# More Missing Nat. Guard Documents **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 6, 2004, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303 "2004-09-06T04:09:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/101 "2004-09-10T06:27:12Z")
Okay, so now I’m seeing statements here and in [this other thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=275389), concerning things like proportional fonts and superscripts, that seem to directly contradict some of these “experts”. And we also have “experts” contradicting each other. My head is spinning. Just how does someone go about becoming a recognized “expert” in typewriters? Is there an institute of typewriterology? (That’s a rhetorical question.) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/102 "2004-09-10T06:39:47Z")
[This is interesting:](http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7096) [quote] More than six weeks ago, an opposition research staffer for the Democratic National Committee received documents purportedly written by President George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard squadron commander, the late Col. Jerry Killian. The oppo researcher claimed the source was “a retired military officer.” According to a DNC staffer, the documents were seen by both senior staff members at the DNC, as well as the Kerry campaign. “More than a couple people heard about the papers,” says the DNC staffer. “I’ve heard that they ended up with the Kerry campaign, for them to decide to how to proceed, and presumably they were handed over to 60 Minutes, which used them the other night. But I know this much. When there was discussion here, there were doubts raised about their authenticity.” The concerns arose from the sourcing. “It wasn’t clear that our source for the documents would have had access to them. Our person couldn’t confirm from what file, from what original source they came from.” [quote] The article says that the documents may have come from the Kerry campaign, and that CBS ran them even though there was internal dissent about whether they could be legitimate. If so, this should be a pretty big scandal. First, that the Kerry campaign would feed forged documents to the media, and b) that said media would report them without also reporting their own serious misgivings about their authenticity. Heads should roll. On the other hand this is the _American Spectator_, so any claims which appear to harm Democrats should be taken with a grain of salt. But this is certainly turning into an interesting story, no matter how it turns out. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/103 "2004-09-10T06:55:38Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > That is not correct. I never said that he was “doing what he was supposed to be doing”, I said that it was completely understandable and, as it happened, completely irrelevant. “Perfect 10”? Not hardly. But nobody scored a “Perfect 10” that day. Not the air traffic controllers, not the military, not the intelligence services, and not the President. If you would like me to concede that there was room for improvement, I’ll be glad to, with one condition. All you have to do is tell me what he could have done to stop it from happening during those seven minutes. As for those seven minutes of a **W** ol’s petrified, wanted-his-mommy terror, one thing an honorable, conscientious, intelligent, compassionate man could and would have done is to realize he was a primary target and so _ **get the hell away from those kids!!** _ Instead, that chicken-hawk anti-hero aWol forced those children to be his human shields. That’s George W. Bush all the way: setting up the weak and the defenseless to pay for his cowardice and recklessness! Have you ever seen the film _Dead Zone?_ Seen the scene where a press photographer catches the cowardly president holding up a little child in order to protect himself from a sniper? We need Time to run a similar cover showing George W. Bush with a circle of young children while he cowers there for seven minutes with his borrowed human shields protecting him. Yes, indeed. More to the point, **Airman** , if a **W** ol Bush and his shamefully and perhaps deliberately heedless administration would have listened to the bipartisan Hart-Ruddman reports – as further emphasized by Diane Fienstein and several other Democrats – that terrorist attacks were planned for within the continental US since May 2001 (in fact, Senator Hart emphasized it quite loudly about 6 days prior to 9/11), those two towers would probably never have fallen and your beloved “president” wouldn’t have been the second-most culpable person for the attacks behind bin Laden himself. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/104 "2004-09-10T07:00:59Z")
Umm… **ambushed** , I think you might be in the wrong thread. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/105 "2004-09-10T07:05:11Z")
I do not know too much about typerwriters, I do know fonts pretty well ( I used to hand letter my ad-art roomate’s projects, it was fun!) I am a tech for a company that rents computers, printers, and fax machines (I mostly deal with computers myself). I do not have MS Word, it will not run on my o/s, so I grabbed the pdf from CNN (thank you, Squink) and the MS Word gif from LGF (thank you, Sam). As has been said before, the PDF is awfully degraded. I suspect a fax and the process of making the PDF, rather than a copier, caused most of the horrid distortion. The gif is also not really hi-res enough for meaningful comparison, either. You have zoom in a lot to really see if they line up correctly. If I ever see a higher res of the PDF, I will type one up at work for better comparison. With those caveats, I would say that the PDF does not really look like Times New Roman to me. The letter shapes look similar, but Times New Roman’s line width varies. The font in the PDF looks as if it does not vary much at all, at least not consistently (compare the capital M). In addition, when I do the overlay, it does _generally_ line up. But the kerning in the PDF looks more irregular, and many letters are a bit off in either direction. I could not get feedback to line up at all on close inspection. The leading is also more irregular \* looking\* than the MS document. My wife is a graphic artist for a printer. She looks at signs going down the road and tells me what fonts they are. I will ask her to look at the PDF and see if she can determine what font it may be. What I \* REALLY\*want though, is better documents to compare. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/106 "2004-09-10T07:14:04Z")
Y’know, this whole bruhaha could be avoided if we could just produce _somebody_ who saw GeeDubya Bush actually _reporting for duty_ at the time in question. As it is now, watching the Bush apologists play Encyclopedia Brown and pretending they’re all instant experts on computer typography in a desperate attempt to cover George’s ass is just humorous. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/107 "2004-09-10T07:15:39Z")
Sorry, I forgot to mention: since the gif was low-res, and I do not have MS word, I compared individual letters to the 22pt TNR supplied with XFree86. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/108 "2004-09-10T07:15:41Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > …On the other hand this is the _American Spectator_, so any claims which appear to harm Democrats should be taken with a grain of salt… I’m trying to understand why a DNC staffer would have talked about this to the _American Spectator_. And it does seem a little too convenient that they were able to get this story out in such a timely manner. From the article (bolding mine): > [@](#): > > According to one ABC News employee, some reporters believe that the Kerry campaign as well as the DNC were parties in duping CBS, **but a smaller segment believe that both the DNC and the Kerry campaign were duped by Karl Rove** , who would have engineered the flap to embarrass the opposition. I’m honestly starting to think that this is a strong possibility. But why would the _American Spectator_ bring up this possibility? Curioser and curioser. ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/109 "2004-09-10T07:25:51Z")
> [@](#): > > I did the same comparison you did, Gaudere. Mine came out significantly better. Almost as good as LGF’s, or maybe as good. I didn’t spend a ton of time sizing and moving the layer around and rotating it to find the perfect match. I just stretched it around until I was convinced that it could be matched that well. I did notice a couple of letters that seemed to differ slightly, but it could have been the difference between screen and printer fonts, for all I know. > > But what surprised me is not the font shapes being exact, because like you say there are only tiny differences between some of them - differences that may not show on a poor copy on a computer screen. But the spacing surprises me. The leading, character spacing, etc. Now I know those are also part of the font specification, but I didn’t expect it to be that precise. By the end of a long sentence the characters are still lined up perfectly. Font reflow, spacing, kerning, is _supposed_ to be precise. Precise to the ultimate degree. When you have a 400+ page doc, a hairsbreadth of difference in a single letter can make up lines or even _pages_ of difference. Word processing has had to deal with designers who want that degree of control (though I’ll admit we don’t always achieve it, particuarly with newer fonts that may not have set standards, or in word, which cannot always support out requirements. But the whole point of word or desktop publishing was to _try_ to reproduce that sort of consistency, even if they don’t always manage it. If there is any font that will be that consistent, it will be the great grandaddy of Times New Roman–unless they’re using some funky TNR just for that typewriter or something.). I’d have to take a look at your overlay doc, but I wouldn’t much trust a 72 dpi reproduction to accurately reproduce a doc…nor a 144dpi, nor a 300dpi! Not to the degree of determining forgery for sure, though obvious modern fonts could be ruled out. The differences between one font and another can be very subtle, particuarly between sister fonts or differing versions of the same fonts. There could be a TNR for IBM that is just the same as the Whatever typewriter except for the serif in the lowercase n. I have one client for whom I have to use one particular version of Garamond rather than another, because one has a particular angle to the apostrophe and the other doesn’t. But I’d bet on a low-res repro you’d never know the difference. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/110 "2004-09-10T07:26:54Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > I think this is a mistake for the Democrats to have this ad out (yes, I know its not directly associated with the Democrats but with [Moveon.org](http://Moveon.org)…just like the Swift Boat guys aren’t directly associated with the Republicans)…it looks like a defensive move to counter the Swift Boat ads being run. Lame. Kerry (and friends) should be running ads defining his record as a Senator and why he is fit to be the next president, not dredging up this bullshit thats already been hashed out and examined several times before…including in the LAST presidential election. And if wishes were fishes… Would I prefer a clean campaign on both sides? Absolutely. But the hard, cold facts tell us that our fellow Americans respond passionately only to mud and dirt. The Democrats’ convention was by far mostly positive, forward-looking, and clean but it got them nothing in terms of voter support. The Republican convention was virtually all evil, scum, hatred, and vicious, bile-filled attacks by dozens of at least _temporarily_ insane demagogues. It was like a Christmas orgy in Hell, emceed by Zell On Earth and Ann Coulter. And it got them plenty of new voters. Until that distant day that our fellow Americans suddenly find themselves actually applying _reason_ and _enlightened self-interest_ to choose candidates, slinging mud will – oh, so sadly – continue to be what works. As deplorable and despicable as that is. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/111 "2004-09-10T07:29:54Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Umm… **ambushed** , > I think you might be in the wrong thread. Please see post #24 to see what I was responding to. ---
**Author:** ![Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e36b37/32.png) [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/112 "2004-09-10T08:11:42Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > As for those seven minutes of a **W** ol’s petrified, wanted-his-mommy terror, one thing an honorable, conscientious, intelligent, compassionate man could and would have done is to realize he was a primary target and so _ **get the hell away from those kids!!** _ …\…More to the point, **Airman** , if a **W** ol Bush and his shamefully and perhaps deliberately heedless administration would have listened to the bipartisan Hart-Ruddman reports – as further emphasized by Diane Fienstein and several other Democrats – that terrorist attacks were planned for within the continental US since May 2001 (in fact, Senator Hart emphasized it quite loudly about 6 days prior to 9/11), those two towers would probably never have fallen and your beloved “president” wouldn’t have been the second-most culpable person for the attacks behind bin Laden himself. Thank you for addressing the question in a serious manner. :rolleyes: OK, so, say Bush leaves right away. Can he stop the attacks? No. Are the kids out of danger? No, because anyone who would go through all the trouble to plan an attack like that will complete the attack without regard to factors that are out of his control. What, if he somehow found out that Bush had run for his life he would turn the plane around and try to ram Air Force One? Not likely, and as it happens irrelevant because it never happened. There was no threat, the kids were safe, and nothing happened in those seven minutes that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. And one other thing. I am sick to death of you clowns calling Bush “my President”. I am not voting for him. Got that? Good. Try to remember next time. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/113 "2004-09-10T08:15:49Z")
> [@Sam Stone](#): > > Squink: I took your link, opened the memo in PDF format, took a screenshot, and copied it into Adobe Photoshop. > > Then I opened word, and typed the memo in. I left Word at the default settings, and just typed, letting word wrap the text where it saw fit. > > Then I took a screenshot of that, and pasted it as a new layer in Photoshop. Then I scaled and moved the two layers so that the CYA matched perfectly. > > I reproduced the results as shown on LGF. It was a bit of a hassle to get the scale exactly right (I expected the scale to be off since I was looking at a PDF). The ‘th’ doesn’t match exactly, and a couple of other letters look a tiny bit off, but the margins and everything are exact. The date is EXACTLY 8 tab stops in word. There’s not even a thousandth of an inch difference. > > The guy on LG says that the slight differences in the ‘th’ and a couple of other characters are due to the difference between screen and printer fonts. He says that the differences vanish completely when you compare the printed documents. I tried just that and the two documents don’t look very similar in the details at all. I’m no expert, but I’ve read a lot about typewriters and their idiosyncrasies in the context of evaluating the reliability and authorship of the so-called “MJ-12” papers as well as the Alger Hiss spy case, in which the tiniest details of typewriters were explored in tremendous depth. The CBS pdf files seem to show all the hallmarks of a typewriter. Note the spotty crookedness of some individual letters: a printed Word document would not have these. Note also the widely varying amount of ink among the individual letters: No Word doc would show these traces. The differences in the key-press force applied are visible, where the very same letter sometimes shows lightly and others more darkly. As I said, I’m no expert. But those CBS pdfs seem overwhelmingly to me to be the product of a manual typewriter with a human typist. The forgery advocates have to explain how a computer printer shows all the signs of a manual typewriter, which I strongly doubt is possible. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/114 "2004-09-10T10:00:44Z")
> [@ambushed](#): > > The differences in the key-press force applied are visible, where the very same letter sometimes shows lightly and others more darkly. There can’t be any visible differences in key-press force on a freakin’ electric typewriter. > [@ambushed](#): > > As I said, I’m no expert. No, you’re not. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/115 "2004-09-10T11:07:20Z")
> [@Airman Doors](#): > > OK, so, say Bush leaves right away. Can he stop the attacks? No. Are the kids out of danger? Yes! The odds are thousands of times greater that they’d be out of danger if he left! Are you unaware that some Arabs in a van tried to claim (without evidence) that they had an interview with the president that very morning and tried to get in to see him (they were turned away)? And that an identical-looking van was spotted with weapons? Any sensible person would see in that the very strong possibility of the existence of a mobile assassination unit. The plan would have been to take out the president and his immediate staff through direct, line-of-sight fire, but as you yourself suggest, a backup plan might well have been to take out the whole school if the president didn’t leave quickly enough. In short, there was **every** reason to believe that the president’s presence posed a terrible threat to those kids, and that a good and brave man would have gotten away from those kids immediately! Your curious points about how nothing actually happened **in no way alleviates the president’s cowardice and/or thoughtlessness at that moment in time!** Surely you’re not claiming that the president was psychic, are you? That he _knew_ that nothing would happen if he just stood there in all his cowardice? No? Then he was an indecisive coward. QED ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/116 "2004-09-10T11:25:03Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > There can’t be any visible differences in key-press force on a freakin’ electric typewriter. First, I didn’t claim it _was_ a “freakin’” electric typewriter. _You_ did! Look, for example, at my closing sentence: _“The forgery advocates have to explain how a computer printer shows all the signs of a manual typewriter, which I strongly doubt is possible.”_ I realize that most people here have suggested it was an IBM Selectric, but I’ve seen no compelling evidence to establish that it was necessarily typed on an electric. Given all the things I and some others have pointed out (that you foolishly ignored in order to get your insults out), including: (1): The word doc I carefully produced and the CBS documents don’t look very similar in the details at all, even at such low resolution. (2): The spotty crookedness of some individual letters: an electric typewriter might or might not have this problem, but a printed Word document would NOT have these. (3): Note also the widely varying amount of ink among the individual letters: an electric typewriter might or might not have this problem, but a printed Word document would NOT have these. So, fella, your attacks and insults are off base. Unless you can prove that these were prepared in Word (and explain how all those glaring, manual typewriter-like flaws were produced by a computer and a computer printer and why) or you can prove that they were typed on an electric typewriter, I’ll stick to my own suspicion that these appear to have been typed on a manual typewriter. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/117 "2004-09-10T11:32:15Z")
Settle down, sport. > [@ambushed](#): > > …I’ve seen no compelling evidence to establish that it was necessarily typed on an electric. If it was produced on a typewriter, it can only have been done on an electric. You must have missed all that stuff about proportional spacing of the letters. ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/118 "2004-09-10T11:33:18Z")
Hi, Mod. If you feel so inclined, can you edit the previous two posts of mine and change the angle brackets “\<\>” to square brackets “”? Thanks ---
**Author:** ![ambushed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3bc359/32.png) [@ambushed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ambushed)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/119 "2004-09-10T12:11:51Z")
> [@Desmostylus](#): > > Settle down, sport. If it was produced on a typewriter, it can only have been done on an electric. You must have missed all that stuff about proportional spacing of the letters. Well, dammit, I think that _does_ shut me down. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2004, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303/120 "2004-09-10T12:36:26Z")
That’s OK, no apology necessary, really. Anyway, let’s pick up where things left off. The font question on the IBMs is readily resolved: > [@](#): > > [State Department bans Courier New 12, except for treaties > Written by Paul Shaw > Published on March 10, 2004.](http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=%23.%5EG%2F%0A) > > Courier was originally designed in 1956 by Howard Kettler for the revolutionary “golfball” typing head technology IBM was then developing for its electric typewriters. (The first typewriter to use the technology was the IBM Selectric Typewriter that debuted in 1961.) Adrian Frutiger had nothing to do with the design, though IBM hired him in the late 1960s to design a version of his Univers typeface for the Selectric. > > \ > > Courier’s vanquisher was Times New Roman, designed in 1931 by Stanley Morison, Typographical Advisor to the Monotype Corporation, with the assistance of draughtsman Victor Lardent. The Times of London first used it the following year. Linotype and Intertype quickly licensed the design, changing its name for their marketing purposes to Times Roman. Times Roman became an original core font for Apple in the 1980s and Times New Roman MT became one for Windows in the 1990s. (Ironically, **at the same time IBM invited Frutiger to adapt Univers for the Selectric Typewriter, they asked Morison to do the same with Times New Roman**.) So Times New Roman was available on the IBM Selectric from the late sixties. The wingers are going to have to show that none of these IBM Selectrics with Times New Roman were ever used by the Guard. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-missing-nat-guard-documents/263303.md?page=7)