"Retarded Death Row Inmates 4 Bush" wrote in message
om...
dream on.

You wish you could dream it was false, but the articles keep coming. Here's
another one.

http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/...96&R=9FCD2F192

Is It a Hoax?
Experts weigh in on the 60 Minutes documents. Says one: "I'm a Kerry
supporter myself, but . . . I'm 99% sure that these documents were not
produced in the early 1970s."
by Stephen F. Hayes
09/09/2004 7:20:00 PM





DOCUMENTS CITED Wednesday by 60 Minutes in a widely-publicized
expose of George W. Bush's National Guard Service are very likely forgeries,
according to several experts on document authenticity and typography. The
documents--four memos from Killian to himself or his files written in 1972
and 1973--appear to indicate that Bush refused or ignored orders to have a
physical exam required to continue flying. CBS News anchor Dan Rather
reported the segment and sourced the documents this way: "60 Minutes has
obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's
personal file," he said. The 60 Minutes story served as the basis for
follow-up news reports for dozens of news organizations across the country.
The memos were almost immediately questioned in the blog world, with blog
Power Line leading the charge.

And according to several forensic document experts contacted by
THE WEEKLY STANDARD say the Killian memos appear to be forgeries. Although
it is nearly impossible to establish with certainty the authenticity of
documents without a careful examination of the originals, several
irregularities in the Killian memos suggest that CBS may have been the
victim of a hoax.

"These sure look like forgeries," says William Flynn, a forensic
document expert widely considered the nation's top analyst of
computer-generated documents. Flynn looked at copies of the documents posted
on the CBS News website (here, here, here, and here). Flynn says, "I would
say it looks very likely that these documents could not have existed" in the
early 1970s, when they were allegedly written.

Several other experts agree. "They look mighty suspicious," says
a veteran forensic document expert who asked not to be quoted by name.
Richard Polt, a Xavier University philosophy professor who operates a
website dedicated to typewriters, says that while he is not an expert on
typesetting, the documents "look like typical word-processed documents."

There are several reasons these experts are skeptical of the
authenticity of the Killian memos. First the typographic spacing is
proportional, as is routine with professional typesetting and computer
typography, not monospace, as was common in typewriters in the 1970s. (In
proportional type, thin letters like "i" and "l" are spaced closer together
than thick letters like "W" and "M". In monospace, all the letter widths are
the same.)

Second, the font appears to be identical to the Times New Roman
font that is the default typeface in Microsoft Word and other modern word
processing programs. According to Flynn, the font is not listed in the Haas
Atlas--the definitive encyclopedia of typewriter type fonts.

Third, the apostrophes are curlicues of the sort produced by
word processors on personal computers, not the straight vertical hashmarks
typical of typewriters. Finally, in some references to Bush's unit--the
111thFighter Interceptor Squadron--the "th" is a superscript in a smaller
size than the other type. Again, this is typical (and often done
automatically) in modern word processing programs. Although several experts
allow that such a rendering might have been theoretically possible in the
early 1970s, it would have been highly unlikely. Superscripts produced on
typewriters--the numbers preceding footnotes in term papers, for
example--were almost always in the same size as the regular type.

So can we say with absolute certainty that the documents were
forged? Not yet. Xavier University's Polt, in an email, offers two possible
scenarios. "Either these are later transcriptions of earlier documents
(which may have been handwritten or typed on a typewriter), or they are
crude and amazingly foolish forgeries. I'm a Kerry supporter myself, but I
won't let that cloud my objective judgment: I'm 99% sure that these
documents were not produced in the early 1970s."

Says Flynn: "This looks pretty much like a hoax at this point in
time."

CBS, in a statement Thursday afternoon, said it stands by the
story. The network claims that its own document expert concluded the memos
were authentic. There are several things CBS could do to clear up any
confusion:

(1) Provide the name of the expert who authenticated the
documents for Sixty Minutes.

(2) Provide the original documents to outside experts--William
Flynn, Gerald Reynolds, and Peter Tytell seem to be the consensus top three
in the United States--for further analysis.

(3) Provide more information on the source of the documents.

(A spokeswoman for CBS, Kelly Edwards, said she was overwhelmed
with phone calls and did not respond to specific requests for comment.)