Tag: CBS

Earl W. Lively was director of operations of the Texas Air National Guard in the 1970s when CBS’ apparently fake memos were supposedly produced. His take on the memo’s authenticity?

They’re forged as hell. . . . And there’s no way that Jerry Killian would have written what they’ve come up with.

Newsweek, meanwhile, has an article fueling speculation that the source of the documents might be Bill Burkett. Burkett is a former TANG officer who became ill during a mission to Panama in 1998 and blamed then Gov. Bush for his failure to receive proper compensation for his illness.

Four years ago, Burkett claimed that he witnessed an incident at TANG headquarters where records related to Bush’s service were destroyed. Burkett claims he saw records related to Bush thrown into a 15 gallon trash bin.

Furthermore, the Ace of Spades blog notes that Burkett has previously claimed that some of the documents he saw destroyed were signed by Killian. Burkett posted on a web site discussion board,

Of the files that I saw within the 15 gallon waste can were numerous documents which detailed why 1LT George Bush was grounded from flying including a two-page counseling statement signed by LTC Jerry Killian.

The odd thing is this post was made on August 14, 2004.

If Burkett is the source, why not disclose that? Because Burkett is easily discredited. His hatred of Bush goes into the irrational, such as this essay peddling a conspiracy theory about how Mossad gave the Bush administration precise details, including a timeline, about the 9/11 plot the week prior to the terrorist attack. Burkett also claims that Bush personally doctored Burkett’s TANG records.

Source:

Bush Guard papers ‘forged’. Hugh Aynesworth, Washington Times, September 12, 2004.

Edward Mendelson thought he was going to show conservative bloggers a thing or two by demonstrating it is easy to make a document in Word look like a type document from the early 1970s. The idea here is that the fact that the fake Bush documents are an almost identical match for similar documents typed on Word proves nothing. But, instead, Mendelson ended up showing just how strange it is that MS Word versions of the fake documents look just like the documents supposedly from the 1960s.

Mendelson took a screen grab of output from an IBM Selectric Composer — one of the few typewriters everyone agrees could have been used to produce documents in the 1960s and 1970s with most of the typographical features in the Killian memos. Mendelson then typed in the same text in MS Word, altered some margins and added some hyphenation to more closely resemble the Selectric Composer sample, and then crowed that he had shown that such matches were likely to be common.

But, in fact, as Charles Johnson demonstrates, a very cursory glance would tell anyone who knew nothing about the samples that they were likely not produced by the same typewriter. Johnson has an overlay of the screen shots posted by Mendelson that, even though Mendelson’s shots are ridiculously small, make it clear that both were almost certainly not produced on the same machine. Apparently, making an MS Word document look like a document from a 1960s/1970s era typewriter takes a bit more work.

This also might answer a perplexing question. It is very odd that if you type in the text of the memos on MS Word and print them out, the result is essentially identical to the Killian memos. Assuming they are fakes and that they were produced in MS Word, why would someone be so stupid as to create fake memos from the early 1970s in a modern word processor?

Mendelson’s experiment suggests that the answer is because it is a lot more difficult than it initially appears to create forgeries this way. True, someone with a lot of knowledge about Word or a page layout program could certainly do a pretty good job, but it appears to be a task which would take someone like me a great deal of time, and even then it’s likely that reproducing the exact font and spacing might be impossible without buying specialty fonts.

So if you’re not a typography and computer expert but you want to create fake documents, what’s the next best step? Create them in Word and then use photocopiers and fax machines to create multiple generations of the documents until the typeface and spacing is a bit distorted to the point where it may appear to be authentic at first glance to non-experts.

Apparently, Dan Rather told an outright lie last night during his defense of the Killian documents. Rather said (emphasis added),

Document and handwriting examiner Marcel Matley analyzed the documents for CBS News. He says he believes they are real, but he is concerned about exactly what is being examined by some of the people now questioning the documents.

But the Los Angeles Times is reporting today that,

But in an interview with The Times, the analyst [Matley] said he had only judged a May 4, 1972, memo — in which Killian ordered Bush to take his physical — to be authentic.

He said he did not form a judgment on the three other disputed memos because they only included Killian’s initials and he did not have validated samples of the officer’s initials to use for comparison.

So Rather just went on TV last night and lied his ass off.

The Times goes on to note that CBS apparently has two other document examiners at an undisclosed location who verified the documents,

A CBS official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the network had two other document experts, who CBS did not identify, examine the documents, which were copies of the originals.

So why did Rather lie about it last night and tell us Matley analyzed all the documents and said he believes all of them are real? Does CBS condone its anchors lying to their audience?

As Glenn Reynolds might put it, I think they’ve been making that clear for years. . . .

Source:

Amid Skepticism, CBS Sticks to Bush Guard Story. James Rainey and Elizabeth Jensen, Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2004.

Michelle Malkin is absolutely right — it’s time for CBS to put up or shut up about the documents,

Instead, I suggest asking CBS to immediately assemble an independent commission comprised of forgery experts. The commission should be given one week to determine whether it is more likely than not that the documents in question were forged. If CBS does not cooperate, a boycott against both CBS and its major advertisers should be organized.

This is absolutely what CBS needs to do or as far as I’m concerned there’s no reason to think the documents have any sort of authenticity.

(I’d join a CBS boycott, but the only time I’ve watched the network in the last year was to watch Rather’s defense of the story).

The Washington Post reports that CBS has asked its document expert Marcel Matley not to give interviews,

Rather said that CBS’s lead expert was Marcel Matley of San Francisco, a member of the National Association of Document Examiners who has taught, lectured and written about his field, testified in numerous trials, and consulted for government agencies. Matley said last night that a “60 Minutes” executive had asked him not to give interviews.

Perhaps CBS is worried that reporters will ask Matley questions about Matley’s previous statements about authenticating documents, such as this,

In fact, modern copiers and computer printers
are so good that they permit easy fabrication of
quality forgeries. From a copy, the document examiner
cannot authenticate the unseen original
but may well be able to determine that the unseen
original is false. Further, a definite finding
of authenticity for a signature is not possible
from a photocopy, while a definite finding of falsity
is possible.

And yet, CBS considers Matley’s analysis of a photocopied and heavily deteriorated signature to be “compelling evidence” that the documents are authentic.

Source:

Using and Cross-Examining Handwriting Experts (PDF). Marcel Matley, Undated.