Responding to challenges to the authenticity of records showing that President Bush shirked National Guard duty, CBS News on Monday stood by its story, but First Lady Laura Bush said she believes the documents are fakes.
Both Bush and Democratic opponent John Kerry have steered clear of the document flap, but the questions about the memos have persisted, first raised on Web sites and fed by radio talk shows and supporters of the candidates. The dispute has prolonged an issue with surprising staying power in this campaign: the candidates’ Vietnam War-era service.
Four days after questions were raised about possible forgery of the memos, CBS on Monday cited two technical experts who said that the print technology under challenge was available in 1972 and 1973 when Bush’s Texas Air National Guard commander wrote memos detailing Bush’s alleged refusal of an order to take a required physical and his subsequent suspension from flight status.
Bill Glennon, a former IBM technician, said it was “just totally false” that the formatting of the documents could not be achieved with typewriters available in the 1970s. Glennon was described by the network as intimately familiar with the company’s office product offerings from the early 1970s.
Speculation about the kind of typewriter that produced the memos has centered on various IBM models.
CBS anchor Dan Rather on Monday night’s newscast said the content of the records matches up with dates in Bush’s military file and with how colleagues remember Bush’s commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, as perceiving Bush.
Killian died in 1984. But his widow, Marjorie Connell, and his son, Gary Killian, told reporters last week that they doubted that Jerry Killian wrote some of the memos.
Gary Killian could not be reached for comment on Monday. Marjorie Connell declined to comment.
CBS, which initially defended its report on Friday, said it obtained the documents from an unnamed but impeccable source.
Document examiners contacted by the Tribune said there’s no way to tell for sure if the records are genuine unless an original, or a very clean copy, can be examined.
CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said Monday that the network possesses what it believes to be so-called first generation copies duplicated directly from the original documents.
But the copies posted on its Web site are somewhat blurred and speckled, suggesting repeated copying.
Genelius said she could not explain why the versions posted on the CBS Web site appear to have been repeatedly copied, while the copies CBS relied on for its reporting were not.
Similar documents also have been obtained by USA Today and are posted on its Web site.
Such low-resolution digital copies are impossible to analyze with any exactitude, said Katherine Koppenhaver, president of the National Association of Document Examiners.
“They’re very poor copies,” she said.
Nonetheless, Koppenhaver questions the authenticity of at least some of the memos. Killian’s signature in a June 1973 memo appears markedly different from his signature on notes written a year earlier, said Koppenhaver, who said she is a consultant to ABC News on the Bush records.
Officially, both candidates stayed above the fray, seemingly content to let the controversy simmer awhile longer.
Kerry spokesman David Wade said that it’s up to the White House to “come forward and verify their authenticity, certainly we cannot.”
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that “experts and journalists have raised . . . a number of questions. And these are . . . being investigated by many news organizations and we look forward to seeing what those results are.”
Surrogates for the campaigns were not as coy.
Campaigning for her husband, Laura Bush told Radio Iowa that “you know, they probably are altered and they probably are forgeries, and I think that’s terrible, really.”
Laura Bush, who rarely speaks out on controversial issues, did not give a reason for her belief.
In Washington, retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and a Kerry supporter, said Bush’s National Guard record will “smell up the place” until the president explains “how and why he neglected his duty, how and why he was not disciplined.”
In its report Monday, CBS said the White House has declined to respond directly to specific questions about Bush’s service in the National Guard.
Bush spokesmen in the past have answered such questions by pointing out that he was honorably discharged.
Both Bush and Kerry are slated to speak to the National Guard Association at its convention in Las Vegas this week.
The story surrounding the memos changed dramatically less than 24 hours after CBS first reported them last Wednesday.
Web sites filled with speculation about possible fakery.
A correspondent to one such site, FreeRepublic.com, pointed out that at least one of the documents was typed using so-called proportional spacing, in which each letter gets the space it needs, rather than a set amount for each letter.
Proportionally spaced fonts are in routine use in word processing programs but were rare on typewriters of 1970s vintage.
Another correspondent recreated the memo using Microsoft Word, the word processing program that became ubiquitous only after the personal computer caught on in the early 1990s.
By Friday, coverage shifted to the question of forgery.
It is the second time in weeks that technology has taken over a Kerry-Bush campaign story and powered it into the headlines.
In August, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth bought $450,000 in ads in three key states questioning Kerry’s war record.
Because of the Web correspondents, talk radio and cable television coverage, the ads became news on the networks and in major newspapers and were credited with helping boost Bush’s showings in the polls.
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Memo features raise authenticity questions
Memos made public by CBS News last week about President Bush’s National Guard service have come under scrutiny. Bush supporters and some document experts say they believe the memos are fakes based on typographical and formatting details. CBS said Monday that its experts believe the records are authentic.
Heading
Is well centered, which is more easily done on a word processor than a typewriter.
Signature
One expert pointed out that Lt. Col. Jerry Killian’s signature on this memo appears different from his signature (above) on a memo dated June 24, 1973. Killian died in 1984.
Proportional spacing
Most typewriters at the time did not use such spacing, which allots each character as much space as that character needs. Instead, most typewriters at the time generally gave each character a uniform amount of space. Some experts point out that proportional spacing was available on some models at the time.
Superscript
Elevated type such as this “th” was not widely available on typewriters at the time the memo was written.
Sources: CBS News, USA Today, Tribune reporting
Chicago Tribune
– See microfilm for complete graphic.
