There is one clear issue that needs to be addressed – not the proportional fonts (yes, the typewriters existed, but they were rare and very expensive; only a small number of offices used them). Not the fact that one document has a superscripted “th” – a clear Microsoft Word feature. But this:
Military paper of that time period was 8 x10, not 8 1/2 x 11. If these were legitimate documents, they’d be 8 x 10. If they were copies of legitimate documents, you’d see the edges of the 8 x 10 sheets of paper on some of them. They would also be shifted around: either they’d be misaligned (too much to the left and too high) or the different sheets would be aligned differently on the page.
If it’s true that the White House doesn’t deny the docs are genuine, and even provided their own copies, why is there any doubt about their accuracy? Surely if there was a chance of them being forged, at the very least they wouldn’t provide their own copies…
All I can say is, it brings me great joy to see the rest of the country tearing their hair out over the kind of piddly details that those of us interested in UFOs have for years when looking at the MJ-12 documents.
I happen to have the originals of two letters of commendation I received in August 1971 typed on HQs US Army Alaska stationary. The measure is 8 by 10.5 inches.
(Don’t ask. They both were about my work on the General’s scrapbook.:D)
It can be considerably harder to make a forgery than you think. (Please note, I know nothing of the details regarding the documents in question.)
The paper:
It’s not just a matter of aging some paper you picked up in Office Despot, but if you want to make a good forgery, you need to start with paper actually made in 1972. Before the advent of widespread photocopying and laserprinting, typing paper was a heavy bond, often with a water mark. If I wanted to make a convincing forgery, I would first start by obtaining a ream of paper manufactured by the same company which supplied the Texas Air Guard in 1972.
The ink:
Again, you must use the same ink that was in use by the TAG in 1972. This would mean you would have to obtain a ribbon cartridge which was 30 years old, and had not dried out. There may be ways to restore a dried ribbon, but I do not know of them.
The typewriter:
All typewriters are different. The easiest way to show these as forgeries would be to produce several documents from the same office, but were written on a different typewriter.
I will withhold judgement on the authenticity (or lack thereof) until one of these issues is addressed.
What about kerning? One of the claims at the Powerline blog is that the documents are kerned. Are the documents kerned (is that even the right way to refer to it)? Were there typewriters in 1971 that performed kerning?
And what about the fact that if you type the text into Word using default settings, the results are identical to the documents in question. Doesn’t that seem a little weird?
Word comparison - Make sure to check out the third graphic down, the overlaid version.
It would be nice to check the paper and ink, but I don’t know that anyone claims to have the original, everyone just has copies.
Thankyou for that link…It’ll be very useful in the arguments I anticipate…If I could just reiterate one comment from it, which is possible pertinent to an objection yet to be made (partly my bolding) …
I don’t trust any of the experts that say it was typed in Word. It takes about 10 seconds to look at any of the memos and see the numerous letters that are out of line with those around them. Whatever the documents’ origins, they were definitely made on a typewriter.
There were typewriters in 1966 that did kerning. One of my best friends at the time used one in a law office in Jackson, MS. I vividly recall the first time I saw the machine she used, with its split spacebar. I presume that can be accepted as evidence that they were reasonably available? :dubious:
As for the superscripted [sup]th[/sup], why on earth would the US armed services not have specified special keys on them?? After all, they bought them in quantity - probably so many hundred or thousand at a time. :smack: There was probably also a [sup]st[/sup] superscript, quite likely as the shift variant on the key which held the [sup]th[/sup]. That could also account for the st being typed in the regular fashion, if the typist hated shifting unless it was necessary. There were just as many idiosyncracies in how people typed on typewriters as in how people type on keyboards.
I used IBM typewriters in most of my jobs from 1965 through the 1980s (although in the 1980s the offices had both PCs and typewriters, usually with an assortment of different fonts for the typewriter).
I am not taking a position on the genuine/fake issue. It’s likely to take a goodish while before I’m ready to.
It seems to me the most productive and conclusive way to resolve the debate is to find all the documents produced by this guy or the offices where he would have had access to typewriters and see if any of them also have the same “look”. No?
I’ll accept that, so it’s certainly possible that one of these typewriters was used. I still think it’s suspicious that the documents were produced on a typewriter that just so happened to support kerning, and used the same font, line spacing and margin settings as Word’s default. Although maybe that’s not as unlikely as it sounds, and Word and the typewriter manufacturer were just using the same standard.
I wish CBS could just reveal who gave them the documents (although I’m sure they were given confidentially), or that they had the originals so more testing could be done.
No. The White House provided copies of the forms they received from CBS, and passed them on “in the interests of openness.” They do not concede that the document is genuine.
The “he didn’t type” argument is consistent with most civilian males at that time. A secretary did the typing. If the TANG was at all analogous of the civilian offices I worked in, around 1975, none of the male managers typed at all. The secretary would be the person who would do the typing of the form in triplicate. When a secretary typed letters or memos to file in the civilian world, normally the secretary would put their initials in lower case followed by a slash then the letters author in upper case: aa/BB. I do not know if this was standard practice in the military also.
If he really didn’t type often, I find it strange that he would make his own letter head centered. Centering was a pain in the rear. Using the space bar go out to the middle of the page, which IIRC was 22 spaces. Then use the backspace key to back up one character for each two characters used in the line. Without preprinted letterhead, a novice typist was much more likely to use left justified block letterhead.
(partly my bolding) …