Blog For Free!
Archives
Home
2008 October
2008 September
2008 August
2008 July
2008 June
2008 May
2008 April
2008 March
2008 February
2008 January
2007 December
2007 November
2007 October
2007 September
2007 July
2007 June
2007 May
2007 April
2007 March
2007 February
2007 January
2006 December
2006 November
2006 October
2006 September
2006 August
2006 July
2006 June
2006 May
2006 April
2006 March
2006 February
2006 January
2005 December
2005 November
2005 October
2005 August
2005 July
2005 June
2005 May
2005 April
2005 March
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
My Links
Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective
Watts Up With That?
Internet Haganah
Jihad Watch
Ponder the Maunder
The Dissident Frogman
Barking-Moonbat EWS
Just Barking Mad!
The Malaria Clock
Project Valour-IT
Islam: Turning everything it touches to Shi'ite since 632 AD...
10 Myths of Islam
tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images
Sponsored
Blog
| CBS- PWN3D!!! |
| 09.09.04 (1:46 pm) [edit] |
|
Well, well well... What have we here? CBS may be manufacturing news again? Say it isn't so! September 09, 2004 (UPDATED: "At Least" 90% Positive They're Fake) Are the CBS National Guard Documents Fake? INDC Exclusive. Must Credit INDC. Based on Powerline's suspicions of forgery over the documents put forth regarding George W. Bush’s National Guard service, I decided to do some legwork and track down the opinions of forensic document examiners that may have an expertise in old typefaces. After contacting several experts, a rather notable Forensic Document Examiner named Dr. Philip Bouffard took the time to examine a pdf of the documents and perform an initial visual analysis of their authenticity. Dr. Bouffard has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Michigan, but got involved in forensic examination of typefaces after working in “graphics” with NCR until 1973 and taking a two-year Certification Program in Document Examination at Georgetown University. After completing the program, he became specifically interested in typewriter classification and went to work for a prosecutor’s crime lab in Lake County, Ohio. Using something called the Haas Atlas, the definitive collection of various typefaces, Mr. Bouffard (and other forensic document examiners) examined the veracity of various documents for over 30 years. Beginning in 1988, Mr. Bouffard hired a programmer to write a computer database program that catalogues the nearly 4,000 typefaces that appear in the Haas Atlas. This computer program is now a forensic standard that is sold as a companion to the Haas Atlas by American Society of Questioned Document Examiners (ASQDE). Though semi-retired, Dr. Bouffard is one of the top two experts in forensic document examination (regarding typefaces) in the country. UPDATE: The name of the program that Dr. Bouffard developed is called "The Typewriter Typestyle Classification Program" (C:TYPE). What did Dr. Bouffard think of the documents? First, the necessary caveats: • The pdf document is of poor quality. It seems to have been copied and recopied several times, blurring letter characteristics. • Also, certain types of analysis can only be done on the original documents, which don’t seem to be available, even to CBS. So Dr. Bouffard is very clear that his analysis is not 100% positive. That being said … “It’s just possible that this might be a Times Roman font, which means that it would have been created on a computer. It’s very possible that someone decided to create this document on a computer... I’ve run across this situation before … my gut is this could just well be a fabrication.” The reasons why? • Right off the bat, Dr. Bouffard noted what others in the blogosphere have been talking about – something called “proportional spacing,” which means that each letter does not take up the same amount of width on the page. On old typewriters that do not have proportional spacing, the letter “i” would be as wide as the letter “m.” Except for professional typesetting, proportional spacing was only available on a very few models (an IBM model, "Executive" and perhaps one or two other models Mini-Update: Dr. Bouffard e-mails to correct me that it was seven or eight possible models, not one or two - Ed) that were not widely available in 1972-73; the vast majority of typewriters did not have proportional spacing. Because of this, Dr. Bouffard’s computer program immediately eliminated “over 90%” of the possible fonts from typewriters that could create such a document, narrowing it down to perhaps 15 fonts used by a very few models. • Next, Dr. Bouffard began entering individual characters in an attempt to match them to the remaining fonts that were available on proportional spacing typewriters of that era, focusing on numbers. Thus far, one character stood out, the number “4.” In the document provided by CBS News, the number 4 does not "have a foot" and has a “closed top,” which is indicative of Times New Roman, a font exclusive to more modern computer word processing programs. other characters matched the old proportional spacing fonts (available on only a small few typewriters of the era), but this number did not (please note that this is only an initial analysis with numerical characters). Dr. Bouffard ran this number and could not find a match in his entire database of over 4,000 typewriter fonts that have been maintained and collected into his computer database since 1988. Otherwise, the font is very indicative of Times New Roman, the font that is only available on computer word processing programs. The final word? Once again, let’s not forget the qualifications: it's a bad copy of a copy and we have no original document for review, but, based on the initial analysis of the documents by an industry expert with over 30 years of experience in typesetting and forensic document examination, the documents “could just well be a fabrication.” In light of this information, I think that it would be highly appropriate for CBS News and the Boston Globe to attempt to obtain a copy of the original document for more thorough vetting, and run a correction/addendum to the story. I still have two other forensic document examiners that are examining the pdf file, and I will update if/when they get back to me. I also plan to ask Dr. Bouffard more detail about the nature of the "th" on the end of dates, though in our first conversation he indicated that some typewriters had the capability to do something in that format. Check out the article, it's being updated frequently. Originally broken by www.powerlineblog.com See also www.littlegreenfootballs/webl og, and drudgereport.com |
| 0 Comments |
