THE SUGAR-COATED HONEY POT:

Man named in Bush memo left Guard before document was written (PETE SLOVER, 9/10/04, The Dallas Morning News)

The man named in a disputed memo as exerting pressure to "sugar coat" President Bush's military record left the Texas Air National Guard a year and a half before the memo was supposedly written, his own service record shows.

An order obtained by The Dallas Morning News shows that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972. CBS News reported this week that a memo in which Staudt was described as interfering with officers' negative evaluations of Bush's service, was dated Aug. 18, 1973.

That added to mounting questions about the authenticity of documents that seem to suggest Bush sought special favors and did not fulfill his service.

Staudt, who lives in New Braunfels, Texas, did not return calls seeking comment. His discharge paper was among a packet of documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News from official sources during 1999 research into Bush's Guard record.

A CBS staffer stood by the story...

These are the saddest of possible words: "A CBS staffer stood by the story..."

MORE:
Questions mount on Guard memos' authenticity (Rowan Scarborough, September 11, 2004, THE WASHINGTON TIMES)

A handwriting expert says the two signatures on purported Texas National Guard memos aired by CBS News this week are not those of President Bush's squadron commander, as asserted by "60 Minutes." [...]

Eugene P. Hussey, a certified forensic document examiner in Washington state, said yesterday there is another flaw in the CBS memos. Mr. Hussey studied the known signatures of Col. Killian on Air Force documents, and two signatures on documents dated 1972 and 1973 that aired on "60 Minutes" Wednesday night.

"It is my limited opinion that Killian did not sign those documents," Mr. Hussey told The Washington Times. He said he uses the phrase "limited opinion" because he does not have the original documents. He, like other experts interviewed by the press, relied on copies of originals first obtained by CBS. The White House then distributed copies of the memos in what is said was the interest of full disclosure. [...]

Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines, a document expert and fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, told the Associated Press the superscript -- a smaller, raised "th" in "111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron" -- is one piece of evidence indicating a computer forgery.

A Washington Times computer expert retyped one of the CBS memos in Microsoft Word. He then superimposed the two documents, which appeared to make a perfect match, character by character.

The Times New Roman typeface available on any word processing machine in 1972 would not have matched perfectly because of the differences in technology used to reproduce it, the expert at The Times said, adding that the line spacing in the memos wasn't available 30 years ago.

CBS Defends Its Report on Bush Military Record (JIM RUTENBERG and KATE ZERNIKE, 9/11/04, NY Times)

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Rather said: "CBS News stands by, and I stand by, the thoroughness and accuracy of this report, period. Our story is true."

On television later, he depicted questions about the veracity of the report as a counterattack coming in part from "partisan political operatives." On the "Evening News," Mr. Rather interviewed a handwriting expert who he said had helped CBS News verify the authenticity of the documents. The expert, Marcel B. Matley, said their signatures were consistent with those of Colonel Killian on records that the White House has independently given reporters.

The CBS News report also disputed critics' assertions that raised, or superscript, characters after numbers like "111th" were not consistent with Vietnam-era typewriters.

"Critics claim typewriters didn't have that ability in the 1970's," Mr. Rather said.

"But some models did," he added, showing an old Guard record previously provided by the White House that such superscripts. [...]

Dr. Philip Bouffard, a forensic document specialist in Georgia who has compiled of database of more than 3,000 old fonts, said people who bought the I.B.M. Selectric Composer model could specially order keys with the superscripts in question. Dr. Bouffard said that font did bear many similarities to the one on the CBS documents, but not enough to dispel questions he had about their authenticity.

A spokesman for I.B.M., John Bukovinsky, said he knew only that the company introduced proportional spacing to some typewriters in 1944, most notably in the Executive line.

Mark A. Robb, team leader of the type development group at Lexmark, which embodies the old I.B.M. typewriting and printing division and now focuses on printers, said specific machines could be custom fitted with the superscript letters in question and that they frequently were.

Some former engineers who worked in the typewriter division said they were not aware of a standard typewriter that could have produced the Killian documents because the superscript letters in question were so rare.

Robert A. Rahenkamp, a former I.B.M. manager who wrote a scholarly history on its typewriters for a company journal in 1981, said, "I'm not aware that we had any superscript technologies back in those days'' on standard proportional space typewriters. [...]

Experts on documents said the veracity of the CBS memos might never be known because they had been copied so many times. CBS News officials said that its papers were copies, too, and that it did not have the originals. The network said it would not identify its original source.

Mr. Rather said, "We worked long and hard and became convinced that, yes, this person had the capacity to get the documents, and, yes, this person was truthful."

That last is a curious bit in itself--Mr. Killian is supposed to have secreted these personal documents somewhere yet they've been copied repeatedly?
Rather Defends CBS Over Memos on Bush (Howard Kurtz, September 11, 2004, Washington Post)

Dan Rather vigorously defended his "60 Minutes" story on President Bush's National Guard service yesterday, saying the 30-year-old memos he disclosed on the show this week "were and remain authentic," despite questions raised by some handwriting and document experts.

"Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill," the CBS anchor said. "My colleagues and I at '60 Minutes' made great efforts to authenticate these documents and to corroborate the story as best we could. . . . I think the public is smart enough to see from whom some of this criticism is coming and draw judgments about what the motivations are."

ABC, AP, Reuters, The Times, The Post...

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 10, 2004 11:37 PM