Question on mil memos circa 1970-1972

[nafod40]

Hey old goats...

The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.

The reasoning is that the memos revealed are proportional font, and use
other typesetting devices that are commonly found now on modern
computers and laser printers, but were not available in your average
Mark I Mod 0 admin department in the military.

Since I was barely out of diapers in this time frame, I thought I'd toss
it up to you grey eagles for comment. Any Admin O's out there? Air Guard
time? YNs? PNs?

http://hftp.blogspot.com/2004/09/60-minutes-documents-forged.html

[Bill Kambic]

"nafod40" wrote in message

> Hey old goats...
>
> The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
> released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.

In this election how can ANYTHING be considered "bizarre?" ;-)

> The reasoning is that the memos revealed are proportional font, and use
> other typesetting devices that are commonly found now on modern
> computers and laser printers, but were not available in your average
> Mark I Mod 0 admin department in the military.

I dunno. The Air Force/ANG world always did seem to have lots of money.
Mabye they were "cutting edge" in their day.

Can't speak specifically to the ANG, but I am in the process of correcting
my records with CNAVRES so I can get all my retirement points. Seems that
they did not know I did six years active duty before I joined, or that I
drilled at NAF Detroit from 1973-1978. Nary a drill was on the master list.
Not even one.

Sooooooooooo, I am copying log book pages, old muster sheets, physical exam
forms, ACDUTRA & SPECAC orders, etc. to show that (a) I was alive at that
time and, (b) performed service for my country, and (c) deserve to be paid
for it.

Oh, and I got a copy of my first DD214 to send along with everything else.

Maybe the boy was AWOL and maybe the ANG had some no load keeping the
records during that period. Either is possible. But, in the end, does it
matter?

Bill Kambic

Mangalarga Marchador: Uma raça, uma paixão

[nafod40]

Bill Kambic wrote:
>
> Maybe the boy was AWOL and maybe the ANG had some no load keeping the
> records during that period. Either is possible. But, in the end, does it
> matter?

Only in the sense of "who killed JR" kind of matters. Good clean
political dirt fun. Let the games begin!

[Peter Stickney]

In article >,
nafod40 > writes:
> Hey old goats...
>
> The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
> released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.
>
> The reasoning is that the memos revealed are proportional font, and use
> other typesetting devices that are commonly found now on modern
> computers and laser printers, but were not available in your average
> Mark I Mod 0 admin department in the military.
>
> Since I was barely out of diapers in this time frame, I thought I'd toss
> it up to you grey eagles for comment. Any Admin O's out there? Air Guard
> time? YNs? PNs?
>
> http://hftp.blogspot.com/2004/09/60-minutes-documents-forged.html

Well, at the time, they used typewriters, and Carbon Paper. That means
a monospaced font, uneven strikes, and all manner of wibbly-wobbly
letters as the thickness of the paper/carbon sandwich changed.

There certainly wasn't anything like, say, an early 1980's Word
Processor/Phototypesetter such as a Wang, DecMate, or Itek Quadritek.

I ought to know - I was there as part of the Quadritek/EON team at
Itek from '80-82, and at DEC just after. Nobody had them becasue we
were just beginning to make them. Think about it - 1973 - no
Micrcomputers. No Laser Printers. No Inkjet Printers. At that time,
Xerox machines were Really Zippy, and Fax Machines were the next best
thing to Star Trek.

Getting high quality typescript done back then was a laborious and
expensive process. Either the type was cast in metal by a Linotype
machine, operated by a specialist, or it was photoset.
Phototypesetting was a multi-step process - you exposed your type on
super-high quality photographic film, (again, a job for a specialist -
there wasn't any WYSIWYG stuff back then - kerning (spacing between
letters) and such were done manually, and was a by-guess and by-gosh
process. After the filmwas shot, it had to be kept light-tight until
it was developed. The developed film was used to deposit resist on a
blank printing plate (A plastic and Aluminum Sandwich, which contains
the full page to be run on the press) the plate is then etched away
with acid so that the characters are raised. Then, if all's gone
well, the plate is latched into an Offset Press, and you wind it up &
let it work. This wasn't cheap - we invested a _lot_ of money, time,
and effort into trying to reduce costs - stuff like recovering the
Silver from exposed film, and the metal from the used plates and acid.

Even a simple job was an all day affair.

A Proportional Font on a 1973 interoffice communication is like having
a Porsche 959 show up in a photo supposedly taken during the Battle of
the Bulge.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

[Jack G]

I have looked at copies of the original documents and concur that the
typography is inconsistent with the alleged dates. I also noticed another
inconstancy - in one of the memos, the expression: "not later than (NLT)"
is used. In my recollection of military correspondence the correct form
should have been: "NLT (Not Later Than)". The parenthetical definition used
only after the first use of an acronym in a document. Can anyone confirm
this form?

Jack G.


Peter Stickney" > wrote in message
...
> In article >,
> nafod40 > writes:
> > Hey old goats...
> >
> > The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
> > released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.
> >
> > The reasoning is that the memos revealed are proportional font, and use
> > other typesetting devices that are commonly found now on modern
> > computers and laser printers, but were not available in your average
> > Mark I Mod 0 admin department in the military.
> >
> > Since I was barely out of diapers in this time frame, I thought I'd toss
> > it up to you grey eagles for comment. Any Admin O's out there? Air Guard
> > time? YNs? PNs?
> >
> > http://hftp.blogspot.com/2004/09/60-minutes-documents-forged.html
>
> Well, at the time, they used typewriters, and Carbon Paper. That means
> a monospaced font, uneven strikes, and all manner of wibbly-wobbly
> letters as the thickness of the paper/carbon sandwich changed.
>
> There certainly wasn't anything like, say, an early 1980's Word
> Processor/Phototypesetter such as a Wang, DecMate, or Itek Quadritek.
>
> I ought to know - I was there as part of the Quadritek/EON team at
> Itek from '80-82, and at DEC just after. Nobody had them becasue we
> were just beginning to make them. Think about it - 1973 - no
> Micrcomputers. No Laser Printers. No Inkjet Printers. At that time,
> Xerox machines were Really Zippy, and Fax Machines were the next best
> thing to Star Trek.
>
> Getting high quality typescript done back then was a laborious and
> expensive process. Either the type was cast in metal by a Linotype
> machine, operated by a specialist, or it was photoset.
> Phototypesetting was a multi-step process - you exposed your type on
> super-high quality photographic film, (again, a job for a specialist -
> there wasn't any WYSIWYG stuff back then - kerning (spacing between
> letters) and such were done manually, and was a by-guess and by-gosh
> process. After the filmwas shot, it had to be kept light-tight until
> it was developed. The developed film was used to deposit resist on a
> blank printing plate (A plastic and Aluminum Sandwich, which contains
> the full page to be run on the press) the plate is then etched away
> with acid so that the characters are raised. Then, if all's gone
> well, the plate is latched into an Offset Press, and you wind it up &
> let it work. This wasn't cheap - we invested a _lot_ of money, time,
> and effort into trying to reduce costs - stuff like recovering the
> Silver from exposed film, and the metal from the used plates and acid.
>
> Even a simple job was an all day affair.
>
> A Proportional Font on a 1973 interoffice communication is like having
> a Porsche 959 show up in a photo supposedly taken during the Battle of
> the Bulge.
>
> --
> Pete Stickney
> A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
> bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

[John Miller]

nafod40 wrote:
> Hey old goats...
>
> The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
> released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.

Let me try this again (and apologies if there's a dupe).
I checked the link. Their premise is *so* broken. That's what happens
when people making these judgments are too young to have any historical
knowledge. Near-typeset quality in the office is nothing new.

As far back as the '50s, as memory serves, IBM had a proportional
spacing typewriter. Some of you may have seen one in front of the admiral's
secretary. It was distinguished by having a split spacebar,
marked '2' and '3' to indicate how many microspaces would be inserted.
The 'w' was indeed wider than an 'i', and combined with a carbon ribbon,
the output was elegant, indeed. In fact, I was once roundly criticized
for having sent something out for typesetting when it had only been
typed, but I digress...

Bah, humbug,
--
John Miller
Email address: domain, n4vu.com; username, jsm

Would the last person to leave Michigan please turn out the lights?

[nafod40]

John Miller wrote:
> nafod40 wrote:
>
>>Hey old goats...
>>
>>The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
>>released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.
>
>
> Let me try this again (and apologies if there's a dupe).
> I checked the link. Their premise is *so* broken. That's what happens
> when people making these judgments are too young to have any historical
> knowledge. Near-typeset quality in the office is nothing new.

I think it's all coming out now, but it's fun to look at them. One thing
the new memos have that your typewriter couldn't do is kerning, where,
for example, the 'o' nestles under the 't' in the word "To". typewrites
could never do that, because it requires knowing what the second letter
is when you hit the first.

I feel like Matlock hunting done McGiver.

[Peter Stickney]

In article >,
nafod40 > writes:
> John Miller wrote:
>> nafod40 wrote:
>>
>>>Hey old goats...
>>>
>>>The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
>>>released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.
>>
>>
>> Let me try this again (and apologies if there's a dupe).
>> I checked the link. Their premise is *so* broken. That's what happens
>> when people making these judgments are too young to have any historical
>> knowledge. Near-typeset quality in the office is nothing new.
>
> I think it's all coming out now, but it's fun to look at them. One thing
> the new memos have that your typewriter couldn't do is kerning, where,
> for example, the 'o' nestles under the 't' in the word "To". typewrites
> could never do that, because it requires knowing what the second letter
> is when you hit the first.
>
> I feel like Matlock hunting done McGiver.

There are also going to be differences in the typeface itself -
royalties on teh use of a particular font are very expensive, but
nobody wants to be missing a font from theri catalog. The various
foundries (The folks that design the fonts) will take a basic design,
make minor changes, and put it out in their catalog under a similar
name. This means that teh source of teh type for a document can be
traced fairly easily. Not quite to fingerprint level, perhaps,
(Although with a typewriter or Daisy Wheel Printer that can happen,
since t ey all wear differently) but at least to the "Rare Blood Type"
level.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster

[Aardvark J. Bandersnatch, MP]

"John Miller" > wrote in message
...
> nafod40 wrote:
>> Hey old goats...
>>
>> The latest buzz from the rabid right wing attack dogs is that the newly
>> released memos about George Bush are forgeries. Bizaare.
>
> Let me try this again (and apologies if there's a dupe).
> I checked the link. Their premise is *so* broken. That's what happens
> when people making these judgments are too young to have any historical
> knowledge. Near-typeset quality in the office is nothing new.
>
> As far back as the '50s, as memory serves, IBM had a proportional
> spacing typewriter. Some of you may have seen one in front of the
> admiral's
> secretary. It was distinguished by having a split spacebar,
> marked '2' and '3' to indicate how many microspaces would be inserted.
> The 'w' was indeed wider than an 'i', and combined with a carbon ribbon,
> the output was elegant, indeed.

Sorry, except for possibly some higher-up offices in the Pentagon, those
typewriters were not in use in the military. My first active duty tour was
in the 1970- 74 timeframe. We were using Royal and Underwood manuals. Now
that's Regular Army, not the Texas Air National Guard, so I would assume
they were using even older model machines. The memos that were released look
nothing like anything that I can find in any of my permanent records.
Second, the family of Bush's former CO have repeatedly said that he did NOT
keep records at his home. I seriously doubt that any CO of any NG command
would keep records in his home, especially beyond the records' mandatory
retirement date.
Third, these memos supposedly came from someone who had no connection either
with the command in question or that particular officer.

The whole thing stinks of hoax.

[Jim Herring]

Why does the letterhead not have a superscript for "th" and the memo does? In
those days the typing of memos was from a blank sheet of paper, there were no
pages with the letterhead already there. BTW, from my days of manual typing it's
not that hard to do a superscript, you turn the platen up a notch then type and
then turn the platen down a notch to continue typing. But, not as clean as these
memos.

BTW, in at least one statement from CBS the memos came via the DNC and the Kerry
camp. There's just too many people in the loop with agendas

When will the major networks file with the IRS as 527's for the dems?

--
Jim

carry on