If you were gonna forge a document from 1968 - would you use a computer?

[Nordic]

Only if you're really really really dumb.

It would be like making counterfeit money on your desktop scanner.

How stupid do they think we are?

Oh, right. Most Americans ARE incredibly stupid.

[LoZoccolo]

1. If I /did/ use a computer...

...I'd at least switch to Courier font.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Why

Tinmes New Roman existed in 1931?

This is trying to dstract you from the issue, the kid has no honor and indeed disobeyed lawful orders. ..and the pattern has not stopped

[LoZoccolo]

25. Yeah but people don't know that.

Thus we have this controversy. Everyone knows that typewriters had Courier, on the other hand.

[Cleita]

9. Exactly, the font was courier.

Why did they insist it was Times New Roman?

[camby]

3. Actually, I dispute the experts who said that

proportional spacing typewriters were not available technology in the early 70's. I was a clerk typist when I first got out of college in the mid-70's, and I seem to remember in a few offices where I worked that we had some old clunkers of typewriters that had proportional spacing. I'm very skeptical of these claims - even the White House is not saying these documents are forged.

[TahitiNut]

22. Bullshit!

I have in front of me two typewritten letters of commendation, plus carbon copies, given me in 1969 in Vietnam. Both show proportionally spaced fonts of a similar kind that Killian used. Gee, do you suppose we had better office equipment at Long Binh than was available in Houston, Texas four years later???

(Sheesh!)

[Scairp]

24. Sounds like proof

Maybe you should fax a copy to every news outlet who has pimped this story for the past two days.

[BMJ]

4. EXACTLY!! The logic hole is so obvious.

The flawed logic of the forgery claim is so obvious, why aren't these people picking it up?

I think to myself... "Ok, I want to forge a document from 1968 that was supposed to be written with a typewriter." - the first thing I would do, is find a typewriter from 1968... duh.

Geezuz.

[Must_B_Free]

Yes, unless you wanted to manufacture an obvious forgery

But I don't think its that complex. I think the Bushites are just going full speed ahead with the lies and propaganda stranglehold.

It's amazingly transparent at this point.

[starroute]

5. I've got two old manual typewriters in the basement

One's an Olympia with a Courier font from 1957. The other is a Hermes with a sans-serif font from about 1960. If I needed to forge something, I'd scare up a fresh ribbon for one of them and go at it.

The last thing I'd do would be to use a computer and then try to photoshop the type to make the lines jagged and a little fuzzy. You'd have to be as dumb as -- oh, say whoever forged the Niger uranium documents -- to try a stunt like that.

[punpirate]

6. Well, look at the forged Niger documents...

... the IAEA discovered they were forgeries in a couple of hours.

[gospelized]

7. or maybe..

that's what they WANT you to think!

that settles it, they're forged.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. Personally, I'd use an IBM Selectric typewriter.

But then, that's just me...

[DemBones DemBones]

18. Me, too, because I hate using White-Out.

Plus those Selectrics were a dream back in the day and it's be fun to play with one again.

[zignovis]

10. Unless you want the forgery to be detected...

Those memos look way too good to be typed -- it would have taken a lot of effort to produce them in 1972. There are other reasons to suspect MS Word, as well.

I tend to go with the theory that someone like Karl Rove set this whole thing up, perhaps seeking pro-Bush backlash. Some people are saying the Kerry camp turned these memos down weeks ago, rejecting them as suspicious.

[politicat]

21. Do you know how to type?

I mean type, not keyboard. Using a computer keyboard is an entirely different skill than typing on a typewriter.

I pulled out my vintage electric Olivetti and typed up a memo in about 10 minutes, using the same text as the posted memos and I'm a crappy typist.

I'm probably one of the few people under thirty around here, and one of a not huge number under 45 who knows the difference between keyboarding and typing.

They don't have to be MS word. Not by a long shot.

It's not the typeface or the typing that's the kicker, it's something we're going to have trouble seeing - it's the paper. 70s era military flimsey and the like is getting pretty brittle and nasty about now.... only a complete moran would take Officemax 20# as period paper....


Pcat (who found she liked the feedback on the keys on the olivetti....)

[BMJ]

11. They "look too good" because...

... IBM makes a damn fine typewriter.

[BiggJawn]

12. They've ditched the "MS Word" story.

Now it's an IBM Selectric "Executive" or "Composer" model, but they're saying that the Lt. Col. would not have had access to such a modern machine (the "Executive was introduced in 1961. This was covered in another thread) or if he had access, "would not have known how to operate such a complicated machine that required special training..."

Can't remember if I heard this on CBS radio or our trust-worthy friends at NPR...

Anyway, do your own research, the computer story is OUT.

[Philostopher]

13. LBN link -- Boston Globe.

I found the link last night -- apparently somebody at BoGlo also found it:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x818446

One of the 'doubting Thomas' document guys now says it's entirely possible the document was produced on the Composer, and I found a link last night to a site that showed procurement reports from an AFB in Alabama from 1969 that included the IBM Composer. I'll throw the link in here, if you want it -- I'd have to dig, I didn't bookmark it, but I did post it here.

Just another article to consider, I guess. Let me say this -- an organization that's been busted paying $500 to a contractor for a toilet seat would have been an easy sell on bells and whistles office equipment, and they would have trained admin specialists on every piece they had there.

[DemBones DemBones]

19. Oh, please. Like Killian must have been

too stupid to use a typewriter -- or get someone to type for him.

What a bunch of shit is being flung about!

[Nordic]

27. I worked as a clerk-typist on military bases in the 1970's

and nobody would EVER type their own letters or memos. Guys/girls like me would.

They would either dictate them or write them longhand and hand them to us.

Everything I've seen about the "problems" with the memos is pure silliness. Like somebody said "it's really hard to center something with a typewriter". Baloney. When you learned to type, they taught you how to do that. I could teach my two year old to do it.

[Cleita]

20. I was using an IBM Executive, when a silver tongued

salesman came to call and convinced my boss that the brand new Selectric was the wave of the future. So the Executive did the 1 to 4 spaced characters that gave letters a look like print in the Roman or Times Roman font. There were electric typewriters out that didn't do the spacing and were basically courier font, but the Selectric with it's little balls that could be changed according to font and pitch were so space tech then, my boss drooled and the Executive got mothballed.

So I know the Executive and other strike type electric typewriters predated the Selectric.

[Lefty48197]

26. Complicated machine that required special training...

HA! I'm just a dumb Lt. Col. Can somebody help plug this thing in?

[BMJ]

14. ..

..

[Only Me]

15. NO! There a ton of old typewriters around I even had

some until my family cleaned the basement out a couple years ago.
I had an old non electic olympian or Olympic?...two non electric, one that had to be from 20's small all medal and weighed aton! And old electri Royal that was huge. I had it from the early seventies. Came from alocal business that closed down. They're not hard to find...The Rups are just grasping at straws and I love it! :evilgrin:

[stickdog]

16. The DOCUMENTS WERE NOT FAKED!!!

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/11/authenticity_backed_on_bush_documents/

[Judi Lynn]

23. You'd like to hope when the "experts" used to conclude they were forgeries

have been enlightened by additional information, and have admitted they hadn't been aware of this capability in electric typewriters, that they'll be decent enough not to let their first statements stand, and will publicly correct them.

Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had dismissed the Bush documents in an interview with The New York Times because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, the international police agency, Bouffard said his view shifted.

Great Globe article. Thanks a lot.

[guitar man]

17. To answer your question

Logic would dictate otherwise.