Wm. Safire perpetuates "forgery" lies, credits "blogger on...Freerepublic"

[Stephanie]

Those Discredited Memos
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: September 13, 2004

<snip>

The copies of copies of copies that formed the basis for the latest charges were supposedly typed by Guard officer Jerry Killian three decades ago and placed in his "personal" file. But it is the default typeface of Microsoft Word, highly unlikely to have been used by that Texas colonel, who died in 1984. His widow says he could hardly type and his son warned CBS that the memos were not real.

<snip>

The Dallas Morning News looked into the charge in one of the possible forgeries dated Aug. 18, 1973, that a commander of a Texas Air Guard squadron was trying to "sugar coat" Bush's service record. It found that the commander had retired from the Guard 18 months before that.

The Associated Press focused on the suspicion first voiced by a blogger on the Web site Freerepublic.com about modern "superscripts" that include a raised th after a number. CBS, on the defense, claimed that "some models" of typewriters of the 70's could do that trick, and some Texas Air National Guard documents released by the White House included it.

"That superscript, however," countered The A.P., "is in a different typeface than the one used for the CBS memos." It consulted the document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines of Paradise Valley, Ariz., and reported "she could testify in court that, beyond a reasonable doubt, her opinion was that the memos were written on a computer."

<more>

[e-mail]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/13/opinion/13safire.html?hp

[XanaDUer]

1. He's using FR as a source?

That is sinking pretty low.

[Stephanie]

2. He implies that the AP used Free Republic as a source

I don't recall that in the AP story, do you?

[XanaDUer]

6. Nope.

But it's pretty sad, either way.

He should also pore over "The Weekly World News"-Bush was abducted by aliens when he should have been in Alabama.

[Plaid Adder]

3. "his widow says he could hardly type"?

The guy didn't have a secretary?

This is just nuts. It's hilarious to me that the 'real' journalists are now taking their cues from us bloggers. Or rather some of us. I mean, I'm a blogger; but somehow, I never seem to see any of my revelations cited by the big boys. Maybe it's because I don't consider it part of my job as a blogger to just make shit up and then put it out there and pretend it's true.

Yeesh,

The Plaid Adder

[Stephanie]

5. The NY Times does have an ombudsman

and I assume they fact check even the op-eds. Wouldn't they? So how does this garbage get through?

I'm just amazed that anonymous posts on an internet message board, posts that are idle speculation, not fact, can be picked up by the right wing spin machine and made into accepted wisdom. It's truly frightening.

[asjr]

4. On a forum at the NYT I said "It is time to

put Safire out to pasture. He has become an old nag." Safire has become a joke.

[LowerManhattanite]

7. Safire's jumping in now...

...to save the "forgery" story as it's been rather (pun not intended) throroughly de-bunked over the last four days. He's been asked to give the story credibility by parroting it's discredited elements in the Times' pages. Trouble is, homey's got no credibility left.

The plug's outta the drain now and ev'rybody's goin' for a ride! :)

[emulatorloo]

8. Somebody w Email please send this quote from IBM typewriter repairman

to [e-mail] - sorry I am away from email and can't do it.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040920-695873-2,00.html

<snip>

But Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York City who worked for IBM repairing typewriters from 1973 to 1985, says those experts "are full of crap. They just don't know." Glennon says there were IBM machines capable of producing the spacing, and a customized key — the likes of which he says were not unusual — could have created the superscript th.

<snip>

[goddess40]

9. Retired

This is Goddess40's mom. If it is true Killian was retired at the time of one of the memos it doesn't mean he couldn't have written the memo for Bush. I was a nursing supervisor for Corrections. After I left that position, and even after I retired, I was asked for letters of referrance for employees. So he could have done the same thing as a favor for Papa Bush.