The Wash Post Shows CBS How to Research a Story

Late but with added perspective for their tardiness, Howard Kurtz and Michael Dobbs have a devastating article in today's Washington Post in which they delve into both CBS's claims and the problems with the documents themselves (via Whizbang).

It begins: "The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves [emphasis added].

"'There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them,' Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are 'copies' that are 'far removed' from the originals."

It doesn't get any better for Dan:

"A detailed comparison by The Washington Post of memos obtained by CBS News with authenticated documents on Bush's National Guard service reveals dozens of inconsistencies, ranging from conflicting military terminology to different word-processing techniques.

"The analysis shows that half a dozen Killian memos released earlier by the military were written with a standard typewriter using different formatting techniques from those characteristic of computer-generated documents. CBS's Killian memos bear numerous signs that are more consistent with modern-day word-processing programs, particularly Microsoft Word.

"'I am personally 100 percent sure that they are fake,' said Joseph M. Newcomer, author of several books on Windows programming, who worked on electronic typesetting techniques in the early 1970s. Newcomer said he had produced virtually exact replicas of the CBS documents using Microsoft Word formatting and the Times New Roman font."

The Post shows up the sloppy (or mendacious) research that CBS uses to defend the authenticity of the documents:

"• Word-processing techniques. Of more than 100 records made available by the 147th Group and the Texas Air National Guard, none used the proportional spacing techniques characteristic of the CBS documents. Nor did they use a superscripted 'th' in expressions such as '147th Group' and or '111th Fighter Intercept Squadron.'

"In a CBS News broadcast Friday night rebutting allegations that the documents had been forged, Rather displayed an authenticated Bush document from 1968 that included a small 'th' next to the numbers '111' as proof that Guard typewriters were capable of producing superscripts. In fact, say Newcomer and other experts, the document aired by CBS News does not contain a superscript [emphasis added], because the top of the 'th' character is at the same level as the rest of the type. Superscripts rise above the level of the type.

"• Factual problems. A CBS document purportedly from Killian ordering Bush to report for his annual physical, dated May 4, 1972, gives Bush's address as '5000 Longmont #8, Houston.' This address was used for many years by Bush's father, George H.W. Bush. National Guard documents suggest that the younger Bush stopped using that address in 1970 when he moved into an apartment, and did not use it again until late 1973 or 1974, when he moved to Cambridge, Mass., to attend Harvard Business School."

Further into the article, the Post takes aim at last night's CBS broadcast, in which Rather defended the documents' authenticity:

"In its broadcast last night, CBS News produced a new expert, Bill Glennon, an information technology consultant. He said that IBM electric typewriters in use in 1972 could produce superscripts and proportional spacing similar to those used in the disputed documents. Any argument to the contrary is 'an out-and-out lie,' Glennon said in a telephone interview. But Glennon said he is not a document expert, could not vouch for the memos' authenticity and only examined them online because CBS did not give him copies when asked to visit the network's offices [emphasis added].

That's astounding -- CBS wouldn't show the actual documents to their own "expert." What inference can be drawn other than they're afraid he'll conclude the docs are fakes if he sees the real thing?

In any event, Glennon's claims were flatly contradicted by Thomas Phinney, who is "program manager for fonts for the Adobe company in Seattle, which helped to develop the modern Times New Roman font." Phinney said "'fairly extensive testing' had convinced him that the fonts and formatting used in the CBS documents could not have been produced by the most sophisticated IBM typewriters in use in 1972, including the Selectric and the Executive. He said the two systems used fonts of different widths."

Finally: "CBS executives have pointed to [Marcel] Matley as their lead expert on whether the memos are genuine, and included him in a 'CBS Evening News' defense of the story Friday. Matley said he spent five to eight hours examining the memos. 'I knew I could not prove them authentic just from my expertise,' he said. 'I can't say either way from my expertise, the narrow, narrow little field of my expertise.'"

MSM is now backing up the research of bloggers with some hard-nosed research of their own. That's a turn of events that Dan et al. can't find comforting.

More to come as this story really begins to unfold.