Damaging Anti-Bush National Guard Records May Be Fake

Published on September 9, 2004 By blogic In Politics

For those who are interested, there's an enormous debate across the Blogosphere regarding the authenticity of the National Guard documents released by CBS yesterday (and highlighted in an earlier post of mine). The documents are supposed to be personal files of one of Bush's superior officers, showing unhappiness with Bush's performance and making reference to pressure to "sugar coat" Bush's service.

Strong arguments have been made that the papers look all too similar to modern Microsoft Word documents, in terms of the font and default tabbing and spacing. While at first it seemed strange that the government produced its own copies of the same documents, it's now clear that those copies were faxed to the government by CBS, the day before.

Updated 5:37 PM, EST
INDC Journal actually brought in a forensic document expert (hey, why didn't I think of that? brain to blogic: because you're a slacker, get back to writing!) to examine the National Guard documents in question. He's 90% sure they're fake.

Updated 10:40 AM EST
There's no new hard information, and barely any new gossip. The conservative American Spectator claims that some people at ABC think the Kerry campaign gave the suspect National Guard records to CBS. I think the Press is wary on this because the White House has still not questioned the authenticity of the documents.

Updated 1:37 PM EST
Liberal blogger Daily Kos argues that the records cannot be Microsoft Word documents, diving into Word minutia that is way beyond me.

Updated 5:00 PM EST
FactCheck has a good roundup of media/expert opinions on the authenticity of the National Guard records.

Updated 10:47 PM EST
CBS News has finally named an outside "document and handwriting examiner" who says he believes the documents are real: Marcel Matley. He also warns against coming to conclusions based on photocopies, fascmiles, mimeographs, or camera obscura images. Of course, if CBS would just make the records more available to outside experts, they could end this confusion quickly.

Updated 8:45 AM EST
A friend of mine pointed out the excellent Killian document coverage by the blog The Shape of Days. It has lots of photos of Killian signatures, although with a great comparison of typewriter text and the actual document... I promise, this isn't just the same analysis you've seen everywhere else... well, unless you have.

I will update this story as more information become available. I invite readers to link or repeat any information they've seen.

Thanks.

Comments (Page 2)

messybuu

on Sep 11, 2004

Wow. Not only is the Media trying to pass off Word documents as memos from the seventies, but now they're twisting the words of others in an attempt to trick people into thinking they're authentic. I'm starting to believe that they're not simply incompetent, but actually evil.

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