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Friday, September 10, 2004
Rather to turn his Swift Boat toward the enemy and beach it tonight?
Am I mixing my metaphors and my controversies here? Or did I just hear someone shout, in Dan Rather's distinctive voice, "Circle them wagons, fellers, and put out another press release"?
Later today, CBS News will address on the air and in detail the issues surrounding the documents broadcast in the 60 MINUTES report on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. At this time, however, CBS News states with absolute certainty that the ability to produce the "th" superscript mentioned in reports about the documents did exist on typewriters as early as 1968, and in fact is in President Bush's official military records released by the White House. This and other issues surrounding the authenticity of the documents and more on this developing story will be reported on tonight on THE CBS EVENING NEWS WITH DAN RATHER.
(Capital letters in original; hat-tip to Jim Geraghty's Kerry Spot.)
So is this — shown here as a .bmp screenshot snipped from the third page of a .pdf file at 100 percent magnification — gonna be Dan's defense?
One of my commenters earlier pointed out this bit from one page of previously produced Bush records that Josh Marshall has pointed to as evidence of a typewritten document showing a superscript. It's after the "111" near the right side of the entry for 4Sep68; this is the best reproduction I can manage on my blog, so feel free to follow the link to the .pdf file yourself and crank up the magnification until you're swimming in pixelated blobs.
Here we see (sorta) the reason why original documents, or at least the best possible reproductions of them, are important. Is that a superscripted "th"? If so, is it typewritten? By a single keystroke? Or handwritten? Or something squeezed in and typed over a Liquid Paper blot-out? Gee, I don't think I'd want to risk my career on a guess among those options. I think I'd want the best credentialed forensic documents examiner CBS' money could buy before I climbed out on any of those limbs. I wonder, will we see one tonight on the CBS Evening News? And I wonder if in addition to pointing to this — ummm, specimen — he or she will give us the details of the typewriter that could have made it and the challenged CBS documents? And if he or she will explain the dozens of other irregularities and oddities in those documents? Of if Dan will tell us who CBS' "unimpeachable sources" were/are?
Oh wait — that would mean clearing the entire evening's programming. Sponsors might not like that. I will go out on a limb, then, and predict that tonight's episode of "Dan Defends Dan" won't answer many, if any, of our more detailed questions.
Or maybe he'll resign on the air. Rather remembers LBJ's surprise announcement in 1968, I'm sure. Nawwww ... I've been up too many hours, I think. They'd have to claw Rather out of a spider hole in the basement of Black Rock to get him out of there. I'll set my alarm, I guess.
Update (Fri Sep 10 @ 5:45pm): Beldar's preliminary reactions to Rather's appearance: Hoarse and shaken. Working hard to flog the "merits" of the Bush Guard record story, minimizing the importance of the documents even if they're forgeries. (As in, we might have made all this crap up out of thin air, but even if so, Bush is still evil.) Blames others for using reproductions of reproductions when CBS is stonewalling the "best evidence" available. Blames partisan political operatives on the internet for "attack" on CBS. Yep, used the one document from the screenshot I posted earlier, not very effectively. One expert, Marcel Matley — apparently a handwriting expert (whose other qualifications are unclear), who didn't address any of the substantive critiques of the documents except the signatures. Failure to understand difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman. Rather thinks "a key" on computers creates a superscript. Summary: Lame, disingenous, embarrassingly weak, and entirely unsuccessful in putting any issues to bed. I'll expand on all this at more length in a later post.
Update (Fri Sep 10 @ 8:30pm): CBS News has a new piece up on its website that closely tracks the defense Rather offered up on the air tonight.
Posted by Beldar at 04:04 PM in Mainstream Media, Politics (2006 & earlier) | Permalink
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Comments
(1) Jim in Chicago made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:15:32 PM | Permalink
Will Dan the Man explain why every other "th" in the document they provide is not supescripted?
(2) YouGottaBeKidding made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:36:10 PM | Permalink
The fact that one "th" appears to be superscripted and the rest are not is a non-issue for me.
Even if the entries were typed by the same person on the same day (and it appears that the entries were typed on many different days), the typist might have typed the superscripted version once and then just not bothered with the rest.
However, the typewriter used to type the text with the superscripts could not have been used to create the forged memos. This is standard 10-pitch typewriter print, Pica or some such.
(3) Todd made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:38:07 PM | Permalink
Powerline has intellectually assassinated The Daily Kos' humorous attempt to save Rather's bacon. Check it out.
(4) rls made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:41:49 PM | Permalink
I know that Kerry is both unethical and intelligently challenged (facts not vetted in his Christmas in Cambodia fantasy) and I have never given points to Rather for ethics, but I did not believe that he was "stupid"!!!
How does he plan on explaining the kerning?
(5) J_Crater made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:44:36 PM | Permalink
Being one of the last persons to have actually taken a Typing class in high school, I can say yeah this is done by holding the roller up a bit and typing "t" pushing back a bit and typing "h". I don't think that is what is in the Killian documents.
These documents are flawed in so many ways that this explaination would be step 1, with 20 more to come. Next would be to explain the proportional spacing, Dan.
(6) vnjagvet made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:45:56 PM | Permalink
I want to throw this out for discussion as an observation. I believe the record excerpted above is from the personnel jacket which accompanies the airman from post to post. The entries are made at each post by some clerk while you are at that post.
The procedure when you leave a post is to go the personnel office (in the Army it was the office of the Adjutant General), present your orders and pick up your file. You physically carry the file to the next post. When you arrive, you take it to the AG's office with a copy of your orders. Than office is responsible for posting the duty on the form. Thus, this form has many entries, most made by different clerical personnel. Obviously with such a procedure, many typewriters are involved in the typewriting on the form.
Note the typeface. All courier. No Times New Roman (or Times Roman). One apparent superscript could have been done somehow, but assuming I am right regarding the procedure, this form does little to authenticate the memos in question.
Out there there is an Air Force personnel clerk who can enlighten us about this.
(7) MaDr made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:55:08 PM | Permalink
I accessed the pdf and cranked up the magnification - the first letter does not resemble a "t" to me. The "h" could well be, although it's a little different than others with the document.
This 'th' was definitely not created by holding the roller up a bit - smaller size type.
Not sure if I'll watch Ra'th'er tonite. Might wind up throwing something thru the TV tube.
(8) Rachelins made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:56:27 PM | Permalink
All of the type questions, including the superscript TH in the reproduced document above, are answered by Jay in www.bondwine.com/gulag/archives/000183.html. This is the best post I have read. Please look at it Beldar.
(9) corrie made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 4:58:45 PM | Permalink
As I commented over at CQ, I blew it up in Photoshop, did a cut-paste-shrink on a full size 'th', and proved exactly nothing.
Still doesn't explain the kerning, or which 1972 typewriter Microspft used as a model for the default settings in Word.
(10) todd made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 5:03:59 PM | Permalink
Corrie, you make a good point. To me, the most compelling aspect of the technical side of the argument is the fact that one can reproduce the memo almost exactly using modern word processors. It IS beyond a reasonable doubt, in my opinion, to think that a document that can be produced so easily using software that everyone has available nowadays would resemble something from 32 years ago so closely.
(11) J_Crater made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 5:30:01 PM | Permalink
I suggest looking at the characters on the Selectric SYMBOL element. I seem to recall it has a th.
(12) Polaris made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 5:39:44 PM | Permalink
J Crater,
Yes, but IIRC it doesn't have the correct font and can not reproduce the Kerning (such as the overlapping "y") nor the 13pt spacing.
No typewriter can. There are fakes.
-Polaris
(13) Tim Fergus made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 5:50:42 PM | Permalink
I just watched Rather. googled Marcel Matley. He is a handwriting analyst. He knows nothing about typewriters. It would have been easy to superimpose a real signature onto a forged document.
Rather's only defense of the superscript issue was to say it was possible and he then showed one on an official doc - the same one you posted, Beldar. Why is it that everywhere else on that doc there are no superscripts? Also, the superscript tooks a little rough, as if it was not just typed but somehow manually added.
(14) YouGottaBeKidding made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 5:53:58 PM | Permalink
Here's a link for a document with lots of superscripted "th":
http://users.cox.net/coldfeet/doc14.gif
Note that this is a standard fixed pitch typewriter document. The "th" was obviously a single character, don't know what keystroke might have created it, but the two characters are the same width as a single normal-sized character.
I printed several of the documents that are not in question, and all the single-digit dates are typed as single digits. That make "04", "09", and "01" look suspicious.
(15) Rick Johnsey made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 6:12:14 PM | Permalink
Notice there are two more "111th"s in the sample that are NOT superscripted. Why not?
Rick J.
(16) YouGottaBeKidding made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 6:37:32 PM | Permalink
Rick,
Different dates? Different typists? Different typewriters? Irrelevent.
(17) Marc made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 6:38:18 PM | Permalink
Your partly right Bill. Rather will resign... just as quickly be hired by CNN to join his fellow hacks, Carville and Begala, as paid employees and political advisores all rolled into one tight little ball of SH*T.
(18) John Hansen made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 6:39:58 PM | Permalink
The document YGBK refers to at
http://users.cis.net/coldfeet/doc14.gif
is not a document written in the 70's or, even, on a typewriter.
The statement at the top of the page makes it clear that this document was written in response to a modern-day freedom of information act request. It was more than likely typed on a computer using Microsoft Word using the Courier New font (with Word automatically generating the superscript).
John Hansen
(19) jack risko made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 7:02:08 PM | Permalink
Rather has a lot of problems besides the phony memos:
The Ben Barnes interview by Dan Rather set the table for the introduction of the phony memos about George Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. The story line was: rich boy got undeserved special treatment, performed poorly, and lied about it ever since. Hence the credibility of Ben Barnes in that interview is important.
We already know that Barnes is the #3 Kerry contributor through bundling, and that Barnes has a past full of scandals, including allegations by federal prosecutors that Barnes bribed a lottery company executive to the tune of $500,000. These are issues that go to Barnes’ credibility. However, we didn’t learn these things from Dan Rather.
Nor did we learn about Dan Rather’s personal fund raising efforts on behalf of the Travis County Democratic Party, where Ben Barnes sits on the Finance Council. Rather raised $20,000 for the organization on March 21, 2001. Rather has extensive personal ties to Travis county: he owns a home in the Austin area, and his daughter Robin, an environmentalist and marketing executive, is said to have considered running for mayor of Austin as a Democrat. Rather has sometimes now said that he attended the fundraiser as a favor to his daughter, but he told Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post on April 4, 2001 that he agreed to appear “at the invitation of an old friend, Austin City Council member Will Wynn.” Rather’s appearance at a Democratic Party fundraiser was contrary to the official policies of CBS and most of the MSM.
Now, three years later, Rather interviewed the same fellow without disclosing the reporter’s previous involvement in raising money for the Democratic Party of Travis County, or his other, even larger, conflict of interest. If Robin Rather wants to have a future in Democratic politics in Austin, she needs the support of Ben Barnes and the other movers and shakers among Travis County Democrats, including those on the Finance Council.
Dan Rather had no business conducting the interview with Ben Barnes because of his extensive conflicts of interests. Since he chose to do the interview anyway, at a minimum he should have disclosed his conflicts, or CBS should have done so for him.
(20) Dimsdale made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 8:02:49 PM | Permalink
I had no trouble reproducing that superscripted "th" using Photoshop, which makes me think there will be a lot of document manipulation in the near future.
This also brings up another point: your college or high school kid puts more effort into making a fake ID, and gets better results. Why was this so pathetically amateurish? That being said, why couldn't the "crack investigators" at CBS, with six weeks to do so, figure out what took most of us less than a day to completely deconstruct? Rather has no excuse, no matter where the document came from. His "expert" verified the signature, but the rest remains unaddressed. I don't care what was available to type proportional fonts in the early seventies; the problem is that it was not available to the regular schlub typing these documents in the average TexANG office.
The bottom line: Rather, in a rabid race to erase Bush's overwhelming post convention bounce, put this out despite it's obvious flaws (like most of his reporting). He is an embarassment to the journalistic trade, and nowadays, that is a considerable accomplishment! And now, he is too stubborn and partisan to admit he was wrong and take his medicine. Pride goeth before a fall.
(21) Dimsdale made the following comment | Sep 10, 2004 8:54:49 PM | Permalink
Check this out for the most exhaustive examination of this forgery I have seen:
http://www.bondwine.com/gulag/archives/000183.html
(22) John McLaughlin made the following comment | Sep 12, 2004 9:21:43 AM | Permalink
111th? Why all the discussion? It is NOT a superscript! It is the standard lower case used with typewriters circa "forever!?"
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