Grasping At Straws
Okay, I said I didn’t wanna talk about the Bush/National Guard story, but this is too ludicrous to pass up. The line coming from the conservative blogosphere is that the documents that CBS released to back up their story were forgeries. The details involve a bunch of hooey about fonts that weren’t available in typewriters in the early seventies. About halfway through this thread at Powerline (who’s driving the story), this line is debunked. Not one to let the facts get in the way of a good story, now bloggers are typing up versions of the memos in Microsoft Word a reporting that the documents match perfectly :
However, there is speculation on the internet (I know I know)that these documents were forged…that they look like they came out of a word processor rather than a typewriter from 1972. I scoffed at first, but then thought I would compare one of documents from then with the same document typed up in MS Word, just 5 minutes ago.They are for all intents and purposes identical.
. . .
Every line break is the same. Every space is the same, and all of the text is printed perfectly on each line. Granted, “the original” looks to have undergone some ‘aging’, but there’s no way that document originated in 1972. It may have been copied into Word, but it didn’t come out of a typewriter.
The only problem here is that the documents don’t match perfectly. In fact, they barely match at all. The site above links to the PDFs of the two documents and provides screenshots. In both cases, simply superimposing the two highlights significant differences between the actual documents and the Microsoft Word versions that are supposedly “identical” :
In both cases, when I lined up the word “SUBJECT” between the real (red) and fake(blue) documents, the rest of the memo doesn’t line up. If this is the definitive proof that CBS was forging documents, it shouldn’t look like something that requires 3D glasses to read. This is all made more amusing by the fact that the White House actually released their own version of the documents yesterday that back up CBS’s account. The fact that the White house released the memos and is arguing about about what they mean, not their authenticity, should put this retarded meme to rest :
The memos from the late Col. Jerry Killian, released Wednesday by the White House and broadcast on CBS’ “60 Minutes II,” suggest the president received favored treatment during a time in the early 1970s when many young men were being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam.
. . .
White House officials said Wednesday the Killian memos and reports on Bush’s Guard service were mostly rehashes of previous reports and support their contention that the president fulfilled his duties.“If the president had not fulfilled his commitment he would not have been honorably discharged,” press secretary Scott McClellan said.
. . .
White House communications director Dan Bartlett suggested that the Killian memos support Bush’s account of those times, showing that he wanted to clear his reassignment in Alabama.“So at every step of the way, President Bush was meeting his requirement, granted permission to meet his requirement,” Bartlett said. “And that’s why President Bush was honorably discharged.”
Like I said before, I don’t give a shit about this, for the most part. I think Bush’s National Guard service is a good example of why I don’t like him, but I think there are just as many examples from the last four years that illustrate why he shouldn’t be “re”-elected. Nevertheless, this conspiracy theory about forged documents and old typewriters is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen come of of the conservative blog community since…well…the Insta-DRUDGE nitpicking about assault weapons a couple days ago.
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I love the White House’s patently retarded notion that even though he got into the National Guard entirely because of family connections and the Old Boy network, he couldn’t possibly have gotten himself an honorable discharge through exactly those connections.
I also rather enjoyed seeing footage of Bush denying that he got preferential treatment, followed immediately by the interview with the guy who treated him preferentially.
Comment by Brianotron — September 9, 2004 @ 1:45 pm
greg,
With all due respect to your time for having taken my screenshots and superimposed them, I might point out that my screenshots were taken from different sized documents and aren’t the same size in the first place (though it appears that you’ve gotten pretty close with it).
I don’t think this is conservative reactionism so much as it is subjecting historical documents to scrutiny. They may indeed be real, but we’ll leave that for forensic examiners to decide.
Great looking blog…did you design it yourself?
Comment by Jeremy — September 9, 2004 @ 2:15 pm
Yeah, It’s Vacation Time
We’re now arguing over electric typewriters. Electric. Typewriters. And that the White House forged documents damaging to the president. I can’t even give the words for how much my spiritual ass hurts right now. UP
Trackback by Pandagon — September 9, 2004 @ 2:30 pm
Document matching aside (you may have a valid point), read my interview/analysis with a non-partisan forensics expert:
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/000838.php
Comment by Bill from INDC — September 9, 2004 @ 2:35 pm
I’m with Jeremy- this IS a good-looking blog. Nice work. Love the art deco menu headers.
Comment by patrick — September 9, 2004 @ 2:37 pm
Damaging Bush Memos Could Be Forgeries [Updated]
The following is a post reprint from Powerline Blog, which is breaking this story and is updating frequently. It oringally appeared here and is reprinted with permission of the authors. The sixty-first minute Today’s big Boston Globe story on Pre…
Trackback by The Command Post - 2004 US Presidential Election — September 9, 2004 @ 2:38 pm
I dunno.. I just did one in MS Word and they’re identical. This is what you call amateur hour at CBS.. they got HAD big time.. these things are fakes. They should leave dirty politics to the professionals. (That’d be us Cook County boys. Don’t worry though, we ain’t through with the Texas Chimp just yet.. )
Comment by ChicagoBoy — September 9, 2004 @ 2:39 pm
‘Grasping at straws’ indeed.
Is this ‘debunking’ of yours satire or for real?
On with the splendid entertainments!
Comment by skipkent — September 9, 2004 @ 2:45 pm
Apparently the copies “provided by the White House” were originally faxed to them by CBS from their own copies. Whatever, it’s livening up an otherwise dull Thursday.
Comment by Orion — September 9, 2004 @ 2:51 pm
Give it up, dude. If I were you I would move on to pursuing the following: given that they are obviously fake, and that one of the faked ones supposedly came from the White House, could it be that the Bushies are playing a game with CBS?
Comment by mcg — September 9, 2004 @ 2:54 pm
“The issue is resolved.”
Look, Powerline, I get to sound like a douchebag too! Greg and LeanLeft both “resolve the issue” of your and and Charles Johnson’s “resolving the issue.” Awwww….
Trackback by August J. Pollak - xoverboard.com — September 9, 2004 @ 2:57 pm
If that’s the case, then how are you able to prove this assertion? :
Did you at any point create screenshots that do perfectly line up? If you’re going to claim that CBS is forging documents, you should provide more concrete evidence than two screenshots that look similar when shown side-by-side.
Thanks. I did design it myself. Sites that have little regard for how their content looks on the screen or just use a generic template (I’m looking in your direction, Atrios) drive me nuts.
Comment by greg — September 9, 2004 @ 3:18 pm
Nevermind that. It turns out the CBS faxed those documents to the White House, and then the White House turned around and released them to the public. So there is no obvious White House rope-a-dope story here. It might still be rope-a-dope, but you’d have to dig deeper to get it.
Comment by mcg — September 9, 2004 @ 3:18 pm
There are 2 significant (to me) concerns that have been raised that CBS and its document examiner should be asked to address:
1) The use of proportional fonts, while not technically impossible for 1972, required machines that were uncommon and expensive. Since military communication protocol to this day specifies mono-spaced fonts, why would the TANG have a proportional-spaced typewriter in the office?
2) The superscipt ‘th’ and curly apostrophe were never standard on any typewriter. It was apparently possible to special order (at great expense) a Selectric ball with these characters, but the Selectrics were all mono-spaced typewriters. The proportional-spaced typewriters did not have changeable fonts. Therefore, no single instrument was capable of generating both proportional spacing and these characters. (Unless the TANG was using a $20,000 typesetting machine for interoffice memos.)
Comment by Tom — September 9, 2004 @ 3:27 pm
I think everyone has to take a step back and just wait and see. 1. the IBM executive did proportional fonts and the military had expensive typewriters for working with massive carbons.
2) I know the typewriter I used in the Army in 73 had several superscript characters, so that isn’t a smoking gun.
3) Photostats of the era deteriorate with time – I know mine have, in fact these look damn good.
4) Wait for siganture comparisons there obviously should be hundreds – we need more than the discharge one since often orderly room clerks filled in for the commanders on such documents. If the memo signatures are phony it will rapidly become obvious.
Lechliter’s analysis released yesterday reaches pretty much the same conclusions and it doesn’t depend on the memos at all.
If the memos are a fraud it will come out, but anyone rushing to ‘the decision’ either way is just indulging in self-indulgent chest pounding. Some reasonable questions have been raised, they will be answered one way or the other.
Comment by BobVB — September 9, 2004 @ 3:33 pm
One more question: Why would CBS go to town with these memos from a dead man’s personal files, vetted by a Democratic politician and Kerry fundraiser with a history of ethics problems, after first ignoring and then impugning the honor of more than 100 living vets who went on the record with their criticisms of Kerry? I’m not saying the SWVfT are shining beacons of light, but the media double-standard here is unavoidably clear.
Comment by Tom — September 9, 2004 @ 3:34 pm
greg,
I have other jobs (like making baseless allegations) to be doing instead of spending hours in photoshop.
Have you tried fixing your background on your site? I think it would be a subtle, yet powerful enhancement.
The Weekly Standard will soon be publishing an article quoting a number of experts who agree that the documents are fraudlent. Additionally, Killian’s son disagrees with CBS’s story. CBS is standing by their story. We’ll see what happens.
I suggest reading Bill’s report at http://www.indcjournal.com, he has more information.
Comment by Jeremy — September 9, 2004 @ 3:34 pm
By looking closely at the dates “18 August 1973″, you can see clearly that this didn’t come from Word.
The 8 on the Word doc is on the same line as the 1, on the typewriter it is higher.
The g is just a different font, the loop on the Word doc is much bigger then the loop on the typewriter.
the 9 is larger then the 1 on the typewriter, it is exactly the same size on the Word.
The 7′s are different, in the typewriter it curves down much more then Word’s perfectly straight line.
The 3 is different, the middle point is much higher on the typewriter then the Word font.
The 8′s top and bottom loops are symeterical on the Word font, on the typewriter the botton loop is bigger.
Comment by John — September 9, 2004 @ 3:45 pm
The real question, is where do the French fit in? ;)
Comment by fat kid — September 9, 2004 @ 3:51 pm
I sympathize with the fringe-schizo-paranoid-delusional wingers, I really really do: we are all so used to forgeries coming from the WH, and the wacko-compulsive-obsessive-fringe-wingers just assumed that these were forgeries too. Funny, but they didn’t notice that the documents weren’t from the WH until it was too late. Then the WH released their own copies of the documents, which just confused everyone. So I sympathize. Really I do.
Of course, we wouldn’t be in this mess and a thousand more if the President was the straight talking resolute kind of guy he claims to be.
Comment by backspace — September 9, 2004 @ 3:52 pm
I’ve seen a lot of chatter about IBM Model C’s and Selectric I’s on this topic and how it’s highly unlikely that those could produce the superscripted ‘th’.
I don’t know the answer, but I seem to remember that the military at the time had an on-again off-again procurement love affair with Remington Rand. It would be interesting to know if one of their high-end typewriters of the era could have typed this document.
One thing I do know about is copying machines. On the thread that got me here (I came from Michele’s posting at Command Post) someone mentioned that it looked like the original had been run through a photocopier several times to possibly show that the allegedly forged document was old. If you run something through a copying machine (especially a well-worn one) even once then I would say that you’re likely to get the distortion that is evident with the red-text/blue-text lineup above. Fax machines would also do this if they used the standard Xerographic process, and that’s even before the image goes over a phone line.
Comment by Chad — September 9, 2004 @ 3:56 pm
Other attempts at overlaying these have worked very well.
And I’m not keen on believing documents with no official letterhead and or seal. I don’t see how anyone thinks this can be construed as official. Besides, if someone wanted to CYA, they wouldn’t write a letter titled CYA.
Comment by Sharp as a Marble — September 9, 2004 @ 4:02 pm
Two Faces of Blog Journalism
If you’ve been following the blogosphere today, you’ve probably notice allegations surfacing on the right wing: They’re saying that the memos that 60 Minutes dug up for its dug up for its
Trackback by pennywit.com — September 9, 2004 @ 4:13 pm
Two Faces of Blog Journalism
If you’ve been following the blogosphere today, you’ve probably notice allegations surfacing on the right wing: They’re saying that the memos that 60 Minutes dug up for its dug up for its
Trackback by pennywit.com — September 9, 2004 @ 4:18 pm
The documents look very much like something just dashed off in Word, but not exactly.
But this is why we have document experts.
I think we’ll have to see what happens, but your “debunking” doesn’t convince me, because your two copies look identical, just not at the same _scale_, which would make sense for a scan of a photocopy…
Comment by Opinionated Bastard — September 9, 2004 @ 4:23 pm
As much as I would like to see these documents be authentic, I do have to agree with Jeremy that the docs match pretty damn closely. Check out this animated GIF that I put together. Note that I did not rely on Jeremy’s screenshots, I made my own from the CBS PDF and from Jeremy’s Word document.
Note, that I definately do not have a right wing agenda, considering that I run my own anti-Bush site, but despite that, I have a hard time dismissing Jeremy’s analysis out of hand.
Comment by Shaun — September 9, 2004 @ 4:26 pm
Sharp as Marble:
You’ll notice that those attempts are with files with much smaller dimensions, which is going to significantly minimize any typeface differences as well as spacing differences. If this can be done at 600dpi or even 300dpi, then I might be convinced. But based on 450 pixels? No way.
I *do* think the superscript is a smoking gun, though. No way could the superscript be placed that high up in Microsoft Word. Times New Roman in Microsoft Word lines the top of the superscript just barely above the cap height of the main text. In this document, the superscript’s *midline* was lined up with the top of the letters. That’s a difference significant enough to see in a low-res file.
Comment by John — September 9, 2004 @ 4:28 pm
Hmmm… the animated gif showed in the preview, but not in the actual post. Here is the link.
Comment by Shaun — September 9, 2004 @ 4:28 pm
Isn’t it interesting that the day before the highly unflattering book by Kitty Kelly is released some annonymous, assumed-to-be Kerry supporter ‘leaks’ these old documents to CBS, in a ‘double wammy’ to the Bush campaign. Then, the next day – when the nation doesn’t know what to believe – the documents turn out to be terrible forgeries and make Kerry look like a fool, while discrediting the book at the same time with its momemtum. Karl Rove, you’re a sick genius.
Comment by Neil — September 9, 2004 @ 5:07 pm
The final word on this: kerning. No typewriter can do it.
Check out the word “November” in your sample. Note how that is one word that does match up in your overlay. Also note the kerning. Note how the “v” overlaps the preceding “o” and the following “e”. This is something that word processors do, and typewriters cannot.
Comment by Skim — September 9, 2004 @ 5:21 pm
Neil, don’t start in with the “Karl Rove” did it… Jonah Goldberg has already put this out in the blogosphere… that if the docs do prove to be forgeries, then the Dems are gonna blame the Repubs. Brilliant, yes? Sigh
Comment by Elderta — September 9, 2004 @ 5:26 pm
I have to say your Photoshop skills need to be polished up a bit. I ran though the same exercise and came up with the following image:
(and in case you can’t post images in comments you can click
here for the pic.)
Whole process documented here.
Comment by Nathan — September 9, 2004 @ 5:26 pm
http://snipurl.com/8yxg
Might this help from 1968?
The IBM SELECTRIC Composer: Proportional Escapement Mechanism
by B. W. Miles, C. C. Wilson
The IBM SELECTRIC? Composer’s escapement system employs rotating elements, rather than the conventional rack system, to provide the required displacement. This permits the basic unit of escapement to be varied, and allows the number of units per escapement cycle to vary in proportion to character width. In this paper the authors discuss the machine requirements that led to this approach and describe the elements that have evolved. The analysis used to evaluate the design (and modify it to some extent) is also recorded, in a separate section.
Related Subjects: IBM SELECTRIC Composer; Mechanical design
Comment by Elderta — September 9, 2004 @ 5:31 pm
I worked in type for several years, for what it’s worth, and am co-inventor of a patented font-generation system (pat 5586241, FWIW). Kerning is a red herring, as while it’s true that typewriters don’t kern, neither does Word, as you can verify yourself by typing ‘To’ and setting it to 72 point. If Word kerned, the o would tuck under the bar of the T. Try the same thing in Pagemaker or QuarkXPress, and the kerning will be obvious.
The overlap you see with a ‘v’ next to an ‘o’ is just that some characters are intentionally designed to stick slightly outside their box, including ‘v’ and ‘w’. This makes for more visually pleasing type.
The font in the document is clearly not Times New Roman, though it is darned similar. Look at the numbers. Look at the lower-case ‘g’. It’s worth noting that Monotype designed both Times New Roman (in the 30′s) and “IBM Typewriter Executive,” which I would assume is the typeface used on the IBM Executive typewriter.
The Executive was a fairly popular typewriter for IBM – I remember seeing them. They had a distinctive split space bar because they could do both 2- and 3-unit spaces. They weren’t as popular as the lower-end monospaced models, but they certainly weren’t some weird model only used by typesetters. And there were definitely typewriters with superscript numbers, ‘rd’, ‘th’, and ‘st.’ I don’t know if the IBM Executive had them, but given that it was a fancy top-of-the-line model, it seems likely.
As for the spacing and line breaks matching in Word, if in fact the Executive typeface was created by Monotype and modeled after Times New Roman, that wouldn’t be too surprising.
Overall, I think it unlikely that any document expert worth his salt would fail to notice that a document was typed using a completely unusual typeface and typewriter. I have a feeling that if you looked at type from an Executive, it would look like these memos.
Comment by Don Munsil — September 9, 2004 @ 5:53 pm
Don’t you think you are all missing the point? Saddam has done far worse shit.
Comment by Reality Check — September 9, 2004 @ 5:55 pm
So is there a run on old typewriters on Ebay yet? Wonder if I can dig one up at the thrift store and make mint….
Comment by Tom DC/VA — September 9, 2004 @ 5:56 pm
By the way, the Word document being compared to
the memo in question was created on a Mac. This
could explain the slight variations. Somebody needs
to create the document on a Windows computer for
what would probably be a better comparison.
The match between the two documents is still
uncanny beyond belief. If you have ever attempted
to use your computer in an attempt to make an
identical match to an old item (people are always
trying to make reproductions of collectible
documents and packaging), you know that it is
near impossible and takes a long, long time to
even get it close.
I’m convinced the 60 Minutes document is a fraud.
Despite some spinning, 60 Minutes doesn’t seem to
fully stand behind the document.
Comment by George — September 9, 2004 @ 5:56 pm
George, the comparison gif that I posted above was done on Windows.
Comment by Shaun — September 9, 2004 @ 6:22 pm
RE: Don Munsil’s comment at 5:53.
Here’s an old advertisement from 1954 for an IBM Executive B series.
Comment by jefe — September 9, 2004 @ 6:50 pm
The Forgery Accusations…
So right now the Conservative side of the Blogsphere is focused on discrediting the documents shown on 60 minutes, that seemed to prove Bush has not been honest about his TANG record. The funny thing is that people like Paul…
Trackback by In Search of Utopia — September 9, 2004 @ 7:09 pm
Note to George and Shaun. Try actually printing that document and the issue of the ‘th’ not lining up is solved. Times Roman on the screenshot doesn’t raise superscript, but does when printed. Same with the growing/shrinking #7.
Just my two cents (which I’m sure is not appreciated.)
Comment by Marty Johnson — September 9, 2004 @ 7:22 pm
John,
“No way could the superscript be placed that high up in Microsoft Word.”
It certainly can, I just did it.
Comment by Greg F — September 9, 2004 @ 7:44 pm
I found an example of the IBM Executive typeface, and it looks darned close to both Times New Roman and the memos in question:
http://www.microsparc.com/news.htm
Look at the ad on the right. According to the text, it was created on an IBM Executive. To me, it’s clearly in the Times family. Given that IBM made the Executive from 1947 to sometime in the 70′s, it doesn’t seem completely unlikely that the memos were just typed normally on an IBM Executive. The text on that web page refers to the labor involved in setting the page, but that’s because the guy that made it justified the type. The memos in question have ragged-right margins, which would be easy on an Executive.
This stuff about the special ‘th’ seems silly. There are certainly examples of typewriters with special ‘th’ keys, and it would very much surprise me if the Executive didn’t have them on at least some models. Apparently some models had replaceable typebars so you could customize some of the symbols you wanted to use.
Here’s a link with the list of Monotype faces, including Times New Roman and Typewriter IBM Executive:
http://members.aol.com/typecaster/alph.htm
And this is interesting. Here are some reminiscences of a WordPerfect old-timer talking about how important it was that word processors turned out documents that looked like they came from an IBM Executive:
http://www.fitnesoft.com/AlmostPerfect/ap_chap04.shtml
So it’s not a given that they are authentic. But the idea that there wasn’t any way to make proportional fonts and superscript ‘th’ on a typewriter of that vintage is not supported, IMO.
Comment by Don Munsil — September 9, 2004 @ 8:42 pm
One interesting point that should be made: I downloaded the PDF of one of the documents and loaded it in Photoshop, then identified two identical words located in different places in the document, copied them on different layers, and overlapped them. Since the words were from the same document, fonts, letter spacings and everything should be identical.
What immedately became apparent is that the people claiming perfect coverage with a new document in Word and the downloaded PDF are full of it. The download is of sufficiently low resolution and blocky that you don’t even get a perfect match of the exact same word taken from the same text.
Comment by Keith — September 9, 2004 @ 9:31 pm
From a 1955 IBM Executive typewriter advertisement:
SECRETARY AND BOSS AGREE
Only the “Executive” Electric types beautiful
letters that look like this…and only IBM
makes the “Executive.”
Because of the exclusive IBM “proportional
spacing,” Executive letters look as if they
were printed. They make striking first im-
pressions, they build prestige, they “open
doors.” And the IBM “Executive” is so easy
to use — saves energy and time — increases
office efficiency.
You can choose from a wide range of
distinguished type faces and (?) handsome
colors. Call your nearest IBM office.
Comment by MB — September 9, 2004 @ 11:08 pm
My mom worked as a secretary at Lockheed from 1955 to 1968 and she used an IBM Executive. They were not as rare as the tinfoil hat brigade suggests.
Comment by MB — September 9, 2004 @ 11:13 pm
CBS Not Complicit?
Have you heard about the stunt 60 Minutes pulled? They slimed Bush using forged documents. My two cents on the matter.
Trackback by Random Observations — September 9, 2004 @ 11:40 pm
OOOOOOF!!!
You got Punk’d!
Don’t feel bad tho, Dan Rather got Punk’d as well.
And I know the guys who did it. :)
-Anga
Comment by Anga — September 10, 2004 @ 2:07 am
Mind-Numbing Incompetence at CBS
I just have to point this one out. Power Line, which I admit I read infrequently, has been blogging up a storm today about a 60 Minutes show purporting to give new evidence on what President Bush was doing in…
Trackback by Three Years of Hell to Become the Devil — September 10, 2004 @ 2:45 am
Let me see if I have this right:
The counter-hypothesis is that the letter was typed on an uncommon model of typewriter (one that when new cost as much as several new cars), specially and usually customised for the th effect, and that this was in a backwater National Guard HQ, and that the fact that the result exactly duplicates the effect you get when printing a Microsoft Word document with unchanged defaults on a laser printer is purely coincidental, right?
But there’s no actual evidence that an Executive typewriter’s proportional spacing is the same as the one on the memo (and in fact a lot of evidence that it wasn’t, with spacing only available in 5 increments)? Or that an Executive (as opposed to any other model) was ever built that had a superscript th, or even used the same Font (as opposed to a similar font of the same family)?
OK, would you like to make a small wager on what will be found out in the near future? And what odds would you accept?
Comment by Alan E Brain — September 10, 2004 @ 2:47 am
True your test-models may not line up but let’s not forget, if I want to make an original document I printed yesterday look old … I make photocopies of photocopies, then leave it outside for afew days.
At which point, some ‘shrinkage’ may appear.
Comment by Mean Dean — September 10, 2004 @ 3:42 am
Regarding your attempts at lining up an MS Word reproduction, your second image is obviously the wrong scale as demonstrated by the fact that the margin of error increases as you go down and to the right of the image.
Really, its like watching OJ pretend to try on that glove all over again and when he can’t, he claims innocence.
Isn’t it interesting that the day before the highly unflattering book by Kitty Kelly is released some annonymous, assumed-to-be Kerry supporter ‘leaks’ these old documents to CBS,
Err, no, CBS had the documents for 6 weeks, the decision to air that program when it did fell to CBS and CBS only.
Comment by DelphiGuy — September 10, 2004 @ 4:54 am
What is with all of the idiot PI’s?
“It matches…lines up perfectly…just typed the whole memo in Word and it is identical!”
Two possibilities here.
Either there are a lot of unemployed and deranged white men with absolutely nothing worthwhile to do, or there are some liars associated with the Bush campaign. Having watched the Repub Convention, I know for a fact that there are many prominent liars on the Bush bandwagon (the “87 billion” vote is one gross example).
However, the economic disaster that is the Bush administration must be considered, so perhaps some one really did take the time and effort to type a memo into Word to reinforce their child-like belief in the greatness of George W. Bush. If so, they have earned whatever solace it gives them.
Comment by Kirby — September 10, 2004 @ 5:07 am
No facts here, just endlessly, mindlessly repeating a non-story. Notice that the Bush administration has successfully changed the debate (again) from “did George Bush receive preferential treatment to get into the national guard and then disobey orders, fail to meet the necessary standards, and get grounded because of it” to “are the documents real”.
And the sheep follow right along.
Comment by Timothy Swan — September 10, 2004 @ 6:54 am
EXCELLENT entertainment!!!
We Canadians enjoy watching you Americans show the whole planet your example of how a democracy should work…..I’m sure everyone in Baghdad, when not being shelled, are suitably impressed too.
We just came off a rather angry election ourselves, funny thing is though, we were more or less debating things that concern Canucks NOW (admittedly less than we’d like), not the swagger of carrying thirty year old medals from an immoral war, or a war-supporter/deserter/self-procalimed war president.
300 million people and the best and the brightest you can come up with is Kerry vs. Bush.
Kerry is a waffler, a company man…..Bush is a fucking despot that buys his own cheering section. You reap what you sow….you’re sooooooooo lucky that there aren’t many suicide bombers from, Rwanda, El Salvador, Cuba, Nicaraugua, Guatemala, Chile, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, South Africa, Pananma, Grenada, etc. to come take down any more landmarks on your stupid asses.
Step back people, look around, give your heads a shake and get real.
Keep fiddling while Rome burns people, it makes for great TV for me though.
BRING IT ON!!! :-)
Comment by timbo — September 10, 2004 @ 7:48 am
-
So tell me, Timothy, how the Bush Administration is behind this story at all. The story was broken on the internet — by Free Republic, by Power line, by INDC, by myself, by dozens of other regular citizens chiming in and offering up their own experience. How is this the “Bush administration”? Are we all paid shills of Bush? Look at my own website, for instance. Did I write because I’m being paid off by W? Did I write because I was duped by someone in the administration? If so, who?
HOW CAN THIS STORY POSSIBLY BE SOURCED TO BUSH?
Comment by Josh — September 10, 2004 @ 10:06 am
Yo Don Munsil,
With all due respect to your patent and your years of experience in type, after doing the experiment you suggested with the letters “To”…I have to say you’re wrong. Not about the letters “To”, but about MS Word’s kerning.
I tried your experiment, now you can try mine. Type the words “interference” and “feedback” in MS Word’s lowercase Times New Roman. Then change the point size to 72. If you were right, then the ‘f’ would not be sheltering the adjacent ‘e’ from the rain.
Those two words are ones that I chose from the August ’73 memo. Check the PDF. The ‘f’s there also shelter the adjacent ‘e’s from the rain in those words. (it’s easier to see in Shaun’s excelent animated gif above.) Also, over in the example of the IBM Executive typeface that you found, the ‘f’s there aren’t quite as chilvalrous…they don’t extend any shelter over the smaller adjacent letters.
So I guess I’d have to say the kerning is not a red herring.
Comment by RJ — September 10, 2004 @ 10:06 am
RJ,
The overhang on the ‘f’ is not kerning. The f has an advance width which is narrower than the letter itself and thus has “negative sidebearing.” This means that the f sticks outside the space allotted for it, no matter what character is next to it. Without that, the f would look like it had too much space on the right-hard side.
Kerning involves adjusting the amount of space between specific pairs of letters. Word does not have that feature and never has. If it had that feature, you would see it on the ‘To’ example (and on ‘Te,’ ‘Ta,’ ‘Yo,’ ‘Ya,’ etc.) Similarly, look at, say, ‘fh’ in Word and note how the f crashes into the h. Kerning would move those letters a bit further apart.
You can see the sidebearings and advance width if you open up Times New Roman with a font editor and look. Many letters have negative sidebearings, but lower-case ‘f’ has the most of the standard alphabetic characters. The same feature can be seen on the IBM Executive, though not as strongly. This is a perfectly normal thing, and something a typewriter can do just as well as Word.
I really don’t know if the memos were typed on an IBM Executive. I don’t think the font in the CBS documents matches the font on that Nibble ad exactly. At the same time, I don’t think the CBS documents’ font matches Times New Roman exactly. It’s darned difficult to tell, though, because of the blurriness of the original documents. It might match Times Roman more closely that Times New Roman. They’re different faces, though obviously related and very similar. And they have the same advance widths, which makes them break the same in Word.
I also spent some time trying to “recreate” some of the other documents in MS Word and got nowhere. I could not get one of the other documents to break the same way no matter how I fiddled with the margin or font size.
So are we to assume that one or more of the documents was created in Word and the others weren’t?
I’m just saying that it’s not immediately obvious that the documents are forgeries. Not yet. If they are determined to be forgeries, fine. I just am annoyed by people with no experience in type rattling on about ‘kerning’ and the like.
Comment by Don Munsil — September 10, 2004 @ 10:55 am
Don,
You are clearly experienced in the field of type. But I don’t get how you can say “while it’s true that typewriters don’t kern, neither does Word, as you can verify yourself by typing ‘To’ and setting it to 72 point. If Word kerned, the o would tuck under the bar of the T.” (my emphasis added) — yet when I point out that the ‘e’ tucks under the ‘f’, well, that’s a whole different story. That’s not kerning.
Hey, whatever you say.
If MS Word doesn’t having kerning, then why is there an adjustment for the minimum font size that it will start “kerning” in the Format/Font/Character Spacing control panel?
I suppose that’s just Bill Gates not telling the truth, eh?
Comment by RJ — September 10, 2004 @ 11:50 am
You’re right and I was wrong about kerning in Word – sometime in the last few years, Word added kerning, though it’s not turned on by default, and it’s not turned on in the document that Little Green Footballs generated. And I don’t see any kerning in the documents posted on CBS.
Do the ‘To’ thing and then turn on kerning. See the o tuck under the T? That’s kerning. Now look at ‘fe’. Even with kerning turned off, the e tucks under the f. Turn on kerning and it doesn’t change.
Kerning has a specific meaning, and it’s not that the characters tuck under each other. Kerning when the standard spacing is changed for a specific pair of characters, like ‘To’ but not ‘Th’. This is a high-end feature, one pretty recently added to Word, I would guess, as it wasn’t there when I worked in typography. And a typewriter would not be able to kern.
But a typewriter is more than capable of having the top of the ‘f’ overlap the next character, just by having the advance width of the character be smaller than the character width. That’s absolutely common, especially for the ‘f.’ Many fonts also have the tail on the lower case y stick a little into the character before it. That’s normal, and happens no matter what the previous character is.
Here’s some terminology. The ‘advance width’ is the amount of space on the paper that character takes up – the amount the carriage advances when it is typed. The ‘character width’ is the actual width of the character, measured from its furthest left extent to its furthest right extent. The sidebearings are the distance from the sides of the character extent to the beginning/end of the advance width. Characters almost always have different character widths and advance widths. Usually the character width is smaller – the character fits neatly into its “box.” But some characters, like the lower-case ‘f’, have smaller advance width than character width because they visually look thinner than their actual character width. Most of the character is thin, but there’s this big overhang on top. To correct for it, in proportional type, the ‘f’ has a negative right-hand sidebearing.
The powerline blog has a whole post where they rattle on and on about ‘kerning’ and they don’t have a clue what kerning is.
Look, like a lot of people, I saw the memos used proportional type and thought “that can’t be from 1972″ because I was used to monospaced typewriters like the Selectric. But having now seen proportional type from an IBM Executive, I don’t think it’s such an open-and-shut case.
The fact that CBS has reasserted that they had the documents vetted and is not backing down strengthens, to me, the idea that their document experts are confident that that type could have been produced by a 1972 typewriter. The quotes in the news from the supposed “document experts” saying things like proportional type wasn’t readily available on a typewriter at that time are just complete hogwash.
Moreover, why in heaven’s name would somebody forge documents that aren’t really all that damning? Why not write, “Lt. Bush was unable to serve because of his ongoing drinking problem” or something really damning? As it is, there’s nothing much in these documents that hasn’t already been confirmed, and the implied criticisms of Bush are pretty mild.
Comment by Don Munsil — September 10, 2004 @ 2:24 pm
Don,
Now I understand what you’re saying. I believe I would react in a similar fashion, if I had to listen to people outside my field of expertise commenting to death about something I knew intimately.
All that being said, I don’t believe that simply because CBS outwardly isn’t backing down (while they are reportedly conducting an internal investigation) that it lends credibility to the documents. Too many things don’t “jive” in the ’73 memo. Why use superscript in one place but not in another?…especially if you have a really expensive typewriter that will do that sort of thing?
The ’73 memo says that Staudt was pressuring to sugar coat. How could that be when according to the L.A.Times, Staudt retired a Brigadier general in 1972?
It’s too fishy.
Comment by RJ — September 10, 2004 @ 3:45 pm
The Staudt thing might be fishy, but again I don’t think it’s a slam-dunk. Someone retired can still put pressure on others, through their personal connections. When a brigadier general retires, do they cease to have personal connections with other generals who are not retired?
Suppose Staudt was a close personal friend of Hodges, and also close to the Bushes or friends of the Bushes. Could he not call his friend Hodges and “pressure” him to sugar-coat things? What if he was a close personal friend of Hodges’ superior?
To me, the key issue is whether there’s a font on a typewriter reasonably available in ’72-3 that matches that document. I think it’s quite possible that there is. According to the ad reproduced on this blog:
http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2004/09/ibm-executive-typewriters.html
The Executive was made with 12 different typefaces, so even if a specific Executive face doesn’t match, it’s possible that another one does. And both IBM Bold Face and IBM Secretarial from that ad seem like potential matches.
These “document experts” seem pretty lame to me. We have them quoted saying that proportional type wasn’t available in ’72 or was limited to print shops, which isn’t true. IBM sold Executive models to businesses starting in ’47. Some “experts” have said that the Executive didn’t have a ‘th’ subscript, but other typewriters of the period clearly did, and the Executive, being a top-of-the-line model, would have had at least the option of having superscript ‘th’ characters. It had swappable type-bars, and you could get them with special characters. If you worked in the “111th”, don’t you think it might have been appealing to order the typewriter with a ‘th’ bar? And that’s assuming that the typewriter didn’t come standard with a ‘th’, which I don’t think anyone has established.
And the 12 fonts mentioned in that ad were for that 1953 model. How many different faces were created for the Executive over the years?
If someone can show definitively that none of the Executive faces match the documents, and that no other typewriter with proportional spacing had a face that matched, then it’s time to call the documents forgeries. But so far, I don’t think anyone has done that.
And man, I wish people would shut up about kerning. You can see in the type samples in that 1953 IBM ad that the lower case f encroaches on the character next to it (the word “straightforward” for one). That ain’t kerning.
Comment by Don Munsil — September 10, 2004 @ 4:10 pm
I don’t have Don’s r?sum?, but I have 20 years in graphics, plus college, have worked in printing and typesetting for years too, and so I do at least know what kerning is, and that it’s different from proportional spacing. I say this only to assert that I have a lot of experience with fonts, photocopiers and other scanners, like fax machines.
Its clear from IBM service people that have posted that IBM did have a proportional electric typewriter at the time, and that it didn’t use “Courier” or “Elite” style fonts. In fact, those fixed-width fonts would be oxymoronic with proportional type. All that is evident in these pages is proportional type, not kerning.
The etypewriters.com image linked above shows a proportional font, with Roman serifs, and ‘natural’ apostrophes ? all slanted right ? which would be consistent with a lead font set, not a computer’s ASCII or Unicode character map.
The PDFs that I’ve seen are ridiculously inadequate in resolution for a good analysis of the font, and the reproductions show disproportionate stretching, which is common in a sheet-fed fax reproduction. Faxes themselves often don’t have a better resolution than 200pixels per inch, which would render most font family analyses difficult, as they would tend to distort height, width and weight. This distortion is apparent in the pdfs: the letter height {“x-height”) varies from line to line.
I saw on the Power site that some of their post-ers are trying to be handwriting experts, too. Please. Anyone who’s studied calligraphy, much less forgery, can tell that the signatures are stunningly accurate matches, in every respect.
All in all, I have to agree with Don… there’s nothing in these documents that would make it impossible for them to be authentic, including the superscript “th.” The variations could be explained by such plausible explanations as: having two typewriters in the same clerks’ office — as my father, a lowly enlisted man in the USAF in 1973 had. And inconsistencies like the usage of the superscript “th” would also be consistent with having different typists. Usually, the special characters on these machines took finger-gymnastics akin to a Ctrl-Alt-Del command on the modern keyboard to execute.
Can these pages be faked? Absolutely. I could fake them in a day or less, variable superscripts, irregular baselines, leading changes, proportional font spaceing and line breaks and all. But the simpler solution is that they are authentic. And the facts in them don’t appear to be in dispute by the White House. Q.E.D. Why bother chasing down this loser line of thought?
Comment by Edges — September 10, 2004 @ 4:44 pm
Here’s a link to a scan from the IBM Executive manual, showing how to remove the typebars and substitute different characters.
http://www.geocities.com/wbd641/TypeManuals2.html
Comment by Don Munsil — September 10, 2004 @ 4:44 pm
I’m not making a definitive statement here so don’t jump down my throat, but I think there’s a question that needs to be asked. Did these vintage typewriters have curly quotes (what Windows call “smart quotes”) so that there’s a left and right version of the character? Wouldn’t this necessitate an extra key on the keyboard?
When I scrutinize these memos it looks to me like there are some apostrophes that are straight (standard-issue typewriter character) and some that are curly — within the same document.
I haven’t used a typewriter in years, but I do know when I use MS Word that curly quotes and superscript “th” and “st” are inserted as I go, but if I don’t want them for some reason I can hit the Undo key and the AutoCorrect entry goes back to the old typewriter character. It seems to me that these documents contain both regular and “smart” characters on the same page, as if the person who typed them remembered to hit Undo some of the time, but not all of the time.
Am I seeing things?
Comment by Artie — September 11, 2004 @ 6:45 pm
your “blue” copy has a lower case f in file where the actual document has an uppercase F in file. Maybe you made a mistake here.
Comment by Susan Salisbury — September 12, 2004 @ 2:24 am
E-mail for the Graphics file-
How the May 19, 1972 document was created.
After having reviewed and recreated the ’18 August 1973′ memo using Microsoft Word, I was confused by the inability to reproduce the ’19 May 1972′ document.
I then resized the graphic using a corner handle, which maintains perspective in both the horizontal and vertical axis — but does not maintain the aspect ratio — and the graphic fit perfectly with the standard Microsoft Word output (all default settings). What surprised me the most, is that the date even landed on a standard tab position.
Can a document aspect be distorted in a copy machine set to reproduce at 1:1? I did a test to find out on my Brother BMF 9600. I ran 5 generations of the ’19 May’ memo, and the results stunned me. The height of the 5th generation copy was 96.5% of the original — but the width of the 5th generation was only 89.42% of the original! Not only were the documents shrinking slightly with each generation — the shinkage was not proportional in respect to height and width.
The results of that test are here (variation.jpg).
Heres how I did it.
1. The document was typed in Word just as it is shown, using default settings for font, leading, tabs, everything. The typist used 8 tabs for the date, and a double space after each period for a new sentence (common). There was no adjustment to any spacing, I simply typed the document as it appears. The DOC file I used was (19May1972.doc).
2. The graphic from the pdf needs to be straightened. I used Adobe Photoshop and rotated the image 3/4 degree counter clockwise. That image is (04-19-72-pdf-100pct.bmp).
3. I then expanded the image height 111% and the image width 112%. This was done simply to match the width and height of the Word document. Under no circumstances would anyone expect that simply matching the width and height of two documents would line up all other features, unless they were composed using the same process — but it did. The sized image is here (04-19-72-Comp.jpg).
Note that changing the width percentage does not distort the placement horizontally — everything remains proportional, the same is true for the
height.
From this experiment, I have shown that a document may be reduced from 1 to 2% on each copy generation — and that the reduction does not necessarily maintain the aspect ratio. That is why I was not getting a good overlay. If these
copies had the same degradation as mine, they were at least 5-7 generations old.
The graphic of the two documents is (04-19-72-Comp.jpg), the overlay is (04-19-72-overlay.jpg), and the animation is (4-19-72A.gif).
My graphics for the 09-18-72 documents are here (09-18-73-Comp.jpg), and the overlay is here (09-18-73-Overlay.jpg).
SheetWise
Comment by SheetWise — September 12, 2004 @ 8:43 am
The ability to forge a document does not prove that another document is a forgery. I don’t know if they’re real or not. I do know that virtually every “news source” claiming they are forged are ones with a completely Republican viewpoint. Most of the people posting to these sites claim that it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are forgeries. Their proof is basically the same things seen here. In my opinion it is far too likely that we will never know because I won’t be surprised if what CBS has is copies and that there are no originals to be had. I have no doubt that while there is no internal investigation as has been claimed by the usual suspects there is an ongoing effort to shore up their evidence. It’s only the logical thing to do.
One post here made the claim that the machine people are saying could have produced the documents cost a fortune. He is confusing the IBM Composer which has been mentioned in other places with the IBM Executive which is the one that has been discussed the most here.
Comment by Jim — September 12, 2004 @ 5:52 pm
>>>Word document being compared to the memo was created on a Mac. Somebody needs to create the document on a Windows computer for what would probably be a better comparison.<
No difference visually, but a stench from the later would be overwhelming.
Comment by charlie — September 12, 2004 @ 6:23 pm
As far as duplicating the aged/irregular typewritten appearance of the text goes, Apple created the GX font technology to allow one to apply variable features such as ligatures to text using sliders instead of descrete increments like 1 point, 2 point, bold/italic, etc. They also created a font called “JAM” to emulate the features of old typewriters. If you used a JAM-like font (MS/Adobe have something similar called OpenType I beleive), you could easily simulate the old typewriter appearance of the memos complete with blotchy letters, slightly irregular spacing, etc., as fast as you could format it in Word. The user interface is a tad more complicated since it includes sliders for “blotchiness” or whatever as well as simple menu options for point size and so on, but its nothing that isn’t intuitively obvious. Google “GX fonts” or “AAT fonts” for more information. It comes bundled with MacOS X, and many Mac-specific word processors handle it with not problem (not sure about Word).
Comment by Lawson — September 12, 2004 @ 10:50 pm
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read Don Munsil’s posting that
began “You’re right and I was wrong about kerning in Word.” Migod,
I can’t even remember the last time I saw anybody outright admit
they were wrong! Kudos to Don Munsil!
And thanks also to Don for several of the most informative
posts I’ve seen on this topic. Finally I think I’m clear about
the difference between proportional spacing, kerning, and advance
width–distinctions that render moot a very sizeable fraction of
messages about the disputed documents.
I have just one point to add: MS Word for Windows 95, Version 7.0,
copyright 1983-1995, already has the option to turn kerning on,
under Format/Font/Character Spacing. And it behaves exactly as
Don says: Make 2 lines of “To Te To Te To Te” in 48 pt, one with
kerning on, and you see a big difference in line length. Whereas
with “fi fo fi fo fi fo” the kerned and unkerned are identical.
Moreover, it *may* be (y’all check this out) that kerning is
turned ON by default. I’ve almost never used MS Word other than
for converting .doc’s to .txt, and certainly never messed with the
default settings, yet when I went in just now, I found kerning
turned on for fonts 8 pts and above. So finding out whether
kerning is the default might give one more clue–all indications
are that the forger, if there was a forger, lacked the expertise
to change a setting. ;-)
Even if a lot of what’s said in the blogosphere turns out to be
mistaken, it’s still doing a heck of a lot better job of forensic
investigation than CBS did!
One last compliment for Don Munsil: After *hours* spent (and
largely wasted) reading postings–both pro and con–that are
95% or more frothing vituperation, it was a breath of fresh air
to read Don’s calm, polite and patiently informative messages.
Thanks, Don!
Comment by Roger Williams — September 13, 2004 @ 1:46 am
Then there is the issue of centering — very difficult to do on a typewriter (manual), using the limited starting positions. Centering on the most sophisticated typewriter of the period could only be accurate to within a quarter of an ‘em’ space, or roughly 3 points on a 12 point face. Even this degree of accuracy would be extremely difficult and involve several drafts to accomplish. On the other hand, Microsoft Word uses an operating system function to center text (TextWidth). The system renders the supplied text in memory using the specified font properties, and returns the length of the graphic in twips (Microsofts default measurement unit, based on a common denominator of english and metric units equaling 1/20th of a point or 1/1440th of an inch), which is then used to determine the print position. The centering will be accurate within one twip. The heading shows near perfect centering — check it.
Then there is the issue of fonts. I can tell you from having worked in the industry during the type revolution of the 70′s and 80′s, that matching type was extremely difficult. Because of the cost involved in setting type, many clients chose to make changes in their documents by simply cutting and pasting a new sentence or paragraph into their existing art boards. If a client had type that was created on a Varitype machine, and I was trying to match the type using the same font on a Compugraphic — it was nearly impossible. The minor differences in the fonts would stand out, and expose the insertion. Often times we had to purchase type from someone using the exact equipment that created the original. Notice how the CBS documents exactly match Microsoft Word output.
Should we believe these ‘memos’ were typeset, composed, and then reproduced using sophisticated hardware (and unknown software) on the date represented — or that they were created later using more modern technology?
Here is a link to the graphics of how the documet was created. Link.
When you consider all the variables that need to match for two documents to overlay simply by making them the same dimensions (leading, font spacing, tab stops, page margins, word breaks, etc.) the probability is already in the millions to 1 before breaking a sweat.
Comment by SheetWise — September 13, 2004 @ 6:05 am
Roger, thanks for the kind words.
Sheetwise, I don’t see how you can say that one memo works “perfectly” without any aspect ratio change, but the other works “perfectly” with an aspect ratio change. Our forger seems to be really careful about some things and not about others. Or went to the trouble to photocopy some of the memos multiple times, or on a different photocopier. For a forger moronic enough to use MS Word, he seemed to be really careful about multiple photocopiers and whatnot.
Another blogger said that another memo worked well if you set the type size to 11.5 points. Great. Our mysterious moronic forger is not smart enough to go find an old typewriter, but he does change the font size from document to document.
Myself, I have had no luck with any of the other documents besides the one that LGF analyzed originally getting them to break the same way in Word as in the CBS photocopies.
As for margins, leading, etc. those were deliberately set on Word to the most common settings on typewriters. The standard for margins and whatnot for the business letter of 1972 is still the standard form on Word.
The tab stops match because Word’s default tabs are every half-inch. I seem to recall from high-school typing that the standard business-letter tabs are also on a half-inch boundary. It’s not that Word has a single tab-stop way on the right side of the page, as some have alleged. It has stops every half-inch, and you have to hit tab 8 times or so to get to the tab stop used on the memos.
What else? We’ve established definitively that:
- There were readily available typewriters that had proportional spacing.
- Some of those typewriters used Times-like fonts (not surprising, as it was and is the most popular serif face in the world).
- Some typewriters had ‘th’ keys.
We don’t know if there were typewriters with both proportional spacing and ‘th’ keys, which to my mind is an important and useful bit of info. We also don’t know if those proportional-spacing ‘th’ keys were raised above the cap height. But given that these typewriters were trying to emulate typesetting, I would guess they would, in fact, raise the th above the cap height.
We also don’t know if any of the proportional typewriters had a font that matched the spacing of Times New Roman pretty closely. Some bloggers and self-styled type “experts” have called that impossible, but I don’t think so.
The thing is, as mentioned above, Times Roman and its variants were and are the most popular serif fonts in the world. If you were designing a proportional spacing typewriter, you would almost certainly want it to reasonably approximate the spacing of Times Roman, within the limitations of the typewriter technology.
If you look at the actual advance widths of Times New Roman TrueType font on Windows, you find that there are only a handful of different widths for the characters. Unlike a proportional-spaced typewriter font, the widths aren’t all simple integer proportions, but they’re fairly close.
For example, just looking at the lower-case letters in TrueType Times New Roman, b, d, g, h, k, n, o, p, q, u, v, x, and y all have the exact same advance width: 1024 units.
i, j, l, and t all have the exact same advance width: 569 units.
Here’s the whole table:
ijlt: 569
fr: 682
s: 797
acez: 909
bdghknopquvxy: 1024
w: 1479
m: 1593
You can see immediately that the letter widths are close to proportions of 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, and 16 units. I know that these are the same widths as PostScript Type 1 Times Roman because Times New Roman for Microsoft was specifically designed to match PostScript’s Times New Roman advance widths. And PostScript Times New Roman was licensed from Linotype, which was one of the original licensees of Times New Roman in the 30′s. So the advance widths of Times New Roman on Windows (and the Mac) are derived ultimately from the widths used by a hot-metal typesetter – the Linotype.
It’s important to note that whether the widths are exactly the same or not between two typestyle variations, if the average character width is the same or very close, and the proportions (the ratio of individual character widths to the average) are the same or very close, one would expect a line of text to lay out very similarly.
Now, Palatino or Bookman would not lay out very closely, because the proportions are different and the average character width is different. Thus the lines would not break the same and would not have the same lengths.
But if you’re talking about the most popular font in the world, it’s not too hard to imagine that both the average width and the proportions would be super close – close enough that overlaying two different renditions of the same text would look very similar.
And in fact, that’s what we have. The two look very similar. To the lay person, they look “identical.” To me, they look very close, but not identical. The ‘nth generation’ nature of the CBS scans is part of the problem, but it’s hard for me to imagine how Times New Roman from a laser printer could become those images no matter how many times they were photocopied.
The bottom of the 7 and 9 consistently drop below the baseline on the CBS documents. They don’t in Times New Roman. The lower case g has a smaller top. The 8 has a smaller top.
What fax or photocopy machine has the capability of consistently making the top of a lower-case g or an 8 smaller, and consisistently extend the bottom of the 7 and 9 below the baseline? Stretching I can understand. Blurring I can understand. But consistently altering the letterforms?
In the end, I find the similarities between the Word documents and the CBS documents to be a “thing that makes you go hmmmm…” In other words, it looks suspicious. But after looking at this hard, I don’t find it completely convincing. The thing to do is to actually either find a real typewriter than can repro this text (which could be hard, considering the number of years) or find other memos from the same office that are acknowledged to be good and look similar.
Or conversely, demonstrate definitively that no typewriter of the time actually had a matching typeface. Again, that’s a tough job considering the time involved.
But this idea that there are features in this memo that technically could not have been done on a typewriter – that’s 100% horse patootie. Technically speaking, every feature I’ve looked at could have been done IBM Executive-level technology. Could an actual IBM Executive have done it? That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?
Comment by Don Munsil — September 13, 2004 @ 4:41 pm
The question is not whether it COULD have been done on a typewriter, it’s whether it WAS. It’s not POSSIBILITY we’re talking about, but PROBABILITY.
What’s the likelihood that the Texas Air National Guard had state-of-the-art typewriters with sophisticated features that were only used to type these four memos? The other memos from this period seem to be typed on regular old typewriters.
I think this falls into the category of “Yes, they MIGHT be authentic, but monkeys MIGHT fly out of my butt.”
Comment by Artie — September 14, 2004 @ 7:59 pm
For what it’s worth, I own an IBM Executive model “B” originally purchased by my grandmother in 1956 which has a “roman” style type face, proportional spacing, does superscripts and subscripts quite easily, and has dedicated “st” “nd” “rd” and “th” characters included with its character set. It was NOT an expensive typewriter. And it could easily have produced the TANG memos.
Comment by ST — September 14, 2004 @ 8:52 pm
Well fire it up! Let’s see what that baby can do!
For the record, “roman” means straight up and down, as opposed to “italic” which is slanted.
Comment by Artie — September 15, 2004 @ 6:31 am
Artie, I agree with you. No matter how you slice it, proportional-font typewriters were not the most common ones. But they did exist, and they didn’t cost thousands of dollars and they weren’t all used for high-end typesetting. The IBM Executive was expensive, but not so expensive as to be out of the question.
If CBS decided to run with these based on the idea that it was “possible” they were created in 1972, without any other evidence of authenticity, they would be doing a seriously stupid thing, because they just don’t look like the product of any common typewriter.
However, CBS says they have corroborating evidence that makes them believe that the memos are true.
This new story about Killian’s secretary saying they aren’t real, but the content is correct, raises the possibility that they were produced by someone who saw the original memos at the time and decided to recreate them from memory. If so, that would explain why CBS would be able to get corroboration.
I still don’t think the font in those memos looks enough like Times New Roman. It might look like PostScript (Linotype) Times Roman, which would imply that they were created on a Mac or with a PostScript printer. I don’t have a Times Roman sample handy to check.
And ST, I also agree that you should type a sample on that typewriter, scan it, and put it on a web site or send it to someone who can do so. A digital photo of the keyboard or the typebar with the ‘th’ would be great as well. If you don’t have a scanner or digital camera, just post your general location and I’ll bet someone would be willing to come over with a digital camera. You can email me if you like and I’ll try to find someone trustworthy to take a digital picture. My email address on this post is my real address, and my name is my real name.
Purely as an interesting aside, Roman and Italic don’t refer to slanting, but to the lettering style they ultimately derive from. Roman lettering does tend to be straight up and down, and Italic tends to be slanted, but really Roman derives from stone-cut letters and Italic derives from calligraphic letters. There are Italic faces that don’t slant at all. Eric Gill liked to create Italics without slant – for example Perpetua Italic.
Practically speaking, of course, you’re right – 95% or more of italic faces slant. And I can’t think of a slanted roman off hand.
Comment by Don Munsil — September 15, 2004 @ 11:33 am
Slanted roman? how about Computer Modern Slanted (Donald Knuth), or (IIRC) W. A. Dwiggins’ Electra (in the original version—I believe the italic,”cursive,” was added later). Of course, MS Word will fake italic for any font that doesn’t have one by slanting the roman in software (Yuk!).
Also, if the memo were faked in a word-processor, wouldn’t the ‘th’ in 111th be scaled from the normal ‘t’ and ‘h’ characters? Real ordinals (a,b,d,e,i,l,m,n,o,r,s,t superscripts) are only found in “expert” or Open Type fonts. So if the memos are from a word-processor, they should be noticibly lighter. Maybe if CBS posted higher resolution scans, it would be possible to tell.
Comment by David Dickey — September 15, 2004 @ 8:31 pm
Who cares what Laura Bush, Killian’s wife, son, and secretary, and a Republican Congressman think! Are they experts in type writer fonts and capability? No.
Unless these people were doing his job for him (Killian), there are any number of things that a professional does on any given day that family and friends do not know about. It’s a JOB! Eight hours a day …. not everything is replayed for the family! And a PROFESSIONAL should really keep personnel matters in the office and not discussing them openly, anyhow.
Was it possible or not to create the documents in question using technology available at the time? Was that technology present on the NG base at the time? How about openning up OTHER guard files of Bush contemporaries and checking out the fonts. QED.
Everything else is fluff. I do not purport to be an expert on IBM technology. But, I know enough to have noticed that the majority of typewriters in government DoD offices where I worked were IBM. (They maybe were expensive, but then we are talking DoD.) AND generally, nearby the typewriter there were (often) several extra font balls for users to interchange. It was a pretty easy thing to do. Again, I was no secretary, but I knew enough about IBMs to type a few papers myself and even change the font ball, as well. It really was not too difficult.
Comment by Steven — September 16, 2004 @ 2:29 am
And another thing ….
Who, if not the DoD would be able to buy expensive typewriters? I bet the USA Government, especially the DoD, was a MAJOR buyer of IBM typewriters. It was WAR time, and money was spent!
Comment by Steven — September 16, 2004 @ 2:34 am
Some veterans have challenged Kerry’s version of the circumstances surrounding the incident that led to his Silver Star award for battlefield heroism, as well as his three Purple Heart medals.
Judicial Watch had requested in August that the Navy open an investigation of the matter, but Route said in an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press that he saw no reason for a full-scale probe.
Here is a statement by Vice Adm. R.A. Route on Kerry’s Silver Star, “Route concluded that there was no justification for looking further into the decisions to award the medals or the anti-war activities.
“Conducting any additional review regarding events that took place over 30 years ago would not be productive,” he wrote. “The passage of time would make reconstruction of the facts and circumstances unreliable, and would not allow the information gathered to be considered in the context of the time in which the events took place.”
The group’s (Judicial Watch) president, Tom Fitton, called Route’s review a “whitewash” and said Judicial Watch would “appeal as appropriate.”
“The Navy IG obviously is afraid of the political ramifications of a thorough investigation into a presidential candidate’s service record,” Fitton said in a statement.
http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20040918/D855P8FO0.html
But the Kerryites have no problem with digging up dirt on GWB when he was in the Air Guard thirty years ago. Even if they have to fake it. Good for the goose but not for the gander?
All of this debate about memos and medals is just a smoke screen to keep the focus off John Forbes Kerry’s flip-flopping and his lack of any plan for anything, his voting record in the Senate, and his poor attendance record there. Why don’t we just forget about what happened thirty years ago and concentrate on the future or our Great Republic.
Comment by Angel Elf — September 19, 2004 @ 6:46 pm
….nevermind the fact that Ben Barnes DID “good ‘ol boy” W into the Guard, that W lied in ’94 about it. that NO ONE W “served with” in Alabama remembers seeing him, and that Killian’s secretary said just the other day that even if the memos are forged that they are factually correct based on conversations she had with Killian.
Gotta love our U.S. media and their vigorous pursuit of the news that results in “to the minute” B. Spears marital status updates, but takes 5 yrs to break something B. Barnes went on the public record with in ’99.
Comment by Trizzay — September 22, 2004 @ 7:23 am