September 11, 2004
IS IT CORROBORATING WHEN YOU SAY HE'S LYING?:
Amid Skepticism, CBS Sticks to Bush Guard Story (James Rainey and Elizabeth Jensen, September 11, 2004, LA Times)
As another of the corroborating experts for its report, CBS and Rather presented an on-air interview with Marcel B. Matley, a San Francisco document examiner. Rather said Matley had corroborated the four Killian memos.But in an interview with The Times, the analyst said he had only judged a May 4, 1972, memo — in which Killian ordered Bush to take his physical — to be authentic.
He said he did not form a judgment on the three other disputed memos because they only included Killian's initials and he did not have validated samples of the officer's initials to use for comparison.
You really have to check out the story to believe how far down in it they bury Rather's own witness saying he's lying.
MORE:
RATHER FORGES AHEAD (DEBORAH ORIN and VINCENT MORRIS, September 11, 2004, NY Post)
He produced a man named Marcel Matley as the document vetter.But Matley is primarily a handwriting expert whose expertise in document evaluation has been challenged by the head of the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners.
Matley spoke only about a signature and initials purported to be those of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — "they are his signatures" — though two of the four memos are unsigned.
Rather also acknowledged CBS has no originals, only photocopies.
Allan Haley — a typeface expert at Agfa Monotype — said anyone who claims to definitively authenticate a photocopy "is either guessing or is a fool."
Authentic or not, Bush memos no big deal to retired guardsmen (ELLIOTT MINOR, 9/11/04, Associated Press)
Retired National Guard members and even an Army Reservist home on leave from Iraq say they aren't bothered by memos indicating President Bush was suspended from flying because he skipped a medical exam and missed six months of training with his Texas Air National Guard unit during the Vietnam war.Posted by Orrin Judd at September 11, 2004 1:27 PMThey said it's common for Guard members and reservists to miss drills - even up to six months - because of job conflicts, family problems or illness, and the members are encouraged to make up the drills so they don't lose pay or eligibility for retirement benefits.
"We worked around it. There's all kinds of situations ... that cause a person to go out of state for a period of time," said Ralph Bradley, 56, who served three years in Vietnam with the Air Force and 17 years with the Georgia Army National Guard.
In case you missed it, the typographic expert quoted as supporting the documents' authenticity in this morning's Boston Globe article - Dr. Philip Bouffard - is saying that his position was totally misrepresented and twisted, and he's mad enough to chew nails and spit tacks. He contacted the blog he's been engaged by to analyze the memos, http://www.indcjournal.com/ , and gave some very strong statements to that site's webmaster in which he said in no uncertain terms that he and his colleagues are becoming increasingly convinced as their work proceeds that the memoranda are fraudulent. (I think that the Globe's misrepresentations were picked up in the LA Times article.)
Posted by: Joe at September 11, 2004 4:34 PM