: www.allahpundit.com/.
Around midday, the popular author Roger L. Simon praises the blogosphere for getting this story . . . LINK
Between this time and mid-day, reporters in the MSM — that's the Main Stream Media to these folks (that's us) — are alerted by some sources to the blogosphere's agita . . . others have read the blogs themselves.
At 2:41 pm ET, one blogger even consulted his own forensic expert and told anyone using the blog that, well, they must credit him: indcjournal.com/.
To Drudge, around 3:00 pm ET . . .
and the Weekly Standard . . . around 5:00 pm ET . . .
to Fox after 6:00 pm ET and then the AP and then ABC . . .
John Podhoretz credits the blogosphere, as he should: LINK
In other stories:
The Washington Post 's VandeHei and Edsall report on the "multi-front attack on President Bush's National Guard service" by Democrats yesterday. Notably there is only one line about the controversy over the authenticity of the documents unearthed by CBS News, with the paper dealing with that separately in another story Noted below. LINK
The Boston Globe does not get into the debate about the documents, focusing instead on the full-throated DNC push on Bush's service. LINK
A New York Times editorial on the new documents and Bush's Guard service does include a reference to the documents' authenticity being challenged. LINK
The White House lobs claims that the Kerry team is behind attacks on Bush's military service record. The Washington Times ' Bill Sammon reports White House press secretary Scott McClellan describes it as desperate measures for desperate times. "You absolutely are seeing a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates on the president." LINK
The New York Daily News writes that the revival of debates over Kerry and Bush's military records is turning New York voters off. LINK
Corky Siemaszko of the New York Daily News reports President Bush' former Harvard Business School proof, Yoshi Tsurumi, has come out of the woodwork to say his former student supported the Vietnam War but did not want to fight it. Tsurumi says Bush claimed his father's connections got him into the Texas Air National Guard. "But what really disturbed me is that he said he was for the Vietnam War," said Tsurumi.. "I said, 'George, that's hypocrisy. You won't fight a war that you support but you expect other people to fight it for you.' He just smirked." LINK
Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times writes "For years, the Democratic attacks have centered on two charges, including one that Mr. Bush failed to meet drilling requirements from mid-1972 to early 1973. A less-persistent accusation was that he used his father's status as a prominent Texas politician to win entry into the Guard after he graduated from Yale and faced the military draft in 1968. That charge has never been proved. And the White House thought it had snuffed out the question on non-drill compliance last winter, when it released records showing he was paid for the drills during the period in question and that he received sufficient points to achieve an honorable discharge in October 1973 as he entered Harvard Business School." LINK
CBS News in Crisis(?):
CBS's "Early Show" did a tell this morning on the document story.
An anchor read: "The authenticity of those documents is now being questions. Family members doubt that Killian would have written an unsigned memo . . . "
And "there are questions about the typography, which some experts say appear to have been done on a computer."
"CBS News says it stands by the story."
And then they quoted from the second CBS statement (not the third) that said that CBS was "convinced" the documents were authentic.
That conviction was dropped from a third CBS statement, which they asked ABC News to use instead of the second.
Compare two sequential statements released by CBS News last night:
New: "As is standard practice at CBS News, the documents in the 60 MINUTES report were thoroughly examined and their authenticity vouched for by independent experts. As importantly, 60 MINUTES also interviewed close associates of Colonel Jerry Killian. They confirm that the documents reflect his opinions and actions at the time."
Old: "As is standard practice at CBS News, each of the documents broadcast on 60 MINUTES was thoroughly investigated by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity. In addition to analysis of the documents themselves, CBS verified the authenticity of the documents by talking to individuals who had seen the documents at the time they were written. These individuals were close associates of Colonel Jerry Killian and confirm that the documents reflect his opinions at the time the documents were written."
The Washington Post 's Dobbs and Allen report that "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.'" LINK
"'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."
And let us not be the last to point out that if a(nother) major corporation was withholding information related to serious allegations made against the president of the United States, "60 Minutes" would be all over them, demanding to know about their documentation and expert back up.
What's going on in the halls of 57th Street and M Street today? (Note our use of superscript!!!)
We'll know more by 6:30 pm ET we bet.
Journalists play Gil Grissom: the documents:
It's important to point out from the outset that not a single piece of hard evidence has been uncovered that categorically proves these documents were forgeries.
Still, ABC News consulted yesterday with more than a half dozen top forensic document experts, including William Flynn and Peter Tytell, considered two of the best in the world.
Tytell and Flynn agreed on several points, namely that the proportional spaced Times Roman font does not appear to have been the result of available technology in 1972 and 1973. They questioned the superscripts, the spacing between lines (13 points separated each line, which, again, was not a technology that was available in typewriters back then.). Then there's the apostrophe, which is curled to the left in one of the documents — not something typewriters did with their apostrophes.
Richard Polt, a philosophy professor in Ohio and an amateur typewriter enthusiast, said he was 99 percent certain that no typewriter he knew of could have made the typed impressions that cleanly.
And two members of Killian's family (who certainly could have agendas of their own) told ABC News that they had suspicions.
Marjorie Connell, Killian's wife at the time, said she "just can't believe these are his words." Mrs. Connell said her late husband would be "turning over in his grave to know that a document such as this would be used against a fellow guardsman." She used the words "appalling," "sick" and "angry" to describe her feelings about Killian's name was "being battled back and forth on television."
She made it clear that Lt Col Killian was a fan of Bush: "I know for a fact that this young man as a lt was an excellent aviator, an excellent person to be in the guard and was very happy to have him become a member of the 111th."
She also mentioned her late husband was no typist. "He would not have typed because he did not type." When Killian did take notes his wife said he usually wrote on whatever scrap of paper was handy but "he was a person who did not take copious notes he carried everything in his mind." For more, see: LINK
Deb Orin and Ian Bishop of the New York Post key off of the radio interview with Mrs. Connell and a document expert to point to potential forgery. LINK
The New York Daily News reports forensic scientist Sandra Ramsey Lines says the superscript in the Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's notes are evidence of forgery. LINK
CBS News sent reporters a previously validated document last night that does appear to contain a superscripted "th," which confounds some experts we spoke with, including Katherine Koppenhaver, who said she is 75 percent certain even still that the new documents are forgeries.
The New York Times ' Seeyle and Rutenberg were careful to ask the political affiliation of their experts, which we think is a good idea. LINK
"Philip Bouffard, a forensic document specialist from Ohio who created a commonly used database of at least 3,000 old type fonts, said he had suspicions as well. 'I found nothing like this in any of my typewriter specimens,' said Dr. Bouffard, a Democrat. He also said the fonts were "certainly consistent with what I see in Times Roman," the commonly used Microsoft Word font. However, Dr. Bouffard said, a colleague had called his attention to similarities between the font in the memos and that of the IBM Selectric Composer of the early 1970's. But he said it would be unusual for Mr. Bush's commanding officer to have had the IBM machine because of its large size."
The Los Angeles Times talked to Killian's daughter: "Nancy Killian Rodriguez said only that her father, who died in 1984, had 'admired George Bush and was proud of the fact that he pinned his wings on him.'" LINK
Edited 9/10/2004 11:42 am ET ET by janeigh
Documents that raise doubts about whether President George Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard include features suggesting they may have been generated by a computer or word processor rather than a Vietnam War-era typewriter.
Experts consulted by some news organisations pointed to typographical and formatting questions about four documents as they considered the possibility that they were forged.
The documents, which were shown on Wednesday night on the CBS network's 60 Minutes II, are dated to 1972 and 1973 and include an order for Mr Bush to report for his annual physical exam and a discussion of how he could get out of "coming to drill".
The dispute over the documents' authenticity came as Democrats stepped up their criticism of Mr Bush's service with the National Guard between 1968 and 1974. If shown to be authentic, the documents would contradict some longstanding White House claims about Mr Bush's service in 1972.
William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the documents raise suspicions because they use proportional spacing.
Documents generated by the typewriters widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" uses as much space as an "m". But in the CBS documents each letter uses a different amount of space.
A CBS official, who asked not to be named, identified one of the network's sources as a retired major-general, Bobby Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry Killian.
He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Mr Hodges, who had replied "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 Mr Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, because he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Mr Bush.
But Mr Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records as "a farce", saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and he did not "keep files". She said her husband considered Mr Bush "an excellent pilot ... I don't think there were any documents. He was not a paper person."
The documents purport to show that Mr Killian, who was Mr Bush's squadron commander, was unhappy with his performance in meeting his National Guard commitments and resisted pressure from superiors to "sugarcoat" the record.
The Washington Post
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My own comments...I think this is a very historic event/day. The media elite (the major networks such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, newspapers such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe...) have finally lost their credibility. As far as I'm concerned they've been losing it over the last few years, but this is the final straw. Did you notice that The Washington Post put this story on page ONE today?! They didn't bury it several pages back under a headline that would bash President Bush! This is a HUGE step and change of course!
I've been thinking for months that there are cracks in the solidarity of the media elite. I think we are going to see some turning from their liberal coverage of supporting Kerry, and will actually start supporting President Bush. Imagine how popular President Bush will become if he actually starts getting some positive press?! Half the country likes him now despite the constant slamming from the national media since before he even took office. Even in my local paper I almost NEVER see a positive story about President Bush--usually the stories and headlines are slanted far to the liberal left to make President Bush look as horrible as possible. I think this is going to start to change in the national media across the country.
Surely the media doesn't want to sink along with John Kerry. Sorry Mr. Kerry, but I don't think your campaign will ever again catch up to President Bush's, and I think the media is realizing it too.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/598wfpet.asp
The Hoaxing of CBS
Why were they so easily duped?
by Richard Starr
09/10/2004 12:00:00 PM
A NUMBER OF EXPERTS have now weighed in on the inauthenticity of the documents CBS breathlessly revealed on 60 Minutes earlier this week--documents purportedly typed by the deceased commander of George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard unit in 1972 and 1973, but actually produced on a personal computer using Microsoft Word. I predict--and here I'm going out on a limb 10-feet wide and only an inch off the ground--that it's only a matter of time before CBS admits it was deceived. If there's any honor and professional pride left in the CBS newsroom, they will then expose the party or parties who deceived them.
Why did the premier news show in what was once reputed to be the premier television newsroom fall for such transparent fakes? Anyone old enough to have used a typewriter can look at them for a few minutes and figure out that they weren't typed on a typewriter in the early 1970s. A poster on FreeRepublic.com whose screen name is "Buckhead" was, to my knowledge, the first to do so at midnight Wednesday, shortly after CBS's scoop had aired. "Every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman," this person wrote. "In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. . . . I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old."
Indeed, some have speculated that a generation gap may
have contributed to the blunder, since only those of us over 40 can remember what it was like to try to type, say, "187th" with the "th" raised above the baseline. You had to turn the platen by hand. (Do you remember what a platen is?) And you couldn't have gotten a smaller "th" without changing the little type ball. Would you have gone to such trouble in typing a memo for your own files?
But the more important reason CBS was duped is that they wanted to believe the story. And the memos neatly fit the anti-Bush narrative that they believed to be true: Namely, Bush was a slacker at the end of his tour of duty and his superiors covered for him because they were under political pressure to do so.
Here's a revealing anecdote reported by Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen in this morning's Washington Post:
A senior CBS official . . . 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."
Obviously, you can't authenticate a document by reading it to someone over the phone. (CBS claims to have had other "experts" examine the documents but has been unwilling to name them.) What this reporting should have suggested to CBS is that whoever forged the documents was someone who knew what CBS's sources would be saying--someone well informed on the anti-Bush scuttlebutt about his National Guard service. The "documents" neatly reflect the reigning anti-Bush theories of the events of 1972 and 1973 and perfectly buttress the anti-Bush narrative because they were produced by someone who was obsessing over that narrative and understood that reporters would need "documentation" to advance the story.
Just as obviously, the journalists who went into overdrive for the National Guard story when the phony memos were released, with few exceptions, want to see Kerry win and Bush lose. This makes them suckers for a good anti-Bush story. It's conventional to call this media bias and be shocked by it. But really it's just human nature. That's why we have to be especially skeptical of the stories we fall in love with. And that's why CBS screwed up.
Richard Starr is a managing editor at The Weekly Standard.
I am WAY more concerned about a network news organization fabricating documents in an attempt to slander our Commander in Chief in a wartime election. Or was it the Kerry campaign behind this?
It would be nice to forget all of this and get to the issues but that would be irresponsible, it's gone too far.
How does setting aside something that is nothing more than the equivalent of a circus sideshow and moving on to more important issues