_bush_documents?pg=2
Authenticity backed on Bush documents
By Francie Latour and Michael Rezendes,
Globe Staff
September 11, 2004
After CBS News on Wednesday trumpeted newly discovered documents that
referred to a 1973 effort to ''sugar coat" President Bush's service record
in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced
charges that the documents were forgeries, with typography that was not
available on typewriters used at that time.
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But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations
say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format,
were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s, when
Bush was a first lieutenant.
Philip D. Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed
typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the
documents in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, one in
a wave of similar media reports. But Bouffard told the Globe yesterday that
after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared
on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.
Analysts who have examined the documents focus on several facets of their
typography, among them the use of a curved apostrophe, a raised, or
superscript, ''th," and the proportional spacing between the characters --
spacing which varies with the width of the letters. In older typewriters,
each letter was alloted the same space.
Those who doubt the documents say those typographical elements would not
have been commonly available at the time of Bush's service. But such
characters were common features on electric typewriters of that era, the
Globe determined through interviews with specialists and examination of
documents from the period. In fact, one such raised ''th," used to describe
a Guard unit, the 187th, appears in a document in Bush's official record
that the White House made public earlier this year.
Meanwhile, ''CBS Evening News" last night explained how it sought to
authenticate the documents, focusing primarily on its examiner's conclusion
that two of the records were signed by Bush's guard commander, Lieutenant
Colonel Jerry B. Killian. CBS also said it had other sources -- among
Killian's friends and colleagues -- who verified that the content of the
documents reflected Killian's views at the time.
One of them, Robert Strong, a Guard colleague, said the language in the
documents was ''compatible with the way business was done at that time. They
are compatible with the man I remember Jerry Killian being."
But William Flynn, a Phoenix document examiner cited in a Washington Post
report Thursday, said he had not changed his mind because he does not
believe that the proportional spacing between characters, and between lines,
in the documents obtained by CBS was possible on typewriters used by the
military at the time.
Flynn told the Globe he believes it is ''highly unlikely" that the documents
CBS has obtained could have been produced in 1972 or 1973.�
Flynn said his doubts were also based on his belief that the curved
apostrophe was not available on electric typewriters at the time, although
documents from the period reviewed by the Globe show it was. He acknowledged
that the quality of the copies of the documents he examined was poor.
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Also suspicious is Killian's son, Gary D. Killian of Houston. ''I still
contend that my father would not have written these documents. I know the
type of man he was -- if he felt he was being pressured, he'd confront it
head on, not write a memo about it," Killian, 51, said in a telephone
interview. His father died in 1984.
The controversy over the authenticity of the documents has all but blocked
out discussion of their content. In the first document, dated May 4, 1972,
Killian appears to order Bush to show up for a flight physical ''no later
than 14 May, 1972." On Aug. 1, 1972, a document bearing Killian's signature
notes that he had suspended Bush from flight status ''due to failure to
perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical
examination (flight) as ordered."
At the time of the memo, Bush had not flown since April. He moved to Alabama
in May of that year to work on a political campaign, and had not attended
drills for more than four months.
In a ''memo to file" dated May 1972, Killian appeared to write that he had
counseled Bush about his commitment to the Guard. And the final memo
obtained by CBS, dated Aug. 18, 1973, said that the group's commanding
general had sought to have Killian ''sugar coat" Bush's annual fitness
report -- even though Bush had apparently not trained at his Houston airbase
during the year in question.
But reporters and political figures focused much of their attention
yesterday on the suggestion that CBS might have been the victim of a hoax.
Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had dismissed the Bush
documents in an interview with The New York Times because the letters and
formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his
database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the
machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric
Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples
obtained from Interpol, the international police agency, Bouffard said his
view shifted.
In the Times interview, Bouffard had also questioned whether the military
would have used the Composer, a large machine. But Bouffard yesterday
provided a document indicating that as early as April 1969 -- three years
before the dates of the CBS memos -- the Air Force had completed service
testing for the Composer, possibly in preparation for purchasing the
typewriters.
As for the raised ''th" that appears in the Bush memos -- to refer, for
example, to units such as the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron -- Bouffard
said that custom characters on the Composer's metal typehead ball were
available in the 1970s, and that the military could have ordered such custom
balls from IBM.
''You can't just say that this is definitively the mark of a computer,"
Bouffard said.
Meanwhile, the political fray over the documents continued unabated. At a
news conference yesterday, Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic
National Committee, again accused Bush of lying about his record.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan defended the president's service
record, but offered no view on whether the CBS documents are authentic.
Globe reporters Stephen Kurkjian and Walter V. Robinson contributed to this
report.�
� Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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