SwiftVets.com

[integritycounts]

Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9967-2004Sep9.html
By Michael Dobbs and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 10, 2004; Page A01


Documents unearthed by CBS News that raise doubts about whether President Bush fulfilled his obligations to the Texas Air National Guard include several features suggesting that they were generated by a computer or word processor rather than a Vietnam War-era typewriter, experts said yesterday.

Experts consulted by a range of news organizations pointed out typographical and formatting questions about four documents as they considered the possibility that they were forged. The widow of the National Guard officer whose signature is on the bottom of the documents also disputed their authenticity.

The documents, which were shown Wednesday night on "60 Minutes II," bear dates from 1972 and 1973 and include an order for Bush to report for his annual physical exam and a discussion of how he could get out of "coming to drill."

The dispute over the documents' authenticity came as Democrats stepped up their criticism of Bush's service with the National Guard between 1968 and 1973. The Democratic National Committee sought to fuel the controversy yesterday by holding a news conference at which Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa) pointed to the documents as a fresh indictment of Bush's credibility.

CBS News released a statement yesterday standing by its reporting, saying that each of the documents "was thoroughly vetted by independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity." The statement added that CBS reporters had verified the documents by talking to unidentified people who saw them "at the time they were written."

CBS spokeswoman Kelli Edwards declined to respond to questions raised by experts who examined copies of the papers at the request of The Washington Post, or to provide the names of the experts CBS consulted. Experts interviewed by The Post pointed to a series of telltale signs suggesting that the documents were generated by a computer or word processor rather than the typewriters in widespread use by Bush's National Guard unit.

A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone and Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."

"These documents represent what Killian not only was putting in memoranda, but was telling other people," the CBS News official said. "Journalistically, we've gone several extra miles."

The official said the network regarded Hodges's comments as "the trump card" on the question of authenticity, as he is a Republican who acknowledged that he did not want to hurt Bush. Hodges, who declined to grant an on-camera interview to CBS, did not respond to messages left on his home answering machine in Texas.

In a telephone interview from her Texas home, Killian's widow, Marjorie Connell, described the records as "a farce," saying she was with her husband until the day he died in 1984 and he did not "keep files." She said her husband considered Bush "an excellent pilot."

"I don't think there were any documents. He was not a paper person," she said, adding that she was "livid" at CBS. A CBS reporter contacted her briefly before Wednesday night's broadcasts, she said, but did not ask her to authenticate the records.

If demonstrated to be authentic, the documents would contradict several long-standing claims by the White House about an episode in Bush's National Guard service in 1972, when he abruptly gave up flying and moved from Texas to Alabama to take part in a political campaign. The CBS documents purport to show that Killian, who was Bush's squadron commander, was unhappy with Bush for his performance toward meeting his National Guard commitments and resisted pressure from his superiors to "sugarcoat" the record.

After their initial airing on the "CBS Evening News" and "60 Minutes II" programs Wednesday night, the documents were picked up by other news organizations, including The Post. A front-page story in The Post yesterday noted that CBS declined to provide details about the source of the documents, the authenticity of which could not be independently confirmed.

On Wednesday evening, the White House e-mailed reporters copies of the documents, as supplied by CBS, as well as the transcript of a CBS interview with White House communications director Dan Bartlett rebutting allegations that Bush had shirked his military duties. While Bartlett described the emergence of the documents as "dirty politics," he did not dispute their authenticity.

After doubts about the documents began circulating on the Internet yesterday morning, The Post contacted several independent experts who said they appeared to have been generated by a word processor. An examination of the documents by The Post shows that they are formatted differently from other Texas Air National Guard documents whose authenticity is not questioned.

William Flynn, a forensic document specialist with 35 years of experience in police crime labs and private practice, said the CBS documents raise suspicions because of their use of proportional spacing techniques. Documents generated by the kind of typewriters that were widely used in 1972 space letters evenly across the page, so that an "i" uses as much space as an "m." In the CBS documents, by contrast, each letter uses a different amount of space.

While IBM had introduced an electric typewriter that used proportional spacing by the early 1970s, it was not widely used in government. In addition, Flynn said, the CBS documents appear to use proportional spacing both across and down the page, a relatively recent innovation. Other anomalies in the documents include the use of the superscripted letters "th" in phrases such as 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Bush's unit.

"It would be nearly impossible for all this technology to have existed at that time," said Flynn, who runs a document-authentication company in Phoenix.

Other experts largely concurred. Phil Bouffard, a forensic document examiner from Cleveland, said the font used in the CBS documents appeared to be Times Roman, which is widely used by word-processing programs but was not common on typewriters.

CBS officials insisted that the network had done due diligence in checking out the authenticity of the documents with independent experts over six weeks. The senior CBS official said the network had talked to four typewriting and handwriting experts "who put our concerns to rest" and confirmed the authenticity of Killian's signature.

The doubts about the documents left the White House and the Bush campaign in a state of suspended animation, with Bush aides encouraging doubts about the documents but conceding that the possibility that they were forged seemed too good to be true. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said that officials there had not attempted to authenticate the documents but simply released copies "provided to us by CBS in the interests of openness."

The Bush administration's strategy yesterday was to let news organizations raise doubts and conduct forensic examinations, without taking an official position on whether the documents were genuine.

"It's clear in reviewing the documents that they do nothing to change the fact that the president served honorably, and was proud of his service in the Air National Guard," Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said.

Staff writer Howard Kurtz and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

[integritycounts]

False Documentation?
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Politics/Vote2004/bush_documents_040909.html
Questions Arise About Authenticity of Newly Found Memos on Bush's Guard Service
ABCNEWS.com
Sept. 9, 2004— Questions are being raised about the authenticity of newly discovered documents relating to George W. Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War.


Marjorie Connell — widow of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, the reported author of memos suggesting that Bush did not meet the standards for the Texas Air National Guard — questioned whether the documents were real.
"The wording in these documents is very suspect to me," she told ABC News Radio in an exclusive phone interview from her Texas home. She added that she "just can't believe these are his words."

First reported by CBS's 60 Minutes, the memos allegedly were found in Killian's personal files. But his family members say they doubt he ever made such documents, let alone kept them.

Connell said Killian did not type, and though he did take notes, they were usually on scraps of paper. "He was a person who did not take copious notes," she said. "He carried everything in his mind."

Killian's son, Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his father, also told ABC News Radio that he doubts his father wrote the documents. "It was not the nature of my father to keep private files like this, nor would it have been in his own interest to do so," he said.

"We don't know where the documents come from," he said, adding, "They didn't come from any family member."

Connell said her late husband would be "turning over in his grave to know that a document such as this would be used against a fellow guardsman," and she is "sick" and "angry" that his name is "being battled back and forth on television."

Her late husband was a fan of the young Bush, said Connell, who remarried after her husband died in 1984. "I know for a fact that this young man … was an excellent aviator, an excellent person to be in the Guard, and he was very happy to have him become a member of the 111th."

Experts Question Veracity

Questions are also being raised about the memos by document experts, who say they appear to have been written on a computer, not a typewriter. The memos are dated 1972 and 1973, when computers with word-processing software were not available.

More than half a dozen document experts contacted by ABC News said they had doubts about the memos' authenticity.

"These documents do not appear to have been the result of technology that was available in 1972 and 1973," said Bill Flynn, one of country's top authorities on document authentication. "The cumulative evidence that's available … indicates that these documents were produced on a computer, not a typewriter:"

Among the points Flynn and other experts noted:

The memos were written using a proportional typeface, where letters take up variable space according to their size, rather than fixed-pitch typeface used on typewriters, where each letter is allotted the same space. Proportional typefaces are available only on computers or on very high-end typewriters that were unlikely to be used by the National Guard.
The memos include superscript, i.e. the "th" in "187th" appears above the line in a smaller font. Superscript was not available on typewriters.
The memos included "curly" apostrophes rather than straight apostrophes found on typewriters.
The font used in the memos is Times Roman, which was in use for printing but not in typewriters. The Haas Atlas — the bible of fonts — does not list Times Roman as an available font for typewriters.
The vertical spacing used in the memos, measured at 13 points, was not available in typewriters, and only became possible with the advent of computers.

The White House is declining to comment on the veracity of the documents. Many Democrats are worried that if they are found to be forgeries, it will be a setback for Sen. John Kerry's campaign to defeat Bush in November.

[integritycounts]

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU SEPT 09, 2004 22:45:32 ET XXXXX

CBSNEWS LAUNCHES INTERNAL INVESTIGATION AFTER SUSPICIOUS BUSH DOCS AIRED

**Exclusive**

CBS NEWS executives have launched an internal investigation into whether its premiere news program 60 MINUTES aired fabricated documents relating to Bush's National Guard service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

"The reputation and integrity of the entire news division is at stake, if we are in error, it will be corrected," a top CBS source explained late Thursday.

The source, who asked not to be named, described CBSNEWS anchor and 60 MINUTES correspondent Dan Rather as being privately "shell-shocked" by the increasingly likelihood that the documents in question were fraudulent.

Rather, who anchored the segment presenting new information on the president's military service, will personally correct the record on-air, if need be, the source explained from New York.

MORE to follow

[lrb111]

[neverforget]

I'm angered that Dan Rather claims he is shell shocked. How dare he use that phrase when he couldn't even make it through Marine basic. Wannabe Dan from now on.
_________________
US Army Security Agency
1965-1971

[integritycounts]

from Powerlineblog reader:
=====================
Please allow me to introduce myself: I am --- . I retired from the Air National Guard just over a week ago, after serving 34 and one-half years in a variety of enlisted and commissioned officer capacities. I enlisted in the Air National Guard in February 1970, and was trained as an Administrative Specialist. I served in that capacity as an enlisted member (Staff Sergeant) for just over 3 years, during which time I personally typed hundreds upon hundreds of letters in official U.S. Air Force format. I was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in August 1973, whereupon I served the remaining 31 years of my ANG career as an administrative officer, personnel and training officer, services officer, and squadron and group commander of support units. During the period of 1974 to 1977, I also served on active duty as an officer instructor at the ANG Professional Military Education Center and Academy of Military Science, the ANG school responsible for training and commissioning new ANG officers. One of my duties was to teach the preparation and proper composition of Air Force correspondence. I give you this background to establish my credibility in matters concerning Air Force letters and official documents.
After researching a number of web sites on the internet to gain as much information as possible concerning the recently "discovered" Texas Air National Guard documents that relate to (then) Lieutenant George Bush, I located and printed two specific documents - one which I consider genuine, and another that is completely bogus and an obvious forgery.

The first letter, which I am convinced is genuine, is dated 5 Sep 73, and is Lieutenant Bush's request to be discharged from the Texas Air National Guard and subsequently transferred to the Air Reserve Personnel Center (ARPC). This particular letter was obviously typed on a typewriter, and followed the prescribed Air Force formatting standards in place at that time. Specifically, the first three lines of the letter were in the appropriate format: "FROM:" on the first line; "SUBJECT:" on the second line; and "TO:" on the third line. All abbreviations were correctly formatted as well as military rank and title. The endorsement of the 111 FIS commander (Lt Col Killian) was in the correct format, as was his two-line signature element that was left justified.

The second letter, which I believe is being used to establish the premise that Lieutenant Bush either refused or failed to report for a flight physical, is bogus not only because of the proportional font, superscript, and Times New Roman font style (as mentioned in several internet sites and on selected media outlets), but more specifically because of the egregious formatting problems I will now list.

1. The format used in this letter, dated 04 May 1972, which was
allegedly prepared/published 16 months prior to Lieutenant Bush's request for discharge, is completely wrong, as the letter is formatted in a manner that was not used by the Air Force until the very late 1980's/early 1990's.

2. The terminology "MEMORANDUM FOR" was never used in the 1970's.

3. The abbreviations in this letter are incorrectly formatted, in that a period is used after military rank (1st Lt.). According to the Air Force style manual, periods are not used in military rank abbreviations.

4. The abbreviation for Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS) includes periods after each capital letter. Again, periods are not used.

5. In paragraph 1, the phrase "not later than" is spelled out, followed by (NLT). NLT was, and is, a widely recognized abbreviation for "not later than" throughout all military services, so the inclusion of "not later than" was not a generally accepted practice and completely unnecessary in a letter from one military member to another.

6. Lt Col Killian's signature element is incorrect for letters prepared in the 1970's. This letter uses a three-line signature element, which was normally not used. Three-line signature elements were almost the exclusive domain of colonels and generals in organizations well above the squadron level.

7. Finally, the signature element is placed far to the right, instead of being left justified. The placement of the signature element to the right was not used or directed by Air Force standards until almost 20 years after the date of this letter.

In summary, I believe the letter used to impugn Lieutenant Bush is an obvious fabrication, prepared on a modern word-processing system by an unscrupulous individual who erroneously used current Air Force formatting protocol instead of the standard letter format directed by Air Force manuals of the 1970's. Therefore, the letter ordering Lieutenant Bush to report for a flight physical should be discounted in its entirety.

Please feel free to use the facts listed above in any of your web sites if you feel this information is valid and relevant (and I attest to the fact that it is); however, please refrain from using my rank and name.

[integritycounts]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/campaign/10guard.html?pagewanted=print&position=