Please read all the updates
The blogosphere is abuzz that there might be an authoritative expert by the name of David E. Hailey, Jr., Ph.D. who might have proven the CBS documents are legit.
The Boston Globe is this correction]
And I have the goods.
He attempted to copy Charles’ work of reproducing the document on a typewriter. Supposedly, the top line is the CBS memo and the bottom line a 1970’s era typewriter. But there was a problem… (He later said it was not typed. read the pdf and you decide what he said)
First download the pdf his analysis. Then go to page 8 and zoom in on the “th” at 400% you’ll see…
As they sing on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the other.”
UPDATE I viewed the pdf on screen and it was obviously a forgery. Spoons says he could not see it so I rerasterized it as saved it as a jpg. I think it is clearer. If you doubt me, like everything in the blogosphere, follow the links. (/update)
Here is a hint for the good Professor– If you are going to forge documents DON’T LEAVE THE EVIDENCE on your webserver. [Ed – Most of the content previously available through this link is now gone.]
And if you don’t think that TH nailed him, feel free to download the PHOTOSHOP DOCUMENT he was working on when he created the forgery.
Not only did he forge the document but he let the work in progress in an open web folder.
And Professor, if you are reading this- and I know someone will mail it to you, I have downloaded your entire website as evidence and I saved screen caps of it, so don’t bother delete it. I also had an interesting phone call with the head of your department. You might give him a call.
Did you think we were stupid?
Update OpenSecrets.org say the good professor gave John Kerry $250 (thanks Allah)
Update 2: We got word from Charles at LGF that the Globe is backing away from the guy. I wonder why.
Update 3: The Backstory I had this story last night. In fact, I mailed it to James and Steven because it was a case of academic misconduct and they follow that sorta stuff.
I asked them to hold it because I was calling the head of his department in the morning. It was not etched in stone that I was going to blog this. I called the head of his department and he was a very nice gentleman. He looked at the pdf and agreed it did not look right but said he did not have the expertise to say it was a fraud.
He asked me to make the case for academic misconduct and mail it to him. I told him he would get it Monday morning. Once I saw the Globe was considering running the story and that Charles and Allah had links to it, I knew someone would bust the guy so I may as well do it.
In other words DSA… Not in your wildest freaking dreams. (ROFLMAO at closed circuit humor 😉
–Some people tried to cast doubt on my story. I investigated immediately and the good professor only dug himself deeper. —
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Update 4: One of the commenters noted that the pdf version was updated about 1pm TODAY. I have no idea if the guy knows he’s famous, so I don’t know if he was trying to cover his tracks or if he just just still working on the forgery (er document). If he was trying to cover something he did a bad job as the bogus TH is still plainly clear.
The pdf has been modified (as noted in update 4) with additional language explaining the figure. He calls it both figure 4 and figure 5 so there is some confusion there. HE NOW CLAIMS THE BOTTOM LINE WAS NOT TYPED.
At this point it is probably safe to assume his department head called him and he was trying to fix things. I’m in the process of seeing if his explanation is credible. If so, I’ll trumpet it. But so far, I’m very, very dubious.
Update 5 He is now doing more editing. Fixing sloppy work or digging in deeper? Jury still out. But keep an eye on the html version. If he makes the case, you’ll hear it here first.
Update 6: As I’ve noted in the comments, we’re working getting the original pdf uploaded. I can’t upload via web interface so I mailed it to Kevin who will FTP it up.
In the mean time, here’s the text. That whole part about not misunderstanding figure 4 was NOT in the original. The original has figure 4 then verbatim:
Figure 4. Washington Post analysis of criticisms advanced by “document experts.” Their criticism is that the type is proportional, the superscript “th” is consistent with word processing software and not consistent with mechanical technologies of the time. Some experts are certain that the font used is Times New Roman, probably unavailable on typewriters at the time, and certainly not used by the military at the time.
The critical arguments of the above document experts are both spurious and uninformed. The ability of the military to produce the proportional text with a superscript “th” with a typewriter is beyond question. [it is? -ed] The only real questions are “is this Times New Roman or similarly contemporary, digital font,” and, “is the typing mechanical or digital?”
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). [editors note he means figure 5.]After figure 5 he has the caption (in bold) then more text.
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.
Using the hypothesis established from examining the Bush memos, it becomes possible to create a virtually flawless replica.IMPORTANT: 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? If it were so easy to replicate, why not do it? IF he had to paste it in, it is still a forgery.
I still have many doubts. Anyone?
The professors now says:
I was able to establish the font family based on the best examples of each character. I was able to recreate most of the defining characteristics using a font called “ITC American Typewriter Condensed.” Once I had identified the font family, I recreated the memo using characters from that font family.
ITC is International Typeface Corporation.
You can see the font he claims he uses at ITCFONTS.COM
Look down and to the right and you will see “View full character set”
There is no superscript “th” in that font. You have to make it on a computer. That’s why he pasted it in!
And at the risk of pointing out the obvious, if he produced it on a computer how exactly does that help his case???
We are left with thinking he is either a forger or incomprehensibly dumb. All things considered, I’d admit to stretching the truth before I’d own up to being this dumb. But that’s just me.
One more… Sorry for delay… original pdf file here.
Update 8: Some say they did not understand this post as it was too cryptic. If so, read Dr. Hailey Redux.
I award you a blog pulitzer.
There really ought to be one.
I noticed he never said his “convincer” fig. 5 was created with a typewriter, although he seemed to be trying to leave that impression with his reader.
His Clinton-clausing led me to believe he might have used a computer font and/or photoshop to make adjustments.
He brought up several issues, as if he were going to disprove them, and he make declarative statements of fact without providing any supporting evidence for them. For example, he said (I’m paraphrasing) that it was beyond question that typewriters of the period in question could make a superscript. He just asserts this as true, when anyone who has been following the story knows the problems with that statement. A dedicated ligature superscript key is not the same thing as a true superscript at all. Machines that could make a true superscript were very unlikely to have been available, let alone used, for produciton of routine memos-to-file.
So Wizbang has shown how he got over his difficulty producting a Johnson style “convincer”.
He just asserts it is possible, with some imaginary machine, and uses ANOTHER MEANS of producing it.
Hailey’s paper is replete with little weirdnesses like that, and I’m with Wizbang – I hope the Globe walks off the cliff and uses it.
Lee,
You can’t even recreate the fraudulent TANG memos using Lotus Word Pro or WordPerfect (latest versions) and Times New Roman. I recreated all four CBS memos in Word. Then for grins and giggles, I recreated one of them in both Word Pro and WordPerfect. Both the vertical and horizontal spacing are subtley but noticeably “off” when each of those is compared to the Word doc.
If you can’t exactly duplicate the Word version with other modern word processing software, there’s no way that Word could magically exactly reproduce 1972 typewriter technology.
The professor’s analysis looks similar to Richard Katz at
http://www.javaskyline.com/analysis/killianfont.html
It looks like he may have borowed somebody else’s methodolgy. Richard Katz is a Software ENgineer that CBS used to try to say that the memos were likely typewritten.
It is all academic because of the copying, faxing degedation, of the originals. Everyone is assuming these docs where done on a laser printer. How about an Inkjet with the best quality mode, lots of ink, and little manipulation such as putting another sheet of paper on top of the newly printed document inorder to cause a little smudgeing.
The smudging would not be consistent accross the whole document and could be slight.
On photo inkjets, one has to let pictures etc dry for a period of time or you will get color shifts.
I have seen reports of people complaining because they put their new photos inside the plastic protective photo jackets too soon.
I recommend that he change his phd to a psd(acronym for a photoshop document file.)
Yougotta,
You can’t produce the phony memos with other word processing software because their default line, letter and word spacings differ from those of Word, even using the same TTF font. The forger had to have been using Word.
And it’s not really a question of Word duplicating a 1972 typewriter (which with some effort probably could be done). Rather, it’s the other way around — no 1972 typewriter could ever create a Word document.
Not unless the writer in 1972 had a time machine and came forward to 2004, wrote them with Word and took them back. 🙂
From reading the comments and the original postings (and looking at the PDF), it seems to me that this guy is not guilty of fraud. However, he certainly was doing a hell of a lot of work to establish a non-sequitor. A non-sequitor that the Globe was going to run with. Then we would have had to go through another full blown cycle of this on the blogosphere, CBS would be able to claim that there were still legitimate questions, and the marginally informed would think that the authenticity of the documents was still somehow in dispute. So I’m glad to see that WizBang headed them off at the pass.
The MSM is so LAME!!!
To make it short,
1) You can type words in Phtoshop
or
2) You can do a combination of typing and cut & paste individual characters in Photoshop
If Hailey said he found a match font and going about to prove it, I assume he loaded that typefont in and do a typing match, using Photoshop or any available simulation. The keyword here is TYPING. It’s not necessary for him to type on a typewriter but to type by using any available simulation. And typing mean you type words in continuously as it appeared on the faked memo. It also prevents manipulating of spacing as in the case of cut & paste.
The th superscript and the ITC font conclude that he imports a th superscript elsewhere to insert in the space after the 111. Whether he pasted each chacracter in one by one, I have not really look into his work to give a conclusion but I am sure if people want to look in, the data is available. Just the th superscript alone, telling me this is an dishonest work the least.
Outstanding detective work! Reality can be a really tough concept for those that seek to deceive 🙂
Lee,
That was my point! The only way to create the documents is with Word. All the people who recreated exactly matching documents did it with Word, therefore the phony originals had to be done with Word. There’s no way they were done on a typewriter because a (new) Word document would not exactly match 1972 typewriter output.
It was always clear to me that he was never claiming that his version was typed using a typewriter. The first time I saw the document, it didn’t have the added clarifying material, but I always understood that he was claiming that the memos were not Times New Roman and that he was able to make what he considered an exact match with a version of the Typewriter typeface.
Let’s look at the “evidence” that the documents were forgeries:
Font didn’t exist – FALSE
Proportional spacing didn’t exist – FALSE
No superscripted characters – FALSE
All these claims were put forward by Harry MacDougald, a Republican operative who had no expertise in the subject.
Now, let’s look at the remaining claim:
The memos can be exactly duplicated using default settings of Microsoft Word, and using the Times New Roman – FALSE.
Hailey never claims that he typed the memo using a typewriter, and he says this in his caption for Fig. 5:
“The above is an example of a bush memo and my replica based on using Typewriter condensed as my font of choice.”
Think about it for a couple of seconds. How could there be a font of choice if someone was using a typewriter? You don’t have a font of choice with a typewriter; you take what you get.
Your assumption that he was trying to deceive results from your being too stupid to read carefully. When Hailey saw that he was being misinterpreted, he added the clarifying material, but that didn’t mean it was needed in order to keep from misleading a person of at least normal intelligence.
Here’s an article I wrote several days ago about “forgeries” from a lawyer’s perspective.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6947.htm
This guy confirms for me you guys never had any business calling these documents “forgeries.” You had no proof, just suspicion. As a lawyer who has viewed thousands of documents in twenty-seven years, I can say that I have never seen a perfect document. If you look at any document long enough, you can find something suspicious. But that doesn’t make a document a forgery.
Forgery is a crime. Using the term lightly has very prejudical conotations. I would encourage every one of you who think that you can prove that this document is a forgery to name the forger (not the passer of the document because they may not be the same person) and take your case to an appropriate district attorney. Put your liberty where your mouth is. Run the risk of swearing out a false criminal complaint.
I dare every one of you as I have others. So far, no one has taken up my challenge yet. Keep in mind also that you have to prove not only the person who was the forger, but the date, place, time, and method by which, the forgey was done. Otherwise, you will not be able to prove criminal intent or what lawyers call mens rea.
You have got a long way to go to prove forgery. Until you do, you are just slandering a reporter and a “passer” of a document to the press. Slander on you guys. Slander on. Please be admonished that your apparent slander has been published.
Here’s an article I wrote several days ago about “forgeries” from a lawyer’s perspective.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6947.htm
This guy confirms for me you guys never had any business calling these documents “forgeries.” You had no proof, just suspicion. As a lawyer who has viewed thousands of documents in twenty-seven years, I can say that I have never seen a perfect document. If you look at any document long enough, you can find something suspicious. But that doesn’t make a document a forgery.
Forgery is a crime. Using the term lightly has very prejudical conotations. I would encourage every one of you who think that you can prove that this document is a forgery to name the forger (not the passer of the document because they may not be the same person) and take your case to an appropriate district attorney. Put your liberty where your mouth is. Run the risk of swearing out a false criminal complaint.
I dare every one of you as I have others. So far, no one has taken up my challenge yet. Keep in mind also that you have to prove not only the person who was the forger, but the date, place, time, and method by which, the forgey was done. Otherwise, you will not be able to prove criminal intent or what lawyers call mens rea.
You have got a long way to go to prove forgery. Until you do, you are just slandering a reporter and a “passer” of a document to the press. Slander on you guys. Slander on. Please be admonished that your apparent slander has been published.
Oh, for goodness sake, David. Your analysis proves nothing except that “forgery” can be used as a legal term of art.
You could make the same argument about, for example, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America”, which wasn’t really a “contract,” but actually more in the nature of a quasi-contract, wouldn’t you say, since “acceptance” of Newt’s offer could only occur by performance? How in the world did Newt ever get away with calling it a “contract”? We lawyers should have called him on this horrid misuse of special lawyer-talk at once!
Get a clue. This prof went out of his way (by omitting crucial methodological information) to create a misimpression. If the best retort you have is that “well, this doesn’t meet several jurisdictions’ definitions of the crime called ‘forgery’,” then, dude, you’re missing the point of the argument.
Oh, and it’s libel when it’s written, not slander. Did you miss that day?
“Please be admonished.” Sheesh.
Pavel, I’ll say this to you, too:
It was clear to ME that Hailey was not claiming to have used a typewriter. Your assumption that he was trying to deceive results from your being too stupid to read carefully.
Lowell-
Yeah. Sure. Mkay.
-Pavel
I’ll have to side with Pavel here. IMHO, Hailey’s paper was poorly written and logically flawed. A fundamental requirement of any technical paper is that it allow the reader to clearly follow, AND REPLICATE, the methodology therein.
That was simply not possible with Hailey’s paper, at least in it’s original form. Now, we can each form our own opinion as to whether the paper was intentionally misleading or just ridiculously sloppy.
David – above, you stated:
“This guy confirms for me you guys never had any business calling these documents “forgeries.”
I don’t mean to belittle your “admonishment”, but I don’t think it’s possible to slander a document.
It is worth pointing out that while a legal definition of “forgery” might require fraudulent intent, the common definition does not. Further, your own “article” makes the case that simply because a document is forged (common def) or inauthentic does not prove “nefarious” intent.
Your position seems to be that simply calling the CBS documents forgeries is slanderous. This is patently untrue, and if you are really an attorney, you know that.
At the risk of further clouding the issue with true facts, I will point out that no slander or libel suits have been filed, in spite of the fact that there are some potentially deep pockets involved. Specifically, neither Bill Burkett nor “Lucy Ramirez” have chosen to file suit.
If you choose not to acknowledge the obvious, that’s certainly your perogative.
Great work, Whizbang. The posters over at FreeRepublic were commenting on this fraud of a fraud on September 27. Check out this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227454/posts?page=81#81
Great work, Whizbang. The posters over at FreeRepublic were commenting on this fraud of a fraud on September 27. Check out this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227454/posts?page=81#81
Great work, Whizbang. The posters over at FreeRepublic were commenting on this fraud of a fraud on September 27. Check out this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227454/posts?page=81#81
Lowell,
Di you read my comment “carefully”?
Pavel, SarahW, LSU Engineer, etc …kudos, right on the head. Taking into account that the author’s conclusion was that CBS had authentic documents as far as he is concerned, which totally overrides any arguments that he “never said a typewriter did this… blah,blah,blah” – from another engineer (me), this simple but not-stated-as-of-yet question:
“Why on Earth would someone go to the trouble to sit and write and then publish this incredibly boring crap in the first place? Why not simply pack up your miracle typewriter, head to New York for a live appearance on the CBS Evening News, then in view of all of America, with a camera closely focused in on the paper and typewriter, reproduce this document for all to see?”
This would have been the most watched and most vindicating broadcast of all time, with the right marketing, can you imagine? But no, this man chose to sit in his closet office, with stinking food buried under years of who-knows-what, and do a “study” to prove his point. Just another example of a person who is too stupid to know that they really don’t know much of anything. I’m just dying to know what this guy looks like, it will probably sicken us all.
I set so many things different between the two line that it is laughable.
Look at the “F.I.S.”, the “F’ aligns but the “I” is way off, then the “S” is in near alignment.
The font “ITC American Typewriter Condensed” is a serif font and has a foot on the “4”, the memos do not have a foot on the bottom of the “4”. Times New Roman has serif-s on most letters, but does not have a foot on the “4”.
This is a killer web site, and I mean that
literally. When trying to view this site using
Internet Explorer under Windows ME (with
September upgrades applied) it crashed my
machine badly enough I had to use System Restore
to get it working again! So I tried using my son’s
PC, also IE/ME – crash again. Pretty cool, if
disturbing. My son’s machine is virtually a virgin
box, I reformatted and re-installed after he left
for college. Finally used my Linux box to get here.
Just wanted to share.
I know typefaces, and the CBS memos look like Times to me. They
Pavel:
You haven’t proven this is a forgery. Period. You obviously don’t know what the word forgery means. It does not just mean an attempt to reproduce an original. There has to have some intent behind the reproduction to decieve somebody. If I attempt to paint a Van Gogh and hang it on my wall and clearly state that it is my attempt to reproduce his work, it is not a forgery until I attempt to pass it off as his work. Then it becomes a forgery because deceit is now part of the equation. Forgery has this conotation both in the legal sense and in the common vernacular.
The word reproduction has no negative connotation. If you guys had called this a reproduction with some suspicious characteristics, would this have made the national news? I doubt it. It is only when you attach the negative and criminal connotation of the word forgery that it becomes news. The implication is that someone is doing something deceitful.
Where is the proof of the maker’s deceit when you have no clue who the maker is? You can’t attach any decit to Burkett, Rather or Ramirez or anyone else unless they knew that that the document was either not signed by Killian or they Knew that the statements of Killian contained therein were false.
We lawyers have to examine documents all the time. The Federal Rules of Evidence (which are almost universally adopted by most states with rare changes) has three chapters dealing with documents. Chapter VIII is Hearsay, Chapter IX is Authentication and Identification, and Chapter X is Contents of Writings, Recordings and Photographs.
Interstingly, Chapter X, Rule 1004 states: “The original is not required, and other evidence of the contents of a writing, or recording or photograph is admissible if –…(2) the original is not obtainable. So please note, it is the contents which are important, not whether the document is an original.
After examining the contents, the court must then look at the contents under Chapter XIII, Rule 807 to determine whether they are “trustworthy.” If they are found to be trustworthy, the court will allow their admissibility.
The point I would like to make is that lawyers look to the contents of the writing, not to the typeface, the kind of paper the words are printed on, whether the document is an original, a duplicate, a crude reproduction, a draft or notes of the original. You look at the contents to see if the contents can be verified. The contents of Killian’s statements were verified by his secretary and others who knew Killian’s opinions.
It’s the statements, stupid, to change the phrase. If the statements can’t be verified, it doesn’t matter how good of an original the document is.
I stand corrected on slander vs. libel. Point well taken.
Find the deceit and then make your case. Otherwise you are just slamming innocent people, apparently for political purpose.
One side note. I am old enough that I remember typed documents. Maybe many of you are too young to remember them. One thing was common with typewriters. Many had several different typewriter balls. It was not uncommon to type part of a document with one ball, take it out, type with another ball for certain fonts, take the second ball out and put the original ball back in and keep typing.
“If I attempt to paint a Van Gogh and hang it on my wall and clearly state that it is my attempt to reproduce his work, it is not a forgery until I attempt to pass it off as his work.”
No question that’s true, David. That’s not what happened with the CBS documents – Rather was busy telling us that they were Van Goghs, not someone’s attempt to copy Van Gogh.
The prof went even further. He went out of his way to create the impression not that he COULD bang out these memos on a typewriter, but that he DID bang them out.
My point is that “fraud” or “forgery” can be used as legal terms of art, or they can be used to connote attempts to deceive. CBS at least should have known better; the prof DID know better, but tried to get the world to think otherwise.
And yes, I remember the days of typewritten legal documents very well.
Using a computer font that emulates a typewriter to reproduce the typewritten letter basically brings us back to where we were — the document can be exactly reproduced on a computer. It would be instructive to know whether ITC Typewriter font is kerned, even slightly (e.g., is the “i” or “l” the same width as a “w”?). If it is, it certainly is NOT a typewriter font; if it is not, then it is properly emulating typewriter technology.
Typewriters (including selectrics) move the carriage a fixed distance for each letter. Ever seen a selectric ball? There is no information on the ball to allow any type of kerning to occur. Any selectric repair people care to comment?
“The point I would like to make is that lawyers look to the contents of the writing, not to the typeface, the kind of paper the words are printed on, whether the document is an original, a duplicate, a crude reproduction, a draft or notes of the original. You look at the contents to see if the contents can be verified. The contents of Killian’s statements were verified by his secretary and others who knew Killian’s opinions.”
David –
That statement is just silly. What you’re saying is that I can take a crayon and fake a will signed by you – and that crude reproduction, although obviously fake, is legally binding as long as I can produce a person (not a witness to the will) who will testify that they overheard you saying that you wanted to give me all your money? What law school did you go to?
re: “The contents of Killian’s statements were verified by his secretary and others”- What “others” are you referring to? Please, please say “Lucy Ramirez”.
Good catch, LSU. I didn’t even read that far in David’s post because the arguments he makes are so preposterous.
Hey, David: Please stop pretending to speak for all lawyers. I, for one, and frankly any lawyer I’ve every met, would take strong exception to being lumped into your “fake but accurate is okay” camp.
Nice work.
You youngsters are way over my head going at this from a computer standpoint, but here are some contributions from a typesetting standpoint.
Either I am missing something, or the professor, and possibly some of you, believe American Typewriter Condensed by ITC was a EVER a typewriter face. It was not. It has always been a TYPEFACE, what you whippersnappers now refer to as a “font.” It was designed for the phototypesetting machines of that era, not typewriters. It only borrowed its graphic inspiration and name from traditional typewriter faces (just as other typefaces drew their inspiration and names from classical handwriting), and applied the sophisticated proportional spacing of typefaces, not the monospace or even the crude IBM 5 or 9 unit systems. Unlike Courier or Prestige, it never appeared on typewriters, typesetting machines, and computers. It ONLY was available on typesetting machines, and is now available on computers.
IT WAS DESIGNED IN 1974 by Joel Kadan and Tony Stan, AFTER the forged memos. I remember seeing it introduced in an issue of U&lc, ITC’s promotional magazine for the trade, and thinking it was cool. I don’t remember if I ever used it.
Two more points from grandpa (next month!):
1) If any typeface like the one in the CBS forgeries had been available on a typewriter in 1971, I and many more low budget publishers would have jumped on it! Those typesetting machines ran from the high tens to the hundreds of thousands of dollars and about $25/hr in those days. Appreciate the technology on your desk!
2) The forgeries are CRUDE forgeries. I know a little about typesetting; I am no expert, and I would have bet the house the first time I saw them. This is to take nothing away from all the excellent work and service done to the country by yourself and the rest of the pajamhadeen. You nailed the coffin lid down TIGHT. Hey, anything worth doing, is worth overdoing!
Source: Level, Newman, Newman, Precision Type: Font Reference Guide. (Commack, NY: Precision Type, 1995)
CORRECTION: I should have said, “after the DATES on the forged memos.” Please ignore the other typos.
JD
Jeff –
The premises of your argument are (1) that the TANG didn’t blow front-end loaders full of cash on superexpensive typesetting machines, and (2) that even if they had, (a) Killian didn’t know how to operate these machines, and (b) if he did know how to operate them, he did not choose to use these machines to churn out short memos to the file.
And yet I bet you have not one bit of proof for these negative propositions. Ha! Tis to laugh!
-Pavel’s Evil Twin
Jeff-
Disregard my evil twin. He’s a Kerry guy.
Congrats on the grandbaby! I can hardly wait for my own in (I hope) the not-too-distant future.
-Pavel
Evil,
Are you jerking my chain? The “argument” was over about six hours after 60 MInutes II aired. I suppose TANG could have gotten access to an Air Force time machine (they always had the budget for the far out stuff) and popped up to 1974 to have a high end type shop set the memos in American Typewriter Condensed.
I think they were created on a computer a couple of weeks ago — and that you are jerking my chain, but with some of the reasoning going on here, one can never be sure. I don’t know if I would go so far as to condemn the prof for academic malfeasance, though — the standards are awfully low. Do parents get their tuition back if you get a conviction?
Paul, thanks for the kind email; you’re a gent. I guess I don’t get this posting thing, since I got your email, but don’t see your post…
Jeff (old slang for gambling with quads)
Pavel,
Thanks for the congrats, but have a little mercy on a senior citizen — I’ve reread that Evil post. No way he is for real, right?
Say it ain’t so.
Jeff
Jeff-
No, he’s not real at all, just seeing if I could force myself to see the other side of the coin and try to be a true believer like Hailey. That’s the closest I could come. Your arguments are proven by common sense, and anytime someone asks you to prove a negative, you know they’re using mirrors.
Love the line about academic malfeasance – we’re seeing a great example of that right now in what’s coming out of USU in Hailey’s “defense.”
“old slang for gambling with quads”: I don’t get it, though perhaps it’s just because it’s early.
-Pavel
Once you eliminate the conspiracy theory mindset, you see the hoohaa. You guys need to read the numerous debunking sites. Let’s not forget the person who is the subject of these documents did not refute them. That’s kinda important, don’t ya think? Kind of like a recent debate we all watched, huh?
I’m not following this that closely, because it seems so clear that the new claims are bogus, but I was struck by the ITC Typewriter font that he claims he used to match the forged Bush memos.
Look at the capital J in the ITC font, with its curlicue. Try to find that J on any of the CBS PDFs (like in the word “Jerry.”)
The font is not even close to the forged CBS font.
Pavel,
Thanks for clearing that up. As for seeing it from the other side’s point of view, I’ve tried for a long time, read some experts, including Hoffer (who is very good), and even lived in Berkeley for several years (entertaining and they do have good food).
The best I can suggest is to forget about logic. Being a true Lefty (as opposed to a responsible Dem, an endangered species) is an emotional and personal choice. It is based on faith, not reason. I think it also has a lot to with finally making into the “in crowd.”
The “gambling with quads” was an old time printing reference for the benefit of Paul, a member of the craft who sent me a nice email. I believe BF mentions it in his Autobiography.
Since you all are into the arcane aspects of typography this week, here it is: Metal type is cast with “nicks,” grooves along the bottom side (if I recall correctly), so that the compositor can tell the bottom by touch. In prePC days (BPC?) typefaces (what you call fonts) had subsidiary fonts, which were the specific size, and style, and literally the collection of type in that specific drawer. Fonts were made up of “sorts,” A couple of “sorts” (individual characters) in every font a couple sorts were square, usually if not always the “M,” thus the “em” space (as wide as it is high
ADDENDUM: A “quad” is an em, a square sort.
I have very nice graphics software, and zoomed in on the “th” superscript in question.
It looks nothing like what you present as the “enlarged” version.
You altered the documents.
That would seem to me to be fraudulent behavior.
Nice Try Josh. You forget everyone else can download it and look for themselves.
So much for your “Very nice” software.
Jeff-
That’s a fascinating story. My dad had a printing press in our garage (no, he didn’t “make money the old fashioned way” :), and I remember the typeboxs and miscellany associated with it. He loved it; could set a line of type with incredible speed. We kids got drafted into putting divider sheets between the pages as he printed them so that the ink wouldn’t transfer.
I agree that this version of p&qs is much more enjoyable than the alternatives, and hence it is the appropriate story to tell.
-Pavel
Pavel and LSU:
First the will analogy. It won’t work. Wills have their own set of rules. I can handwrite my own will and if I do, I usually will not need witnesses as long as someone can identify my handwriting. If someone contests my handwriting, then a jury gets to decide which one of the two people are right. If it is type written and contested, again a jury would get to hear what laypeople knew about my intents. Mostly in will cases the issue is whether it has been revoked. It is so far removed from a document case like this that parallels seem pointless.
I am willing to concede for the sake of argument that this document is suspicious and I personally have no expertese in the area of typesetting.
But what is your point? Rather’s mistake was that he showed the world the documents before he had someone verify the contents. If he had done it the other way around, would we be having this discussion? I doubt it.
Does this document refute what Killian’s secretary is saying? No. At a trial she could be asked something like this. Did Killian ever ask you to type anything about Bush? She would say yes. Did he ever ask you to type something that resembles the following statement? Then a statement from this document is read. She would answer. If she answers yes, then she could be asked how closely this statement is to being a verbatum statement of one Killian asked her to type. And she could say it is verbatum, nearly verbatum, sorta close, or not at all close or whatever her response would be.
I guess this is where I have the problem. If this document was a recent fabrication, how did it get so close to being as accurate as what Killian’s secretary said she typed for him? She knew it wasn’t the document she typed, but she described it as a document that was so close to the one that she typed that the maker of it either had the original to work from or had an extremely good memory of what the original said.
Again, both this document and Killian’s secretary confirm what is believed to have been Killian’s thoughts about Bush. Others also have said the same thing about Killian’s opinion of Bush. Is that what is important or not? If that is not what is important, then it seems to me this is much ado about nothing. I said originally your argument puts form over substance.
The law looks for substance. What I am looking for is what Killian said and thought. All you guys want to do is make the argument that we should not even be permitted to make an attempt to find out what Killian thought or said because of one suspicious document. Heaven forbid that those of us how would like to know what people are willing to say about Killian’s opinion should find out.
Turn this around for a moment. Suppose we had a document that looked like an original, that had appeared to be kept in Bush’s file all these years, that appeared to be signed by Killian, but people who knew Killian said that the statements in the document didn’t sound like Killian’s. Would we not want to consider what these people had to say?
This is the Swift Boat argument now. We have documents there that appear to be genuine and authentic government documents, but many of the people who say they are familiar with the events say that the documents don’t reflect what happened. They still got to tell their view point and the world got to judge them. All I ask for is the same consideration.
Please try it yourself, Paul. When enlarging %400, not only does the image _not_ look like the one presented here in the sense that the lower “th” appears to have been altered, but also the overall grainiess of the enlarged gif is missing, as if the %400 image was smoothed by Wizbang.
The original gif does _not_ contain the details supposedly evident in the above, clipped image.
Mr. Mills is understating the case. Killian’s secretary is 85 years old, and let’s face it, secretaries are not usually drawn from the deep end of the brain pool, especially not military secretaries for the Air National Guard.
Now, she claims she didn’t type the memos, but that Killian kept a secret file, and they reflected what she remembers about Bush at the time.
More plausible than the forgeries, if you ask me, is that these are those files.
Yes, Bill Burkett is a partisan against Bush.
Nothing I have seen _in_any_way_ puts doubt on the authenticity of the documents from the technical standpoint (the typesetting controversy).
Do this…
Go into Adobe Acrobat Reader. Open the document, get to the exact part and zoom 400%, heck zoom in and out make it 800%, 1200, and go back down to 200% (and make sure you have the original pdf file)
Paul
I’ll give you a microscopic caveat. The pdf is a vector file and I rasterized it in photoshop rather than take a screen grab. (in an effort to preserve quality) Between that and potential changes in resolutions of monitor sizes, potentially what I call 400% looks like 300% on you screen.
That said, if you zoom in so that the letters are about the same size, I assume you it will look the same. Furthermore there are about 5ish other places in the doc with similar problems, you can look at them.
Lastly, about 250 comments have been posted and dozens, if not hundreds of people have tried it and reported the same thing. May people made their own files and put them on their blogs. Surely someone would have noticed if you were on to something.
**Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you are not just jerking my chain,** try adjusting the brightness and contrast on your monitor especially if you have an LCD panel.
Oh and Make sure you are using the right file. It is available on update 9 of the post.
After that I’m kinda clueless.
-“Nothing I have seen _in_any_way_ puts doubt on the authenticity of the documents from the technical standpoint”
That’s the problem… You’re blind!
I’m using the original .gif from his site. I know what a screen grab is, certainly, but not about “rasterization” of PDFs. Can’t you all try it yourself? I have an excellent screen, so I know it isn’t that.
I can zoom or scale the image, and in _no_way_ could the image at the top of this page be said to have come from the IMRI original.
Anyone want a copy?