Bush Service Memos Questioned

Twirlip of the Mists writes "Last night, CBS News released a set of memos dated 1972 and 1973 that are purported to raise questions about President Bush's National Guard service. Some are saying those memos might have been produced with a computer. Blogger Scott Johnson ran with the story first this morning, raising questions about the typography of the memos. Blogger Charles Johnson (no relation) went one step further, actually reproducing one of the memos in its entirety using Microsoft Word's default settings. Matt Drudge is running the story now with a link to a CNS News article that includes quotes from typography experts at font foundries Afga Monotype and Bitstream. There's a round-up of key facts about the story on this blogger's web site." The experts in the CNS News story and others could come to no conclusion, and even if the documents are not originals or photocopies of originals, that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't faithfully retyped copies of originals. CBS continues to assert the documents are authentic.

Comments

Re:The actual documents seem to be slashdotted

[Twirlip of the Mists]

That would be the cretin you want to get elected to the Whitehouse.

It's two words: White House.

Several people are claiming that they used Selectric golfballs with proportional pitch.

Impossible. The pitch on a Selectric isn't controlled by the type ball. It's controlled by the motor drive. The type ball just rotates and elevates to strike a letter on the paper. There's nothing about it that controls how far the type head advances on each letter strike.

but I certainly don't see how you claim to know the exact capabilities of every typewriter owned by the US military.

I've had sixteen hours now to work on this story. ;-) How many people from IBM have you talked to today?

IBM sold selectric golfballs with the th superscript at the time.

Yes. They were custom items that were machined to order and that cost a fortune. And they also could not produce variable-pitch type, nor could they produce Times New Roman type.

There is no reason why they could not have offered their IBM Executive series machines with a similar option.

Yes, there is: the Executive machines didn't use interchangeable type balls. They used a lever-arm mechanism. Either all Executive typewriters would have had the "th" glyph or none of them would have. None did. IBM never made one with that glyph.

And no, the typeface is not MICROSOFT anything, Microsoft has never designed a typeface ever. The Microsoft fonts are from Monospace corp.

LOL. You mean "Monotype?" Heh. When TrueType came along in the early 1990s (or was it late 1980s?) Microsoft licensed the name and the letter forms from Monotype, now Agfa Monotype. Microsoft implemented the font, which means they determined the letterspacing, kerning pairs and so on.

The CTO of Agfa Monotype, incidentally, is on the record saying that it was highly unusual for anyone to use proportional-pitch type in the 1970's. The technology just wasn't there.

The 'expert' you refer to is not regarded as such outside the US republican party.

Sorry, but that's simply not true. He's so influential in the industry of forensic document analysis that other researchers write papers about him.

There is only one google hit for Bouffard and typewriter that relates to a forensic case and that is a crank case involving UFOs.

Your Google-fu is lacking.

Re:An analysis

[gleam]

Thank you.

Here's what the original blogger gives us as proof that this was rare, courtesy of the ever-accurate freerepublic.com (where "Unfit for Command" co-author Jerry Corsi conflated islam, catholicism, and "boy buggery"):

"Every single one of the memos to file regarding Bush's failure to attend a physical and meet other requirements is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatine or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing (especially in the military), and typewriters used mono-spaced fonts.

The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction high-end word processing systems from Xerox and Wang, and later of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's.

Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang and other systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used mono-spaced fonts. I doubt the TANG had typesetting or high-end 1st generation word processing systems."

That's absurd, and demonstrably false. You mentioned the selectrics. IBM's electric typewriters had proportional fonts as far back as 1945. Even if the base had a typewriter that was nearly 30 years old, it would still be capable of creating proportional fonts.

Doubters should also remember that today's most popular proportional fonts have been used in typesetting (and on selectrics) since well before TrueType.

Furthermore, Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, mentioned in the memos and involved in the back-and-forth, has confirmed that Killian expressed to him the same sentiments contained in the memos.

Regarding the superscripted 'th' argument, this document from Bush's official records also contains a superscripted 'th': http://www.usatoday.com/news/bushdocs/9-Miscellane ous.pdf. The superscripted th is on page three, in the second line of the log.

The White House even admits the authenticity of the documents, so why is this even an issue?

Because people don't want to realize that Bush disobeyed a DIRECT ORDER from his superior officers.

Because people don't want to think that the plane Bush flew continued to be used regularly through 1975, despite Bush and Bartlett's claims that it was "being phased out" and that Bush didn't need to take the physical because the planes wouldn't be used.

The best line I've heard lately, courtesy of Kevin Drum:

This story is a perfect demonstration of the difference between the Swift Boat controversy and the National Guard controversy.

Both are tales from long ago and both are related to Vietnam, but the documentary evidence in the two cases is like night and day.

In the Swift Boat case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence indicates that Kerry's accusers are lying.

Conversely, in the National Guard case, practically every new piece of documentary evidence provides additional confirmation that the charges against Bush are true.

regards, ed