What manner of man are you, that can summon up superscripts without flint or tinder?
For those following the story closely, the right-wing blogs (and Howard Kurtz) have a new patron saint of typography, a Joseph M. Newcomer, Ph.D. You can see his argument here, if the traffic hasn't brought it down again. This is the most publicized yet of the attempts to prove the documents are modern Word documents. It is, unfortunately, also among the poorest. Originally, this diary installment was going to dwell mainly on the flaws in Newcomer's logic, which are quite stunning, for a Ph.D. If you are interested in a brief summary of his claims, which were enough to convince Howard Kurtz, you can simply go here. Unless there is more interest, we can leave it at that.
The other attempts purporting to prove that a 1970 machine could not do this are little better. Most rely on the blanket assumption that proportional type wasn't possible; some acknowledge proportional type was possible, but not that typeface; some acknowledge both, but claim the spacing is off, and that proves it's Word. Software engineers, particularly, are coming out of the woodwork claiming to be experts on what typewriters could and couldn't do in the 1970's.
Each of these "expert claims" suffers from exactly the same flaw; they purport to take very precise measurements of the memos in order to "prove" their particular point. At the same time, they claim that similar precise measurements that contradict their point are merely "distortions" caused by the poor quality of the image.
This is a huge, fundamental error with any analysis. You simply can't have it both ways. How can you claim that, for example, the precise spacing between certain letters indicates it is a TrueType font and nothing else -- but that obvious differences in the shape of those letters is merely "distortion"? How can you claim that you have found the precise font in question, "except for" certain letters of that font? How can you claim that your very precise measurements of the 'th' prove that it is a modern derivation of the 'th' superscript -- and yet not only dismiss, but completely ignore the obvious wandering baseline of letters within each word?
In short; you can't, unless you are very, very foolish. Unfortunately, the number of foolish people is legion -- and almost all of them scurry to be quoted by newspapers and television, if they can manage it. And most of them seem to be associated somehow with the software industry, which seems as a whole to be absolutely ignorant of technological history before the 1980's. (Thanks, guys, for making all us technology folks look like bucktoothed 20-something geeks with no knowledge of the outside world previous to the introduction of the Nintendo. Yay, computers!)
In other news:
- We learned that proportional type machines were indeed actively used by the military during the period in question: here is a 1970 document from the 101st Airborne that is clearly proportionally spaced.
- We learned that IBM Executive typewriters did indeed have removable, replaceable, customizable typebars, as an IBM employee previously attested. He also attested that, for large customers, these machines were frequently custom-ordered with the particular typeface and glyphs that the customer desired.
So, were they created in Word?
Based on the evidence available to us, as opposed to CBS and USA Today, it is simply impossible for us to tell either way, but after careful examinations of the memos, I myself am highly dubious that this output is from Word. The things that are similar, like the tabstops and margins, are similar because they are long-held standards of typography or of the particular typeface family in question, Times New Roman. The things that are different, like the wandering baselines and occasional instances of noticably slanted text (e.g., the letterhead) are clearly not the work of Word. The wandering baselines, especially, cannot be reasonably explained through "distortion" of the document, whether by copier or fax; it is difficult to imagine a distortion that would move single letters vertically up or down by such significant amounts, while leaving letters a few pixels away untouched. So count me as still leaning strongly towards the opinion that these are, indeed, typewritten documents.
The precise origin, we still don't know. This blog has actual output from an IBM Composer, but made absolutely no attempt to adjust the settings of that Composer to ones that would mimic the linespacing and space-bar settings found on the memo. An inspection of the font of the Composer shows it to be very similar, nearly identical, to the font of the memos, except the proportions of the uppercase M and W, which are wider in the memo than on the sample Composer font. That would, upon my own best analysis, tend to rule out the Composer.
On the other hand, this example of the output of an IBM Executive shows capital M's that do indeed match extremely well. What does that mean? Anything? Nothing?
Now, perhaps I am wrong; perhaps these are created in Word, snipped apart to create crooked letterhead, adjusted in photoshop or by another mechanism to recreate the wandering baselines. But I have yet to see any evidence of that that, objectively, can be taken as definitive.
Killian's secretary, Marian Carr Knox
Events in the news have overtaken our scholarly attempts to find the origin of these documents, however. As reported in the Dallas Morning News, via another dKos diarist:
Marian Carr Knox, who worked from 1956 to 1979 at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, said she prided herself on meticulous typing, and the memos first disclosed by CBS News last week were not her work.
"These are not real," she told The Dallas Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. "They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him."
...
She said she did not recall typing the memos reported by CBS News, though she said they accurately reflect the viewpoints of Lt. Col. Killian and documents that would have been in the personal file. Also, she could not say whether the CBS documents corresponded memo for memo with that file.
"The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones," she said.
That is, to put it mildly, explosive information. We should take Knox at her word, just as we took CBS at their Word. That, in turn, leaves us with a gaping question -- who gave these documents to CBS, and later to USA Today? It was someone CBS described as an "unimpeachable source".
Speculation is centering around a man reported (MSNBC) to be the source of CBS's story, a former TANG officer by the name of Bill Burkett:
A principal source for CBS's story was Bill Burkett, a disgruntled former Guard officer who lives in Baird, Texas,
who says he was present at Guard headquarters in Austin in 1997, when a top aide to the then Governor Bush ordered records sanitized to protect the Boss. Other Guard officials disputed Burkett's account, and the Bush aide involved, Joe Allbaugh, called it "absolute garbage." Burkett may have a motive to make trouble for the powers that be. In 1998, he grew gravely ill on a Guard mission to Panama, causing him to be hospitalized, and he suffered two nervous breakdowns. He unsuccessfully sued for medical expenses.
Still, in theory, Burkett may have had access to any Guard records that, in a friend's words, "didn't make it to the shredder." Fellow officers say he wasn't a crank, but rather a stickler for proper procedure--a classic whistle-blower type. Burkett was impressive enough to cause CBS producer Mary Mapes to fly to Texas to interview him. "There are only a couple of guys I would trust to be as perfectly honest and upfront as Bill," says Dennis Adams, a former Guard colleague. The White House, through Communications Director Dan Bartlett, called Burkett a "discredited source." Indeed, Bush strategists are convinced--or have convinced themselves--that the issue will backfire on its purveyors.
Regardless of whether it was Mr. Burkett or not, Knox's testimony brings up a very sore, and very relevant past story. It is objectively true that there are documents missing from Bush's National Guard records, and that these absences have never been explained by the White House. The documents missing include ones that would be generated for any guardsman in Bush's position, and yet, they are simply gone. From USA Today, we have an account of the controversy:
As Texas Gov. George W. Bush prepared to run for president in the late 1990s, top-ranking Texas National Guard officers and Bush advisers discussed ways to limit the release of potentially embarrassing details from Bush's military records, a former senior officer of the Texas Guard said Wednesday.
A second former Texas Guard official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, was told by a participant that commanders and Bush advisers were particularly worried about mentions in the records of arrests of Bush before he joined the National Guard in 1968, the second official said.
Bill Burkett, then a top adviser to the state Guard commander, said he overheard conversations in which superiors discussed "cleansing" the file of damaging information.
...
Burkett says that the state Guard commander, Maj. Gen. Daniel James III, discussed "cleansing" Bush's military files of embarrassing or incriminating documents in the summer of 1997. At the time, Burkett was a lieutenant colonel and a chief adviser to James. He says he was just outside James' open office door when his boss discussed the records on a speakerphone with Joe Allbaugh, who was then Gov. Bush's chief of staff.
In Burkett's account, Allbaugh told James that Bush's press secretary, Karen Hughes, was preparing a biography and needed information on Bush's military service.
In an interview, Burkett said he recalled Allbaugh's words: "We certainly don't want anything that is embarrassing in there." Burkett said he immediately told two other officers about the conversation and noted it in a daily journal he kept. The two officers, George Conn and Dennis Adams, confirmed to USA TODAY in 2002 that Burkett told them of the conversation within days.
Soon afterward, there was a series of meetings of top commanders at Texas Guard headquarters at Camp Mabry. Bush's records were carried between the base archives and the headquarters building, according to Burkett and the second Guard official, who was there.
The meetings were confirmed in a 2002 interview by USA TODAY with William Leon, who was the state Guard's freedom-of-information officer in the 1990s. He was involved in discussions about what to release. Leon declined to comment on the substance of the meetings except to say, "We were making sure we released it properly and made sure we did it in a timely manner."
Contacted at home Wednesday night, he refused to talk to a reporter. He said: "Don't ever call me again at home. I'll call your publisher and sue you."
...
Allbaugh, James and the White House denied Burkett's story. As president, Bush has since elevated James to be director of the Air National Guard for the entire country.
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Bush said he fulfilled his Guard commitment and offered to make his records public. Host Tim Russert asked, "Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?" Bush replied, "Yes, absolutely."
Since then, White House officials have released only documents concerning whether Bush fulfilled his service obligations. White House statements have not addressed the release of any papers that could show disciplinary actions, medical exams, legal scrapes and the like.
The fact that there was a "scrubbing" of the record when George W. Bush was governor of Texas has been backed up, then, by multiple sources within the TANG. To this point, however, it has gotten only passing interest in the press.
The accusations from Burkett and the anonymous second source (Warrant Officer Harvey Gough, perhaps, who also has come forward as a witness to the document purge, saying when asked of the scope of what was removed: "I think quite a bit. I think all his time in Alabama."), as well as the confirmation of that story from Conn, Adams and Leon, are especially troublesome, because destroying those records would be, for Allbaugh and James, a federal crime (Title 18, Section 2071) punishable by fine or imprisonment.
Another interesting side note, when considering the content of the recent memos: This, from the Guardian, in Febuary of this year:
Reports during the 2000 elections claimed that Bush and his father pulled strings to get him to the top of the queue. That was vehemently denied by the officer who was instrumental in ushering Bush into the ranks of the guard. But Bush's senior officers must have been acutely conscious that they had a scion of America's political elite in their command.
"He did not use political influence. He did all the things required," insists Walter Staudt, a retired National Guard colonel who was Bush's commanding officer. The two men first met during the Christmas holiday of 1967, during Bush's senior year at Yale. A few months later, the young graduate applied for pilot training. "I interviewed all the kids, and if I thought they had promise, sent them through the chain," Staudt says. He retired soon after Bush's induction, and says that he can remember little of that episode now.
Hmm. Seems Staudt took a liking to the boy, doesn't it?
Conclusions
Adding all this together, we seem to be sitting on the ingredients of an explosive political thriller. It has been reported through multiple sources that Bush's documents were "scrubbed" of damaging information. Knox verified the contents of these newest memos, but discounted that she or anyone else typed them for Killian. So are these memos transcriptions of files scrubbed by Allbaugh and James, kept by an involved party for future use, and released now under Killian's signature? Are they 1970s-era transcriptions of Killian's notes, made by Killian or others "in addition" to the original memos, and stored separately? Are they original memos, and is Knox simply unaware of them?
We don't know where the documents came from, at this point, but it seems that finding out where they came from -- and what relationship they have to the "scrubbing" of Bush's National Guard documents previously reported -- is now going to be a very hot topic for the national media. In short, a fuse has been lit here.
These documents, whether authentic or forged, are leading reporters slowly but surely to the original cast of TANG characters. And it seems that, because of the politics involved, those players remember Bush and the other players well. Knox verified the content of the memos: if she were to review Bush's files, as presented by the White House, could she attest to any documents she wrote that were missing? And what of Bartlett, Gough, and the others? Will reporters dig more deeply into determining what was removed from Bush's files, as opposed to simply reporting that something was?
