Go through that again in dumb english. Sorry man, it is cool, but needs translating. Otherwise, dead center!

One word: Awesome.

Um, please explain. I see little lines in the top corner, but I don't know what that means.

Yeah, I don't get it.

What am I seeing? What does it mean? Is the point that the second th isn't as distorted as the first one?

I'm completely lost.

WOW. What will these people stop at?

Pajamahadeen catching forgers morning, noon, and night. Fantastic! Excellent work!

Nailed him.

One of these days the Left is going to dig up somebody competant to forge their documents.

If you go Hailey's index, you'll see the published file: bush_04_May_72_with_typewri.gif. This is the published image. Also listed is: bush_with_typewri.gif. This is the image BEFORE Hailey pasted in a superscript th. He seems to be forging his forgery defense.

Oh, excellent . . . he is busted.

Paul - Right on, brother! You are just abso-frickin'-lutely righteous for exposing this lame ass shill.

Maybe we need to find out which mail order campus gave him his PhD as well.

Death to all who oppose the blogosphere. You will be assimilated.....

Still doesn't 'prove' anything - no one 'knows' where the documents came from - anyone could have created them. That's the thing - there is no paper trail that verifies those so-called documents ever existed before someone got the idea to try to screw Bush.
And really, more importantly, who the hell cares, outside of a bunch of moronic Dimocrats and Newspeople who can't stand the idea of a Republican President?
If the Boston Globe and CBS are still expending time and energy on this craziness, I would suggest that their stockholders should start selling the damn stock.
I'll shut up now.

He forged the 2nd th by using Photoshop to erase the old th and overlayed the new th on top of the old th.

Now he can use another title after his PhD salutation "Caught in 24 hrs"

Bless OpenSecrets.org Must be a lot of money ($250) for a Utah English Professor.

HAILEY, DAVID
RICHMOND,UT 84333
UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY/ASSOCIATE PRO
5/25/2004
$250
Kerry, John

see link on update (-ed)

Offhand, I'd say the line over the "th" (which is oddly sharp compared to the rest of the document) was formed by doing a cut and paste to lower the superscript, but he didn't catch the top of the "t." Had he zoomed in to take a closer look, he'd have realized the cut was faulty.

That's my guess anyway.

Ho. Lee. Etc.

Now I see it. Whoa.

Reminds me of a time when I had to explain permissions on files to someone who had left up some very interesting emails for the world to see... I learned how to anonymous email that day.

Still, was pre-emption a good idea? These people may actually learn something in this process, and as Laurence says, someone who can actually forge convincingly may come out of this process.

But man oh man. Good work.

The th in the second line was photshopped in. In the original there was no th "typed" in (probably because there is no way to do so on a typewriter he was using).

So he photoshopped the th in and claimed he did it on a typewriter--when he didn't.

For crying out loud. How can people do this and not expect to get caught?

Dr. Hailey, what do you have to say for yourself? And why, man, why? The story was just about dead. CBS succeeded in waiting the storm out, and nobody's talking about it anymore. Now you revive it, and possibly permanently damage your career in the process. What were you thinking?

The downloaded Photoshop image shows the document's second line illustrated above withOUT a superscript "th." I believe this shows that the good professor used Photoshop to add said "th" to his doc, confirming it to the Wizzer as being a fake.

arb

Hey, this reminds me of Professor Michael Bellesiles, the history professor who wrote that firearms were rare in early America. His research was a total fraud!
http://home.att.net/~r.s.mccain/bellesiles.html

Add my voice to the "dumb it down for us" crowd. I am looking at two lines of texts, one with fuzzy TH superscript and one with a clear one. The clear one has some lines next to it. OK, so what does any of that mean?

I also do not have Photoshop, so I can't see what kind of damning evidence is in the PSD file. I have Photoshop on my home computer and frequently use it to scan things in (since I can use 32-bit color and adjust levels better than the scanner can), so I certainly wouldn't make anything of it if it is just a PSD file with an allegedly scanned typewriter document in it, as that in itself proves nothing. But maybe if I could see the document, I'd see clear signs of forgery-in-progress...so maybe you could explain what that would be for those of us without Photoshop access.

Thanks.

good work! i checked out the open web folder and there's a lot of stuff there. anything else incriminating? i have a friend on the faculty at USU and i'll ask him if he knows anything about this guy.

looks like a good case for a professional ethics violation.

Wonder how fast the Boston Globe is stopping the presses.

WOW now that was some fast responses... Ok I was close on the "cut and paste" but I was thinking about lowering the original and using a sharpen filter. Duh, he put an entirely new "th" in and failed to cover the old one entirely.

The 2nd superscripted 'th' has been added later. It doesn't have the edge pixelation the letters on either side have. It looks "clearer" than the set of letters it was supposedly typed along with.

This is caused by forgery; admittedly a better forgery than the original see-BS forgery (which was totally outrageous) but a poor forgery still.

You know when you're at the mall and everyone is staring at one of those hidden 3D pictures of a lighthouse or a three-masted schooner or the space shuttle or something where the whole thing looks like a bunch of squiggly lines until you cross your eyes just right and then BAM it comes into view, except all around you one by one people are saying "Oh, I see it" or "Wow, there it is" except you're just standing there like an idiot staring so hard you feel like you're eyes are just going to shoot out of your head at like a million miles per hour because you just can't figure out what the hell it is everyone else sees and you're going so insane that you're sure you're just about to start punching everyone int heir stupid faces because you think you're either crazy or blind or having a stroke or something?

I feel like that.

You are a GOD!

Simple explanation: the cut and pasted the TH into the image of the document to make it look like the TH he created on his typewriter matches the TH from the CBS memo. If you look at the PDF and the PSD files, you can see that the 72 in the date "1972" a few lines above the superscript TH also appears to be pasted in.

Considering the professor's credentials, this lameness does not surprise me - he's a technical writer. We are not known for our mental acuity. At least, I'm not!

Excellent catch on this!

Playing Devils Avocate for a second...

Isn't this guy supposed to be someone who is looking to debunk the documents?

If so, that would probably involve photoshopping around and trying to move elements of documents around to see if they fit. This could be a work in progress, it could be a temporary throwaway image he wasn't planning on using to provide evidence of the authenticity of the documents.

I just think there are a variety of reasons to explain the point you are making, if I think you are making the point I think you are.

I went to Utah State, located DEEP in a very conservative small town. Literally 85% or more of these people are religious, gun-toting, hard-wrking industrious conservative folk who are identified as Republicans. The second you step on to campus, however, they hit you over the head, suck any sense of value and morality from your soul, and begin to indoctinate every wit with their liberal bias. Even in good ol' Logan Utah.

From the doctors paper in the parent directory

"Working on the hypothesis that this is Typewriter, and was typed on a machine, I am able to exactly reproduce a Bush memo (Figure 4)."

And wiz has the evidence that he was forging them.

People need to start reading the visuals more clossely...the guy's headline screams "I'm Left, I'm Left, I'm LEEEFFTTT!"

This is a great job you've done...I downloaded the pdf file for safe keeping but you know, I really anticipate all the other "evidence" to just be gone in the next few minutes. Or, at least, soon. Great job here, really great!

People need to start reading the visuals more clossely...the guy's headline screams "I'm Left, I'm Left, I'm LEEEFFTTT!"

This is a great job you've done...I downloaded the pdf file for safe keeping but you know, I really anticipate all the other "evidence" to just be gone in the next few minutes. Or, at least, soon. Great job here, really great!

Look at the two versions of 1972 just above th. The numbers are obviously different too.

The Bush Doctrine in Action!

I emailed this story to the USU student newspaper. Maybe it will get some buzz.

Question, we know forging goverment documents is a felony.

Is forging forged goverment documents to pass them as real documents still a felony ?? If so,
we know who did it this time, unlike the originals.

Just a thought

Next thing you know, CBS/Kerry will be showing "'Father' Guido Carducci" discussing HIS versions of the, um, "documents."

Then, it'll be Oscar the Cookie Monster. THEN, it'll be Heloise. THEN, there will be...

"one of these things doesn't belong..Can you find which one is not like the other before I finish this song?"...Sorry that song is stuck in my head now.

Here's his email address

dhailey@english.usu.edu

What about the lack of a . after the 2?

I don't get what you are saying.

The doctor says "Do not misunderstand figure 4. My addition is not typed. It is replicated based on the characters already in the memo."

Doesn't this mean he was using photoshop to move the "type" around? to layout the memo?

Am I missing smoething? Isn't one missing a period after the two? Seems like a dumb mistake.

The original fakes were better than this one.

Just for the record, I don't doubt Paul on this. When 39 people in the room see something, and I don't, I'd have to be crazy or even more arrogant than my wife says I am not to recognize that the odds favor them being right. I just don't understand the argument.

Having never used photoshop, I guess I just don't know what a photoshopped document looks like.

And what's with the "72" missing from the date on one of those, two. It's strange - is he actually saying he cut and pasted chunks from one place and another in Photoshop and moved them around to "recreate" actual typespeak?

I'm confused. He says on page 8, in the first paragraph, beginning with "Do not misunderstand..." that he put that together with photoshop and a digital Typewriter font. Was that not in the PDF you downloaded?

haha... feel free to contact this joker...

dhailey@english.usu.edu

http://imrl.usu.edu/Hailey/content/index.html

I also had an interesting phone call with the head of your department. You might give him a call.

Paul, what was the "interesting conversation?"

Way to go, Wiz. Buy yourself some nice silk pj's. You deserve 'em!

Way to go, Wiz. Buy yourself some nice silk pj's. You deserve 'em!

Zoom to about 1000% and it's much more obvious.

Hey Paul,

Were the fake "rape" photos the Globe used on his site, too? Just sayin'...

The superscript sure looks pasted in - several times. I'd still like to see a rebuttal by one of the other experts familiar with document analysis. But, even if Dr. Hailey could duplicate these on an IBM Selectric, there wasn't one in that TANG office, was there? Or, is Dr. Hailey implying that the officer who couldn't type typed these documents on a typewriter that wasn't the one used by the secretary in the office who could type?

Incidentally, as the Photoshop file shows, it's not just the superscripted th that he faked. Many of the NUMBERS were added after the fact as well.

Please make sure to emphasize this. He placed FAR MORE than just a little "th" AFTER THE FACT.

This is a clear case of manufacturing evidence. In the sciences he would be tossed on his ASS for massaging the data to fit the premise.

Case closed, this guy is a goner.

Brilliant! My first visit to your Blog (courtesy Charles at LGF) and I am IMPRESSED.

Keep it up.

Idiots! All they had to do was create an HTML file and call it: "index.html"

That would have pretty much taken care of the "security" issue of the webserver being open.

Okay, I'm no expert, but he supposedly is...

He wrote...
"Figure 5. The above is an example of a bush memo and my replica based on using Typewriter condensed as my font of choice. Note that the match is exact."

Exact?

Not only does it fail to match exactly, but he also failed to type the "exact" same line, more than once, with magical alignment.

He left off the period following the "2" with no proportional spacing difference, good trick. The "2" does not match either... angle, shape, yet somehow none of this affected the spacing of the line. But, like i said.. I'm no expert... someone else can probably explain this. Actually, none of the numbers match, especially the 9, 7, 3, and we'll never know about the 5, since he did not finish typing that line - maybe he was in shock by how badly the 3's matched.

I double checked... he definitely needs to bone up on the meaning of exact...

Main Entry: exact
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin exactus
1 : exhibiting or marked by strict, particular, and complete accordance with fact or a standard
2 : marked by thorough consideration or minute measurement of small factual details
synonym see CORRECT
- ex·act·ness /-'zak(t)-n&s/ noun

Most excellent. I hope the Globe decides to do a story on this website for outing the bogus prof. You are the definition of a real investigative journalist.

Falsifying data used in research is means for dismissal for a professor.

164 Jihad Verses in the Koran

Falsifying data used in research is means for dismissal for a professor.

Falsifying data used in research is means for dismissal for a professor.

All I can say is....SWEET!

WAIT A MINUTE! I just downloaded the Bush_Memos.pdf that Wizbang linked. In Acrobat Reader 6 I checked document properties: The creation date and modification date are 9-30 around 1PM. That's TODAY folks, not the date Hailey posted them!

WTF?!

Um, yeah. So you're arguing that the man has gone to extreme lengths to forge something.. that the report in question explains is assembled as a demonstration of the matching of the font, and not a demonstration of an actual match with a typewriter?

That is, you're dancing in the aisles for catching him doing.. what he said he did?

Wow.

So if the docs were created TODAY, how could Wizbang have had the story LAST NIGHT?

WTF!?

Um, yeah. So you're arguing that the man has gone to extreme lengths to forge something.. that the report in question explains is assembled as a demonstration of the matching of the font, and not a demonstration of an actual match with a typewriter?

That is, you're dancing in the aisles for catching him doing.. what he said he did?

Wow.

spoons:

Just look at the enlargement alone of the file with the "th" ALLEGED superscript versions (there are two displayed on one file)...the second "th" superscript bears enough visual remains from Photoshopping that it pretty much advertises itself as a doctored/modified document.

When you copy and then paste one portion of an image into or onto another image (which is what the program, "Photoshop" enables, image-modifications, image creations, thus the term, "photoshopped" and/or "photoshopping" when someone modifies an image file with any image editing program, at this point -- Photoshop, the program, was the first "big" hit as to image editing software, so it's become both a Proper Noun in language and also a verb for the act of image editing).

When you image edit, you leave "edge" pixels from what you've cut and pasted onto the second image, unless you do further image editing (remove your cut'n'pasted pixel remains from around the image portion you "pasted" onto another). Just glare at the two "th" superscript lines and there are glaring pixel remains on the second line, around the "th" that clearly show a cut'n'pasted process.

On the other hand, anyone could now go into that file and erase the remaining pixels, save it to replace the existing, and all evidence of the photoshopping/Photoshop process would be gone. And, they probably will...

And that's just for starters, just one issue available to view/read here.

Wait a minute-- check your calendar. Today is the 30th and the doc shows the 29th.

P

Well, if the good doctor says he produced that on a typewriter, I for one would love to see him do it, especially the part where he Photoshops it afterwards.

How dumb can you get?

Hold on, folks. Has anyone here other than Right of Center actually read the whole memo?

I believe beyond any doubt that the purported TANG memos are fraudulent. But to claim that the prof's analysis is based on manufactured evidence is completely inappropriate.

Analysis continues on my blog (http://pavelblov.journalspace.com), because I don't do posts this long in "comments."

Here's my own contribution to the Killian memo evidence. Photoshopping is fun!

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

"Using the hypothesis established from examining the Bush memos (oh, and photoshop. oops.), it becomes possible to create a virtually flawless replica."

Brian: The "Do not misunderstand figure 4" clause on page eight is referring to, well, Figure 4. We're talking about Figure 5.

Page 9, Fig 5 refers to the spacing not the font or the superscript...so why would he cut & paste the "th'? Man, that makes no sense at all...unless he didn't have a ball with superscript. Wouldn't that makes his analysis invalid? or am I missing something?

Paul: download the doc from Wizbang's link.
Open it with Acrobat Reader 6.
Go to File|Document Properties.
The "Created" date is 9-30 1:01PM.
The "Modified" date is 9-30 1:02PM.
Today is 9-30.
Hailey posted his report before today.
This doc is probably not the same one Hailey originally posted.
SOMETHING IS VERY FISHY HERE!
Wizbang, what do you think about this?

WTF!?

Spoons,
One of the keys is the Photoshop document. The PDF obviously looks hinky. When blown up, it's obvious (to me at least) that the th doesn't the rest of the letters. It is much clearer. The photoshop document shows the exact same letter only the th is missing from the document and there is a large space after 111. He added the th through some other process, likely c&p in Photoshop. Assuming that he created the document then scanned it and added the th, the th would logically be clearer as it is at least one generation newer than the rest of the document.

On page 8 he says:

Once I had identified the font family, I recreated the memo using characters from that font family. Do not misunderstand figure 4. My addition is not typed. It is replicated based on the characters already in the memo. It does not prove that the memos were typed, or that I can type them.

He has a number of arguments that, he says, point to mechanical origin, but he does make it clear he didn't duplicate them that way himself. I don't see how this is fraud. I also don't find his arguments convincing. For one thing, it is just too much of a coincidence that the memos DO line up so well with documents created in Microsoft Word.

Repeating your post five times doesn't make it valid, Pavel :) Just kidding, I know it was likely an accident.

Seriously though, I just read your blog, and you make a very good point. I think it would be safe to say that his analysis is not necessary FRAUDULENT but it is certainly LOGICALLY FLAWED.

I wish you had waited a few hours, preferably until the Globe story was live. Remember the old tried and true rule: don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.

The only lesson the legacy media people and the Democrat operatives they are in league with will learn from this is that next time they'd better do a better job on the forgery.

As for the professor, he will not be dismissed. When was the last time you ever heard of a professor getting fired? They're like politburo members, they stay 'on the job' til they die. Why do you think there are so many thirtysomething PhDs working at Barnes & Noble? PhDs are easy to get; PhD jobs however. . . forget it. Once got, those jobs ain't given up.

And if by some miracle it does occur to somebody in the administration that a professor who forges documents for the Boston Globe is a liability rather than an asset to the school, you can bet that there will be protestors bussed in the next day to defend the guy.

If he were really clever he would voluntarily resign and send a resume to Viacom.

Sorry for the (many, many) duplicate comments - I wasn't get an ack back from the server.

"Wait A Minute"s post is interesting. Is the text I mentioned in older versions of the PDF? Did the professor add the point that his additions weren't typed?

I just emailed Kevin to make sure he reads your full defense, Pavel. I really do think you have a good point. A charge of academic dishonesty has to be airtight. To that end, this guy is clearly grossly incompetent, perhaps seriously disingenuous, but I don't think it's safe to say that he's perpetrating a fraud.

Steve L., he does not claim that he produced the examples he's contrasting with a typewriter.. at all. He's merely asserting that the Typewriter font he has found, which is not New Times Roman, matches closely the text in the memos. The superscripting he would probably have to insert out of band, as whatever code he used to generate the baseline text would not replicate a typewriter with a superscripting function.

There's a whole lot of people screaming 'liar, liar!' at this guy without bothering to actually read what he wrote. Not the best showing for the blogosphere, I'd say.

I just looked at the PSD docs on his server...is this guy kidding?

David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D. is owned.

There are too many things wrong with his analysis, not in the sense of a mistaken conclusions but in outright cheating.

The main issue is that he is not really using a typewriter, but software to mimic a typewriter.

He mixes at least 2 typefaces to get results that he wants, beside apparent manual kerning to get the same/close character positioning. The clear giveaway is the capital R. Its right leg is an indication that this is TNR typeface--in all versions or derivates of American Typewriter, the leg is curved, even in the condensed version he is claiming to use. See here
and You can easily find other differences, as number shapes (2,3,4,7,9), or "s".

I am not sure if the guy is dishonest consciously, or if the toll of cognitive disonance induced by leftist deconstructionism found him to become a typical example of the mind lost in the web of pathological lying.

The professor's "report" says at one point

Using the hypothesis established from examining the Bush memos, it becomes possible to create a virtually flawless replica. Please understand, however, the replica is not typed. It is produced by examining and replicating the original font used in the memo. It is not a demonstration that I can type a replica memo, it is a demonstration that the font in the memo is probably Typewriter.

(Emphasis mine.)

What is he trying to prove, that he, too, can create a forgery? And that therefore the CBS documents are authentic?

Riiiiiight.....

You are brilliant, f'ng brilliant.

Folks, take a deep breath here.
I'd especially think twice before attacking Hailey right away.
Bush_Memos.pdf was created TODAY.
We don't know WHO created it.
If Hailey's server's supporting_material directory is "open," is it opened only for "read," or for both "read" and "write?"
Did Hailey create that doc today?
Or did SOMEBODY ELSE plant files on Hailey's server?
How did Wizbang get the story LAST NIGHT, if the doc was created TODAY?

WTF?!
g

I got here through Power Line.

Excellent Job!

Keep it up.

Please tell me that there's Heinz Ketchup smudges at the bottom of the doc.

Hailey's assertion that the memos were typed with a typewriter equipped with American Typewriter Condensed is demonstrably false:

Proof

I'm not impressed by his analysis, but add my name to the list of those who don't understand the "Caught him red handed" stuff.

He's not claiming to have made this on a typewriter, but just using some "Typewriter" font (which, BTW, seems to have nothing to do with a real typewriter, and so nothing to do with the memos, AFAIK).

My first glance take on this is that his reliance on Photoshop means that it's not feasible to just type this in in Word using his whatever "Typewrite" font and get the desired results--it take a lot of hand tweaking. But this seems immaterial to his case.

OTOH, his case seems rather daft to me, too--a very well written specious argument, showing only the with a variation on some who-knows "Typewriter" font, and using photoshop, one is able to get results not as good but maybe sorta kinda almost as good as using Word and Times Roman did with the one memo.

Is his whole case resting on a mistake? Did anyone claim that ALL the forged memos used Times New Roman? I don't think so; that seems to be one of his many assumptions.

To emphasize: while his analysis seems very laboriously weak (though this is only at a first read), I don't think this Photoshop stuff refutes his claims.

But his_demonstrable claims seem really low-content, something like "it's possible to use a marginally Typewriter-like font in Word and then cut, paste, and massage in Photoshop to get results similar to the Bush memos--therefore, they could have been typed." But that conclusion is a total non-sequitur without additional premises that are nowhere to be found in his analysis.

I must inform each of you that I have successfully recreated an exact match of the supposedly forged Bush TANG documents using a typewriter in wide use during the early 70's. However, my cat Apples (widely known to be mischevious) has eaten the documents as well as the typewriter. Rest assured that I am as frustrated with this development as you must be. Regardless, I feel that this settles the matter in CBS' favour.

Excellent work! Another win for the blogosphere!

Guys, either the Hailey changed the text of his analysis, or most of you are reading what he said wrong.

This is what I posted at LGF:

"Ok guys, most of you seem to have misunderstood what this guy is saying. Charles, please take note of this and make sure the blogosphere doesn't embarras itself. He said:

1. He states, "The following evidence from a forensic examination of the Bush memos indicates that they were typed on a typewriter:" He is saying that THE CBS MEMOS were made on a typewriter, NOT THE ONES HE MADE. He makes a specific note that he did NOT use a typewriter for this.

2. He took out all the letters, took the cleanest ones out of those.

3. Claims to have indentified the font, and says it is not Times New Roman.

4. He took those characters, and arranged them in a way that he says is consistent with what would have been produced by a typewriter of a specific kind. He did this in photoshop, and clearly states he did not use a typewriter for it.

5. Later on he says the "th" from Times New Roman does not match the "th" in this font.

Now, I personally do not see any relevance to arranging the letters in photoshop to make another copy of what they were in the first place. However, unless he changed his site, (did he?????? if he did, then thats another thing..), HE IS NOT CLAIMING TO HAVE MADE THAT MEMO WITH A TYPEWRITER. !!!.

However, his analysis doesn't seem to line up with Charles's flashing animation of the superimposed memos... His (Charles, ed. for clarity) seemed to match perfectly, yet Hailey's examples of fonts show a Times New Roman that doesn't match the CBS memo font very well at all. Charles, can we have a super zoomed "flashing" look at both some numbers (with some 1's), and of some letters, please?

Also of issue, is when Charles found out that the "th" didn't display properly, but printed right. Hailey specifically says the "th" doesn't match Times New Roman, could he have made the same error?

I'm still sure the memos are fakes, considering all the content problems, but we need to make sure we do a good job on our rebuttal of this guy's work. Twisting his words (unless, as I said, he changed them after the fact) will not help us any."

............

Please, make sure we don't jump to early on the wrong item here. Lets take some time to sort this crap out.

ConservativeRevolution.com posted this guy and his boss's home phone numbers. You just gotta love bloggers.

I think you should make a better analysis of this forgery and send it to Dick Thornburg. This guys analysis could be used to get CBS off the hook. also what does Mr Newcomber think of this he did the most definitve job in defeating the CBS Memo's

It really does not matter much if the documents in the directory were replaced with later date. One can speculate that the previous docs may have been even more revealing (because the PSD files lack the layers that one would use for typing and positioning).

His main contention that he uses American Typewriter and/or derivate of it for his comparison is not only false, but some specific details also provide a clear indication of an attempt for deception.

I should have said "first glance" rather than "first read" above, but let me add one more comment:

His assertions 1-6 in the beginning each seem dubious indeed, and certainly undemonstrated by his seemingly professional-length, amateur-quality analysis. He's just no expert on this stuff, and it shows. Seems like what Noam CHomsky would write if he were to suddenly analyze fonts and typing--more holes than insights (though some real insights too).

I agree with you, John R. - it's a weak analysis that tells us basically "if you mix and match a few fonts that were in existence at the time of the TANG memos, and then manipulate them with Photoshop, you can come up with something that looks sort of like the TANG memos."

He's doing a Michael Moore job - never saying something that is false in isolation, but putting together a number of uncontextual factoids to create a false impression.

From a guy immersed in conspiracy theory... bravo... it's refreshing to see one actually proven...

Newt's analysis of Utah State University is mostly correct.

I am a USU almnus and a former research employee. And there are plenty of California/East Coast liberals (locals call them "educated idiots") who have come to USU to be close to nature and escape the negative consequences of their love affair with socialism.

Fortunately, they're not numerous enough to create too much trouble in Logan. But they do dominate the campus. It's their own little world up on the hill.

"My motto, 'cogito ergo falsus sum,' means 'I think, therefor I am wrong.' I say it often to remind myself that my opinions are always suspect; I am unqualified to judge the ideas and opinions of others. If I am unqualified, as far as I am concerned, so is anybody else. (That statement is made with the full knowledge that I am unqualified to make it.)"

- David E. Hailey, Jr.
Assistant Professor
Professional Writing/Hypermedia
Utah State University

This whole thing looks to be sloppy but not deliberately disingenuous. He specifically says in the text that his "addition is not typed" (top of page 8) but then refers that to Figure 4 rather than Figure 5. He also claims in the caption to Figure 5 that the 'Typewriter' font produced an "exact match" but this hardly seems to be born out by the document itself and the amount of Photoshopping that definitely did take place above and beyond simply inserting the text for comparison. Even if the 'Typewriter' font did produce an exact match, all that does is support the notion that these are forgeries. All very strange.

Thanks, Pavel. Agreed with your summary of my post, though personally, I wouldn't even presume these fonts were in existence on typewriters at the time; he seems to be relying on the font name "Typewriter" to carry some evidential weight, which is really silly for obvious "anyone can make any font and name it anything" reasons.

And this weird stuff about "It seems to be a transitional typeface", a strange hybrid of a monspaced fontused in a proportionally-spaced environment, is just so obviously bogus.

Why does the Left get suckered-in by this stuff? Why do they offer sucker-in themselves when they write this stuff?

Because for WAY too many lefties, what counts as intelligence and good sense is skill with words and concepts, not skill with realities on the ground.

And so goes this analysis, at first glance: very clever (in a good way--very conceptually interesting), very skillfully written, but very ignorant. It's about what you'd expect from an English professor who's good with words and analysis, but just doesn't have half the facts he needs.

So why would anyone rely on this analysis? Well, again, it's a GREAT analysis if (and only if) your criterion for greatness is "well-written and conceptually interesting". Unfortunately for the author, while those are two genuinely wonderful attributes for an analysis to have, they by themselves don't have much of anything to do with the truth, and will lead astray (albeit eloquently and clverely) when they're dealing with factual matters in a factually ungrounded (or let me be nicer: insufficiently grounded) way.

Gentlemen,
Please don't fry Dr. Hailey too quickly. If you read the top of page 8 in the PDF file, you'll see that he says he did NOT type the document: "Do not misunderstand figure 4 [he means figure 5]. My addition is not typed. It is replicated using the characters already in the memo." He was trying to establish that the font type is "Typewriter", not "Times New Roman." However, as you point out--his "th" doesn't match. But this doesn't mean that he was trying to forge anything . . .

Wasn't Utah State where the Cold Fusion guys (Pons & Fleischmann) came from?

EVERYONE READ MY UPDATES

EVERYONE READ MY UPDATES

EVERYONE READ MY UPDATES

Note
this PSD file, which corresponds to Hailey's figure 6:

Each of the letters in the word IBM Typewriter version of the word "status" has been cut out and individually repositioned.

Hailey's actual point (that the memos are in "Typewriter Condensed" rather than Times New Roman) may or may not be correct. However, the Figure 6 photoshop file shows that even in this font, the spacing apparently had to be manipulated to match the memos.

Wizbang, please post a link to the copy of Bush_Memos.pdf that you claim to have copied LAST NIGHT so that we may compare it to the copy that was created/modified TODAY.

You DO have that pre-1PM copy, right?

Paul, can you post the exact textual differences between the original and modified PDF reports? I only have the newer file, so I can't tell what the original said. :(

Raoul:

That would be the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, an institution that is far more pretentious than USU (Utah has the medical school, USU is the "cow school").

If this has already been pointed out, forgive me, I am heading out the door. The number 2 on the second line is missing a period. It appears that if a period were put in it's place, the documents would not line up.

As a true blue Aggie, this pains me. If the school newspaper runs this story, I suspect Dr. Hailey will have to enter the witness protection program. I graduated in 88, but I don't think things have changed that much in Cache Valley. The guy can't be comfortable there to begin with, I almost feel sorry for him, then I don't.

Fight the POWER!

Jonathan Abbey

Steve L., he does not claim that he produced the examples he's contrasting with a typewriter.. at all. He's merely asserting that the Typewriter font he has found, which is not New Times Roman, matches closely the text in the memos. The superscripting he would probably have to insert out of band, as whatever code he used to generate the baseline text would not replicate a typewriter with a superscripting function.

There's a whole lot of people screaming 'liar, liar!' at this guy without bothering to actually read what he wrote. Not the best showing for the blogosphere, I'd say.

This Kerry donor wasn't engaged in idle academic curiosity when he concocted his defense of the CBS forgery. He was trying to insert his supposed credentials and expertise to lend credence to the CBS effort. Sorry, can't cut him any slack.

"Hailey's actual point (that the memos are in 'Typewriter Condensed' rather than Times New Roman) may or may not be correct."

Not only it is incorrect, he uses at least 2 typefaces to make up his mythical 'Typewriter Condensed'. In other words, he cheats. There is no way to get around that.

I'm not sure you haven't jumped the gun here. My review of the study indicates that the author may have misidentified one of his figures in the text, but nothing more. As some above have partially quoted, the author says,

"Once I had identified the font family, I recreated the memo using characters from that font family. Do not misunderstand figure 4. My addition is not typed. It is replicated based on the characters already in the memo. It does not prove that the memos were typed, or that I can type them. It only proves that I know what the font family is and can reasonably accurately reproduce the characters in the memo. The reproductions in the memo demonstrate that and nothing more."

I think the author meant to refer to his figure 5, not 4. If I'm right, then he's admitting that he didn't type his claimed duplications in Figure 5, but is merely claiming that he replicated the Bush memo using characters from the "Typewriter" font family. If all you show is that he inserted some of the characters (and particularly the superscript "th") using photoshop, how does that prove that the characters so inserted aren't from the "Typewriter" font family? It seems to me that the method of copying and insertion is irrelevant to his claim (as long as the method does not distort the character, of course). To disprove the author's limited claim, one would have to prove that the photoshopped characters are not, in fact, part of the "Typewriter" font family.

Am I missing something?

I don't have copies of both versions of the PDF but I can tell you that the PDF I have is distinctly different from the version posted on the professor's USU website. The web version includes a section (and graphic) arguing about the height of the "th" that is missing from the pdf. Is is possible the guy omitted this after realizing his argument was wrong (i.e., he didn't recognize the difference that LGF noted between the superscripts' appearance on screen versus when printed)?

I don't have copies of both versions of the PDF but I can tell you that the PDF I have is distinctly different from the version posted on the professor's USU website. The web version includes a section (and graphic) arguing about the height of the "th" that is missing from the pdf. Is it possible the guy omitted this after realizing his argument was wrong (i.e., he didn't recognize the difference that LGF noted between the superscripts' appearance on screen versus when printed)?

You know, I really didn't expect it to turn out that this guy actually did change his site, I was just putting that in my post to cover my own ass.

But, thinking about it, I suppose its typical.

John R-

My thoughts exactly: it is a very clever, and generally articulate piece. (I particularly liked the prof's flat-earther metaphor for those of us who believe the TANG docs are forgeries.)

"Because for WAY too many lefties, what counts as intelligence and good sense is skill with words and concepts, not skill with realities on the ground." Exactly correct. That's why the academic world is such a hotbed for leftie indoctrination. They don't have to deal with the real world, just a theoretical one. But, man, it sounds SO good.

Guys, Kevin's web interface won't let me upload it here, too big... Original pdf coming as soon as logistically feasible.

Doing my best- patience grasshopper.

"To disprove the author's limited claim, one would have to prove that the photoshopped characters are not, in fact, part of the 'Typewriter' font family.

Am I missing something?"

Yes. At least some of the character shapes are NOT a part of the 'Typewriter' font family.

Which means only one thing: more than one typefaces were used. And that translates to: he cheated.

As simple as that.

Sorry; I got distracted while typing and missed the updates.

Tom, please post a link to YOUR copy of the pre-1PM Bush_Memos.pdf.

Wizbang, please post a link to YOUR copy of the pre-1PM Bush_Memos.pdf. (You DO have it, right?)

We really need access to these to help figure out just who's monkeying around here.

This is fascinating stuff...it's a frickin' soap opera.

Busted!!! The smoking gun, at last.

Excellent work! Get ready for your traffic to spike.

Not an expert, but...

It seems to be that professor is "proving" something using circular logic. It goes something like this (my words, not his):

1. Using Photoshop, I cut and pasted a "th" from somewhere else in the document.
2. I then superimposed my "th" over the documents "th" same font.
3. By cutting and pasting a "th" from the same font in the same document, I have proved that the original "th" is also from the same font.

QED!

I see neither why the Left was so excited about the "proof", nor why the blogosphere is so excited about "debunking" the prof. He has proved that a font=a font. Big deal.

OK Once more in bold... The blog won't let me upload original because it is too big. (2mb) I'm mailing it to Kev who can FTP it.

Working as fast as we can.

All you folks who are thinking about emailing Hailey and/or his boss: better wait until this multiple-version stuff gets ironed out!

This whole thing is fishy as hell.

From what I can tell from his paper, Hailey didn't type his replicated memos, he PhotoShop'ed each letter into place. So he's not claiming he reproduced the memos, only the font.

While I find his font analysis interesting (and it deserves some more investigation, though without the originals we'll probably never know for sure), the most convincing evidence of forgery has always been for me the exact match in character position to Word-produced documents, which Hailey doesn't even attempt to explain. I've worked with proportionally-spaced computer fonts back in the '70s and I know that how each letter is adjusted to space with each adjacent letter was far from standardized in that period, and still is not. All those tiny variations in character position add to each other over the length of a line and make any deviation stick out like a sore thumb.

It is simply not reasonable to assume that some theoretical typewriter available in the '70s would exactly reproduce the spacing used by a TrueType font today if that was not the author's goal. (And damn difficult even if it was, as evidenced by the inability to date of anyone successfully reproducing the memos using period equipment, despite the $50,000 reward for the first person to do so.)

Add that in with the improbability of Killian having access to such a machine, having training in how to use it, and the illogic of utilizing both in preference to a standard typewriter for a personal memo to himself, and the probibility of the memos being authentic is so low as to be indistinguishable from zero.

obviously the size means the fake "rape" photos are there! Busted, Dr. Hailey!

(joking, people! joking... even though this whole thing is rather amusing already.)

I see it. You nailed him. His liberal weenie knees are shaking, and even the patches on his tweed coat have sweat on them. I will write a letter to that department head. And a letter to the school newspaper.

I thought they knew better in Utah.

Wizbang's copy of Bush_Memos.pdf is 2MB?

Mine is 1.249MB.

Fishy!!!!

"So he's not claiming he reproduced the memos, only the font."

Once again, that is not the case. He has not reproduced 'the font', unless one accepts that mixing letter shapes from different typefaces constitutes a 'match'.

Where can I download the original copy of the PDF---not the one he's currently modifying?

So in the end, what has this guy proven? Only that he can recreate the memos using photoshop...so now if they can just prove that Killian had access to a modern computer with Photoshop then CBS is off the hook!

What drivel this report is...if the case could be made, it could be made in an elegant fashion...

Perhaps in the end the good prof simply wants to muddy the waters and give CBS more cover and more of a reason to explain that they weren't duped that badly and/or a reason for some to still cling to the belief that these docs might just be the real thing...

MY BAD WORKING TOO FAST

original PDF 1 point 2 MB (1.2) NOT 2MB

I looked wrong

Duh, sorry, I missed the post about the 2MB file. Nevermind.

mcg, good question!
Where indeed!

Has anybody yet determined if Hailey's supporting_materials directory permissions allow WRITE by OTHER??? (I'm not going to try it.)

If his permissions are WIDE-OPEN then how are we EVER going to be able to establish the true provenance of all these versions? Maybe somebody PLANTED this crap on Hailey's server.

Better think twice about slandering Hailey before this fish is fully cooked.

What he claims to have proved is that CBS wasn't unreasonable in assuming the memos were authentic. I don't agree, personal memos in proportional font from a '70s-era Air National Guard base just doesn't pass the laugh test. The Freepers picked up on that in minutes, CBS never even investigated the issue before broadcast and still denies it's relevant.

I think he is busted, but I think there is some misinformation floating around. In the comparison, the author is NOT claiming the second lines are typed on a typewriter.

He says they are created on a computer using a font called "typewriter".

In other words - his evidence that the memos were not created on a computer - is that he can reproduce them on a computer.

Does anyone believe Paul would a) alert two well-known bloggers (James Joyner and Steven Taylor) in advance, and b) call a department head at Utah State to advise him of possible academic dishonesty if he weren't highly confident of being correct?

Secondly, look at the behavior. The files were updated today, in what appears to be a vain attempt to salvage credibility.

The conclusion of the paper is:

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.

That is not what a sane person would claim he could prove by manipulating computer typefonts with Adobe Photoshop. Proving the CBS documents authentic requires technology available in the 1970s and an actual demonstration of how it's done.

I believe there's still $10,000 available for someone who can do just that.

I'm not interested in ruining this guys career, "WAIT A MINUTE!", and none of us should be. We should be interested solely in making sure that misinformation is not being spread. His new "document cleaning" episode is going to strip away the last of any convincing evidence he has. Let his department worry about this academic future.

Besides, I'm almost certain his web directory isn't world writeable. College IT departments wouldn't take lightly to such insecurity.

First, let me state that I'm a political independent who is tired of duplicity from both sides of the aisle.

You need to examine your assumptions before publishing your theories--as does Dan Rather (who hasn't made many mistakes in many years as a journalist, and is man enough to apologize for them when he does, unlike our current administration). Why do you assume that the Dems had anything to do with forging these documents--especially as numerous other sources document the "missing time" problem dogging GWB's AWOL from national service? I wouldn't be surprised if Karl Rove is the one who's behind the forged documents--after all, he did bug his own office while working on GWB's gubernatorial campaign.

I'll tell you why the Karl Rove conspiracy theory is flawed---because it depends on the fact that a news agency would be so insanely incompetent that they wouldn't engage in the most cursory of document authentication techniques before they ran with the memos.

Even Karl Rove wouldn't have believed how incompetent CBS was before a couple of weeks ago.

mcg, did you write "Besides, I'm almost certain his web directory isn't world writeable. College IT departments wouldn't take lightly to such insecurity."? Did you really write that?

BWAAAAHAAAAHAAAA! So they allowed 666, but not 777? Take it from me, a BSCS/MSCS software engineer: IT depts can't BEGIN to keep up with all their server holes.

FWIW, I'm sure the CBS Killian memos are fake, and that CBS's bias is proven. But I apply my skepticism to ALL sources, not just those I ideologically agree with. And right now, I'm skeptical of Wizbang.

Looks like a few people piled onto Hailey prematurely.

UPDATES UPDATES UPDATES

Read my newest update.

Until I can upload the doc, I put the text up. That really is enough for you to start your chewing.

BUT REMEMBER it does not matter if he claimed he typed them or not, If he claimed he can replicate the font but can't he's still a liar.

When "Rathergate" first hit the fan a week or more ago, I almost immediatley penned in a piece elsewhere entitlled "How CBS is *winning* 'Rathergate'", the upshot being that by sacrificing itself (like a loyal samurai defending a vulnerable lord), CBS & associated have managed to drive all of *Kerry's* negatives off the air. They're still plying the Bush-was-at-least-AWOL argumentt, while Kerry's communist-front service during the same period is completely swept under the rug.

FWIW, I'm sure the CBS Killian memos are fake, and that CBS's bias is proven. But I apply my skepticism to ALL sources, not just those I ideologically agree with. And right now, I'm skeptical of Wizbang.

Wait a min- hit me with your best shot- I wouldn't want it any other way.

On page 9, there are many letters that atr vastly different. The T, 3, and most telling is the 5..Notice how he misteriously leaves out EVERY 5 fron the reproduced document. My guess is that the 5's are very differnt. Why type the entire document and leave out a few key key strokes?

"Even if you accept that he never meant to imply he physically typed it, he just worded it poorly in the original, WHY DID HE HAVE TO PASTE IN THE TH?"

He had to paste in EVERYTHING. That's what he says in the (new) pdf. (And that's why the differences between any versions of the pdf are so important.)

My further hunch: the superscript "th" is created by shrinking a standard "th." That's why it looks wacky.

robert, you should read what the post was about for god's sake.

go away.

If anyont wants to look at the missing section on the superscript (which allegedly disproved the font was Times New Roman), go over to http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ and find the entry dealing with this topic. At the top you will see links to both an html version and a PDF version. Open both and you'll find the superscript section only in the html version (it is just before the infamous Figure 5). There may be more versions than just these two however.

If you go to Haileys web site and look at his so called
art work, you can see he is an amateur photoshop artist.
Its no wonder his bad "th" cut and paste sticks out. Not a professional, just a professor.