Wow — Dan Rather’s response tonight was pathetic and completely nonresponsive.
Were typewriters with superscript available in the 1960s? Yes, but as you could clear see from the photographs CBS used that there was a major difference between the pseudo-superscript that typewriters of the era used and the sort of superscript that Word and other modern word processors can do (and that are featured in the apparently fake documents).
Was the Times Roman font available since the early 20th century? Yes, but the real issue is was it available on typewriters that could do proportional spacing and superscripting in the 1960s? It is telling that Rather didn’t cite a single example of a typewriter so equipped.
Rather slammed the blogosophere and others for relying on scans of PDFs that CBS itself posted. Is this serious? Then make the originals available to other media outlets for independent analyses. Only supplying scans in PDFs and then complaining that critics are only relying on scans in PDFs is typical major media bullshit.
Finally, Rather concluded by saying he knew of no evidence that would suggest the documents were fake, once again conveniently ignoring Killian’s widow and son’s contention that they believe the documents are fake.
This is not going away and CBS just dug itself a deeper hole with such a shoddy response.
BTW, here’s a screen capture of CBS’ segment which shows the obvious problem with the superscript claim. CBS expects you to ignore the evidence and believe these two forms of superscript are identical. Find a typewriter from before 1973 that can do the sort of superscript that is show on the left “New document” and CBS might have something. But so far, there’s nothing here suggesting the documents are authentic.
Updated:
Note that Dan Rather is actually claiming that the two superscripts above are the same!
Critics claim typewriters didn’t have that ability in the 1970s. But some models did. In fact, other Bush military records already released by the White House itself show the same superscript – including one from 1968.
How stupid do they think we are?