Corey Pein has a defense of his CJR article posted here, on Romenesko letters. I had previously criticized his article and just zipped off the following letter to Romenesko:
I found Corey Pein’s defense of his CJR article, like his article itself, rather unconvincing.
It just strains credulity to think that two memos written in 1973 would match the default settings of Microsoft Word, virtually pixel-for-pixel. The chances that the word-wrap alone would match are incredible, as anyone who’s ever typed a document should know.
This alone does not “prove” that the documents are forgeries … but when taken with evidence the typography on 1973 memos showed pseudo-kerning, “curly-quotes,” ligatures and other artifacts difficult if not impossible for a 1970s typewriter to produce, it’s the only reasonable conclusion.
Pein dismisses the authoritative critique by Joseph Newcomer as based on a “logical error,” saying that the “accompanying analysis was long and technical, discouraging close examination.” Hmm. If he didn’t understand it, perhaps he shouldn’t have weighed in.
UPDATE: Pein also appears to have confused Jonathan Last, author of a critical Weekly Standard piece, with someone else. “For my own part, I did read Pein in his entirety,” writes Last. “Sadly, I can’t say that he returned the favor. ”
UPDATE 1/7: Pein has corrected his mistake. Not a lot more to say, especially since the CBS independent report might be released today.
The comparison you link to at LGF hardly matches pixel for pixel as you claim. Look at the serifs, they are distimtly different. This seems to prove Pein’s argument that we can’t be sure of what’s what’s.
“Virtually pixel for pixel.” Obviously, there is some difference – but it seems to me that could be accounted for by the document being photocopied multiple times. I agree that the Little Green Footballs example alone doesn’t prove the documents are forgeries; you also have to look at the totality of the evidence that Newcomer and other experts have compiled. Just throwing up your hands and declaring an analysis is “long and technical” so you’re not going to examine it — while simultaneously offering an opinion — is pretty unbecoming, IMHO.
to argue that the clear and unambiguous examples of differences
between the “Word” version and the version released by CBS
can be accounted for because of “photography” and “copying” is
also to argue that the original looked nothing at all like the
Word version in all probability.
Hailey has shown that the differences between a typed version
and subsequent generations of copies do not wind up looking
like the CBS memos.
The fact is that the White House deliberately withheld documents
from its February release that showed that the Texas Air
National Guard was using proportionately spaced fonts in its
offices over a year before the date of the first “Killian memo.”
One can reproduce this document using Microsoft Word as well.
Hailey also claimed, in a three-sheets-to-the-wind series of comments on Wizbang, to have proven the documents are “probably frauds.” Also check out this post from Dec. 17 where Hailey says he believes the documents were produced “in Typewriter” — that is to say, using the Typewriter font on a computer.
I don’t see any “clear and unambiguous” differences between the LGF Microsoft Word documents and the 1973 docs. Via Wikipedia, I found this enlarged comparison. Looks very similar to me.
Lastly, you’re right – although rare, there were proportional-spaced documents from in that era. However, the Killiam memos had superscripted “th”s; joined “fi” and “fr” combinations; curly-quotes; and centered proportionally-spaced headers. From what I understand, the first two are impossible to produce on 1970s-era typewriters; the other two difficult for an unskilled typist.