For the FSP Flat Earth Society/(aka Lefty nutjob meltdown)

[Tommy Duncan]

Well sure. Perhaps someone built a time machine and went back in time with a PC loaded with MS Word and happened to encounter Killian and showed Killian how to use it...


www.weeklystandard.com/Co...7fgqgo.asp

To accept CBS's insistence the four do ents from the early 1970s are authentic, you would have to believe the following:

(1) That the late Jerry Killian, Bush's commanding officer, typed the do ents--though his wife says "he wasn't a typist."

(2) That Killian kept the do ents in his personal files--though his family says he didn't keep files.

(3) That the disputed do ents reflect his true (negative) feelings about Bush and a contemporaneous official do ent he wrote lauding Bush did not.

(4) That he typed the do ents on a technically advanced typewriter, an IBM Selectric Composer--though that model has been tested and failed to produce an exact copy of the do ents.

(5) That this advanced typewriter, which would have cost $15,000 or so in today's dollars, was used by the Texas National Guard and that Killian had gained the significant expertise needed to operate it.

(6) That Killian was under pressure to whitewash Bush's record from a general who had retired 18 months earlier.

(7) That Killian's superior, Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, was right when, sight unseen, he supposedly said the do ents were authentic, but wrong when, having actually viewed the do ents, he declared them fraudulent.

[Tommy Duncan]

----- That is not proof that Killian used such a machine. Also the superscripts in that doc are different than in the memos.

It would have been highly unusual for two different do ents to have been typed on the exact same machine wouldn't it?

Again your argument is that the existence of that do ent proves that Killian could have produced a MS Word default do ent in 1972.

----- And again, there is all the other evidence which apparently you are ignorant of at this time, such as the observations of the man's family,

That isn't proof, its an opinion by family members.

Oh it's proof alright, kiddie.

----- the likelihood that a national guard post would have a typewriter capable of producing a MS Word quality do ent back in 1972 and so on.

Again not a proof, just a matter of probability. If your entire arguement is based upon this contingency claim, then it makes the entire argument flawed. Asking what if they had that specific type writer is just as valid as asking what if they didn't?

That does not make the argument flawed. And no, obviously I did not base the entire argument on that so your own argument is "flawed."

[DeSPURado]

(1) A secretary probably was more likely don't you think?

(2) It was in his file of records not a personal file.

(3) What does that mean? It doesn't represent his feelings?

(4) I'd like to see such a test. Why hasn't that ever been posted?

(5) How much has the millitary spent on toilets before? On the bradley personal transport? 15k is pennies.


(6) That general made sure to redo every single advancement proceedings to get pictures of himself presiding over the advancement ceremonies LT Bush earned. Even though they had already been done once. But no a retired general and personal friend would never have any influence would he?

(7) You never showed me a quote from Hodges actually saying this? Why would seeing the do ents change his mind? Because Hodges would never type it? See number (1)

[DeSPURado]

----- And again, there is all the other evidence which apparently you are ignorant of at this time, such as the observations of the man's family,

That isn't proof, its an opinion by family members.



Oh it's proof alright, kiddie.

Really its proof? You would suck as a lawyer.

[Tommy Duncan]

(1) A secretary probably was more likely don't you think?

Oh so he used a secretary to write out a personal memo.

(2) It was in his file of records not a personal file.

Proof?

(3) What does that mean? It doesn't represent his feelings?

Consistency. Duh.

(4) I'd like to see such a test. Why hasn't that ever been posted?

It's been done. Why are you not aware of this?

(5) How much has the millitary spent on toilets before? On the bradley personal transport? 15k is pennies.

Irrelevant.

(6) That general made sure to redo every single advancement proceedings to get pictures of himself presiding over the advancement ceremonies LT Bush earned. Even though they had already been done once. But no a retired general and personal friend would never have any influence would he?

That does not address the point. The man was retired.

(7) You never showed me a quote from Hodges actually saying this? Why would seeing the do ents change his mind? Because Hodges would never type it? See number (1)

Hodges has been quoted throughout the press as saying that. I'm not going to look up all the developments that pertain to this case that you are ignorant of.

[Tommy Duncan]

You want proof? Start with this: www.flounder.com/bush2.htm

Given how you have managed to suck as an ambulance chasing wannabe, you might want to rethink that statement.

[DeSPURado]

Oh so he used a secretary to write out a personal memo.
-Usually yes

Proof?
-pentagon statement

Consistency. Duh.
- peoples emotions are ever consistent?


It's been done. Why are you not aware of this?
- proof?


Irrelevant.
- now you're just getting lazy its irrelevant because you say it is?



That does not address the point. The man was retired.
- The man was a close friend, retired or not my step father a full bird colonel still gets saluted.



Hodges has been quoted throughout the press as saying that. I'm not going to look up all the developments that pertain to this case that you are ignorant of.
- he was quoted as saying that he would have believed it if it were hand written. Again see (1)

[Tommy Duncan]

I'll defer to actual lawyers who managed to attend real law school programs...

www.powerlineblog.com/

Reader Martin Vaala asked an interesting question; here are his query and my answer:

Powerline:
Since you're lawyers, I have a, perhaps trivial, side issue question about the memos. What admissibility hurdles would you have to overcome to get copies of do ents entered as evidence?

Martin Vaala

Martin:

Good question. Based on what CBS has released so far, they're not even in the ballpark. You'd have to authenticate them and overcome any hearsay obstacles contained within them. CBS hasn't attempted to do any of this.

CBS is trying to use these forgeries to influence a Presidential election, but they could never get them into evidence in a $10,000 civil case.

John H.

Which kind of puts CBS's stonewalling into perspective.

Funny how I have to consult that site to get a real lawyerly perspective on this matter.

[Tommy Duncan]

Proof?
-pentagon statement

BULL . The Pentagon has made no such statement with respect to these do ents. CBS has not come forward with the source of those do ents either.

Come on Perry Mason, don't make it that easy.

[Tommy Duncan]

They salute your Uncle just to humor the old bas .

[DeSPURado]

Hearsay objections are easily overcome. Records kept in business are exceptions to the hearsay rule. Funny that those lawyers don't know that.

Authenticity would be a matter for the jury to decide both sides would argue that with their own experts.

[Tommy Duncan]

www.presenceofmind.net/20...1069546650

The Cluetrain doesn't run on Sixth Avenue

I know of my own certain knowledge that the Killian memos are forgeries. I did work on the IBM Selectric Composer in the 70s, both the stand-alone model and the magnetic tape version (a Turing machine that set type--badly). I know from my own bleary-eyed effort how much time it would take to manually produce even one MS-Word style superscript. In fact, no one would have used the Selectric Composer as an office typewriter, and, even if Lt. Col. Killian had done such an insane thing, he never would have wasted the time necessary to manually produce superscripts. All of this ignores the issues of centering, kerning, etc., all of which were difficult to achieve, and required painstaking and hugely error-prone manual effort. CBS expects us to believe that Killian produced a memo 'for the file' that would have taken an hour, at least, to bat out on the Selectric Composer--and which he would have had to start over from scratch at the first typo.

In fact, I pulled some amazing typographic stunts out of that machine. (For example, typing a line in Univers Bold, then cranking the lead by one point (1/72nd inch) and the escapement by one-half point (1/144th inch), then retyping the same line to create a faux Kabel Black look.) Cheap art done with panache. But not quickly, and not on a whim. Like everyone else in the 70s, I wrote copy on a plain vanilla IBM Selectric Typewriter. Rock solid, mono-spaced, six lines to the vertical inch--nothing like the Killian memos released by CBS.

I haven't even bothered to speak up on this aspect of this obvious fraud. Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs has proved beyond all doubt that the Killian memos are forged. Stupid stunts like the one pulled over the weekend by Edward Mendelson at PC Magazine prove nothing. In fact, not even an experienced Selectric Composer operator could have produced those memos, nor a Linotype compositor, nor any other typographer using 70s-epoch equipment. 'Set to match' is one of the hardest jobs in fine-art typography, and there was no equipment available then that could do what Charles Johnson has done effortlessly and repeatedly with MS-Word straight out of the box.

This is not subject to debate by rational men. The Killian memos are forgeries.

[DeSPURado]

BULL . The Pentagon has made no such statement with respect to these do ents. CBS has not come forward with the source of those do ents either.

They have they were the ones to find the do ents during the Freedom of information search.

[Yonivore]

I think we should pe ion Kori to start a Flounder's Forum for DeSPURate and Nbadanallah.

[Tommy Duncan]

Again, BULL . There is no proof that the Pentagon released those do ents whatsoever.

Anyways, address Newcomer's analysis and give me a link proving those do ents came from the Pentagon.

[Tommy Duncan]

Oh I think that lawyer knows what he is talking about.

[DeSPURado]

Newcomers anaylsis is based upon the premise that the 68 do ent and the 71 do ent were typed on the same type of machine. There isn't anything to suggest they were. I have no argument with his analysis there. They probably weren't typed on the same machine.

Again I am not contending that they have to be real. You need to realize that. Personally even if they aren't real there is one exactly like it saying almost exactly the same thing, Hodges expressed that in his claim.

[DeSPURado]

Exceptions to the hearsay rule:

Obviously, we don't have time to examine the substance of either the federal or state exceptions in detail, but you should at least read their descriptions in the federal rules and the Evidence Code.

In the federal rules, the kinds of statements defined as nonhearsay are:

6. Business records, including those of a public agency. Evid. Code §§ 1271, 1280.

Findlaw

[Yonivore]

Oh, that's right, DeSPURate is gonna be lawyer. Well, you're losing your case here, buddy.

[DeSPURado]

Again I am not contending that they have to be real. You need to realize that. Personally even if they aren't real there is one exactly like it saying almost exactly the same thing, Hodges expressed that in his claim.

[Yonivore]

You mean when CBS called him and read the contents of what the purported, to him, to be handwritten notes -- which actually turned out to be forged typed memos -- of Killian's whereupon he said something to the effect of, "well, if he said it..."

That's pretty lousy lawyering counselor.

[Tommy Duncan]

shapeofdays.typepad.com/t...lectr.html

September 10, 2004
The IBM Selectric Composer
For a couple of days now we've been talking about whether the CBS memos could have been produced using the technology available in 1972 and 1973. We've talked about two typewriters mainly, both widely used at that time: the IBM Executive series and the IBM Selectric series.

Though the question has hardly been conclusively answered, the consensus of opinion among interested parties seems to be that neither an Executive nor a Selectric could have produced these memos.

My purpose here is not to debate the relative merits of either of those typewriters; that discussion is happening elsewhere. Rather, I want to take a moment to consider the dark horse candidate, the one piece of equipment that is widely believed to have been capable of producing a do ent similar to these memos, but that has been dismissed as being so improbable an alternative as to hardly bear talking about.

I'm referring to the IBM Selectric Composer. This machine resembles a sophisticated electric typewriter in most respects, but is in fact a full-fledged cold-type typesetting machine. (Cold type as opposed to hot type, machines like the Linotype that would cast entire lines of type in molten lead as the typesetter worked. Ah, those were the days.)

Whenever the topic has turned to the Selectric Composer, it has been dismissed out-of-hand as being far too expensive an item to find in an office on an Air National Guard base: The machine sold for anywhere from $3,600 to $4,400, and fonts were extra and not cheap. Furthermore, the Composer was widely agreed to be far too complicated and slow a machine to use for typing up memoranda, especially ones that were destined to go into a file and not even be distributed.

Update: Many commenters have pointed out — and I'm trying to read 'em all, I promise! — that I'm talking about $3,600 to $4,400 in unadjusted 1973 dollars here. If you use one of the widely available deflation or purchasing-power calculators, you end up with an equivalent in 2004 dollars of between about $16,000 and about $22,000. Bottom line: despite its fairly innocuous appearance, the Selectric Composer was no ordinary office typewriter. It was a pricey little number.

But the nagging question remained: Could an IBM Selectric Composer have been used to produce these do ents?

I found my answer the same place everybody finds everything these days: Google. Typing "IBM Selectric Composer" into that search site took me to the aptly named ibmcomposer.org, which describes itself as "the only site on the Internet completely dedicated to the IBM 'Selectric' Composer line of typesetting machines." The site, which is run by Gerry Kaplan, includes information, scanned user manuals, and photographs of the only working IBM Selectric Composer I've been able to find. And, fortunately for me, it also includes an e-mail address.

When I first heard back from Gerry, I felt a little bad for having bothered him. He'd been fielding calls and letters all day, he told me, including an inquiry from CNN. But he was a trouper, willing — enthusiastic even — to help out.

I asked Gerry, in a fit of hubris, if he wouldn't mind trying to reproduce a sample from one of the CBS memos on his Selectric Composer. Just over an hour later, he emailed me back a sample, typed up on his Composer using the 11-point Press Roman type ball and scanned into his computer.



At first glance, the sample Gerry provided looks pretty darned close. The type is proportionally spaced, just like the type in the CBS memos. Gerry was also able to reproduce the now-infamous superscripted "th," though he had a disclaimer about that.

Superscript didn't come out so good because when you change the escapement lever (from the larger spacing to smaller spacing, and visa versa), sometimes the ball actually slips forward by a small amount, so you can see that the superscript looks disjointed.

But all in all, I thought it looked pretty close. Was it possible that thirty years ago an Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel typed up a handful of memos on a state-of-the-art typesetting machine?

I was getting ahead of myself. There's a big difference between looking pretty close and actually being pretty close. I knew I wouldn't be able to tell until I got the samples into Adobe Photoshop and superimposed them. I tinted Gerry's sample red for visibility and then overlaid it on top of the original. Here's the result.



The most obvious discrepancy was that the line-spacing — what typographers call leading (rhymes with "shredding") — was off. I e-mailed Gerry about this, and he replied: "Yes, if I had really tried, I could have matched the spacing (leading). The leading on the composer can be finely adjusted. Don't know if it is down to the single point level, but it probably is since you can set the leading according to the font, and the leading dial goes from something like 6pt up to 14pt."

Rather than asking Gerry to cough me up another sample, I simply split the lines of type apart in Photoshop and slid them down to align with the baselines of the corresponding lines of type in the original. Here's the adjusted version.



Much better … and pretty darned close to the original. But not close enough. The letterforms in the IBM's Press Roman typeface are very close to the letterforms in the CBS memo. Not surprising, since they're both based on the original Times New Roman font commissioned by the Times of London in 1931. But as we've seen already, different versions of the same font always exhibit subtle differences, usually in letterspacing. This case is no different.

Consider the first line of type. The "14" at the end of the line is almost perfectly aligned in both samples. But the word "to" in "report to commander" is significantly offset. So's "AFB." And, of course, the second line is completely out of whack. The third line is quite close, except for the superscript, the one Gerry said looked disjointed because of a slip in the carrier while he was adjusting the escapement lever.

Hey, what about that superscript? How'd he make it? I asked him via e-mail, and he replied:

To make the superscripted th, I first typed "111", then switched the font to the 8pt font, switched the escapement lever to the smaller escapement (horizontal movement), reverse indexed the paper 1/2 line up, typed the "th", indexed 1/2 line down, switched the escapement lever to the wider escapement, then changed the type ball back to the 11pt font. On other tries, I was able to produce the superscripted th much cleaner (where it looked proper), but on the one I sent you, the carrier slipped forward a little bit when I switched the escapement lever to and from the smaller spacing.

Just to be clear, when Gerry says he switched to the 8-point font, he's not talking about pushing a button. He had to remove the 11-point type ball from the machine and replace it with the 8-point type ball, which in a real office would involve digging in the back of a drawer to find the seldom-used thing. Creating that superscript wasn't quick or easy, and when he did it the carrier slipped and the superscript ended up offset. Unlike the perfectly formed and placed superscripts seen in the CBS memos.

So the superscript is slightly off, and the letterspacing is significantly off. What's left? Something I didn't even think to ask about: the centered type.

Another point that is very su ious is the centered heading. This is a snap to do with fixed spacing (like courier), but the text is centered using proportional spaced text, which means that the typist had to carefully measure the text prior to typing to calculate its exact center point. Typing a superscript, with all its steps, is simple compared to centering text proportionally without digital electronics.

This point was so important to Gerry that he went out of his way to mention it to me again later in the day: centering type is hard on the Selectric Composer. Two of the memos, May 4 and August 1, 1972, feature a three-line centered head. Each of those lines of type had to be centered by measuring it carefully, doing some math, then advancing the carrier to just the right point on the page. The margin for error would be pretty wide because type can be off by a few points in either direction and still look pretty well centered. It wouldn't be objectionable unless you went looking for it. So it wasn't necessary for Lt. Col. Killian — or his typist — to be millimeter-precise.

And yet … he was.



Two letterheads typed three months apart can be superimposed on each other so perfectly that no difference at all can be seen. It's the same deal as before: the red in front was superimposed over the black behind it. You just can't see the black copy because the red copy is perfectly aligned with it. These letterheads weren't centered to within a couple of points of each other. They were centered exactly the same. Three months apart.

Remarkable.

Can we draw any conclusions from this? Well, there's always room for doubt, no matter how slim, no matter how slight. But in my opinion … yes. Based on the significant differences in letterspacing between the Composer font and the font used in the memos, the iffy nature of the superscript "th," and the unbelievable coincidence of the precisely centered headlines, I'm ready to say that the IBM Selectric Composer was not used to produce these memos.

Update: Gerry, who I swear is going to have his own blog before the end of this, had a suggestion.

Something that I think would be a good test for your website may be to reproduce the centered heading using MS Word and Times New Roman. If you can produce centered text that matches identically to the letterhead, it is, in my opinion, a true hoax. The reason is, because even if they were able to center text with a typesetting machine such as the composer, a PC (and good word processor), will center the text even more precisely, not at the "point" level, but rather on the twip level (1/1440th of an inch or 1/20th of a point).

I live to please. Behold:



This is the composite image from above with the new stuff on top. The bottom layer is the first original memo headers in black. Above that is the second original memo headers in red ink. And on top of that in black is the header I created just now using Microsoft Word's default settings and clicking the "center" button. There's a little slippage because the original scans are not perfectly horizontal while the overlay I put on top is. But beyond that … looks like a dead-on match to me.

What are the odds?

[DeSPURado]

And the rest of that quote goes on to say? "well, if he said it..."

[Tommy Duncan]

Still waiting on the proof that those do ents came from the Pentagon.

[DeSPURado]

Still waiting for a denial from the whitehouse.