Rather Continues Lying About Forged Documents; NPR Aids and Abets

Charles Johnson makes a point here: Why is it that the MSM has never offered the visual proof he constructed of the famously alternating GIF?

Seems to be two possibilities:

1. They didn't think of it and would prefer not to acknowledge the contribution of a non-guild member.

2. The GIF is damning and ends all debate.

Incidentally, Rather continues clinging to the claim that the forgeries were never "officially" determined 100% to be fakes. This is... true, in a way. The CBS report by Boccardi and Thornburgh says that, that there is no proof one way or the other. (By the way: For those keeping score -- the media likes to note that a Republican, Thornburgh, wrote the report, but fails to note that Boccardi of the AP is almost certainly a liberal Democrat, and fails to note the whole investigation was paid for by CBS. And he who plays the piper calls the tune. They darkly hint that Thornburgh's Republican affiliation taints the report, without pausing for a moment to consider that perhaps the report is too easy on CBS due to the fact that CBS paid for the report.)

While the report claims that, an appendix by an expert leaves no doubt whatsoever that the documents are forged. If one wants to see the real verdict on the documents, one must look to Appendix 4, where an expert declares without equivocation they were produced on a modern computer:

(2) The font/typestyle of the documents: The Thornburgh-Boccardi report provides the analysis of forensic document examiner and typewriter expert Peter Tytell, both in the text and at greater length in the report's Appendix 4. Tytell is a diplomate of the American Board of Forensic Documents Examiners and a highly qualified expert on the issues raised by the typographic characteristics of the documents. Tytell examined the official Bush Guard documents as well as the CBS documents procured from Burkett and concluded that the Burkett documents were produced on a computer in Times New Roman typestyle.

According to Tytell, Times New Roman was designed in 1931 for the Times of London and was only available on typesetting and other non-tabletop machines until the desktop publishing revolution in the 1980s. Tytell concluded that the Times New Roman typestyle was not available on a typewriter in the early 1970s and that the Burkett documents must have been produced on a computer. The Thornburgh-Boccardi report states: "The [Thornburgh-Boccardi] Panel met with Tytell and found his analysis sound in terms of why he believed that the documents are not authentic." If the documents are not authentic, they are frauds.

It seems that CBS' "complete" PDF of the Thornburgh report is not quite complete enough to include that damning appendix.

But it's still findable on the web. Barely. If you do enough googling to find the right search terms, and then conduct a new search. The obvious search -- Thornburg Rather -- leads to the top result of the CBS "complete report" which fails to even mention it originally ran with appendices.

The Republican-tainted Thornburgh did a confused old man, as well as his employer CBS, a favor by pretending there was a shred of doubt when their own expert said otherwise. But that little favor has of course now become the main finding of the report, in Rather's and the MSM's telling, as was inevitable.

posted by Ace at 03:58 PM

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