Killian documents controversy

The Killian memos are documents which were allegedly written in 1972 and 1973 by Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian (who died in 1984), which the CBS News organization used as the basis for a 60 Minutes segment in September 2004, claiming that President George W. Bush disobeyed orders while in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG). The authenticity of these memos is in dispute; forensic and typewriter experts consulted by major media organizations have not yet achieved a consensus.[1]

Initial skepticism

A few hours after the release of the 60 Minutes II segment, a discussion began on the Free Republic discussion group and quickly spread to various weblogs that the copies of these memos from the CBS News website displayed numerous characteristics inconsistent with being produced by 1972 typewriter technology. These claims quickly found their way into the mainstream press. CBS News stood by its story, however. The initial skepticism appeared in the following posts on Free Republic:

"TankerKC", 19 minutes after the broadcast began, noted that the memos on screen were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF... Can we get a copy of those memos?"

"Buckhead" responded less than four hours later, with a critique about the typography, writing "Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts... I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."

And the Internet discussion groups and blogosphere quickly pursued these alleged inconsistencies aggressively.

Typographical questions

Proportional fonts

Typewriters using proportional fonts were very rare and expensive in 1972. The overwhelming majority of typewriters available then used fixed width fonts. The only known typewriter available in 1972 with proportional font support and a similar (though not exact)[2] match to the font used in the memos (11-point Press Roman vs. 12-point Times New Roman) is the IBM Selectric Composer, which cost $3,600 to $4,400 in 1973 dollars ($16,000 to $22,000 in 2004 dollars), and so would have been a highly unusual purchase for a local ANG base. Also, all known genuine documents from Bush's ANG base were typed using the more typical fixed width fonts commonly associated with typewriters.

In contrast Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York City who worked for IBM repairing typewriters from 1973 to 1985, disagrees with this claim. Glennon says there were IBM machines capable of producing the spacing, and a customized key -- the likes of which he says were not unusual -- could have created the superscript th (discussed below). His conclusions have been questioned by other experts, including Thomas Phinney, program manager for fonts at Adobe Systems, which helped to develop the modern Times New Roman font. He said "fairly extensive testing" had convinced him that the fonts and formatting used in the Killian memos could not have been produced by the most sophisticated IBM typewriters in use in 1972, including the Selectric and the Executive. He said the two systems used fonts of different widths.[3]

Sophisticated spacing

The Killian Memos display sophisticated character spacing that is ubiquitous with word-processing documents and virtually unknown in 1972. Specifically, the memos use a process called kerning, whose implementation is so computationally complex that it was not possible on any mechanical typewriter in existence in 1972. Technically, Microsoft Word does not perform true kerning by default, but the TrueType engine used by Windows supports something called "hinting" or pseudo-kerning, which is equally impossible for a mechanical typewriter, and this is what analysts were seeing. Again, the comparisons that are being made show that the memos match up with a document printed using the default settings for Microsoft Word.

The IBM Executive electric typewriter, manufactured in four models starting in 1947, featured proportional spacing.[4] However, a selection of documents from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library that were typed on an IBM Executive shows a font and proportional spacing that many say is very different from the Killian memos.[5] Unlike other IBM typewriters featuring interchangeable font balls, the IBM Executive used the traditional typebar mechanism and so the typeface could not be changed.

Word wrapping

Because a typewriter does not have the ability to know what the user is going to type next, it is up to the typist to decide when to move the carriage to the next line. Often, a typist will use hyphenation to split a word between two lines on a syllable boundary, while computer word processors (and Microsoft Word in particular) do not do this by default. The lines in the memos are split along word boundaries at the exact location where Microsoft Word would have split them.

Superscripted THs

The Killian Memos display superscripted TH characters in a smaller font on numbers (such as 111^th) that are generated automatically by Microsoft Word but some claim would be very difficult to create using 1972 typewriter technology.

In fact, several documents of unquestioned authenticity in the Bush records have similar superscripted 'th' characters interspersed throughout, although at a lower height above the baseline than the version in the disputed documents.

Centered headers

Centering headers using a proportional font is very difficult using typewriting equipment. In addition, two of the memos, dated May 4 and August 1, 1972, feature a three-line centered heading which aligns exactly, not only between the two memos (dated three months apart), but also with a comparison document created using the auto-centering feature of Microsoft Word.[6] Furthermore, the presence of a typed address header is suspicious in itself, as the standard practice was to use letterhead for all correspondence.

Smart quotes

Another feature of Microsoft Word is the automatic translation of apostrophes in English contractions. While typewriters only support a single kind of apostrophe (') and a single kind of quotation mark ("), computer word processors also have the ability to display curved quotation marks like the kind used in typesetting. An example from the Killian memo is the word "I’m", which would have been rendered as "I'm" on a typewriter or computer word processor without this feature. Microsoft Word also automatically converts double quotation marks, so "this" becomes “this”. Double quotation marks are not used in any of the Killian memos. (You may have to enlarge the font size of your browser or print this page in order to see the difference between the two kinds of apostrophes.)

This jpeg image is a 1954 ad for an IBM Executive typewriter that clearly shows the ability of that machine to produce smart quotes.

Easily reproducable using modern technology

Some critics claim that the memo could be duplicated identically with the default settings in Microsoft Word 2003 [7], while others dispute this, noting among other indiscrepancies letters and words in the original which are not aligned properly.[8] However, the discrepancies could have been introduced by a combination of FAX transmission (CBS apparently does not possess the original documents), repeated photocopying (a technique often used by forgers to give the appearance of age), and/or Photoshop manipulation. In addition, using a custom computer algorithm to find the best alignment between the scanned memo and the Word version shows an exact overlay, demonstrating how the low fidelity of the CBS documents can give the appearance of differences between individual letters in the two versions due to the random "thickening" introduced during the FAXing and/or photocopying process.[9]

Inability to reproduce using contemporary technology

Thus far, no one has been able to reproduce the exact typography, spacing and layout of the Killian memos using 1972 technology. A $36,000 reward is offered for a successful reproduction.

Other issues

In addition to the typographical concerns, other issues have been raised regarding the content and formatting of the memos.

Skepticism from Killian's family

Jerry Killian's wife and son argue that their father never used typewriting equipment and would have written these memos by hand. The family has also stated that Killian was not known for keeping personal memos. They also state that Jerry Killian was very pleased with George Bush's performance in his TANG unit.

Mention of influence by retired officer

An officer, Walter Staudt, cited in the memo dated August 18, 1973 as exerting pressure on officers to "sugar coat" their evaluations of Bush, had in fact retired from the service in March of 1972. Another officer, Earl W. Lively (now 76), who at the time was the commanding officer at the Austin TANG facility was quoted in the Washington Times as saying, "They're forged as hell."

Improper formatting

According to U.S. Air Force practice of the 1970s, the memo dated "04 May 1972" should have had the date formatted as "4 May 72". Months were abbreviated to three characters, leading zeros were not used, and only the last two digits of the year were used up until the year 2000. In this memo, other discrepancies include:[10]

The terminology "MEMORANDUM FOR" was never used in the 1970s.
The abbreviations in this letter are incorrectly formatted, in that a period is used after military rank (1st Lt.). According to the Air Force style manual, periods are not used in military rank abbreviations.
The abbreviation for Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS) includes periods after each capital letter. Again, periods are not used.
In paragraph 1, the phrase "not later than" is spelled out, followed by (NLT). NLT was, and is, a widely recognized abbreviation for "not later than" throughout all military services, so the inclusion of "not later than" was not a generally accepted practice and completely unnecessary in a letter from one military member to another.
According to an ex-Guard commander, retired Col. Bobby W. Hodges, the Guard never used the abbreviation "grp" for "group" or "OETR" for an officer evaluation review, as in the CBS documents. The correct terminology, he said, is "gp" and "OER."[11]
Lieutenant Colonel Killian's signature element is incorrect for letters prepared in the 1970s. This letter uses a three-line signature element, which was normally not used. Three-line signature elements were almost the exclusive domain of colonels and generals in organizations well above the squadron level.
Finally, the signature element is placed far to the right, instead of being left justified. The placement of the signature element to the right was not used or directed by Air Force standards until almost 20 years after the date of this letter.

Paper size

In 1921, two different committees decided on standard paper sizes for the United States. A group called the Permanent Conference on Printing established the 8" by 10½" size as the general U.S. government letterhead standard, while a Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes came up with the more familiar 8½" by 11" size now known as US Letter. The U.S. military used the smaller size up until the early 1980s, and so there would very likely have been thin vertical lines or some other indication of the smaller paper size in any photocopy of the memos if they had been typed on the 8" by 10½" paper that would have been used at the time.[12]

CBS' "Smoking Gun"

CBS authenticated their documents with General Robert "Bobby" Hodges, a former officer at the Texas Air National Guard. Hodges agreed with CBS' assessment that the documents were real. However, the authentication was performed via telephone. Once Hodges was able to view the documents for himself and had heard of claims of forgery by Killian's wife and son, he stated that they had been falsified. Hodges also claims that when CBS interviewed him, he thought the memos were handwritten, not typed. ([13] New York Times, September 12, 2004)

Independent Experts

The vast majority of independent document authentication experts contacted by the major news media and bloggers have indicated a strong likelyhood that the Killian memos are forgeries constructed with the use of modern word processing software and printer technology, with the memos "aged" using multiple generations of copying to blur the characters. Several are "certain" that the documents are fraudulent.

The case seemed to be so obvious that some have suggested that the documents were more likely forged by the Bush camp to embarrass their opponents, the argument being that someone wanting to create plausible forgeries would likely have used an actual old-style typewriter.

Quote

106 [degrees] in the Valley...I was sweating like Dan Rather checking for forged documents.

—Jay Leno, September 10, 2004, on The Tonight Show

External links

The memos

Memorandum, May 4, 1972 (pdf)
Memo to File, May 19, 1972 (pdf)
Memorandum For Record, Aug. 1, 1972 (pdf)
Memo to File, Aug. 18, 1973 (pdf)