<font size=4>GUARD-MEMO 'HOAX'
<font size=3>By DEBORAH ORIN and IAN BISHOP
NY Post
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A storm erupted last night over whether CBS anchor Dan Rather fell for a hoax or had authentic documents when he challenged President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.
The wife and son of the late officer who purportedly wrote the memos questioning Bush's performance challenged their authenticity — as did another officer who served with him, and several document experts.
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"The wording in these documents is very suspect to me,"<font color=black> said Marjorie Connell, widow of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984.
In an interview with ABC radio, she said her late husband didn't type and was a big fan of the young Bush, whom he regarded as <font color=purple>"an excellent aviator."<font color=black>
legitimacy of another unsigned memo titled <font color=blue>"CYA"<font color=black> that speaks of pressure to <font color=blue>"sugarcoat"<font color=black> Bush's performance in August 1973.
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"It just wouldn't happen. The only thing that can happen when you keep secret files like that are bad things . . . No officer in his right mind would write a memo like that,"<font color=black> said Gary Killian, who served in the Guard with his dad and retired as a captain in 1991.
Rather claimed Wednesday on "60 Minutes II" that CBS was told the memos suggesting Bush ignored orders to take a physical came from Jerry Killian's personal files but Gary Killian said his dad didn't regularly bring work home.
The personnel chief in Killian's unit in the 1970s, Rufus Martin, said he thinks Rather fell for a hoax — <font color=purple>"They look like forgeries to me. I don't think Killian would do that and I knew him for 17 years."<font color=black>
CBS stood by its story but declined to specify who supplied the documents or name the experts who vetted their authenticity except to say they were <font color=blue>"thoroughly investigated by independent experts."<font color=black>
The authenticity questions erupted on the Internet, starting with Powerlineblog.com, and several experts said the memos are dubious because they look like contemporary, computer documents:
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* The type spacing is proportional — a wide letter like a "w" gets more space than an "i." That's typical of documents created with the Microsoft Word computer word-processing program but most 1970s typewriters gave the same space to each letter, the experts said.
* References to military units like the 187th have the "th" in a raised superscript. This is automatic on Microsoft Word documents.
Several experts questioned whether a typical 1970s typewriter would have superscripts. An IBM spokeswoman said the superscript may have been available on Selectrics in the early 1970s, but couldn't pinpoint a date.
* The apostrophe in words like "he's" look curly but most typewriters had blunt apostrophes with straight edges.
* The typeface looks identical to 11-point Times New Roman, a standard Microsoft Word typeface.
* Each line in the memos looks smooth, unlike hunt-and-peck typing where some letters are struck harder than others.
"I would have a lot of questions about it before I would want to accept it,"<font color=black> said Emily Will, an expert in Raleigh, N.C.
Computer-document expert William Flynn told The Weekly Standard: <font color=green>"These sure look like forgeries."<font color=black><font size=3> With Post Wire Services
nypost.com |
