I think it was just to show exactly how damning the Word matchup was. It shows that another word processing program fails to match up at all with the forgeries. And if another word processing program doesn't match up exactly, what are the chances that a 1972 typewriter would match up exactly?

dorkafork,

Me too, then.

Thanks for clearing up the question of the "document expert".

The point of Charles' new experiment is that it's not enough to use the Times New Roman typeface at 12 point to produce the memos in question. Do that in Apple's TextEdit and the results are completely different. So even if someone did produce a typewriter in 1972 that could do proportional spacing and superscripts and used Times New Roman (or a very similar typeface), it would still be highly unlikely to produce a result that exactly matched the memos we have seen.

But Microsoft Word with the default settings does match the memos exactly. Therefore we are amply justified in believing that the memos were indeed produced using Microsoft Word. We don't have proof, but the level of assurance that these are fakes is better than 99% - based on the typographic evidence alone.

LGF's "eye-opener" was directed against Rather's defense that, well, New Times Roman (sic) was available in 1973, and proportional spacing was available in 1973, so why couldn't the documents be genuine? LGF shows us that even TNR and proportional spacing-- both of which Apple TextEdit have-- don't by themselves get you all that close to matching the CBS documents. Which makes it all the more remarkable that he was able to match them so precisely using MS Word X.

Others beat me to it, I'll just add that this is of some importance.

While I think there are a huge number of oddities to pursue, all of which point to forgery, there are some claims that haven't born out. For example, the black-and-white claim (made by some) that Times New Roman didn’t exist in the 70’s is just plain false.

The claim(made by some) that no typewrites could produce proportional font in the 70’s is just plain false (The IBM Executive could).

The present issue is whether one should raise eyebrows at the fact that the default settings of Word produced the exact same line returns and spacing as the memo in question.

Last evening, in another place, I was suggesting this wasn’t a very big deal. It didn’t seem surprising to me that the military would use standard margins which might correspond to the defaults used in Word.

As others have noted, this may not be quite so obvious. The defaults in some other systems, even using the same font, produce different results.

We still aren’t in a position to either – conclude it was a forgery because of the margins, or to dismiss the margin coincidence as fully expected.

The search goes on.

Thanks. Now I get it!

Phil, I suspect Charles and others who are familiar with document-production short-circuited their explanations because they are so used to the fact that different applications using the same fonts and margins and other settings inevitably produce different results. It can be hugely annoying when you need to reproduce a layout exactly using different software.

When I saw that Microsoft Word produced the exact same layout with the default settings, that was it for me - slam dunk. But that depends on information and experience that needs to be demonstrated for others.

THE GUYS GET PAJAMAS:

I don't know if Charles is the originator of the meme that the document is not technically Kerned, but is sort of suedo-kerned by an algorithym that is unique to MS Wordfor Windows. It's not just that no typewriter could have made the documents: ONLY MS WORD FOR WINDOWS could have made the documents.

The real smoking gun was the centering of the address. It is only possible on even the most sophisticated typewriter by manually measuring and repeating the exact same measurements on both of the forgeries that have the centered address. Unfortunately for Rather, not only do the two forged doc's headers line up, but they also line up perfectly with, wait for it...

MS Word's default header centering.

Once again, MS word and ONLY MS Word could have made those headers exactly the same. The sugar coating is that, according to this computer science prof, even a super computer from the early 70's could not have done it, much less a manual typewriter.

Game, Set, and Match to the guys in Pajamas!

Why did CBS select a hand-writing expert to examine document authenticity? (other than the fact that he would reach the desired result).

First, we only know what CBS revealed, not what they actually investigated and chose not to reveal.

Second, Hodges claimed he never saw the documents prior to his interview, only that CBS told him the documents were "handwritten" and read him excerpts, to which he replied "well if he wrote them that's what he felt." (LINK)

I doubt that CBS outright lied to Hodges about the nature of the typewritten documents (they probably didn't disclose it one way or the other) and no doubt have a tape of the interview to knock down that point.

More likely, I suggest that what they actually told Hodges is that they hired a recognized handwriting expert to analyze and authenticate the documents as having been signed (written) by Killian (or some similar weasel words). From that premise (and possibly because he knew Killian wasn't a typist) Hodges assumed that the documents were handwritten.

If as it appears, the 60 Minutes producer (Mapes) was aware of contrary statements of Killian's son and widow, but went forward with the broadcast without revealing these more informed opinions, they had to know there would be some blowback and planned accordingly. CBS can now afford to discard Hodges as having been tainted by Bush partisans.

It would be unproductive to give CBS unnecessary strawmen to knock down and deflect from the growing pressure on the network to be more forthcoming as to the source of those documents. They desparately want to change the subject to the charges and away from the documents.