Something's very stinky about the Killian Memo scandal. First, the doubts raised by Bushies about the document (proportional spacing rather than monospacing; superscripted "th" in "111th"; use of Times New Roman) do seem serious for a document purportedly produced by a typewriter in the 1970s.
However, they seem so very obvious that it's not hard to imagine a Rovean scheme underlying their existence, to wit: some Bushies whip up a document that, at first blush, seems to indict their man. It's passed to CBS who, sensing a scoop, perform up to sadly predictable journalistic standards (there's way too much check-free echo-chambering: just ask Negativland) and run with the story without verifying it. Of course, CBS claims to have experts who've vetted and approved the document - but where are they? Let's imagine the document is demonstrated to have been faked. Well, who faked it? You can bet the Bush team will call in all of their considerable bogus-association powers into play (as seen in the 9/11-Iraq non-relationship)...not directly, of course...and imply that Kerry is somehow behind this blatant attempt to smear Bush's reputation.
You'll notice that the media focus seems to be on the authenticity of the document...and not on the manifest truth that no one has been able to prove Bush was where he was supposed to be.
And of course, the whole thing is, like the Swift Boat brouhaha, a complete distraction from Bush's actual record of failure as president.
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3 comments:
My two cents as a type geek and former secretary (who
used a proportionally spaced IBM Executive typewriter in an Army personnel office in 1980, for what that's worth):
The superscript doesn't appear to match those produced by word processing programs, which shrink the ordinary letters and thus produce thin strokes. The superscript in the memo has strokes equal to those of the body text. However, this could be caused by low-resolution faxing or scanning.
With regard to the signature conflict, I can testify that it's quite common for a secretary to sign for the boss. In any case, all that's required to clear up the issue is a comparison to a notarized signature. Surely that can't be too hard to find.
That said, the similarity of the output to that produced by MS Word's default settings is pretty damning. I wish a high-quality scan was available on-line; it would settle the matter.
J. Greely points out
here that even if the document is proven to have been typed on a computer, that doesn't automatically make it a forgery--it could be a later transcription of a hand-written memo, for example.
And as you rightly point out, if it is a forgery, we shouldn't jump to conclusions, either way, as to the culprit.
--Tim
That link returns a 404, Tim - would you mind reposting the link (assuming you can find it again, and it hasn't vaporized)? Thanks.
Try this...
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005497.html#56722
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