Bloggers bust CBS over Bush memos

On September 8th, the CBS show 60 Minutes II ran a story bringing to light which purported to show that when President Bush was in the National Guard he failed to obey orders. The memos were supposed to have been written in the early 1970s by a Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian. (Who is, as it happens, died in 1984.)

Pretty damning stuff. Just one problem -- there is mounting evidence collected by the blogosphere that the documents were forgeries. And not very good forgeries at that. A lot of bloggers are designers and computer geeks. People who pay attention to things like proportional spacing, kerning, superscript text and the other features of modern word processing. Guess what?

A letter by letter comparison of one of the purported memos with a version typed in Microsoft Word by Charles Johnson at the blog Little Green Footballs reveals: The spacing is not just similar -- it is identical in every respect. To hammer his point home Johnson superimposes the purported memo with his Microsoft Word, typed today version. Literally 1:1, not even fuzzy, not a letter out of place.

But if that doesn't convince you it was faked, the type in the document is KERNED. Kerning is the typesetter's art of spacing various letters in such a manner that they are 'grouped' for better readability. Word processors do this automatically. NO TYPEWRITER CAN PHYSICALLY DO THIS. (Example, in the word To, the o comes under the top of the T or in the word my, the y comes under the m).

Now, unless the government had access to Office 2003 back in the 1970s (possible explanations include time machine, alien technology, I'm sure our Area 51 people can come up with ideas) something about that seems a bit fishy.

Screenshot: Lay Over Example (thanks murfster)