Dan Rather forges ahead

From the New York Post this morning:

September 11, 2004 -- CBS anchor Dan Rather hung tough last night and
insisted there's no "definitive evidence" to refute the authenticity
of documents about President Bush's National Guard service — but a
growing number of document experts smell a hoax.
"If any definitive evidence to the contrary of our story is found, we
will report it. So far there is none," Rather insisted.

He produced a man named Marcel Matley as the document vetter.

But Matley is primarily a handwriting expert whose expertise in
document evaluation has been challenged by the head of the American
Board of Forensic Document Examiners.

Matley spoke only about a signature and initials purported to be those
of the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian — "they are his signatures" —
though two of the four memos are unsigned.

Rather also acknowledged CBS has no originals, only photocopies.

Allan Haley — a typeface expert at Agfa Monotype — said anyone who
claims to definitively authenticate a photocopy "is either guessing or
is a fool."



In another challenge to CBS, Killian's boss, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby
W. Hodges, told ABC News that he regards the documents as a computer
"fraud," never saw them in the 1970s and didn't validate them for CBS.

A senior CBS official had claimed to the Washington Post that Hodges
had validated the documents.

During his national news broadcast, Rather claimed "partisan political
operatives" are challenging the memos but omitted the fact that
Killian's widow and son dispute them.

The memos cast doubt on whether Bush fulfilled his Guard requirements.

Marjorie Connell — widow of Lt. Col. Killian, who died in 1984 — has
told ABC the documents are "very suspect" because her late husband
didn't type and was a big fan of the young Bush.

A key issue is whether the documents were made on a 1970s-era
typewriter or are forgeries done by computer because of their
proportional spacing and raised superscripts on ordinal numbers like
"111th."

Rather last night pointed to an undisputed document from Bush's
National Guard files and claimed it has a superscript, so they were
available by 1968.

But that document is in a different typeface and experts say it was
made on a different type of machine without proportional spacing so it
proves nothing.

"It could be a superscript, it could be a correction with a letter
showing through white-out, but in any case it's absolutely irrelevant
.. . . It doesn't prove a thing," said document expert Bill Flynn.

"It's a completely different technology," added the Phoenix-based
Flynn.

Flynn said it's "very unlikely" that the memos are legit, adding that
he knows of no typewriter fonts using proportionally spaced Roman type
with a raised "th" available in the 1970s.


all the best -- Dan Ford
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