11 Sep 2004

It's been three days since CBS's "60 Minutes" reported on 8 Sep 2004 that the network had documents showing that President Bush disobeyed orders while in the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron in Texas in 1972. The blogs (e.g., joefish, Power Line) are having a field day with the inconsistencies in the memos, particularly the typographical features that are more suggestive of a modern word processor than of an early seventies typewriter.

CBS's early reaction to the criticism was a dignified acknowledgement of the criticisms and a promise to check and correct any errors. It's strange that CBS didn't then simply keep quiet until they'd had time to check the inconsistencies. However, Dan Rather publicly insisted that "there's no 'definitive evidence'" of inconsistencies. He could have kept quiet, but then he would have been someone else. Particularly questionable was Rather's claim (and CBS's) that a handwriting expert had verified Lt. Col. Jerry Killian's signature on the memos. CBS has only photocopies, and a handwriting analysis won't give much assurance that the signature on the photocopy appeared on the rest of the document before copying. (See Wired News)

As it stands now, Rather's defensive posture will require some explaining, even in the event that the memos are shown to be authentic. I hope the rest of the press gives CBS some of the lumps that it gave the New York Times over the Jason Blair incident.

There are enough improbabilities in the memos (check out the above links) to make the memos's authenticity quite doubtful, but as a technical diversion, I'll present the possibility that an IBM Selectric typewriter in 1973 might have been able to type the memos:
One objection to the memos is that few, if any typewriters in 1972 could type the superscript "th" as in "Report to 111th F.I.S..." This objection may not be valid. In 1973 or '74, I used a Selectric for a day while my secretary was out. It could subscript or superscript any character on its type head "golf ball" by moving down or up a fraction of a line. There were many different fonts and character sets available on these replaceable "golf balls." If the small "th" was a special character on one of these "golf balls," then the Selectric could have written the superscript in these memos. I have similar doubts about the unavailability of proportional spacing. I suspect that definitive information on the 1973 Selectric's capabilities will be researched and available shortly, so I'm not going to bother to look into it further.

The four memos, 04 May 1972, 19 May 1972, 01 Aug 1972, 18 Aug 1973, are available individually from CBS, or in a single PDF from Fox News.

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