Memogate: fact mixed with fiction
This “memo scandal” is one of those situations where the Internet is really handy to see how different news organizations are spinning the events.
AP: Authenticity of Bush Memos Scrutinized
Washington Post: Some Question Authenticity of Papers on Bush
New York Times: Commander’s Son Questions Memos on Bush’s Service
The differences between the different articles is interesting.
Over the last twenty-four hours I’ve received literally hundreds of emails that point out that each specific criticism, on its own terms, doesn’t quite hold up. Thus, for instance, there definitely were proportional type machines widely available at the time. There were ones that did superscripts. There were ones with Times Roman font, or something very near to it.
But that only means that such a document could possibly have been produced at the time; not that it’s likely. And taken all together, the criticisms raise big doubts in my mind about their authenticity. Adding even more doubt in my mind is that the author of this site was so easily able to use MS Word to produce a document that to my admittedly untrained eye looks identical to one of the memos in question. Identical.
That combined with the individual criticisms mentioned above seems very hard to get around.
Update: exhaustive analysis of the forgery claims on Daily Kos
Seems that CBS is sticking to their guns on this story. Something I find interesting in the original story: “60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.” Which makes it sound like some of these memos were handwritten. Check out the New York Times article above where Killian’s son seems to admit that some but not all of the documents are authentic.
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