corrente

Now that the winger circlejerk on the Killian memos has come to its inevitable and pathetic conclusion, we can, once again, start applying those old-fashioned enlightenment tools, "evidence" and "reasoning," to the question of the authenticity of the Killian memos. Let's review the state of play:

0. It's no longer in question that Bush committed payroll fraud (back) while in the TxANG, and didn't fulfill the commmitments he made to the country (back) when the taxpayers spent $1 million training him. The Bush campaign, emboldened by their successful bitch-slapping of the Cowardly Broadcasting System (Salon, here) is lying about all this again (Orcinus), but we expect that, and it's not worth taking the time disentangling it.

1. Bush's pattern of fraudulent behavior is important, because it speaks to the question of Bush's character. Yeah, it would be great if we could only talk about "policy," but the Partei is bent on holding onto power by any means neceessary, and one of their key talking points about this or any Dear Leader is that He makes decisions from His "gut" (back). Well, if Bush's gut is the gut of a coward and a fraud, that does call His leadership abilities, and His ability to make sound judgements, into question, doesn't it?

Now to the technical nitty-gritty:

2. Relentless meme transmittal by Republican operatives posing (back) as typographic experts obscured an essential point: if the Killian memos could be shown to have been produced by mechanical means, that's a prima facie case that they were not forged. (back).

3. Typographic experts—imagine that!—have at last examined reproductions of the Killian memos, and determined (a) that it is likely the memos were produced by mechanical means, and (b) that the Times Roman font was not, in fact, used. Quoting the abstract of Professor David Hailey's study:

The following evidence from a forensic examination of the Bush memos indicates that they were typed on a typewriter:

1. The specific font used is from a typewriter family in common use since 1905 and a typewriter capable of producing the spacing has been available since 1944.
2. The characters “e,” “t,” “s,” and “a” show indications of physical damage and/or wear consistent with a well used typewriter.
3. The characters that are seldom used show no signs of damage or wear.
4. The quality of individual characters is inconsistent throughout the memos beyond expectations from photocopying and/or digitizing but quality is consistent with worn platen and variations in paper quality.
5. Overlapping characters occasionally indicate paper deformation consistent with hammered impressions.
6. Critical indicators of digital production or cut and paste production are missing.

Implications are that there is nothing in this evidence that would indicate the memos are inauthentic. Furthermore, from the point of view of the physical evidence in the documents (excluding any rhetorical evidence or external evidence, which is not examined in this study) no amount of additional research on the part of CBS would have lead them to exclude the documents from their 60 Minutes report.
(David E. Hailey)

A word on Professor Hailey's qualifications:

In addition, I served in the U.S. military (Army) from 1963 to 1972. For five of those seven years I was an Army illustrator responsible for short run publications including memos such as those in question. Ultimately, I have a total of almost 35 years experience examining document production, including analyzing and spec’ing type. I have an archive that includes military documents produced between 1963 and 1984 and have access to a repository of military documents here at the university. Finally, I have extensive experience using computers to manage and manipulate images, including type.

So much for all the winger frothing and stamping.

The usual MBF suspects have, of course, targetted Hailey for a barrage of hate mail, and are trying to destroy his career; Orcinus again. Typical—and a very strong indication that what Hailey says is true, since it frightens them so much.

And a couple of unanswered questions:

1. What's up with that $50,000 reward? (back) You know, the one that's there waiting for the witness who saw Bush doing his service during his "missing year"?

2. What's up with the memos that Killian's secretary did type? (back) Remember that the winger frothing and stamping also obscured the fact that Killian' secretary said that the substance of the Killian memos was true. So, where are the memos she did type?