Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > C BS. C BS Run. Run, C BS, Run (Part 3)

Wizbang looks at Marty Heldt as a possible source for the CBS documents.

The reward for re-creating the CBS documents with a 1972 typewriter is up to $37,900. And there's a new cartoon.

There's no reward for re-creating the documents using Microsoft Word because it's so ridiculously easy. Here are the instructions and copy-and-paste text so you can try it at home. Two quick tips for homebrewers: put two spaces at the end of sentences, and print the document for the superscript th to look right (it looks totally different printed than it does onscreen).

This morning's USA Today article moves the story forward by quoting several document experts who pronounced the CBS documents phonies. Beldar notes the two extra pages in USA Today's version of the documents. The paper says it obtained its documents "independently soon after the 60 Minutes segment aired Wednesday, from a person with knowledge of Texas Air National Guard operations."

An amazing Flash animation comparing the CBS documents with the same documents produced in Microsoft Word. They're forgeries, folks.

More on letter spacing in the CBS documents. This page looks at the CBS docs and finds definite word spacing anomalies that are uncharacteristic of any typewriter. His analysis is based on the fact that Microsoft Word spaces certain letters pairs (such as at) not at all or to a lesser degree when presented in the opposite order (such as ta). The CBS docs follow the same spacing pattern found in the Microsoft Word document.

Jane Galt:

What's with the anonymous experts? I've never heard of such a thing. Anonymous sources, sure, but document examiners aren't like priests or employees -- they expect to testify about what they do. That's what they get paid for. How come CBS's won't come forward? Are they really that afraid of Karl Rove's Special Document Examiner Hit Squad?

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 14: The "document and handwriting expert" (he is the latter but not the former) CBS News used to authenticate the signature on one document has said he does not and cannot authenticate the documents themselves because they're photocopies.

The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals.

Meanwhile, CBS News is now putting forth Bill Glennon as a "document expert." He's no such thing. He was a typewriter repairman for IBM and even he says "I don�t claim to be a typewriter expert". Actually, what he says is "I don�t claim to be a typewriter expert but after working on IBM typewriters for IBM for over 13 years in a high call area like NYC I can tell you without a doubt that the Model D can produce those documents." Then why not go collect the reward?

I'll close with these thoughts from Powerline:

Before September 11, important aspects of our security arrangements were based on the assumption that people, even terrorists, want to live. For example, airlines followed the rule that if a passenger's bags were checked but the person failed to appear for the flight, his bags would be removed from the airplane. The idea was that a bomb could have been planted in the luggage. But as long as the passenger was on the airplane, it was assumed that his bags were safe, since no one -- it was thought -- would blow up an airplane with himself on it. After September 11, security arrangements were changed to take into account the new reality (or newly recognized reality) of the suicide bomber.

...

Very few Americans are news junkies. Most people will probably never know about the CBS scandal, or will never have enough information to form a judgment about it. For that matter, most don't care. But within the news business, and inside the relatively small slice of the American population where sophisticated consumers of the news dwell, everyone knows, already, that Dan Rather and CBS News tried to influence the November election by telling lies and publishing forged documents. CBS has been disgraced among its peers.

The fact that CBS was willing to barter away what remained of its reputation in exchange for an opportunity to help the John Kerry campaign requires us to re-examine our assumptions about the mainstream media, just as the emergence of the suicide bomber required us to re-examine certain assumptions about security. We never thought that a vast, powerful broadcast network would destroy its own reputation for political gain. Now we know that it can happen.