Homestead mailing list

["clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>]

Lynda writes:

> Which reminds me, a "real" expert would have had to do only one thing to
> prove or disprove the use of a typewriter, hold the paper to light and see
> if the paper had been through a printer or a typewriter.


This is right.  The only machine available in 1973 that could have been used
to write the memos was the IMB Selectric Composer and it struck the paper a
mighty blow with each keystroke!  Why hasn't someone examined the original
documents to see if there is the tell tale spoor imprinted on the paper!
If they found no spoor, that is, if the ink was sprayed (as in an ink jet)
or heat fused (as in a laser printer) then conclusively the documents are
fake.   If there is the spoor left from the mechanical striking of the
paper, then the memos COULD be real.  Or they could have been composed last
month on an IBM Selectric Composer.

Many sources are saying that the IBM Selectric II that came on the market a
few weeks before the first memo could have been used to write them.
Probably not.  In two of the memos there is the address center justified in
a right hand column.  The Selectric couldn't do this.  Also some of the
superscripted th's are in a smaller font.  On the Selectric you could fairly
easily superscript the th by raising the ball half a line, but it still
typed th in whatever font you had there.  That's not the case in the memos.

The only machine in existence at the time that could have done the above was
the IBM Selectric Composer which was a desktop typesetting machine and very,
very expensive.   In order to center justify a line, you had to type in the
line twice:  once to let the machine calculate the kerning and then again to
actually type the line.

So the argument is one of probabilities, not absolute proof:

- a person who wasn't in the habit of writing or keeping memos
- a person who didn't type
- using an extremely expensive typesetting machine
- or else going way out of his way to do fancy embellishments
- writing memos in reference to someone (Standt) no longer in the Guard
- writing and keeping memos that might incriminate the writer
- memos showing up in "personal effects" of which the immediate family
denies exited with no explanation as to how the "source" got possession of
them


You're right, though.  It proves nothing.  But if you just got off the space
ship from Mars and had no idea who Bush is (had no dog in the fight), would
you say that the evidence points to a forgery or an actual document?

Gene's theory of a plant by Bush supporters holds far more water than these
being actual documents from the 70's.


James