Bush Military Memos Forgeries?

Posted By Blackfive

What?

The memos attesting to President Bush's neglect of his Guard committment seem to be forgeries to these folks at Powerline (who's writers are seriously firing up the blogosphere on a lot of topics).

In order to see what they were talking about, I dug up my promotion order to Sergeant - which was in the mid-eighties - and it was done on an IBM Selectric. I might post it so you can see the difference between what was supposed to be George Bush's indicting memos in 1973 and what memos looked like in the 80's. I think the folks at Poweline and Free Republic are correct here.

And David Mobley at a Physicist's Perspective has a bit more on the subject.

Update: LGF's Charles Johnson found an amazing resemblance of one memo from 1973 to Times New Roman on MS Word by, oh my gosh!, typing up the memo verbatim and comparing the "1973" version with the 2004 version. Why does Charles have all the common sense?

BTW, while Microsoft developed a word processor in 1983 called PC Word that no one used, MS Word wasn't developed until 1989.

Another Update: Apparently, Charles is not the only one with common sense. THERE ARE TWO in the whole blogosphere.

Here's the other guy - at Space Town USA.

Another Another Important Update: Bill at INDC Journal talked to a forensics expert on typefaces today. This is only getting worse for the big media giants that decided to not talk to the right experts or possibly use their own computers to compare typefacing...(advantage Bill)

Was that because they are really that sloppy? Doesn't journalism school teach you anything?

Or are they just BIASED?

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In the absence of more compelling evidence, I would suggest the right-leaning bloggers lay off this forged documents business. Please stop. You're making us look like a bunch of barking-moonbats. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they usuall... [Read More]

Comments

[Dan Patterson]

A forged document. I am shocked. SHOCKED!
I was on the receiving end of one such forgery event years ago. And it was so stunning, so dangerous that the event is seared--SEARED--in my memory:

The mission required volunteers. Volunteers only. None but I came forward, for I alone understood that the danger was only a particle of what I had thrice confronted before. Confronted and emerged with bleeding and painful wounds. Painful but not to the point of actually causing pain or bleeding my own blood. Another kind of painful. Anyway. My commanders, two giants of men with strong and broad shoulders, steely resolve and a grip to match, Theodore Kennedy and Robert Byrd looked at me with pride and a knowing glint in their eyes.
"Glad you stepped forward John Forbes Kerry", said Kennedy, "because only a man such as you could undertake this mission. It's dangerous,"
"But men such as I and Jennjus Kahn", I interrupted, "we men thrive on such".

...excerpted from the coming autobiography "My Secret Missions" by John Forbes Kerry.

[Cannon Cocker]

Charles at LGF has it up also. It appears that 60 minutes, in their haste to smear the President, bungled the job badly. this is just another reason for me to get my news from the blogosphere. Thanks Matt

As I remember my early years in the Corps, we didn't even use 8 1/2 x 11 paper. I think it was 8 x 10 1/2. Why aren't there any lines on the zerox copies of the 60 minutes memos?

Hmmm

[BigFire]

Charles did one better than the original. He super-imposed both documents together. And they match. The super-script "th" is a show stopper, since there are no IBM typewriter from 1972 that can do this trick.

[Jeff Cole]

I'm a retired Marine Rifleman who champed at the bit as a staff weenie from time to time... The notion of writing a memo for the record without signing it or at least initialing it near the subj line or at the end is a tipoff that these memos are phony. They become anonymous memos to the record... Not sure what one of those is if not false. Let me put it another way: No officer with fitness report responsibility or command authority would ever write a memo for the record without initialing it. Period.

[Mikey]

That sound you just heard were two craft, Senator Kerry's campaign and 60 Minutes' credibility, slamming into mines.

They are so contemptuous of Pres. Bush that they walk right into it every time.

[Chris Van Dis]

Sean Hannity just mentioned this on his radio show as well, Drudge has it up too. Hannity is looking more at the lying former lt. governor ( Barnes?) of Texas and his part in this. Missing the bigger part of the story if you ask me.

[RonG]

I wonder if would make any difference if this was a plant by the democrats to try to make Bush look bad, or a plant by the Republicans to make CBS look bad?

[Dawn]

Well, some folks apparently think that it was the White House that forged the documents. I guess some people will believe anything.

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/09/09/did_the_white_house_.html

[dream'n@r.e.m.]

Initiate. Interesting word choice. I heard Presidents always have to say yes.

Forged. It was a bad order(unable to obey for reason no linger available.....) which is why he kept personal files and this is always a bad idea?

[dick]

I like it that the LLL accuse the White House of releasing these documents. My understanding was that all military records released are released by the military only. These LLL will stoop to anything to disparage and blacken the pres. The more I see the more sure I am that I have to vote for Bush. We just cannot let these people get into office.

[Ohms]

Something I noticed on the CYA memo was the date: 18 August 1973. Now, things could have changed by the time I went into the Army in 1987, but we would've written that date as: 18AUG73 and not 18 August 1973.

[JLawson]

Something else absolutely amazing to my eyes - that when the memos are rewritten in Word with default 1 inch margins, with 8.5x11 inch paper selected - the line spacing, font, line breaks and margins are EXACTLY the same as something done on a typewriter on the then-military-standard 8x10.5 inch correspondence paper... without a detectable difference. Superimpose the two, and they're virtually identical.

32 years later. On a different paper size, with different margins. And with a proportionally spaced font that wasn't even AROUND in 1972.

It's just plain miraculous. Heck, you don't get that close a match with the same letter printed out on an HP Lasterjet 2 and on an HP Laserjet 8000.

I'd love to take a look at the originals. Want to bet they're nice and white, not brittle or discolored at all? And that the printing on them looks like it was done with a laser printer?

J.

[Steff W]

My husband, who is currently in the Army, can't get a simple LES from 6 months ago and yet the democrats can dig up documents from 30 years ago... sign 'em up... we need new PAC guys...better yet..PFC Kerry where are you when we need you?

[Bobby Sr]

Col Jerry Killian's widow Majorie Connell casts doubt about the memos as reported by ABC radio interview. Col Killian died 20 years ago.Link:
http://www.krgv.net/cgi-bin/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1094786172,88169,

[Go 4 TLI]

Some comments / questions:

(1) I remember working as a technical writer while in grad school in 1988. The documents I wrote (spec sheets for electronic components like A/D converters) for the military were on this junky word processer called Multimate. It was light years behind what was commercially available even fifteen years ago.

(2) I also remember being assigned the additional duty of OER officer when I was still in the USAR (in Houston, appropriately enough!). Having nobody assigned to me to type up the forms, I did that myself. On a typewriter. In fact, I bought my own electric typewriter so that I could avoid the government issue clunkers at my unit and also so I could work at home. This situation lasted well into the 90's.

(3) In all of my military experience ('84 to '98 as an ROTC cadet and in the USAR), I have never dealt with any written correspondence that had a P.O. box as the return address in the letterhead like the one supposedly ordering Bush to submit to a flight physical. Doesn't all such correspondence have the street address of the unit headquarters? And while I'm asking, wouldn't said letterhead also have a unit patch and/or a TXAFNG unit patch or some such? If it's important enough for a letterhead ...

(4) Every official letter written by any unit commander I've run into was signed by so-and-so, such-and-such rank, "commanding" or "commanding general". Never "commander". Maybe the TXAFNG was different in the early 1970's, and hopefully Blackfive or one of his readers has better poop on this.

Anyway, those are the obvious questions that popped into my head immediately. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't major in journalism in college!

[MVH]

These Old Media types are just too funny for words. Look at how they refer to themselves: "I'm a Journalist." Ha, these elite snobs aren't worthy to be called "reporters."
For me, a "journalist" is all talk and no work. A Reporter is down in the trenches. Just like the bloggers are now.

[annika]

One thing that i haven't seen mentioned anywhere is the automatic superscript function of MS Word. i used Word every day at my job for many years and i hate that function. if you type "th" at the end of a number, Word automatically converts it to superscript and i can't for the life of me figure out how to shut that function off. Seems like the forger couldn't either, or didn't notice.

i watched Nightline tonight and ABC is now piling on CBS. Oh they both support the Democrats equally, but i'm sure ABC is shrewd enough to see a chance to steal a little of that dwindling network news market share. Funny thing was, Koppel actually had the gall (or perhaps genius) to interview Chris Lehane about the forgery! Well, if Lehane wasn't the source of the memos, he certainly would be an expert on that type of dirty politics.

[Timmer]

Giggle, snort. It's just too funny.

I've worked with AF Records both old and new for 20 years and I've never even seen a format like the one used in the "CYA" document of 18 August 1973.

My take on it? The new Clinton advisors set it up to be caught so Hillary will have to step in at the last minute. Hey...I KNOW that's absurd, but at this point, nothing would suprise me.

This isn't inept...it's just plain silly.

[Bucky Katt]

Game, Set, Match to Power Line, LGF and the blogosphere. ;-)

[Black Oak]

Their not Sloppy (they are biased though).

The reality is THEY WANT THIS TO BE TRUE!!

[Outlaw3]

You guys aren't paranoid enough. The vast secret right wing conspiracy manipulated a simple minded left winger into forging the documents on a modern computer to look like it was done in the 1970s. Then it was leaked by a credible left wing source as found during a (burglary) perusal of private files without the widow or family's knowledge. This was followed by a massive disinformation operation with planted right wing agents in the DNC, Kerry HQs and news media arguing both forgery and authentic (truly brilliant to unbalance the socialists). But so many of the left wanted it to be so, and thinking it is so = it is so in their twisted minds, so they went with it. Battle Damage Assessment: 1. Brilliant information warfare operation by the Bush campaign. 2. Credible damage to DNC, Kerry, and CBS, crushing their ability to get other stories out. 3. The right wing agents in those organizations are now well respected for their acute sense of planted stories. 4. All other socialist news organizations will suspect future stories of this type as phony, and so kill them to avoid embarrassment. 5. The socialist useful idiots have once again been very useful to their true secret masters.

Absolutely an IO mission for the history books.

[Klag]

Excepting for the use of the term "credible left wing source", I would totally agree with Outlaw3. Since that phrase is an oxymoron, though, I cannot.