Talk:Killian documents controversy/Archive 9

This is an archive of past discussions about Killian documents controversy. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

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Archive 7

Talk page dispute

Instead of removing bits of the discussion and combing through BLP and NPA violations, I've just archived it all in hopes that this will help inspire the participants to start fresh. Some things to keep in mind:

Do not start new sections that serve no other purpose than to complain about or attack another user.
Do not use this talk page to expound upon your opinions about or to needlessly restate facts about the controversy or its participants.
Attacks on other users or on living individuals will not be tolerated and will be removed.

Thank you. Gamaliel (Angry Mastodon! Run!) 21:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Adding a "Commonly believed misconceptions" section?

As you can see from the above debate, a large number of unsubstantiated rumors and outright falsehoods regarding the memos are in wide circulation, especially among the right wing/conservative media and blogosphere. I think it would therefore be very wise, as well as save on needless, unending debate, to create a new section that lists at least the most common of these misperceptions along with a description of where and how the misperception originated and then contrast that to what the actual verifible evidence indicates. I think that would help alleviate much of the circular bickering this topic tends to cause.

The documents are forged, the forgery is proven, and trying to pretend otherwise is highly POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.157.14 (talk) 20:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

And please follow Wikipedia policies when objecting or debating this suggestion or specific issues with it. The above "Corrections and improvements" section is actually in violation of several Wikipedia policies, but I for one will leave it alone. But any further unsourced assertions (including using refs that don't specifically support the contention) or personal attacks on living persons will be summarily removed as is done in the discussion pages of other controversial wiki topics such as Global Warming. Remember, as the masthead says: This is not a forum for general discussion of Killian documents. Any such messages will be deleted. along with This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Killian documents article. -BC aka Callmebc 14:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Everything I've typed is supported and cited. What are these "unsubstantiated rumors" and "outright falsehoods" you speak of? 74.77.222.188 19:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc added a similar section to the Talk page of Killian documents authenticity issues and is also editing that page. (SEWilco 19:43, 27 September 2007 (UTC))

Article title

Why is this article titled "Killian documents" when these memos are widely considered as not originating from Killian at all, including by his own family? I think this article should be called "Burkett documents" since Bill Burkett is the sole source for these six documents. 74.77.222.188 02:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

A reminder:

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Killian documents article.
This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.

-BC aka Callmebc 02:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Your reminder doesn't pertain to the subject I am raising at all. I'm obviously discussing improvements to the article. 74.77.222.188 03:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:WEASEL -BC aka Callmebc 03:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:COI 74.77.222.188 04:20, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Let's stay on topic, please. The title should reflect the most common term used to refer to these documents, not the one which we personally think is the most correct or accurate. There is no evidence that the phrase "Burkett documents" is in widespread usage, so it should not be used as the title of the article. Gamaliel (Angry Mastodon! Run!) 03:59, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, that makes sense. But, then, the previous title of this article, "Rathergate", is in far more widespread usage than "Killian documents". 74.77.222.188 04:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that is true. I certainly haven't observed any widespread usage of "rathergate", much less a usage significant enough to change the title of the article. That is not the only consideration, however. On Wikipedia, we favor more formal, neutral, and dull titles, as opposed to loaded, colorful, slang titles, e.g. White House travel office controversy instead of "Travelgate". Gamaliel (Angry Mastodon! Run!) 05:18, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a way to see what redirects and titles get the most traffic? "Rathergate" redirects here. How many times does that get typed into the search box vs "Killian documents"? I certainly agree that "Killian documents" is more neutral than "Rathergate", but I don't think it's neutral enough, in the sense that it implies Killian wrote them, which, as we all know, is very widely considered to not be the case. No one disagrees, however, that the documents came from Bill Burkett. Just food for thought. 74.77.222.188 05:52, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia is keeping such statistics. For the Google test: "Rathergate" 484,000, "Killian documents" 15,200, "Burkett documents" 348. Burkett documents doesn't seem to be common usage. (SEWilco 03:36, 29 September 2007 (UTC))

See Article naming -BC aka Callmebc 07:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Corrections and improvements needed for the opening paragraph

1) For one thing, there is no key background or context whatsoever given for CBS's airing of the story, most especially in not mentioning that CBS's report was only one of many press investigations into Bush's Guard service, not just in 2004, but also notably during the 2000 presidential campaign and during Bush's run for Governor of Texas in 1994 [1]. In fact, just the day prior to the CBS story, Sept. 7, 2004, there was another major release Bush's Guard records and these too showed that there were issues with Bush's Guard service [2]. CBS's interest in obtaining the Killian documents was a direct result of these longstanding questions, stirred up even further by Sen. Kerry's Vietnam service and his later antiwar activities being heavily targeted by right wing groups.

2) It is patently misleading to claim that "Many media sources have asserted that the memos are forgeries" -- those "Many media sources" are actually almost exclusively conservative/right media sources and especially blogs hostile to Kerry, CBS and Dan Rather. A quick Google shows this.

Articles and programs from The Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, and numerous other mass media sources, have characterized the memos as probable forgeries. 74.77.222.188 03:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:CITE; Neutrality_and_verifiability

[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] 74.77.222.188 05:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Ummm, I clicked on the first few and did a search on any word beginning with "forg" and only the 3rd mentions forgery, but only the context of quoting what someone else believed, and that someone was right wing fave, Joseph Newcomer. Could you please find some mainstream, reliable refs that actually say the memos are "probable forgeries"? That is what you're claiming, is it not? -BC aka Callmebc 05:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I thought you could read between the lines. You could try the other links, but if you want major mass media sources blatantly calling the documents "discredited", "now-discredited" and "widely discredited", here you go: [14][15][16]

See: WP:SYN

So, let me get this straight, does this mean you're totally fine with the article stating that major mainstream media organizations have categorized the memos as discredited? 74.77.222.188 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You're probably the kind of guy who likes to split hairs, but the reason they're considered discredited is because they're considered to be phony. In other words, forged. 74.77.222.188 06:43, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, for obvious reasons, I have to be super careful. But as far as your assertion goes, see [17] and again: WP:SYN -BC aka Callmebc 07:17, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

There's no synthesis in stating that typography experts quoted in various major mainstream media sources have concluded that the memos are forgeries. There are zero experts claiming that they are genuine. 74.77.222.188 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been watching for a MSM report saying that the documents are forgeries, and I haven't seen one. There are plenty of news items, op-eds etc hinting that they documents were forged, but that doesn't meet Wikipedia's requirements. So, until/unless the NYT or WaPo or someone similar says explicitly that the documents are forged, Wikipedia should use terms like "alleged forgeries". Citing this 2004 CNN report lets us use "discredited", but even then we'd need to be cautious. (BTW, this is an example of Wikipedia's rules working properly.) Cheers, CWC 16:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm fine with "discredited". Even CBS itself characterized them as such. Of course, they're considered discredited in the first place because of the likelihood that they're forgeries. 74.77.222.188 19:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

3) The comment "aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 Presidential Election" falsely implies that this was somehow a singular effort by CBS in order to cast questions on Bush's service, when in fact other media outlets, most especially the Associated Press, were also raising the exact same questions using official Guard records. In fact obtaining the Guard records from the DoD was an effort in itself, causing the AP to file an FOIA lawsuit that resulted in those records that were released on Sept. 7 [18].

It doesn't imply that at all. It's a factual statement and it explains exactly why the story was so explosive and part of why it became so infamous. 74.77.222.188 03:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Information suppression

Considering your record of deletions on this talk page, you are the last person who should be bringing up information suppression. The story aired on CBS in the middle of a presidential election. That is crucial to the story. Your attempt to excise that information is unconscionable. It doesn't falsely imply anything. The idea that CBS had no idea their reporting might impact the election is, of course, absurd. 74.77.222.188 05:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, was there something factually wrong with my 3rd point? Were there not a lot of other press investigations about Bush's service record all year long, up to and and even after the time of the memos [19]?And in regards to your last comment, see [20]. -BC aka Callmebc 06:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC) An -BC aka Callmebc 06:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, you can't possibly be suggesting that this page not focus on CBS. Can you? Those documents are a CBS story. It was their scoop. They aired it. 74.77.222.188 05:24, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

How would giving a mention of the context of CBS's story change the focus away from the memos? I do believe tt's called introduction and background. -BC aka Callmebc 06:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it's called muddying the water. This is a clear story. CBS went ahead with a story hinging on documents they failed to authenticate. It has nothing to do with the Associated Press. 74.77.222.188 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

ISTM that those words ("aired by CBS ...") do imply an effort to hurt Bush politically (which we know Mary Mapes was trying to do), but not a singular effort. So I'm happy to leave them in. CWC 16:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

4) Given the above, not including a link to the George W. Bush military service controversy right off the bat along with Killian documents authenticity issues also shows a lack of proper context and backgound.

A logical, accurate, and fair assessment, no? -BC aka Callmebc 02:57, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Argh! Of course we should link to George W. Bush military service controversy, preferably in the lede section. Thanks for spotting this, BC. CWC 16:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Having a bias does not disqualify a person from editing here. Most editors can keep their biases out of the articles. CWC 16:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, no. I think your one man crusade is in direct violation of WP:COI since you are the creator of this website. You have a clear bias and as such have no business editing this article. 74.77.222.188 03:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Having a bias does not disqualify a person from editing here. Most of us find it fairly easy to keep our biases out of the articles. CWC 16:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Most of us, but not User:Callmebc. Have you seen what he's tried to do to the lead? Check his edit history. 74.77.222.188 20:03, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Let the facts speak for themselves

-BC aka Callmebc 03:33, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The Facts

1 - The originals have never turned up to date.

You are stating this without a source. Also none of the DoD docs are originals either, plus Xerox machines were plentiful even in those ancient days.

Without a source? You must be joking. The originals turning up would be a news story on a par with the Ark of the Covenant turning up. As for your other point, there is obviously a huge difference between copies coming from the Department of Defense and copies coming from Bill Burkett. 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm just pointing out that you keep saying "This happened, and that happened, and he said, and she said, and so on, and so forth...." without citing stuff refs to back up each item. Getting refs for every assertion may be a pain but you need to do it. While some things may be generally known and have been discussed as length at in newpapers and on TV, some others may be just questionable stuff "discussed" on places like "Hannity & Colmes" and circulating in right wing blog sites. I've always done this regardless as good research, and Wikipedia requires it, WP:CITE. Stirring in sketchy stuff and opinion with known facts just makes for a sketch and messy argument.

And why should it be that the DoD is allowed to use copies and nobody else, especially given DoD's behavior in releasing the records, from "accidently" destroying records to having a judge intervene. That judge bit is especially significant because the files that were released because of that, the ones labeled "Documents Released on September 24, 2004" located on the DoD site contained the only proportionally printed record in the whole DoD collection, along with a couple of other funkily formatted documents. The Sept. 24 date is especially curious when you look as what had happened just before then: [21] and [22]. But regardless of this, Xerox machines and such were indeed common then, a point of mine you failed to address, along with microfiche and microfilm machines for archiving documents. If you look through all the DoD copies of Bush's records, not only will you see vast differences in quality (the flight logs are particularly bad) but even multiple, variable copies of the same records that had been stored in locations unknown. The memos also show similarly highly variable quality, especially when you try to do the Times New Roman match-up trick -- actually a couple are so bad that they look much more like they came from microfilm/microfiche as well [23], [24]

It's insane to hold the Department of Defense and Bill Burkett to the same standard. The DoD released one proportionally spaced document out of over a hundred pertaining to Bush's service. It did not come from Killian. It did not come from that TANG office. It does not match the type of the disputed documents. One out of over a hundred. But it's believable that all six of Burkett's memos are proportionally spaced? Please. 74.77.222.188 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

2 - The supposed author of the memos, Jerry Killian, is dead.

Yeah, so is Harris. Sad. But wait -- isn't Bush still around? Gosh, maybe if someone just asks him if the memos are real or not, we could end all this bickering and maybe have a beer. I for one would be happy to be proven wrong -- the idea that the President would just let people like Mapes and Rather dangle in the wind for no good reason....makes me nervous.

The story from the White House has always been that he did his duty fully and honorably and the official documents from the DoD support that. 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Read that back to yourself out loud. Also check out what then White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett gave to "Stephen from Colorado Springs" when asked about the CYA memo during an "Ask the White House" Q&A session. That really cleared up matters, eh? I should mention also that Bartlett knew Burkett and was one of the people Burkett named as having been involved in scrubbing Bush's records about 10 years ago [25] -BC aka Callmebc 13:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Bill Burkett's story has been backed up by no one. Not one soul has verified it. He has changed his story on multiple occasions and backtracked saying his story was "not accurate" and "overstated". You're probably going to ask me to cite that, too, but it's all in the cites contained in this locked article. Try reading them. 74.77.222.188 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

3 - Jerry Killian's wife and son say he didn't write the memos and that the content of the memos reflect the opposite of his true opinions of Bush.

Hmmmm...that's funny, Marian Knox, who was actually working at the base, says otherwise: [26]. Also from I know personally, family members are often if not pretty clueless about what the dad does at work, especially military guys. But you say you're an ex-Yeoman -- your significant other knew all about what you were doing?

Killian's son was also in the Guard. He says no officer in his right mind would ever write memos like that. He also says Bush requested to go to Vietnam. Twice. As for Knox, the record says otherwise. Actually authenticated Killian documents say that Bush is "an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot." 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

And how would Killian's son know that Bush requested to go to Vietnam twice? And you're being deliberatelyh a teeny bit misleading about what the "record says" -- you're quoting an older rating report from when Bush was apparently still mostly doing his service acceptibly well. His last rating report, which was done amid all the skethy and questionable stuff, says quite the opposite: [27]. -BC aka Callmebc 13:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Killian's son knows Bush requested Vietnam service twice because his dad told him so: [28] Also, you apparently don't know what the word "opposite" means.74.77.222.188 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

4 - The only source of the documents is a notorious Bush basher and a man who admitted to lying about where the documents came from.

"notorious Bush basher"? I think you have to remove this as per: WP:LIVING

He's notorious for bashing Bush. That's just true. 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

5 - After being caught lying, this known Bush basher and admitted liar said he got the memos from a mysterious woman.

Again I think you have to remove this as per: WP:LIVING

6 - This mysterious woman has never been identified.

Sort of like using anonymous IP addresses, eh? Intriguing, but this has to do with...what now?

It illustrates that Bill Burkett is the sole source for the documents. 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

7 - When pressed about the originals, the known Bush basher and admitted liar said he burned them.

Again: WP:LIVING

8 - No one has been able to reproduce the memos with technology from the time period. If you can do it, there's a $50,000 reward in it for you.

I checked and the offer is no longer there. I doubt that they would have paid up anyway -- I could only find functioning daisywheel printers going back to the early 80's. There is this 1973 document I have that's in that faux Arial font [29], but that's not Times Roman. Oh well....

Oh well. Of course, according to your website, daisywheel printers might be found in law offices, but not the TANG. 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

9 - The source of the memos said on Democratic websites and email lists prior to the airing of the story that "down and dirty" tactics were justified to keep Bush from winning election.

WP:CITE

[30] 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

10 - He also said that he and others had "reassembled" documents damaging to Bush a few weeks before the CBS story aired.

I hate to be a nudge, but: WP:CITE

[31] 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what those facts say to User:Callmebc, but they speak loud and clear to most of us.

Hmmm....[32]

LOL! That's a good one. But, come on, Bill Burkett's history and statements have to give you pause about the veracity of the documents that he is the sole source for. They couldn't have come from a less credible source. 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

74.77.222.188 05:09, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll leave it for you to remove your personal attacks on Burkett -- see [33]. -BC aka Callmebc

I'd remove them if they were untrue. A prerequisite of libel is that the information is false. Bill Burkett is famed for bashing Bush and is an admitted liar. 74.77.222.188 07:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Again: WP:CITE and WP:LIVING -BC aka Callmebc 14:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Geez Louise, have you read any of the cites in this article? Do you know anything about the story that you so badly want to edit?[34] 74.77.222.188 19:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

There is no need to repeat your opinion of Burkett over and over again. Please refrain unless directly relevant to the immediate discussion. Gamaliel (Angry Mastodon! Run!) 16:21, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

What exactly are we fighting about? A forensic expert stated that they were "probably forgeries", which is cited in the article. CBS admits that they have never been able to authenticate them, which is also cited. It isn't necessary, nor is it proper, to use Wikipedia's voice to state that the ARE forgeries. There is enough factual information for most people to be able to draw the conclusion that they are probably forgeries. The same goes with the Burkett characterizations. If there are reliable source statements about his character or motives, then cite and attribute them. But it's not proper to for Wikipedia's voice to state those allegations as fact. - Crockspot 16:51, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The language in the lead that stood unchallenged until User:Callmebc showed up was: "Subsequently, a number of expert forensic document examiners concluded that the six memos are almost certain forgeries." Why he has a problem with that, I have no idea. Oh, wait, it's because he (or she) and Mary Mapes are the only people in the entire world who think that they're genuine. Even Bill Burkett doesn't vouch for their authenticity anymore. 74.77.222.188 19:26, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

What if the "almost certain" was changed to "probably"? That sounds more neutral, and more in line with the sources to me. - Crockspot 19:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

"probably forged", "most likely forged", whatever. Except that some of these experts flat out said that they're definitely forged and certainly forged, so I think the original language in the lead saying they were found to be "almost certainly forged" is all the softening of an absolute needed. 74.77.222.188 19:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any expert saying "definitely" forged, except maybe on blogs and other not-quite-Reliable venues. IIRC, they all say "probably" or "almost certainly" forged. I like Crockspot's suggestion: "probably forged". The current wording ("Many media sources have asserted that the memos are forgeries.") is far too strong (and uncited ... oops). Let's fix it. Cheers, CWC 16:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Joseph Newcomer said they were definitely forged and was widely quoted in the mainstream media. I agree with your assessment of the current wording. 74.77.222.188 19:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Coming around again

Gamaliel, and colleagues, I was going to explain how this argument over the intro has come and gone at least once or twice before, but reviewing the archives of Talk I see Gamaliel was in the thick of it about a year before I started editing this article in 2005, over two years ago. On a practical level, regarding the introduction: The statement "As no original documents have been produced, it is difficult to ascertain their validity," could be more precise. Without originals it is impossible to positively authenticate the documents. However, more than a few document examiners concluded the docs were forged, including as we all know the expert retained by the Thornburgh-Boccardi investigation, on the basis of typography, abbreviations, content, and uh, the fact that it matches a Microsoft Word document (gee, what are the odds on that?). On the other hand, it is not factual to assert the docs are definitively forged; this has not been "proven." MOST people upon reviewing the chain of extremely unlikely events, timing, provenance, and physical characteristics such as typography and content associated with these documents will conclude they are not authentic, but it is not our job to conclude this in the article. This is despite whatever legitimate criticisms may exist about the GWB military service issue. I disagree with CallmeBC's position regarding authenticity BUT I am not against linking to GWB military service controversy - I think we used to have that link in there and it is part of the context. Let people read about GWB's military service problems if they want, and let them also read how CBS and Mapes were so desperate to get Bush before the election they went to air with basically no evidence and then lied about it for two weeks. So what can we do to unlock and edit the article? Kaisershatner 14:06, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Wait for the inauguration of the next U.S. President? ;) I hope that once the topic becomes history rather than politics passions about this page might cool. htom 17:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Is President Bush a primary candidate in your state? (SEWilco 03:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC))

That doesn't matter, I live in Minnesota; we haven't voted for a Republican since 1972 (Nixon). htom 04:04, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, so the article should not be blocked in Minnesota. Unless Dan Rather runs for office. (SEWilco 04:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC))

Review Panel Section

Shouldn't there be a note that Richard Thornburgh, one of the two people appointed to head CBS's review, was Attorney General under George H.W. Bush? Since this whole controversy ultimately concerns George W. Bush's service in the National Guard, it seems relevant that someone so close to George W. Bush's father was appointed to investigate Dan Rather for investigating George W. Bush. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.86.242.145 (talk) 04:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

CBS put someone on the investigation who was likely to be sympathetic to the critics of the story. Organizations do that sort of thing when they want a fair investigation. Gazpacho 05:49, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

A quick question regarding the copyrights

The image in the article is tagged as fair-use. However, since the document is asserted to be US military document, aren't they supposed to be public domain?

I'm sorry if this has cropped up before (and I'm half-sure if it has): If it has, I'd just like to have a brief clarification on what exactly is the copyright status of "documents alleged to be work of US government" for as far as Wikipedia's copyright rules are concerned. =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 15:35, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

See U.S.government works Basically if it originates with the US government and not, say, some private subcontractor working for the government, it's in the public domain. Obviously, this doesn't include classified docs you stumble upon, but once declassified or obtained via FOIA, you're good to go. -BC aka Callmebc 16:24, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep, basically what I suspected. So assuming this was a released document, it'd be good to go, but right now, we're in a stalemate where no one dares to sue anyone over a copyright infringement / posting private material so it's Fair Use. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 19:04, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually your question gave me an idea: upload a bunch of Bush's relevant military records, which are inherently public domain, into Wikipedia Commons. Bush's military records are at this DoD site, but the "good stuff" is buried in very poorly organized and unindexed PDF collections. And even then, copies of individual documents show up randomly here and there in a wide range of quality, some copies barely readable. Someone should find the best copies of Bush's key records, copy them from the PDF's into individual image files and just upload them all into Wikipedia. Right now, the only extensive image copies of Bush's records are here and here, both of which some Pro-Bush folk might take exception to even linking to for reference. While this would be most useful for the George W. Bush specific wikis, I can see some use for them in the Killian ones. Ya think? -BC aka Callmebc 19:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

A cupla comments

I'm back. I actually have to finish other wiki matters before returning to dealing with informational train wrecks that make up the Killian wikis, but I can make a few comments.

1) All of the information originating from right wing blog/conservative blog site regarding the memos, starting at the very beginning with "Buckhead's" pile of factlessness, [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/replies?c=47], are demonstrably, factually confused, wrong or outright fabrications in either their entirety or in their key assertions. Feel free to challenge me on this, but under the condition that all I have to do is just show at least half the "points" in whatever claim is being made to be wrong to discredit the entire assertion. Some right wingers are under the impression that if they make, say, 10 allegations, the burden is on you to disprove all 10 of them -- no. If someone tells you 10 things and you discover that the first 5 are wrong, you've already got yourself a completely discredited source if not outright liar.

"If someone tells you 10 things and you discover that the first 5 are wrong, you've already got yourself a completely discredited source if not outright liar." Would that be like Bill Burkett? From what I read he made some discredited claims about being transferred to Panama etc. and CBS itself considered him to be of dubious credibility prior to his involvement in the Killian thing. Kaisershatner 13:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

"From what I read"? Be careful to source your allegations when dealing with living persons as per Wikipedia policy [35]. This long interview with Burkett doesn't exactly portray either a bad man or a cunning forger, [36]. Burkett claimed he lied to protect his source, and given all the angry fuss the memos had generated, any source would have been wise to not be named. Also these types of memos are personal notes and not official records, so they had to have been stored off base all this time, and given their likely possible locations, I can't think of any circumstances where these types of documents would have been obtained with permission. Meaning that whoever took them or copied them did so illegally. Also please don't put an entry like this and mark it as a "minor" edit. -BC aka Callmebc 15:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

He lied to protect his source? I think he lied to give the memos an air of authenticity that they lacked. If he had originally told them that they came from some mysterious "Lucy Ramirez" woman and that he burned the originals, CBS probably would have laughed in his face. 74.77.222.188 05:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, I am free to write that "I have read Burkett is a completely discredited source" on a Talk page without providing a footnote for myself. I am not asserting it as proven fact on his WP entry or to this WP article either. And FWIW I am referring to the previous Burkett/Bush incident, involving his "transfer to Panama," IIRC CBS itself considered him an unreliable source. Just wondering if based on your logic of proving the first 5 things wrong, in this case his original accusations, you also think Burkett is a bad source for his latter ones. Kaisershatner 16:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

See Thornburgh-Boccardi report pp49-54, esp p. 50: "The various interviews and statements revealed inconsistencies in Lieutenant Colonel Burkett's allegations, which led to questions regarding his credibility and whether his claims could be proven." Also on p. 53 "As in 2000, Lieutenant Colonel Burkett made claims during this time period that he soon retracted." He also changed his story about the provenance of the documents (that is objective fact as documented in this WP article with footnotes), and the fact that he "destroyed the originals" (what possible reason could he have for that?), and I'm wondering whether he meets your "if someone tells you 10 things and the first 5 are wrong" test. Kaisershatner 16:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Aside from this getting away from the question of the Killian documents themselves, how are you counting to "5"? And if you're going to bring up the incompetent Thornburgh/Boccardi panel to attack Burkett's credibility, then I'm entitled to do the same with then Col. Bobby Hodges, the former base commander during Bush's last years, and then Major Rufus Martin, the personel officer who seemed heavily involved in blocking an official USAF inquiry into Bush's missing rating report [37], [38].

Hey, BC. Are you saying you literally meant 5 out of 10 things? Strange. I thought you were pretty clearly indicating that a person's historically inaccurate statements allow one to doubt the credibility of their subsequent ones, to save you the time of point-by-point refutation. I can't say I agree with your logic, since even a proven liar might later be right, but I would say their history should color your judgement or perhaps prejudice you against finding them wholly credible in the future. But if you can't concede that either Burkett has some credibility problems as evidenced by his history of changing claims about Bush, or even that CBS itself was concerned about his credibility problem, OR that the T/B report was competent to judge Burkett's credibility at all, OR that a reasonable observer might at least have some concerns about Burkett's credibility, then it probably isn't productive for us to argue at all. Are you saying that nothing at all makes you the least bit suspicious about the source of these documents, Burkett's changing story about their source, and his decision to destroy the originals? Kaisershatner 20:26, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to get into a debate into who's the biggest liar, but let's look at some of the people involved in this mess and see how credible or honest they may or not be. While it's true that Burkett did indeed gave CBS a couple of explanations for where he got the docs,[39], if he was indeed protecting the source of them and was not comfortable with dodging questions, his confused and contradictory responses for where they came from would make sense for someone who is not use to lying, even to protect someone. As I just pointed out, Hodges and Martin have a few "things" to explain regarding their responses to the CBS panel investigation. "Buckhead," the originator of the forgery charge, was laughably completely wrong in his assessment of 70's (and earlier) office tech with his first post [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/replies?c=47]. That could have been attributed to him just shooting his mouth about stuff he knew little about, which isn't really lying-lying; but in a later post, [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1526303/posts], he portrays himself as an expert on office tech, which he obviously isn't, thereby then crossing over into the liar zone. Charles Johnson was able to replicate just one of the 4 memo's in Word on his Mac, but still went ahead to proclaim all the "documents" -- plural -- as being forged [40]. He like Buckhead could also just have been shooting his mouth off about things he knew little or nothing about, but he too ended up portraying himself as an expert [41], meaning that he either lied about his credentials or else misrepresented his results (the other 3 memos recreate poor to not at all with Word, which he should known and discussed if he was true, legitimate expert). Then you have the conservative/right wing mediasphere as a whole churning out piles and piles of confused and utter nonsense, like that Mother's Day anecdote, as "proof" of forgery. I'm not so sure to characterize it as lies or as just groupthink confusion, but the end result was widespread misinformation regardless. And then you have Bush acting very, very guilty in his disingenuous avoidence of officially commenting at all on any of the documents [42], even though he is by far in the best position to attest for their authenticity or lack thereof. In some respects, his silence was the best indicator that the memos were dead on.

It's simpler and less problematic, though, to just focus on the memos, their contents, context and appearance, and it's those aspects of this whole messy business that should be the primary focus. I think. But what do I know.... -BC aka Callmebc 22:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, at least we can agree on the last bit. Since I am not a document examiner, I can rely only on what's published on that subject, and of course per WP policy all of us shouldn't be doing our own research here about their authenticity, just reporting what has been written about them. Doubts about Burkett's credibility were a part of the Killian documents story- a major part of what distinguishes the Killian episode from the broader GWB military service controversy is CBS' being way out on a limb without authenticated proof of their allegations (Rather "taken from Killian's personal files"?!). In my view, suspicion about Burkett's reliability, as noted by CBS itself prior to 2004 and as noted in the T/B report, sets up the rest of the narrative. I'm not sure that Hodges or Martin's credibility has the same importance to THIS story - maybe more on the entire issue of GWB military service? Finally, the last time I was day-to-day active on this article, the GWB military service controversy was linked in the intro [43] and I say again I think it should be in there. It is certainly part of the background and context of this story. Kaisershatner 14:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Much of this section is really just "FYI" because I'm trying to work within the Wikipedia rules, in this case in regards to WP:OR. Presumably anyone wanting to edit/add stuff in any of the Killian memos related wikis may have some interest in what a deep analysis of records and comments (or lack thereof) show if you know where to look. While you can argue that Burkett's credibility has been questioned by the mainstream press far more than anyone else in relation to this matter [44], I can also very clearly demonstrate that the mainstream press didn't exactly delve very deeply, if at all, into key details and overall made a complete botch of factchecking things related to the memos and even to the applicable DoD records themselves. Only the AP made that much of an effort, especially in filing an FOIA lawsuit to force a very, VERY reluctant release of more of Bush's military service records [45][46][47] [48] [49] the result of which was kind of lost amid all the CBS Killian memos turmoil, [50][51].

Whatever, as tempting as it might be to just put all this stuff into the main Wiki article, that wouldn't be playing by the rules. I certainly can, however, try to deal with the malicious/clueless nonsense akin to the "Mother's Day" fable. And the omission of the background into CBS's Killian story and having no immediate links to the Bush service "controversy" just shows that the wrong people have been "overseeing" the Wiki for far too long. Another problem, perhaps, that needs to be dealt with. We shall see.... -BC aka Callmebc 20:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

BC, I'm actually heartened to read what you wrote. Yes, it is a fundamental issue with WP:NOT that if the press didn't delve into the story as much as you might like, we are nonetheless limited in the article to report what they did do. Any more would simply be injecting your (prodigious) original research. For what it's worth, as I have said, I agree with you that the GWB military service controversy should be linked in the intro, as it used to be. It is as much part of the context as the presidential election timing. As a final note, please do your best just to omit statements like "the wrong people have been 'overseeing' the Wiki..." It doesn't help your case and it doesn't help make the article better. Don't make it personal. We're all volunteers. Best, Kaisershatner 13:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

On page 154 (by the PDF count) of the report [52], there is this little jewel of apparent fabrication by both those two: in a discussion of the August 1, 1972 Killian memo, [53], where Killian notes his verbal suspension of Bush, the panel report states, "the Panel was told by both Major General Hodges and Colonel Martin that this document refers to the Commander ("Comdr") of the "Hq 147 FTR Gp" who had issued the verbal order suspending Lieutenant Bush. Although Major General Hodges had no specific recollection of issuing the verbal order over 30 years ago, he was the commander of the 147th Fighter Interceptor Group at the time. Further, the order suspended Lieutenant Bush solely for failing to take his annual physical. No other reason for the suspension, such as failing to perform to TexANG standards, was provided in the official Bush records. This is another indication that the August 1, 1972 memorandum may not mesh with the official Bush records.

How does this catch Hodges and Martin in a fabrication? Well: 1) Killian was Bush's immediate commander, so by normal military chain of command, it would have been his responsibility to suspend Bush and not the base commander; 2) Both Hodges and Martin signed off on the order in an official record dated Sept. 5, 1972 (and stamped on Sept 19) to suspend Bush, [54], but there is no mention of a "verbal" order being given by Hodges, yet Aug. 1 is referred to as the date of the order; 3) the National Guard Bureau notes the order for Bush's suspension as having been a verbal order given on Aug. 1, 1972 [55]; and 4) the actual wording in the Killian memo, "I conveyed my verbal orders to commander, 147th Ftr Intrcp Gp with request for orders for suspension and convening of a flight review board IAW AFM 35-13." matches up exactly with the sequence in the records -- Hodges was indeed the "commander, 147th Ftr Intrcp Gp" and would be the one to sign off on the verbal suspension, just as the records show that he did over a month later.

Also the claim that "Further, the order suspended Lieutenant Bush solely for failing to take his annual physical. No other reason for the suspension, such as failing to perform to TexANG standards, was provided in the official Bush records." is overtly highly suspect POV pushing by someone on the panel -- a pilot failing to take the annual physical was very serious business in and of itself, as the referred-to "AFM 35-13" USAF regulations clearly describe: [56].

Ergo, Hodges and Martin lied to the panel. Also Hodges's claim of having Hodges had no "specific recollection of issuing the verbal order over 30 years ago" laughably improbable in both the face of all the available memory-jogging records available, and in the context of Bush's dad being a very big shot at the time and then Vice President just several years later, [57], not to mention the later activities of Bush himself [58]. I personally would love to see Dan Rather's lawsuit get Hodges, Martin and maybe some of the panel members on the witness stand with a sharp lawyer, and use best evidence rather than going through all this tedious sleuthing stuff. FYI. -BC aka Callmebc 18:48, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It's stunning to me that you can so brazenly call Major General Hodges and Colonel Martin liars, yet you swallow Bill Burkett's ridiculous "Lucy Ramirez" tale without the slightest hesitation. 74.77.222.188 05:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

2) A very good example of #1 is the "Mother's Day" anecdote that was stuck into the Killian documents authenticity issues by SEWilco -- it originated in a Washington Times column written by alleged old Bush military bud, William Campenni,[59], and he uses one of the Killian memos dated May 4, 1972, [60], to make a series of claims: the address on the memo was wrong; Killian ordered Bush to take a physical on a Mother's Day weekend, May 13-14, 1972; the base was closed on Mother's Day weekend and May 20-21 was the next drill weekend; Killian would have known all this; therefore the memo is a forgery. However virtually nothing in Campenni claims check out as factual: that same "wrong" address also shows up in the DoD records [61]; Killian had ordered Bush not later than the 14th, which according to this DoD record, [62] was Bush's last day before he "cleared" the base on the 15th to head to Alabama (or parts unknown); Bush's flight logs at the DoD, [63], when matched with an appropriate calendar, [64][65] clearly shows that as pilot who had to fly regularly to maintain certification, Bush was taking flights all through the week and month, and not just a weekend or two as described by Campenni; the memo in question was from a commander to a pilot under his command on the same base -- it would have just been put in the pilot's mail box at the base mail room, meaning that Bush would have gotten the memo Friday morning, May 5, 1972, at the very latest, meaning that there is was another full weekend for drilling, May 6-7 (if that had mattered), and not May 20-21 as claimed by Campenni; and if Campenni was indeed an old military buddy of Bush, he would have known all this, meaning that either he had fabricated his relation to Bush, [66], or else fabricated everything in his Washington Times column (feel free to try to explain it any other way).

3) The "expert retained by the Thornburgh-Boccardi" is Peter Tytell whose expertise is really just in old typewriters [67] and NOT document forensics per se. Indeed, in that Thornburgh-Boccardi report appendix he contributed [68], he shows extremely poor forensics research: no print samples from the Executive typewriter he claims to have examined, and not even a mention of the proportionally printing word processing systems that were commonly available at that time [69][70][71].

4) Claims that the memos match Microsoft Word document recreations are also false if you consider all the memos: Charles Johnson only recreated in Word just one of 4 memos CBS used semi-well [72] (I won't go into why it was far from perfect here), which should have begged the question about whether one could do this trick with the other 3 memos CBS used for its story, nevermind all 5 remaining ones that CBS had in its possession. Maybe because the results were decidedly mixed, to say the least: [73][74] and not to mention my little contribution [75]

5) Given what happened when certain editors and their buddies from here and the other Killian wiki decided to pay a visit to the Global Warming wiki to apply their "reasoning," [76], I suspect any admin would be very wary to lift a full block here that soon.

6) Also, I can't really go into too much detail here because it's way too much original research, but....if you assume that all of the memos as group are either real or false, meaning that if you prove one of them as being forged, they were all forged, and likewise if you prove one to be authentic, they are all authentic, then the memos could not have been forged under any circumstances thanks to an issue with the shortest of the memos, [77], that CBS didn't even use: the bit involving Killian's concern for Bush's and [James] Bath's flight certification could only have been forged via an analysis of Bush's flight logs, which do show a very sharp rise in training flights just after the date on the memo. The problem is that the flight logs were not released by the DoD until after just a couple of days after CBS had obtained the memos, and there isn't even a hint otherwise in the rest of the DoD records [78] indicating an issue with Bush's flight certification. A short summary is here [79]. Yes, that is original research, but anyone can dupe it. FYI. -BC aka Callmebc 02:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Where do you get this crazy idea that that memo could only have been forged after a careful analysis of Bush's flight records? All the memo says is for someone to update him on Bath and Bush's flight certifications. That's it. No details whatsoever. You're going to make the mere date of the memo the basis for your claim that the memos couldn't be forged under any circumstances? That's ridiculous. 74.77.222.188 05:17, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

2) Discuss "Mother's Day" in the Talk page for the article where the material exists. (SEWilco 03:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC))

I clearly used that as an example in regards to misinformation appearing on both the main Killian wikis, and in more direct response to misinformation presented in recent discussions on this talk page [80]. Hence it's in regards to improving the quality of both articles and quite relevant.

~~But since you popped in, I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind explain to me and the other editors this sequence of edits on your part along with your reasoning:~~
~~1) You were the original editor who added the Mother's Day anecdote on Sept. 21, [81]. Your original entry went:~~
The document dated Thursday May 4, 1972, ordered Bush to report for a flight physical not later than May 14. Even if the wrong address on the letter had been correct, Bush could not have been expected to get the letter in time to get a physical the weekend of May 6-7. The Ellington Air Guard Base was closed for Mother's Day the weekend of May 13-14. The next Air Guard drill weekend was May 20-21.
~~2) I reverted the add as "unsupported nonsense -- check the talk page for details)" and showed why on the talk page:[82].~~
3) You re-added your Mother's Day entry nevertheless, and kept doing so regardless of my showing serious issues with it based on source docs. Your primary justification was that it was "properly cited material" despite it being only an anecdote appearing in an opinion column written by a purported old friend of Bush, William Campenni, and appearing a couple of years ago in a relatively minor, conservative newspaper, The Washington Times. You also kept including a broken link to the article, which was no longer available online by the paper.
4) At one point, I used an except of the article that appeared in the Weekly Standard, [83], that showed you changing the wording the anecdote: you quoted Campenni as writing that Killian had "ordered Bush to report for a flight physical not later than May 14" but the Weekly Standard had the it quoted as "1st Lt. Bush was supposedly ordered to report for his physical, May 13-14, 1972". I also pointed out that your quote was indeed actually taken from the Killian memo in question, [84], dated May 4th, 1972: "not later than (NLT) 14 May, 1972".
5) But you nevertheless still claimed, [85], that Campenni did write "report for a flight physical not later than May 14" and dismissed my using the Weekly Standard excerpt as "Your link has five sentences from Campenni's column, and the first sentence is marked as having been altered. You think Campenni wrote a column with five sentences." [86].
6) When I disputed your version over and over, including citing WP:PROVEIT, you actually wrote at one point,"For a prepaid consulting fee of $50 I will post detailed instructions on how anyone can buy a copy of the the Campenni column. For an additional $20 I will have a printed copy sent to you. I am not responsible if you won't read those instructions any better than you've read what is above, nor if the detailed instructions repeat anything which is above."[87].
7) Clashwho (aka 74.77.222.188) reverted my edit and added this more full reprint of Campanni's column, [88], [89], but that also showed the exact same wording as reported by the Weekly Standard piece I used: "1st Lt. Bush was supposedly ordered to report for his physical, May 13-14, 1972".
8) This was your response to the identically worded Rantburg ref: "Another editor has added a link to a copy of the Campenni column. I didn't check it word-for-word, but except for different paragraph structure it looks like it is probably complete. It's not identical to the Washington Times copy but seems to have the same words. "[90].
9) I was blocked at this point over trying to revert your unsupported and now proven fabrication, but continued arguing over it with Clashwho/74.77.222.188 at my talk page [91]. This apparently led to him changing the Mother's Day wording to indicate that the wording was the memo's and not Campenni's, leading to very confusing wording that showed Campenni being contradicted by the very memo he's suppose to be quoting from, [92].
So it would appear that you knowingly fabricated at least one key element of that now utterly discredited anecdote, and hence kept re-adding it out of deliberately malicious intent. But I admit appearances can be deceiving, so I at least would welcome a good explanation for the above sequence of your actions. -BC aka Callmebc 13:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Anyone here can chack whether the phrase "to report for a flight physical not later than May 14" is used by Campenni, but you should not be trying to use this example someplace other than where it has already been discussed. Don't move the example away from its existing responses and don't scatter the conversation. Discuss that item in Talk:Killian documents authenticity issues. (SEWilco 14:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC))

Hmmm....I'm sorry, but I still don't see "to report for a flight physical not later than May 14" is being used by Campenni in this reprint, [93], which you yourself said was "a copy of the Campenni column." Perhaps it might help if you could copy and paste it in this discussion (which is, of course, highly germane to both Killian wikis, I do believe.). -BC aka Callmebc 14:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Material above stricken due to being in wrong place. Moved to existing discussion in Talk:Killian documents authenticity issues. (SEWilco 19:55, 3 October 2007 (UTC))

Changes to the main article

I was going through to fix a bunch of mistakes individually, but there were just so many issues I came across that I corrected as many as I could as part of more logical, more comprehensive, fact and ref-based restructuring. If I made any errors, please post them here for discussion. Thanks. -BC aka Callmebc 22:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Discuss your proposed changes one at a time instead of making tangled edits. (SEWilco 03:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC))

Well, see the thing is that there were just so many things wrong with the article, and there have been just so many issues dealing with all these troublesome, malicious "editors" usually hiding behind anonymous IP's, sockpuppets, and whatnot demonstrating everything other than an interest in improving the article. Your sole "contribution" on any of the Killian wikis, for example, involved inserting that Mother's Day "anecdote" in the Authenticity wiki that was laughably and demonstrably false in every way, which you nevertheless went to great lengths to protect. You and others, some operating under sockpuppets, also spent a lot of effort to block inclusion of refs to actual Air Force writing guides because it didn't agree with some imaginary "Air Force style manual in effect at the time" that had been used to nevertheless attack likewise imaginary issues with the format of the memos -- a point illustrated by actual available samples other military memorandums for records that, again, you and others nevertheless have been attempting to block as well. And when I tried to get you to actually discuss anything, you only end up making nonsensical non sequiturs like this last exchange:

By your logic, if there was a Wikipedia article somehow involving a widespread claim of how back in the early 70's, cherry blossoms were yellow and purple, but not pink, you would object to including any sourced pictures of pink cherry blossoms from the early 70's because "we wouldn't know how such random pictures are related to this article." [personal attack deleted] -BC aka Callmebc 22:00, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

It means that when discussing the cherry trees of Washington, D.C., a picture only shows that something which looks like cherry trees are there; for information about the diplomatic and emotional reasons why the cherry trees are there I'd have to cite sources which describe why the cherry trees are there. Or if the article is about the biological classification of those trees I'd have to cite an authority which identifies the type of those trees. (SEWilco 04:06, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you deny any of this? Or are you just going to again delete this as a "personal attack"?

Whatever, let's get back to the topic of improving the main article. When I went looking into the details, as with the Authenticity wiki, there were lot, LOTS of problems from bad terminolgy, missing refs, getting the details wrong, ommitting background info, weaselly insertions of unsupported right wing talking points, and so on and so on.

Some examples:

"'th' glyphs" should have been "'th'" ordinals"

The four documents were presented as authentic in a 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004 falsely implies that the entire show was about them when they were only mentioned in a standard 12-13 minute segment, and that they were the feature when they were only part of the overall segment that actually featured an interview with Ben Barnes over longstanding allegations of Bush's preferential treatment in getting into the Air National Guard

Speaking of which, the article falsely had Bush's service as being in the "United States National Guard" and not the Air National Guard as was the case. Not a small difference considering all the nonsensical assertions that Bush only trained on weekends when as a pilot, he trained throughout the week.

"Many media sources have asserted that the memos are forgeries." is false. Only the right wing/conservative media has done this. The mainstream media has called them discredited or such, but only because of CBS's failure to authenticate them. I've already had long "debates" with sockpuppets over this, one of whom at one point added a bunch of refs as "proof" except that none of them actually used the word forgery in any form. Actually further down into the article is the correct description: No generally recognized document experts have positively authenticated the memos. Since CBS used only faxed and photocopied duplicates, authentication to professional standards is impossible, regardless of the provenance of the originals. Not being able to authenticate is not the same as saying that they forged.

Where the hell do you get off calling me a sockpuppet? Read those refs again. 74.77.222.188 05:22, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Statements like Copies of the documents were obtained by CBS News producer Mary Mapes from Lt. Col. Bill Burkett, a former officer in the Texas Army National Guard (TexARNG). omit that this was done solely as part of an overall media investigation going on at the time into Bush's service records, a point made in the Thornburgh-Boccardi report.

Actually the whole background of the press investigations is omitted, including a major release of official records by the DoD under an AP FOIA lawsuit the very day before the CBS story aired. Instead the article falsely implies suggest that this was just some some sort of singular effort by CBS to disparage Bush "less than two months before the 2004 Presidential Election".

Dan Rather asserted the documents "were taken from Colonel Killian’s personal files" is a parsed, misleading misquote. What Rather actually said that they were "a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file".

The authenticity of the documents was challenged within hours on Internet forums and blogs is grossly misleading: the authenticity was challenged within hours by only right wing blog sites, starting with the Free Republic.

As no original documents have been produced, it is difficult to ascertain their validity. is repeated as The documents have subsequently never been authenticated, and no originals have been produced for examination. within a couple of paragraphs. But then further down, in the article, it's written as Since CBS used only faxed and photocopied duplicates, authentication to professional standards is impossible, regardless of the provenance of the originals.

No mention is made whatsoever of Mary Mapes's defense of the story, either in the context of what she told the CBS panel, or what she wrote in her follow-up book, "Truth and Duty"

Weaselly edits like "Document experts have challenged the authenticity of the documents as photocopies of valid originals on a variety of grounds ranging from anachronisms of their typography, their quick reproducibility using modern technology, and to errors in their content and style" and using using a ref this [94], which provides no support at all for the their quick reproducibility using modern technology, which is indeed a contention associated with right wing blog sites like Little Green Footballs. Also, only one of the four memos had ever been reasonably reproduced with "modern technology".

And these are just for starters. My initial rewrite corrected some of the major issues I believe, but there is some work still needing to be done. Like I said, if I had made any errors in accuracy, please point them out. And if you wish to genuinely help to improve the article, such efforts will be welcome. -BC aka Callmebc 13:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC) -BC aka Callmebc 15:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

There are so many things wrong with your edit that I agree that it was better to revert it and discuss it. Given the history of this article you should have known that doing a big change like that would only start a revert war. Let's start at the beginning with the intro section. I think that your deletion of the "Background and Timeline" section, moving all that content in altered form into the intro, was a retrograde step. It makes the intro far too long and wordy. Look at the intro to a featured article like 1996 United States campaign finance controversy for example. Three succinct paras that lay out the essentials without going into excessive detail. Your quotes from the contents of the memos, for example, are way too much detail for an intro. For what it's worth I would argue that the current version's intro is also too long. Dcxf 01:36, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

There are so many things wrong with your edit -- really? Do tell. Whatever, the overall article was/is currently a disinformational nightmare. I debated about how much of the "highlights" of the memos to stick into the introductory paragraphs, and in retrospect, I maybe should have done so as bullet points for a better visual. The important thing, though, is the corrected intro is far, FAR more accurate in both content and context [95], yes? And my original intention was indeed to do a series of smaller updates, but since I was getting into a series of absurd revert wars over even small, indisputable issues with hostile, politically driven editors in a variety of guises, there was little incentive to not just try to fix a whole bunch of overt problems all at once as a starting point. Makes sense, no? If people had played nice, or at least nicer.... -BC aka Callmebc 22:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to go into everything that is wrong with your edit because that will start another long, rambling thread that goes nowhere. Please address the point. How do you justify having such a long intro? The place for the details of context and content is in the body of the article, not the intro. And please consider that if small changes start a revert war, what do you think large sweeping changes will do? Dcxf 22:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Participants should be aware that User:Callmebc thinks these articles are part of some sort of war [96], has stated an intent to cover these articles with changes [97], and expects to break 3RR a lot more [98]. Meanwhile, he erroneously challenges one small issue (Talk:Killian documents authenticity issues#"Mother's Day") and pretends he expects us to resolve many entangled alterations. I have to admit he did produce one amazing work at User talk:Charles Matthews#SEWilco - Revising quotes and diffs to hide a lie (yes, he notified administrators of it). (SEWilco 03:47, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

CallmeBC considers his version NPOV

I request that the main article page be reverted back to this diff: [99]. Yes I know this is a contentious, controversial issue, but the version of the page now locked is an older one with a host of uncorrected errors and NPOV violations that was reverted to just before the block was turned on (and it may well have been intended, or "gamed" that way -- check the contrib history and my 3RR complaint). -BC aka Callmebc 14:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I request that callmebc's request be denied. The version he wishes to be restored is itself one huge NPOV violation. It would be better to discuss and agree upon each of the points in the diff between that version and the current version point by point, here on the discussion page, before proceeding.

HiramShadraski 14:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

In that 3RR complaint I mentioned, please pay particular attention to my comments regarding HiramShadraski as well as those regarding the Changes to the main article section located on this page. And while an admin, Sam_Blacketer did decide there was "no violation," you may want to decide for yourself what the evidence strongly suggests if not outright shows. -BC aka Callmebc 15:12, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not going to get into a shouting match here, but (referring to callmebc's 3RR compaint):

I am not a sockpuppet. Check my contribs.
I am not in collusion with SEWilco, or anyone else.
callmebc's suggestion that I "recuse" myself from editing this article is ignored. If someone conducts themselves inappropriately, there are proper channels for action.

HiramShadraski 15:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Did I say you were a sockpuppet? No. Have I had deal with troublesome sockpuppets and anonymous IP editors in all of this? Yes, very much so: [100][101]. As far as the the other stuff about collusion, yeah, I'm sure it was just a remarkable coincidence that you, who have no past edits (at least at all recently) in either of the Killian wikis, just happened to have popped in and by sheer accident helped SEWilco avoid a 3RR block by adding 2 reverts to his 3 in regards to blocking my initial and heavily ref'd attempt at cleaning up some of the Killian_documents mess. The "recuse" part, I admit, is your personal choice (and that's all I'm going to say about that if it doesn't come up again.) -BC aka Callmebc 17:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Participants should be aware that User:Callmebc thinks these articles are part of some sort of war [102], has stated an intent to cover these articles with changes [103], and expects to break 3RR a lot more [104]. Meanwhile, he erroneously challenges one small issue (Talk:Killian documents authenticity issues#"Mother's Day") and pretends he expects us to resolve many entangled alterations. I have to admit he did produce one amazing work at User talk:Charles Matthews#SEWilco - Revising quotes and diffs to hide a lie (yes, he notified administrators of it). (SEWilco 15:54, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

CallmeBC, propose a single change in its own Talk section so it can be discussed. Your entangled attacks in your war are not being tolerated. (SEWilco 15:54, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

SEWilco's comment of proposing "a single change in its own Talk section so it can be discussed" is disingenuous and laughable in the face of his "contribution" history, which primarily consists of him: inserting a demonstrably false, in every way, "Mother's Day" anecdote into the Killian documents authenticity issues wiki; setting off multiple revert wars by blocking any attempt at removing the anecdote regardless of whatever cites and refs showing it to be totally factless and outright nonsensical; setting off another revert war by blocking any attempts to add refs and cites to actual Air Force writing guides regarding the proper format of military memos, along with sample military memos -- all of which was in relation to an existing mention of an uncited "Air Force style manual" that was supposedly about, well, the format of military memos (no, I'm not kidding here); defending his blocking and removals of those writing guide ref with a series of nonresponsive, nonsensical, non sequitors that make Miss Teen South Carolina seem erudite [[105]]; and all in all, being no more than a contentious, troublesome, right wing pest with no demonstrable interest in actually improving anything in regards to either of the Killian wikis. If you want diffs for any of this stuff, I can give you a virtual truckload of them at the asking. -BC aka Callmebc 16:25, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The "Mother's Day" item is discussed in Talk:Killian documents authenticity issues. Propose a change for this article here. (SEWilco 17:20, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

This is actually a perfect example of SEWilco being no more than a contentious editor with zero interest in being helpful in any way, shape or form. The Talk:Killian documents authenticity issues talk page already has whole sections of Mother's Day "discussions". Instead of defending inserting an anecdote written by an old friend of Bush, William Campenni, who is neither a journalist nor a reliable source, SEWilco took the position that because it appeared in the conservative, iffily reliable Washington Times newspaper, regardless of it only being an unvetted opinion column, the burden of proof should be on anyone objecting to it. I should note that he's already reverted yet again changes to the "Mother's Day" entry at Killian documents authenticity issues wiki. Why is this behavior tolerated? Seriously. (Check the top of his home page.) In any case, I just posted in response to his request a copy of yet another long "Mother's Day" discussion from my Talk page. I'm sure his response to it will be very enlightening.... -BC aka Callmebc 18:11, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Nonresponsive. Propose a single change in its own Talk section so it can be discussed. (SEWilco 18:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

See what I mean? Dude, try starting with #1 and working your way down (if you can get past it.) -BC aka Callmebc 19:28, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I see no section headline #1 for this article. Propose a single change in its own Talk section. (SEWilco 20:54, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

See what I mean? His only intention is to be troublesome, with no intention of discussing anything for real. For the record, #1 and its context goes:

Hmmmm....it's such a huge list now, but let's just look at the current "Mother's Day" entry, shall we:
TANG pilot William Campenni disputed the document dated Thursday May 4, 1972, which ordered Bush to report for a flight physical not later than May 14. According to Campenni, the squadron commander supposedly ordered Bush to report on a weekend when the base was closed. The Ellington Air Guard Base was closed for Mother's Day the weekend of May 13-14. The next Air Guard drill weekend was May 20-21.[33][34] Bush's last day on base was Monday, May 15, 1972, according to the official record.

1) This bit, According to Campenni, the squadron commander supposedly ordered Bush to report on a weekend when the base was closed, is directly contradicted by the very memo Campenni is referring to, which is also what you are now quoting. So why bring this up at all?

'Nuff said, eh? -BC aka Callmebc 21:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Apparently I have not repeated 'nuff times that "Mother's Day" is not in this article. Propose a single change to this article in its own Talk section. (SEWilco 21:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

Poor signal:noise ratio

Is there any way to get the tone of this discussion away from that of political bickering and personal attack, and towards improving the content of the main article?

HiramShadraski 18:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, if all the editors here for purely political reasons, and having no intention to actually help improve the articles in any way related to Wikipedia policy and intention, could just leave, that would make for a good start. I think. You think? I'm all up for discussing stuff, but not with people who only want to state, restate, and restate over and over again factless points garnered from right wing blog sites. Want to make a point? Provide some supporting ref or evidence. Want to dispute something? Again provide some supporting ref or evidence. It's not that hard. -BC aka Callmebc 19:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Which of your proposed changes do you wish to discuss first?

HiramShadraski 19:48, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I obviously have good reason to be skeptical, but if you are intending to be genuinely helpful, let's then start by reverting back to the last corrected version as a starting point. Further up the page you will see a list of just some of problems that were discovered and corrected. If you don't see anything wrong with them, and if you really are here to help improve the article, then why not start with the better version of the article? Makes sense, no? -BC aka Callmebc 20:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

"Proportional Spacing", "th", and ignoring experts

I have an article in The_Guardian this week examining the recent lawsuit. In it, I make some hopefully semi-original points, notably proportional spacing comes in degrees. It's not as if all "proportional spacing" is equivalent. A common mistake - one that creeps into this article - is to confuse the crude version of proportional spacing found on a few old typewriters with the modern fine proportional spacing of word-processing, say they are both "proportional spacing", and so have the error that the crude version is the same as the fine version. The same mistake is made for superscripts.

Unfortunately, there should be no reasonable doubt the documents are forged, and I use the word "forged" in my article. No contemporary record has been produced that has fine proportional spacing and a true superscript. The only thing people have done is found much rougher versions, and confused that via the category itself.

I don't want to put my article in myself due to WP:COI issues, but people may find it a WP:RS -- Seth Finkelstein 01:41, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm....sorry, but I do believe that just a couple of small bits from my nonsusable WP:OR trumps your WP:COI points: [106][107]. Research can be annoying but it's usually nourishing food for the soul. And I hate to break the news but the whole Rathergate thing only became "Rathergate" because of lazy, incompetent journalism, starting with CBS and then continuing on to reporters loathe to take a trip to the library for anything they couldn't pull up right away on their PC's. And some more WP:OR shows that the memos could not have been forged under any circumstances because of a conflict between the contents of one of them and the release date of the DoD records that any supposed forger would have needed to recreate those contents. But again that darn WP:OR restriction prevents me from mentioning it anywhere outside of this type of discussion, and even here it's borderline. I have to be satisfied with just cleaning up all the nonsense presently infecting the Killian wikis as best I can following Wikipedia rules. But taking out all these malicious sockppets and hostile anonymous IP editors has provided me with some, if time consuming fun. Apparently I'm also now dealing with someone with Oversight rights who's up to no good. That will be a fun one to take out as well when the time comes. In a perfect world, people will stick to the facts, listen to reason, accept best evidence, and admit to being wrong when proven wrong, but.... -BC aka Callmebc 14:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC) -BC aka Callmebc 15:57, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc:

Please do not put discussion which belongs here on my talk page.
Please do not make any further suggestions that you will reveal personal information about me. If you do so, I will register a complaint.

HiramShadraski 16:33, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

??? Since you never posted anything here, I merely put a notice on your talk page about removing your strange "NPOV" revert. About the other bit -- I've been dealing with so many sockpuppets, I slip into automatic "sleuth" mode regarding any "new" editors randomly popping to make unjustified and undiscussed reverts. If I stepped over the line, I apologize. Life would be much easier for all of us if more people around here would just play by Wikipedia rules, especially in regards to NPOV and actually maybe "improving" the article. (PS -- strange section to post at, by the way.) -BC aka Callmebc 16:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc, I think it's great that you've done your own investigation, and my impression is that you are sincere. It's a contentious topic, that's obvious. I've looked at your material. But sadly, there are many errors and problems in it. Repeat, the bottom line is that no contemporary record has been found with fine proportional spacing and true superscript. Also, I think you put too much credence in an unwarranted assumption that all material in a "document dump" is being released for the first time. It's entirely possible to have documents that have already been released in another context, or the information was available earlier (or even guessed but not confirmed). Note, I don't want to spend days arguing over this, since it won't do any good :-( -- Seth Finkelstein 22:14, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Care to point out just one of the "many errors and problems in it"? A curious mind would like to know. Plus I already found a 1973 document with "fine proportional spacing" and one of Bush's DoD records released after CBS backed away from the story has full, true superscripting. And doesn't it bother you that you can't come close to recreating 4 of the 6 memos, all of the longer ones, with Word or whatever? And the information in question was not available for over 30 years and even then, only to Bush's immediate superior officers. Ever try doing research? -BC aka Callmebc 23:49, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Just on the first screen - "A proportionally printed Air National Guard document from 1969". this is the category error I keep explaining. I understand the garbled version of the argument that's been made. But it's still an error to imply that crude proportional spacing proves fine proportional spacing. No contemporary record (yet shown) has a true superscript. From all this, I'd assume recreation problems are a methodological matter - I can see many mistakes possible, and making a mistake doesn't mean the memos can't be recreated (I also think it's usually going to be futile to try to convince anyone they've made a mistake, they'll never believe it). You're also just repeating your assumption about sole source of documents - this is why a long debate won't go anywhere. -- Seth Finkelstein 00:45, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

"Category error"? Do you remember what started the forgery charges? This [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/replies?c=47 claim] by Buckhead: "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. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts."

That was a laughably clueless claim undercut by memos like that 1969 TexANG doc. While the proportional printing in the Killian memos is indeed different from that TexANG doc, (although I did find a 1973 document using an Arial lookalike font) that wasn't the argument made, was it? And there was all that follow-up nonsense about the position of the signature block, and how the memos didn't look like Bush's DoD records, blah, blah, blah. Moronic nonsense -- nobody, at least in the news business, thought to maybe, you know, find other military "memorandums for record," which is, um , what the Killian "documents" are. And if you do, guess what? All of them look like the Killian memos:

June, 11, 1959 (Also Propoortional)
Oct. 15, 1969 USAF
Oct. 4, 1971 (Also Proportional)
Nov. 30. 1971 (Also Proportional)
Feb.17 1972 (Also Proportional)
Mid 70's UFO sightings

"I'd assume recreation problems are a methodological matter"?!? Yeah, sure dude -- real good assumption. No. Only the shortest, simplest of the four CBS memos, the "CYA" one, recreate even semi-well with Word, which is why that's the only one you see on the Internet. The two longer ones really don't match up at all, as demonstrated by this enlargement of this attempt by typographer Thomas Phinney on the memo dated Aug. 1 1972. Compare that to David Hailey's attempt with the same one, as well as my modest little effort. Look closely at that enlargement of Phinney's attempt [108] - even if you allow for such high distortion (which is too much for typical 2004 era equipment), the mismatch in the vertical alignments of the characters actually eliminates Word and any Windows or Mac based system using either Times New Roman or Times Roman as the font. The only thing that would account for having a reasonable match-up on the short, simpler memos but a very poor one on the longer ones is if the font was some other "Times" or "Roman" style font -- they would have very similar but not identical character spacing, meaning that you would get a good match-up on shorter documents made with Word Times/New Roman, but noticeable misalignment on longer ones. Which is exactly the case with the Killian memos. And the only systems that were in common use that used something other than Times/New Roman are all very, very old systems, some going back to 1972/1973, which, by some bizarre coincidence, happens to be the dates on the memos.

But then, maybe I'm making another "category error," eh? Actually, I'm not really all that keen on discussing this stuff in this context. I'm here to try to correct the most bogus crap on the Killian wikis following Wikipedia rules for NPOV and verifiability, which both wikis are somewhat lacking in. Whatever. FYI. -BC aka Callmebc 04:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you have sources which state that those documents are relevant to the Killian documents? (SEWilco 05:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC))

Are you trying to claim that you need to find sources to show that other sources are relevant to the topic that all of the sources are related to? How about this Washington Post article? It compares a "memoradum for record" on the left to a none "memoradum for record" on the right, and makes the claim that the signature block is on the wrong side and that there is something wrong with them being proportionally spaced. But "those documents" you are referring to indicate that that military "memorandums for memos" have the signature block on the right side and nearly all of them are proportionally spaced. Yes? No? Think I should have an RFC on the matter? Would you still try to block inclusion nevertheless? -BC aka Callmebc 14:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

PS -- I see you're back to vandalizing the Killian documents authenticity issues wiki. Good for you -- you must be so proud. -BC aka Callmebc 14:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Third time - you have again conflated crude proportional spacing with fine proportional spacing - "All of them look like the Killian memos". No. Do they have fine proportional spacing with true superscript, from a common typewriter? No. This is not a hard question. "Buckhead"'s original post was overstated. But the documents are still forgeries beyond a reasonable doubt because of the fine proportional spacing plus true superscript features. Just at a glance, the last image cited has one glaring error in it and another more subtle glitch, both affecting the match - this is what I mean by methodological matter. It will be a lot of work to track down all mismatch artifacts and it's obvious some reasons will be rejected anyway. -- Seth Finkelstein 06:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Third time - you have again conflated crude proportional spacing with fine proportional spacing?!?

Dude, you're the one who is "conflating" stuff, and apparently deliberately so. Let me try to make this as simple as I can. As I already said, the original charges by Buckhead were that such "memos to file" were in a "proportionally spaced font," and that "In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts." The question was not at all about "fine proportional spacing". And then Charles Johnson really stirred things up with a post headlined as Bush Guard Documents: Forged where he says all the memos, plural, are forgeries based on an imperfect match (and it is imperfect -- you would not have that shifting effect otherwise) with just one of the memos, the shortest and simplest of the four CBS used. And so far nobody has been able to any similar recreations with the other three (and I'm the only one who did it with one of the the remaining two, but that is the shortest of them all)

Ok, are you following things so far? Nobody then was discussing "crude proportional spacing" versus "fine proportional spacing" at that point as the basis for the forgery charges.

It was then claimed that the memos also had superscripting and that typewriters in 1972 couldn't do that. CBS responded by pointing out there were superscripted "th's" in Bush's officially released records [109]. The criticism was then that the superscripted th's CBS weren't true superscripts since they didn't "rise above the level of the type.". But records released by the Pentagon contained an undated document with full superscripts that was obviously done on a typewriter [110].

It was also claimed that the memos had all sorts of formatting discrepencies when compared to the the official records, as was done in this Washington Post piece. But "memorandums for records" like the Killian memos are not archived since they are technically personal notes more than official records, and indeed whatever Air Force writing guides that can be found on the web (all based on the Air Force's "Tongue and Quill" [111]), along with other such memos than can be found, as I listed above, all show that the Killian memos are indeed in the correct format.

The closest anyone has come to discussing "crude proportional spacing" versus "fine proportional spacing" is typographer Thomas Phinney in this interview of sorts. He discusses and shows a comparison between a section of one of the memos and one he created with a "simulation" of a 1965 Selectric Composer. Despite this being only a simulation based on information from a 1967 IBM document regarding the earliest model of the Composer, it still doesn't come off that bad, especially when compared to how poor Word recreations are to some of the Killian memos. I used a real sample from a 1965 Composer and compared that to Times Roman recreation and the result wasn't exactly so bad, most especially compared to the results I got using the May 4, 1972 memo.

Instead of wasting my time going over all this stuff (yet again....) I suggest that you visit a good, large library and search for books, journals and magazines from the 1970's on "Word Processing". You might perhaps find enlightenment, and maybe even some satisfaction in doing more research than any other journalist has evidently done so far in regards to the Killian memos stuff. -BC aka Callmebc 14:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The forgery argument is not constrained to the original post by "Buckhead". The argument I am making is (n=4) "No contemporary record has been produced with fine proportional spacing and true superscript". What anyone else says is technically irrelevant, and often a strawman. Your comment above is filled with errors. Again, I just don't have time to go through each one. To take the most obvious: The document you cite as "but records released by the Pentagon contained an undated document with full superscripts that was obviously done on a typewriter [112]" That is not a contemporary document. In fact, it is obviously a modern document because it states it is in response to a FOIA request. It appears to be the second page of this 2004 file. That is, you have offered a much later document, likely but not certainly from 2004, as proof of ca. 1972. Look at how much work and detail I've had to do for just that item! Will you now (WP:CIVIL) grant the error? -- Seth Finkelstein 23:23, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Ummm....no. Look veddy, veddy carefully at the document [[113]] -- it is "an undated document with full superscripts that was obviously done on a typewriter" as I described: it's in a fixed font and of poor quality. And also as a writer, fess up: when was the last time you saw a fixed font used with a full superscript anywhere? And even if you want to make the argument that it could be computer Courier, there's this -- the US government officially banned Courier at the beginning of 2004. Plus at the DoD site, it's buried deep on page 45 of the "Part 6" pdf collection, implying that it's from an earlier FOIA request. There is a handwritten sheet preceding it indicating that it and the other files following that came from the files of the "NPRC" in 2004. I had wondered about that FOIA request as well -- there have been multiple requests for Bush's military records over the years. I just did a little bit more research -- it looks like it came from some FOIA requests back in 2000. See this: it's referred to as "Doc14.gif".

You get a "C-" at best for that little bit of research. Which actually puts you ahead of your journalistic collegues to date. Congrats. -BC aka Callmebc 00:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm....I looked more deeply at the better copy on the DoD site -- it was obviously done on some sort of impact device given its uneveness. I was thinking that it could maybe be a 24 pin printer, but I don't see any dotty effects. A line printer would be inappropriate for such a letter. It could also be from an old daisywheel, but if was created in 2000, it would still would have been a decade after the last daisywheel system would have pooped out. It was therefore most likely a typewriter, which in 2000 would have been the ~~last gen of the electronic office models~~. While still a typewriter, that would still be a few generations removed from anything available in 1972. FYI. -BC aka Callmebc 00:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Nah, I had to scratch the "electronic" bit -- just from the offices I know, who still keep a typewriter around for forms and such, their old electric beasts go back a couple of decades at least. The typical typewriters made from the early 90's, 80's and even 70's were designed for a heavy daily office pounding and so are forever young if now only used to fill out the occasional form. -BC aka Callmebc 02:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Part of this apparent excellence in design is that many of the light duty typewriters have died and gone to landfills (or museums), if they were given much use or abuse. Only the strongest or least used machines have survived. htom 03:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

"obviously done on some sort of impact device"? Maybe if the impact device was using rubber. There are characters which are distorted within the character, such as the first few characters of each line at the top of page 45. I've seen that on damaged paper (such as water damage) and documents scanned through a page feeder. The same distortion along the vertical axis suggests page feeder wrinkling. If it's sideways wrinkling but feeding vertically at a more consistent rate then line widths have probably been reduced (and widened by the usual scanner/printer expansion), while in the vertical direction the distortion should proceed at an average constant rate (wrinkling alters vertical location of characters a little, but relative positions of lines should have similar distortion along the height of the page). Gee, this is fun! But of what use is it? This is why we cite someone who writes about a topic instead of doing our own analysis. Shall we try DNA analysis of some of the documents? I have some batteries and gelatin. (SEWilco 03:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

May I ask, oh office equipment guru, when was the last time you saw a document with both a fixed pitch and full superscripting? In any case, there are too many unknowns to get into that much of a debate about it. It's interesting, but it's undated. Personally the most annoying thing about it is that there are no "st" ordinals as in 1^st -- none of the Killian docs have their "st" ordinals superscripted (and no, not all can be explained by there being a space between). -BC aka Callmebc 13:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Define "full superscripting". In 1970 the typewriter training for raised numbers and ordinals such as "th" was to lower the platen one click (half a line), type, then turn the platen back to type the rest of the line. (SEWilco 17:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

Full superscripting/subscripting are half line feeds by definition: [114]. I suppose your response will be something like "Define 'definition' and how does this relate to platens?". -BC aka Callmebc 23:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

A case of wrong being easily available, but right being hard to find. A proper super/subscript is (approximately) rendered in a font 1/1.2 the height of the base font, and placed so that the baseline of the smaller font bisects the x-height, or that the upper limit reaches to that height, or some such. The half-line is an approximation to "proper" used by monospacing typewriters who don't have the fine control available to a printer. You might find a better reference in Knuth's work about TeX. htom 00:13, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking in the TeXbook, TeX uses the sequence 5 pt, 7 pt, and 10 pt for supersuperscripts, superscripts, and body type, so the multiplier used is near to 1/(1.2*1.2); I've been unable to find where Knuth derived this, although I'm sure he documented it somewhere. htom 03:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

D'oh. 1.2 is used as an approximation to sqrt(sqrt(2)) htom 14:43, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

"D'oh" is right -- when you do a half-line feed down and type in characters in whatever font size, and then do half-line feed up back to the main text line, you've just created a superscript. While the modern convention is to always use a smaller font, even if you use the same size characters, as has been done commonly in the typewriter days, you're still superscripting (see page 25 of this Smith-Corona typewriter manual) As long as the superscript is above the main text characters, that's a full superscript, like this for instance, E=MC², but not this: E=MC². -BC aka Callmebc 15:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Looking about, Subscript and superscript doesn't seem to agree with you.

A subscript or superscript is a number, figure, symbol, or indicator that appears smaller than the normal line of type and is set slightly below or above it – subscripts appear below the baseline, while superscripts are above. Subscripts and superscripts are typically used in formulas, mathematical expressions, and descriptions of chemical compounds or isotopes, but have many other uses as well.

And being entirely pedantic, it is E=mc² ; neither the 'm' nor the 'c' are capitalized, and the supersuperscript size 2 you've used is too small.htom 16:00, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

"Looking about" a Wikipedia article? Like going to Killian Documents for good info? Well I also was "looking about" a while back but actually found slightly more convincing, NPOV stuff I can point to: [115][116]. They were created on an old IBM Executive typewriter. Also E=MC was capitalized to better show the relative superscript heights, which was kinda the point. Your argumentative, pointless, generally invalid and now suspicious comments are giving me a sense of deju vu. You best shoo. -BC aka Callmebc 16:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

We use what others have written, not our own research. Such as using Phinney's work rather than pictures of random documents, whether they're from the DoD or from various word processors. So what sourced analysis is available? (SEWilco 03:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

Actually I did use Phinney's work further up the page to show that only the "CYA" memo, the shortest and simplest of the four CBS used, could be even reasonably recreated in Word -- even Phinney couldn't come close to using that trick with one of the longer memos. -BC aka Callmebc 23:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

That came up in regards to claims about superscripting. It is there in the records and it doesn't look like anything anyone has seen in recent years, but is WP:OR speculation, I agree. -BC aka Callmebc 13:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

So you agree that the random documents in the OR-labeled section are OR? Can that be deleted now? (SEWilco 17:25, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

2 + 2 ≠ banana. It may in your world but not anywhere else (hopefully). -BC aka Callmebc 23:40, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Improvements to introduction

It's best to eat an elephant one bite at a time. Which of your proposed changes to you wish to discuss first?

HiramShadraski 20:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, the opening paragraph to the corrected version [117] accurately describes the Killian memos as being 6 in total, obtained by both CBS and USA Today as part of an overall, ongoing general media investigation into Bush's military service, with detailed refs showing all that, followed with a link to the George W. Bush military service controversy wiki. Any problems with that? -BC aka Callmebc 21:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

There are six references given in that paragraph. The first should, in my opinion, be rewritten as follows:

The name "Ra^thergate" is a reference to superscripted "th" ordinals in the purported memos, which some assert are unlikely to have appeared in documents produced by contemporary office equipment. For more information, (etc).

That's not really mine -- I left that in and only changed the original term "glyphs" to "ordinals," which is more the proper term to for "th" type superscript following a number.

As may be - I just think this version conforms to WP:NPOV better.

A "nickname," as I understand the term, refers specifically to a person and not a concept or object. In addition, the assertions about the 1972 TANG office equipment and the curiosity of the superscripting are not limited to the initial period of discussion about the memos.

No, a "nickname" can refer to anything, like Big Bertha Again that's not mine.

As may be - I just think it sounds a little better and more scholarly.

The other five references are excessive in number. I would choose the one which best summarizes the event, and which is the least supportive of one side or the other (where "side" is pro- and con-genuineness, political-left or -right, however it makes sense to define that), and ditch the rest. If none of these five are really appropriate in those terms, another source should be sought.

The number of refs was chosen to really hammer in that the CBS thing was just one of many then current and past media investigations into Bush's service records. I also picked those particular ones to show a rough chronology of the media investigations.

Still, six is excessive. Leaving the George W. Bush military service controversy link in takes care of this. I think all that's really necessary here is a pro forma reference.

No need here to hammer other investigations. The controversy focused around these documents which CBS had. What is relevant is who had the documents and what was done with them in the investigations which had the documents. The overall controversy has its own article. (SEWilco 04:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

The link to the George W. Bush military service controversy wiki is arguably redundant, but my inclination would be to leave it in for completeness.

Sorry, but going from 6 to none is not a "compromise," and merely providing a link to the George W. Bush military service controversy is neither redundant nor even adequate: the Killian documents were obtained in the context then very active and contentious -- don't forget the AP lawsuit and DoD claims that records were destroyed[118] -- media investigations into Bush's Guard service. This information is not at all immediately nor even clearly presented in the George W. Bush military service controversy, which gives much more of a historical background to the entire issue. And it doesn't give any indication of the specific investigations going on at the time of the memos until you get to the section labeled Memos allegedly from Jerry Killian, which of course, ironically refers back to the Killian Documents wiki for more info. Go look -- am I right, yes or no? -BC aka Callmebc 14:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, if there was no "George W. Bush military service controversy," there would have been no interest by CBS or USA Today in a Killian documents story.

Other edits I would make:

Change "are six military memorandums" to "refers to six military memoranda".

Agreed. I just Googled and "Memoranda" shows up more often and memorandums, although both are considered acceptible

Change "Air National Guard" to "Texas Air National Guard".

I had considered that but the Air National Guard wiki has more background info into the overall type of service it is, and it has a Texas Air National Guard link.

Okay.

Change "in the midst of series" to "in the midst of a series".

A typo -- good catch

Hyphenate "long standing". Or, better, delete "into long standing questions".

It's tricky -- media questions and investigations into Bush's guard service have been recurring issues since he ran for governor of Texas. Hmmm, maybe "recurring" would be technically more accurate?

Deleting the phrase "into long standing questions" is more in keeping with WP:NPOV, in my opinion, and still leaves the passage sufficiently descriptive.

HiramShadraski 21:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually a little surprised, pleasantly for a welcome change -- your critiques were actally on point. Cool. To show that I'm willing to ease off on my quick draw, I'll let this thing sit here and wait for others to comment on as well. I guess I should put this bit under a new, more appropriately named section as well.... -BC aka Callmebc 22:34, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I changed the section title, though.

HiramShadraski 22:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The phrasing "The Killian documents controversy (also called Memogate, Rathergate or Rathergate[1]) are six military memorandums" needs grammatical adjustment, as becomes apparent in "The controversy are six memorandums". The controversy is not the memos; as the original version stated, the controversy "involved" the memos. (SEWilco 04:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

A more general problem with the new first paragraph is that the first paragraph is no longer a summary. The introduction vanishes and becomes only the first paragraph of the essay. Shouldn't there be a summary intro? (SEWilco 04:44, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

Indeed. Remember that the article title is "Killian Documents," not "Killian Documents Controversy." That controversy (such as it is) is certainly a legitimate part of the narrative, but probably does not belong in the expository first sentence of the intro.

HiramShadraski 12:07, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes or No: the Killian documents were obtained by CBS and USA Today soley as a result of the then active overall media interest and investigation into questions regarding Bush's Guard service, which was also connected to Kerry's Vietnam service as well? (Hint: check page 7 -- or 17 by the PDF page count -- of the CBS panel report) Omission of context is, I believe, an NPOV no-no. -BC aka Callmebc 13:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

BC, I don't understand your point here - if you are saying that the guard service controversy needs to be mentioned, would this be ok? "The four documents were presented as authentic in a 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 Presidential Election and in the context of the GWB military service controversy but had not been properly authenticated by CBS." Kaisershatner 14:22, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

??? Your question makes no sense. I was addressing the point that not leaving in the context of how the "Killian Documents" were only part of a greater media investigation going on would be a violation of NPOV. The current "The four documents were presented as authentic in a 60 Minutes Wednesday broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 Presidential Election" is a violation of NPOV since it leaves out that important context and suggests that this was all some singular effort by CBS to influence the election -- yes or no? -BC aka Callmebc 14:36, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The point is not that the controversy should not be mentioned; only that it should be left for the material after the initial definition of what the "Killian Documents" are.

HiramShadraski 14:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Most of the article is not about the documents themselves, but about their background and controversy. The article should be summarized in the intro. Wikipedia:Guide_to_layout#Lead_section (SEWilco 14:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC))

In the very first sentence, though? Maybe - but only if that sentence is more descriptive of what the documents are rather than what they meant.

HiramShadraski 14:34, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not exactly a long intro, and it mentions what the "documents" are off the bat and puts them and their nature in context. What else should the intro be or do? -BC aka Callmebc 14:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

$50,000 Reward

I understand this is probably violating the spirit of the second point in the above "Talk Page Dispute" section, but as I was the initiator of the oft-cited reward, I thought I'd add a little context and clarification. I can't add anything to the article myself, of course (COI), but I think it's important the facts are briefly mentioned here, as it keeps being brought up in the talks!

I'm not a Bush fan. I recently signed yet another petition calling for his impeachment. I do a lot of public work with Democratic advocacy groups. But at the time of the 2004 election, it is true that I opposed Kerry, and had a blog discussing this. (Apologies to all.) When the Killian memos were reported, as a graphics professional I researched the issue extensively and determined they could not have been produced at the time they were claimed. With my accountant, we set aside $10,000 as a public reward for anyone who could reproduce the Killian memos on technology available in the early 1970s. Others heard of this, and pledged additional money (some even sent it funds via cashiers check, to be cashed only if someone accomplished the feat.) This "pledged" money eventually upped the total to $50,000, but the only legally guaranteed payout would have been the $10,000 I set aside for the project. This was well publicized, discussed a lot on TV and Radio, and indeed many individuals starting scouring garage sales and old office equipment trying to cash in. To date, no one has -- not even close. I kept the money in the separate account for a full year period, and then ultimately put it back into my business. I didn't have a posted "end date", so if someone were to contact me with proof of completion of the task, I would stand by my word, and they could legally claim the original $10,000 prize. If you think you can, feel free to contact me here.

Every semester, I teach college courses in Graphic Design and Typography, in addition to running a successful design studio. One of the assignments I give my students (generally as their typography midterm project) involves authenticating the Killian memos. Students must determine, regardless of political opinions or online discussions on the memos, whether the documents could have been reasonably produced on typewriter technology at the time they were allegedly written. I do not tell the students the "correct" answer in advance, but then again, every student so far has been able to successfully illustrate why the documents could not have been produced in 1972. If a student ever WERE to hand in a report saying the documents COULD have been produced in 1972, I would clearly have to give that a failing grade. During all the conventions and meetings and discussions I've had with other experts in the industry, I have never, not once, not ever talked to a single individual with a background in typography who has studied this issue and believed the documents could be genuine. Ever. Such an opinion could only be held by individuals without the necessary skillset to make such an assessment. This is not to denigrate contrasting opinions willy-nilly -- it's just a simple, practical fact. It's one thing to argue that you BELIEVE 2+2=5, but you don't get to claim it's a valid alternative opinion to 2+2=4. At the very least, this article MUST include a conclusion something along the lines of: "Although some have claimed the memos could have been created with typewriters in the early 1970s, to date no individual has been able to demonstrate this possibility."

Sorry again for violating the spirit of the above rule (I know it isn't a forum). But since my prize keeps being brought up on these pages, I thought it important enough to weigh in. JK 23:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

At a minimum you've provided an update on the amount on non-expiration of the reward. Is there a URL which still mentions the reward is available? (SEWilco 23:57, 30 October 2007 (UTC))

Ahhh...something interesting on this page, finally. Well, Mr. College Professor in Graphic Design and Typography, could you please tell me and my loyal wikistalkers if you had any clue whatsoever that in 1972 IBM, for one, was making more money selling "word processors" than typewriters, including a model called the "MC/ET" that could do everything the earlier Composer model could, and then some, in a simple to use, typewriter-like office device? Also did you ever hear of ancient, near mythical devices called "daisywheel printers" and "I/O Selectrics" [119][120]? Or long lost companies like Lexitron, NBI, or especially Redactron, who merely sold its 10,000th word processor by 1975? (You might also want to read through this.) And if you don't mind as well, could you also possibly explain this overlay result using Arial Bold over a section from 1973 draft press release involving a Redactron word processor, and this overlay result using Times New Roman over one of the longer CBS Killian memos?

And lastly but not leastly, if I could by chance get my hands on an old daisywheel printer, and if I could, again by chance, replicate at least the same proportional spacing shown in the memos, can I claim the ~~50 G's~~ 10 G's? -BC aka Callmebc 15:49, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, for starters, those overlays would prove my point. The kerning is dramatically different in both animated examples. Especially the second one -- look at where the d in "ordered" falls in the first paragraph -- under the "r" in perform in the blue example, and under the "d" in perform in the red example. That's a clear and easy proof that they were done on different systems. (I realize that you're saying this proves YOUR point, but that's why the prize was based on the CYA memo, not the others. Either way, your example is clearly flawed, since when *I* type that paragraph into Microsoft Word, I get [121], which very clearly matches, pixel for pixel, the Killian memos. Your Times animation is flawed.)

Nope, not in the slightest. Go try to create an overlay of the Aug 1st, 1972 memo yourself. I suppose I should show you what happened when Thomas Phinney tried it, as well as David Hailey's effort. It can't be done -- aside from the severe overall width difference, you can't even get things to line up vertically relative to character placement, especially in regards to Bush's service number. This by itself eliminates Word altogether. Sorry. -BC aka Callmebc 21:12, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

At your suggestion, I did. And it works perfectly if you do it CORRECTLY. This is the problem with having people who don't have the expertise and training in this area putting up websites claiming they do. :) It's very easy to upload two documents you haven't properly aligned, or properly typed, and then claim that proves they don't properly align! But when you DO properly align the documents, it's clear. I created this youtube video to show how easily you can prove the match on the August 1, 1972 document. The only reason it's not as instantly clear as the CYA memo is do to the fax roller tracking, which I explain on the YouTube. All of the Killian memos (and, incidentally, none of the actual historical real Killian memos) line up exactly as you'd expect in Microsoft Word under default font settings. 69.89.103.83 22:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Look, I'm with you -- I think it's almost certain that Bush used his wealth and privilege to, at the very least, get a little easier time on his National Guard service. But that doesn't make the documents any less impossible, whether they support your cause or not. If you can get your hands on a typewriter that was available for purchase in 1972, and recreate the Killian memos in a way that exceeds the exact-match of Microsoft Word's default settings, then, sure, I can have my attorney redraft the contract for the initial promised $10,000. But considering that Killian's own secretary (who would have been the one to type the memos) has confirmed that they are forgeries, then I think you're at the very least wasting a great deal of time! From a design perspective, though, it's a wonderful example of modern typography in action, which is why I use the example in my classes. The Killian memos perfectly match Microsoft Word under default settings, default kerning, and default leading. They do not match any typewriter or early word processor available in 1972. In fact, its unlikely they match any known typewriter ever produced in any year. I think you're confusing "kinda looks like" with "exactly looks like". The fact that some typewriters have had proportional spacing, and that some have had a special superscipted TH key, kind of miss the point. None of those typewriters has a font and lettertype comparable to Times New Roman in Microsoft Word. None of them. That's why it's easy to prove the forgeries (especially the CYA). But, yes, to answer the question, certainly I'll pay out $10,000 to anyone who can prove me wrong on this. Can't speak for the $40,000 in "pledged" funds, though. :) JK 04:15, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to point this out again, but "The Killian memos," plural, don't recreate with Word. Of the 4 CBS used for its report, only the CYA memo, the shortest and simplest, can be even semi-reasonably recreated. I think I did even better than Charles Johnson's effort, but even here you still see an odd shifting, which indicates that Word Times New/Roman is only approximating the font and spacing in the memo. If you include all 6 memos, you can also approximately recreate the shortest of all the memos, the one dated Feb. 2, 1972, rather (so to speak) well, but with each longer, more complicated memo, you end up with a greater and greater mismatch, which again indicate that Word is only approximating the font and spacing shown in the Killian memos. This is much the same case in how Word, when using Arial Bold, approximates the font and spacing used in this 1973 document (And unlike Times, Arial didn't even exist as a font until almost 10 years later).

Also you keep talking about typewriters when I clearly asked about using a daisywheel printer. Perhaps you went through my little messy site and noted my efforts at recreating the default proportional spacing used by daisywheel printers, and what happens when one recreates the CYA memo with that. Regardless, I'm asking again: if I could by chance get my hands on an old daisywheel printer, and if I could, again by chance, replicate at least the same proportional spacing shown in the memos, can I claim the 10 G's? Well? -BC aka Callmebc 21:12, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The CYA memo is definitely the easiest to recreate, because it faxed the best. I took the August 1 1972 memo, which your website picks apart, and showed on this youtube link how it does, in fact, match exactly with a Microsoft Word document at default settings, as long as you do the simple necessary correction for the fax roller issue, which is something a non-expert wouldn't necessarily think to do. I was very impressed with the amount of time you spent on your site, and I believe that YOU genuinely believe you're right, but that doesn't mean you get to just discount all the experts (those of us who have devoted our lives to this career) who disagree. :) The only reason some of the Killian memos don't line up exactly WITHOUT correcting for the fax machine issue is because, well, they were faxed! And -- conveniently -- right after they were faxed to Mary Mapes, the originals were destroyed. Burned into ash. What do you think is more likely -- that you'd destroy original documents that exonerated, or implicated you? Think about it.

As for the reward, the deal was that, if someone could reasonably recreate Killian documents that matched as well as, or better, the same documents created in Microsoft Word, then you will have satisfied the $10,000 prize, and could legally claim it. I'd encourage you to go through garage sales, old universities, talk to old lawyers/doctors/secretaries/etc., Salvation Armys, etc., and just bring some of the memos with you (and some blank paper) and start typing. I really think you'll come around once you delve into it a bit. After all, do you really think CBS didn't already try this? In fact, they've admitted they did -- they frantically tried recreating the memos on every typewriter and early word processor they could find! No luck. Dan Rather lost his job over this, remember? They put tons of effort into showing that the docs could have been created in 1972, and failed. Because they weren't created in 1972. The 267-page report they sent out details why all experts agreed with the problems of the documents. Since then, even the Associated Press refers to the Killian memos as "forgeries" -- not "alleged forgeries" -- which is why this article should also refer to them, definitively, as forgeries. 69.89.103.83 22:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

P.S. -- here are the documents I made if you want to try it yourself: zip file As long as you remember to account for the simple fax flutter, it's a perfect match. If you can find an early 70s typewriter, daisy wheel, word proc, or anything else Killian may have conceivably had access to, that's able to match the documents as well as these, then yes you can absolutely claim the $10,000. Happy typing! :) 69.89.103.83 23:29, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

??? Okayyy...let's see now:

You made a video of you using Photoshop to manipulate a memo to fit your Word recreation. Which proves that....Photoshop can get whatever image results you want? But there are still issues with the vertical alignment, which even your Photoshopping didn't fix.
I would comment on your YouTube site, but you have comments disabled for some strange reason.
You mentioned "spaces" as why some st's are not superscripted, when in fact none of the "st" ordinals are superscripted in any of the memos, regardless of there being preceding spaces or not. And some of the th ordinals are also not superscripted, also regardless of there being spaces or not.
You didn't comment on that 1973 faux-Arial Bold document.
That Zip file of yours contained PDF and DOC versions of the Aug. 1, 1972 memo, and you can tell at glance that your PDF doesn't match up with the original -- just look at the character spacing in the word "expresses" at the end of one of the lines. What do you think you were doing?
If you did peruse my web site, you would have noticed that the appearance issue is not exactly the major blow against the forgery nonsense.
If you haven't noticed, the US media has been incompetent at an awful lot of things the past several years -- why would the memos thing be any different?
The oldest daisywheel printer I can likely get functioning is from the early 80's -- if I can use that to replicate the spacing in the memos, can I claim the 10 G's? It's still preceding the theoretical forgery by 2 decades.

Again, well? -BC aka Callmebc 05:41, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah, this is my "P.S": when was the last time you saw a fax machine where the documents are fed in sideways? -- that's what it would take for your so-called "fax flutter" (that's not even a real phrase) to warp the documents left to right in a way you've shown in that strange video to be not so easily correctable even with Photoshop. -BC aka Callmebc 09:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

You have not seen an auto-scanning fax machine that does such? (Usually a copier that will print 11x17 originals, I'll grant!) htom 19:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm sure some big, high end fax/copier machine that can handle 11x17 sheets is going to warp the daylights out of documents via "fax flutter" when you feed them in sideways. Even you know that's an absurd contention and that the "fax flutter" stuff is utter (or should I say "Otter") nonsense. -BC aka Callmebc 19:36, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the video actually mentions the rollers in the fax machine not rotating at the same speed (such as due to different diameters), so it is referring to the rotation and wrinkling due to one side of the paper moving trying to move faster than the other side. Look at where the rollers are on document feeders or watch an old fax machine. (SEWilco 19:40, 6 November 2007 (UTC))

Give it up -- that was an utterly confused video. The line compression was lateral and if the rollers were off that much, the characters themselves would be distorted and stretched vertically. That strange exercise in futility did make me think more about what would have caused some of the memos to be so laterally squeezed that way. My scenario always involved an early Times or Roman PS print element on an early word processor, and Word Times New/Roman would at least roughly approximate that even in a longer, more complex document. The only thing I can think of that would cause that sort of lateral distortion and compression would be a slightly curled microfiche. I would have to do some tests though to see if this is a reasonable explanation. If it does look like microfiche was involved, that annoyingly complicates things enormously for reasons that I'm not going to go into here (sorry).

Ahhh....I mistakenly characterized things in reversed in the preceding -- the memo widths on the 4 longer docs are actually wider than the Word replicas, and in a consistent way that I stupidly overlooked before. This fortunately eliminates microfiche and gives me a testable idea that, perhaps, some people aren't going to like (as is usual). -BC aka Callmebc 03:53, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Your ideas don't matter. What source do you have? (SEWilco 04:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC))

Don't you ever get tired of coming up with non sequiturs? (Yes, that was a rhetorical question.) We have 4 documents (sources) with a Times-like font, but with a character spacing just a teeny wee bit wider than recreations (more sources) made with modern Times/New Roman. There are probably some character width ratios (math) I can, perhaps maybe, have some fun with (analysis). Well, my idea of fun (logic). -BC aka Callmebc 04:25, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

By the way, I see that you took advantage of the Killian documents authenticity issues finally being unlocked again, but it appears that your edit puts back a well, WELL-refuted anecdote. I'm sure you didn't really mean to put back such a blatent fabrication, so I reverted it to a somewhat much more accurate prior version. No need to thank me -- I was glad to do it. -BC aka Callmebc 00:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Callmebc Please read the following from the top of this page. This is not the place to discuss the forged documents.

This page is not a forum for general discussion about Killian documents controversy/Archive 9. Any such comments may be removed or refactored. Please limit discussion to improvement of this page. You may wish to ask factual questions about Killian documents controversy/Archive 9 at the Reference desk.

You should also check WP:TE 131.107.0.72 13:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Umm, I was not the one who started this section, and the person who did made a lot of nonsensical assertions that had to be addressed. And I also wasn't the one who created and posted a ludicrous YouTube video (?!?) showing some Photoshopping as part of this strange discussion. And I wasn't the one who brought up "fax flutter" to justify using Photoshop to try to force-fit one of the memos to make it sort of look like it could have been created with Word. And I'm also fully aware that this sort of discussion is technically verboten in article discussions, so if someone wants to strike the whole thing, I'll be fine with that. Actually I'm mostly very curious about why this debate got started in first place -- more than enough people on the right wing blog sites are grudgingly aware of the "situation" and know well enough not to start a public debate on the matter with me. I'm very happy that it happened, but it was very, very odd and completely out of character. Whatever. Do what you want with this discussion. I guess I can assume I'm not going to get the $10 G's in any case. -BC aka Callmebc 15:37, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the reward mentioned in this article; it is over in Killian documents authenticity issues. I'm not finding mention of a reward still being available, but noticed the URL over there was to johnjohn's main page so corrected it to the relevant reward archive page. The Wikipedia mention of the reward uses ambiguous past tense phrasing which I thought didn't require updating. It's not hard for someone to find and contact the person who offered the $10,000 reward if it becomes necessary. (SEWilco 19:16, 7 November 2007 (UTC))

The Corrected Intro

The above is getting too messy and is starting to drift off point: here is my suggested corrected intro[122] with minor typos fixed. Please address this directly: -BC aka Callmebc 14:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The Killian documents controversy (also called Memogate, Rathergate or Ra^thergate^[1]) are six military memoranda involving President George W. Bush's service as a pilot in the Air National Guard, purportedly written by the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Bush's then squadron commander. The documents were obtained by both CBS News and USA Today in the midst of a series of media investigations into long-standing questions regarding Bush's military service.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]

::The Killian documents are six memoranda. The KD controversy involves six documents that were asserted to be authentic by CBS without proper authentication and which were later repudiated by CBS because of the media firestorm that followed their strenuous denials of wrongdoing in the face of the evidence. Kaisershatner 14:58, 9 October 2007 (UTC) Sorry, also they purport to be six military memoranda. They've never been proven to be such. :Kaisershatner 15:00, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, try again -- that's just worthless right wing POV nonsense. Also CBS only used 4 of them, no mention of USA Today, no mention of context, and the authenticity issue is complex and is discussed further down. -BC aka Callmebc 15:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Please desist from your personal attacks and assume good faith. Kaisershatner 16:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes or no: your contrib history here is not of one "assuming good faith," is it? Be honest -- haven't I tolerated an awful lot of bad, dishonest behavior, and have consistently gone out of my way to the Nth level to address, usually in excruciating detail, all objections and supposed "points" however frivolous and nonsensical? Yes? No? -BC aka Callmebc 17:11, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Whatever you may have "tolerated" does not justify your own choice to make comments like "that's just worthless right wing POV nonsense." In reply to your question, I would be happy to have any neutral party review my contribs here with regards to assuming good faith; I am proud of a long record of collegial editing on this page and others. You? Kaisershatner 17:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Me? Oh, just the usual, I suppose -- revert wars with right wingers of ill intent along with their hordes of sockpuppet/anonymous IP compatriots, and with nice little bonuses like sneaky Oversight edits and such. Same as everyone I guess who edits on Wikipedia. -BC aka Callmebc 20:37, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, please don't edit my comments by striking them out. Kaisershatner 17:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The Killian documents controversy (also called Memogate, Rathergate or Ra^thergate^[7]) involved documents describing President George W. Bush's service as a pilot in the Air National Guard, some of which were presented as authentic in a CBS News program regarding the GWB-MSC [on DATE], prior to the 2004 Presidential election. Anchor Dan Rather asserted the documents were obtained from the personal files of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, Bush's then squadron commander, although document examiners retained by CBS failed to authenticate them. After questions regarding the documents' provenance and authenticity were publicized on blogs and by other media outlets, CBS retracted their story, apologized to viewers, and undertook an internal investigation, as well as firing the producer of the segment."

Did I get any of the facts wrong here? It has been some time since I revised the intro. Kaisershatner 17:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep:

No mention of USA Today
No context in relation to concurrent media investigations -- "prior to the 2004 Presidential election" implies CBS was acting on it's own with a story critical of Bush's Guard service
"some people initially asserted" -> right wing bloggers
Proportional printing was "initially asserted," not "superscripted "th" ordinals
Dan Rather actually said "60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file" which is not the same as "asserted the documents were obtained from the personal files of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian".
"document examiners retained by CBS failed to authenticate them" is not true -- there was some authentication, but it was simply determined later that this had not been sufficient and that Burkett wasn't honest about where he got the memos.
"Anchor Dan Rather asserted.... although document examiners retained by CBS failed to authenticate them." falsely suggests that Rather knowing presented fake documents.

How's that for starters? Considering your suggested changes so far, might I be so bold as to suggest that you would perhaps be more suited editing a simpler Wikipedia article that doesn't require as much research? -BC aka Callmebc 20:31, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. The USA Today doesn't have to be in the first sentence, IMO.

If you mention CBS you kinda haveta mention USA Today -- they both got the same memos at the same time from Burkett.

Not according to USA Today. They said CBS received two memos from Burkett "sometime in August" (the T-B report p8 says "September 2"), and the rest "around Sept. 5". USA Today got the documents an hour after the 60 Minutes story aired, although Mapes was aware on Sept 4 that they and other newspapers were "on to the story and the documents" before the broadcast (T-B report p82). [123] Dcxf 06:25, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

My semi-bad -- USA Today did indeed get its copies just after the CBS broadcast, but they did so directly from Burkett independently of CBS and they were still the first news organization to present all 6 of the memos, including 2 CBS never used. Check the date on this PDF file: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf -BC aka Callmebc 14:43, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Publishing a day later is a world of difference in news terms. So does USA Today really belong in the intro? The scoop was CBS's, and they were central to the controversy. CBS did complain that USA Today was not criticized to the same extent for publishing the memos, but that seems a little peripheral to the main story. And please stop describing my contributions as "more gaming and obstruction". Dcxf 20:55, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I think USA Today should be in the intro, since their treatment of the same memos was very different from CBS' usage of same; it is a juxtaposition that shows how far out on a limb CBS was. If you look at their article, by September 12[124] they already had a handful of experts who were very doubtful of the memo's authenticity, while CBS was digging in their heels. I don't think we need a para about them, but some notation that they were simultaneously pursuing the story with the same raw material I think is useful. Also, Rather et al. cited competitive pressure to break the story first so it probably helps to point out how close USA Today was to using the documents. What do you think, Dcxf? Kaisershatner 23:08, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe USA Today shiuld be in intro, in something similar to "and later USA Today", with details in article. CBS was the focus of the activity. (SEWilco 23:30, 10 October 2007 (UTC))

Yes I'd agree with that, so long as it's clear that CBS broke the story. Dcxf 04:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Um, the Wiki article is about the "Killian documents" and there are six of those independently obtained by CBS and USA Today. Four of them were used first as part of a CBS story that featured an interview with Ben Barnes regarding Bush's Guard service. Also there was no story that CBS "broke" -- as I've already pointed out, the CBS segment was just one in a series of media investigations into Bush's Guard service, and the memos were initially regarded as only shedding some light on the discrepancies already found in the official records, again as I pointed out. Did I miss anything else that needs to be pointed out? So far all of the suggestions offered so far here would only produce another confused, inaccurate intro (surprise, surprise). I am confused about one thing -- who's on the left hand and who's on the right? Whatever....I really need to focus on other things....-BC aka Callmebc 05:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Of course we're discussing creating a new intro, because you tried to remove the old one. Which part is inaccurate? (SEWilco 02:45, 12 October 2007 (UTC))

All the points that were change by the corrected version. So far all of the "alternative" fixes suggested by you, Kaisershatner, and Dcxf, consistently have been either false, misleading, or ommitting key details and context, which is the state of the current version. Considering how messy the discussion got with my having to refute all the inaccurate, and confused suggestions and supposed points raised, it is possible that I may have missed a valid suggestion. If you can you point to one, that would be helpful. Also, again, have you and the others ever thought of perhaps working on a section that I didn't get to fix yet, and is obviously not up to Wikipedia standards? The "Findings" section, for instance, supposedly refers to the findings of the CBS Panel report, but the list of supposes points form the report are not only improperly annotated, but at least some, starting right with #1, appear to be only POV-pushing "paraphases" of what's actually in the report rather than accurate quotes. One might think that if you and the others were genuinely concerned with the quality of the article would focus on less arguable issues like that first. But....tsk-tsk. -BC aka Callmebc 14:48, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi BC, typically when there is major disagreement over large parts of an article the way to make progress is to take things one at a time. That's why we're discussing "The Corrected Intro." Also, it would really be nice if you would please stop suggesting things like "if you and the others were genuinely concerned with the quality of the article." Notice most of the other editors here are not accusing you of bad faith or obstructionism despite our obvious policy differences. It would be better for us all to focus on the text. Kaisershatner 17:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

"Policy differences"? Is that what you label "facts versus fiction"? And what "progress," pray tell, is going on here? The nonsensical nature of the endless "suggestions" and comments going on here indicate nothing but repeated attempts of Wikipedia:Gaming the system. Right now I'm mostly just looking at patterns of edits to better separate out sockpuppets and meatpuppets for admin action. But if you wish to act like an ancient Mesopotamian, then feel free to continue to Babylon. -BC aka Callmebc 17:40, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The mention of the "right wing bloggers" also.

The Free Republic, Power Line, and Little Green Footballs (wink, wink) started the forgery charge and they are all hard core right wing blog sites. And we certainly can't leave out "Buckhead" whose post really got things rolling.

Both of these in the second paragraph perhaps.

Or perhaps not -- how did the Killian memos become an issue for CBS?

I like your change about Rather, it is more accurate, "we are told" is right.

But certainly best in the second paragraph, like I had in my corrected version:

On September 8, 2004, four of the memos were used in a segment of the CBS news magazine show, 60 Minutes Wednesday that also featured an interview with former Texas House Speaker and Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, who claimed to have helped Bush receive preferential treatment in getting into the National Guard.^[8] At the time, 1968, the Vietnam War was at its height, and National Guard duty was seen as an "escape route from Vietnam".^[9] The memos were introduced by the segment's correspondent, Dan Rather, as "a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file," and some of their more notable contents were discussed, including: a May 19, 1972 memo where Bush calls Killian to talk about "how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November" to work on a campaign in Alabama; a memo dated Aug. 18, 1973, where Killian describes pressure from former base commander Col. Buck Staudt to "sugar coat" one of Bush's evaluations; another dated May 4, 1972, where Bush is orderd to report for a physical; and the fourth, dated Aug. 1, 1972, where Killian suspends Bush from flying status due to "failure to accomplish his annual medical examination" and with the comment "Lt. Bush has made no attempt to meet his training certification or flight physical."

The document examiners didn't authenticate the documents without originals.

They went by signatures, interviews, and a "meshing" of the contents to official records. Actually that meshing bit would have perhaps (wink, wink) nailed the memos as authentic if they had done it better.

Was Rather aware of this? I thought he was.

You thought wrong. Research can be a wonderful thing

So we can make those changes if you like. Oh, and given your repeated personal attacks, sarcasm, and general tone, might I be so bold as to suggest that you would perhaps be more suited to editing a different Wiki where civility and collaboration are not required?

Kaisershatner 20:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

A "Wiki where civility and collaboration are not required"? Ummm...isn't that where I'm already at? ;)

Also, just a brief review of the Thornburgh-Boccardi report: on page 4 they note CBS' failure to obtain clear authentication from any of the 4 examiners consulted before the September 8 segment. So I do have the facts right on that.

Nope, you're still not getting things quite right. "Failure to obtain clear authentication" is a judgement call. It's like, oh say, trying to be certain enough to accuse someone of being a sockpuppet to a Wikipeda admin -- each admin has different standards of what constitutes "clear" evidence. And you didn't mention the "meshing" part. You might want to print it out and read it with a highlighter handy.

And it looks to me from that report that Mapes knew about the doubts of the examiners, but Rather may have been told they were authentic, so I wouldn't support an assertion that Rather deliberately promoted fake documents. Perhaps splitting that sentence would be better so as not to imply this incorrectly. Kaisershatner 21:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, we wouldn't want to "imply" anything that's not NPOV, eh? -BC aka Callmebc 21:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

BC, I am trying to work with you here, but your consistently snide tone is really making that hard. And by breaking up my comment, you take out of context my suggestion that you find a wiki where civility isn't required. It was a direct reply to your personal attack "Considering your suggested changes so far, might I be so bold as to suggest that you would perhaps be more suited editing a simpler Wikipedia article that doesn't require as much research? -BC aka Callmebc 20:31, 9 October 2007 (UTC)" While I am willing to discuss factual edits to the intro, are you as willing to cease with your condescending and insulting comments? Kaisershatner 23:31, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I'll instantly cease and desist with my "insightful" comments when you stop trying to game this "discussion" in an obvious attempt to avoid actually improving the article in any meaningful way, especially in regards to Wikipedia policy and spirit. There are plenty of other places in the article apart from my corrected bits that can certainly also use a clean up -- it would certainly bolster my "good faith" to see you and the others do some work there rather than to just torturously and pointlessly nit pick at mostly imaginary nits regarding my fixes, and in effect getting little or nothing done. Yes or no: does this make sense? -BC aka Callmebc 00:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I thought the whole point was that we were all working on the intro, so I don't think it's that reasonable to start complaining that there are plenty of other places to work on. And you manage to include (another) personal attack by accusing me of gaming the system when I am trying to find some common ground. Kaisershatner 02:17, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The "point" is to improve the article, which doesn't appear to be your intention given your "suggestions" so far in regards to the intro. I tried the Good Faith thing and, well, it ain't working. Actually, given the overall hostile gaming and POV vandalizing (which is the proper term for knowingly putting in unsupported, misleading, and outrightly false info, whether as an add or a revert to a correction), as well as all the persistent sockpuppet/meatpuppet/anonymous IP nonsense, I've decided that there is now much more than enough evidence to file complaints against the main and secondary "editors" involved. So I'm bagging this stage in trying to deal with the disinformational mess in the Killian wikis and will focus on getting the main miscreants and their identifiable alter egos blocked and/or put on probation.

And I should mention for the benefit of you and some of your "colleagues" that I have no intention of disparaging "CJ" with my corrections. Little Green Footballs, the Free Republic, News Busters and other similar right wing blog sites are always posting nonsensical charges in regards to one thing or the other. Since they aren't serious or credible news sources, their stuff is usually and should be regarded at the level of bar room conversations, regardless of the intensity and assuredness of the people "speaking" the loudest. The central fault with the Killian memos saga is with the mainstream media, from CBS to ABC News to the Washington Post and so on, who made a complete, incoherent botch of basic journalistic principles in their presentation and "coverage" of the story from end to end. The campaign-long investigations into Bush's Guard service and all that "other business" regarding Kerry's Vietnam service came to a crashing halt after the Killian nonsense took over the headlines. The most elementary journalistic basics such as checking facts, sources, background, and so on were tossed, apparently simply because some of the research needed to be done could not have been done very well, if at all, from sitting in front of a computer. But even stuff that should have been gleamed from web-based searches, even if tedious, went missing. As a result, a pile of nonsense, much of it maliciously and politically based, was allowed to spread unfettered, including making its way into all of the Wikipedia articles containing any mention of the Killian memos.

But whatever.... We'll see. -BC aka Callmebc 13:42, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Comments by SEWilco

No mention of USA Today
- Should USA Today be in the intro? When did USA Today publish? When were its copies of the documents analyzed?
No context in relation to concurrent media investigations -- "prior to the 2004 Presidential election" implies CBS was acting on it's own with a story critical of Bush's Guard service
- "prior to election" only establishes the point in time. Concurrent media investigations which do not involve the Killian documents would probably fit better near the pointer to the Bush controversy, or omit it and let the Bush article cover those.
"some people initially asserted" -> right wing bloggers
- That seems to fit the description of the initial reports.
  - The article already says "Free Republic, a conservative Internet forum". (SEWilco 05:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC))
Proportional printing was "initially asserted," not "superscripted "th" ordinals
- For the summary it's fine to use one short item, and put both in the article text.
Dan Rather actually said "60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file" which is not the same as "asserted the documents were obtained from the personal files of the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian".
- OK, suggest a summary word instead of "asserted" which means "said they were told". I think "taken" and "obtained" are fine.
"document examiners retained by CBS failed to authenticate them" is not true -- there was some authentication, but it was simply determined later that this had not been sufficient and that Burkett wasn't honest about where he got the memos.
- Are both referring to authentication before broadcast? So is "failed" different than "some", or does "some" mean authentication? Did CBS at first say there was authentication?
"Anchor Dan Rather asserted.... although document examiners retained by CBS failed to authenticate them." falsely suggests that Rather knowing presented fake documents.
- What did Rather say about his involvement in the process? That might be in the Dan Rather article.
- (SEWilco 01:54, 10 October 2007 (UTC))

Rather's Daughter

Dan Rather's daughter was a leader in the Democratic party in Austin, TX. The person who originated the Killian Documents lived near Austin. Coincidence? I think not. Shouldn't this at least be in the story? --Glenn, TX, 11/07

Have some reliable sources on this topic? (SEWilco 05:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC))

Yeah, Ellington Air Field is also in Texas, so was Killian, so was Bush's dad, and even Bush and Cheney hang out there sometimes -- it's all one big Texas conspiracy.... -BC aka Callmebc 06:31, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

^ The name "Ra^thergate" is a nickname stemming from some superscripted "th" ordinals appearing in the memos, which some people initially asserted was only possible using a computer. For more information, see the companion article.
^ "1-year gap in Bush's guard duty". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
^ "Bush's Guard service: What the record shows". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
^ "AP Sues for Bush Guard Records". Editor & Publisher. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
^ "Bush Military Records Destroyed". CBS News. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
^ "Questions about Bush's Guard service unanswered". USA Today. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
^ The name "Ra^thergate" is a nickname stemming from some superscripted "th" ordinals appearing in the memos, which some people initially asserted was only possible using a computer. For more information, see the companion article.
^ "New Questions On Bush Guard Duty". CBS News. Retrieved 2007-10-06.
^ "At Height of Vietnam, Bush Picks Guard". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

[1] The name "Ra^thergate" is a nickname stemming from some superscripted "th" ordinals appearing in the memos, which some people initially asserted was only possible using a computer. For more information, see the companion article.

[2] "1-year gap in Bush's guard duty". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

[3] "Bush's Guard service: What the record shows". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

[4] "AP Sues for Bush Guard Records". Editor & Publisher. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

[5] "Bush Military Records Destroyed". CBS News. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

[6] "Questions about Bush's Guard service unanswered". USA Today. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

[7] The name "Ra^thergate" is a nickname stemming from some superscripted "th" ordinals appearing in the memos, which some people initially asserted was only possible using a computer. For more information, see the companion article.

[8] "New Questions On Bush Guard Duty". CBS News. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

[9] "At Height of Vietnam, Bush Picks Guard". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-10-06.

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