Wizbang has a theory as to the identity of the Bush ANG memo forger. He identified Marty Heldt, a notorius anti-Bush crackpot, as being one possible suspect in the creation of the memos. Indeed, Heldt has been known for trying to smear Bush’s ANG service and was connected to another set of crudely forged Bush documents in the past.
At the same time, Tim Blair has another possible suspect for the forger, a disgruntled ANG officer named Bill Burkett who has been named as a primary source for the original CBS story.
Either suspect could be the forger, or it could be someone we don’t know of yet. When you’re dealing with something that anyone could create in Microsoft Word from the comfort of their own home, you have a very long list of potential suspects.
What is shocking is that there are some who still stubbornly insist that the memos are something other than a crude forgery. When even The New York Times is on the story, the insinuation that the forgery evidence is all some feverish right-wing conspiracy is not only absurd, but self-evidently so. The arguments for the authenticity of the documents are beginning to reek more and more of desperation – typewriters can do superscript and proportional fonts (true, but only prohibitively expensive ones that a non-typist would never use to compose a simple letter), the letters of the memos have differing baselines, showing they were made on a typewriter (which they don’t – the letters are merely distorted from being photocopied and faxed ), etc, etc. Some are even deliberately and disingeniously comparing a screen capture from Word to the memos, ignoring the fact that a screen font and a printed font may not be identical (which is true in the case of Monotype’s TrueType version of Times New Roman).
If CBS’ source for these documents is even remotely connected to the Kerry campaign, it’s over for John Kerry. It’s already over for CBS, their credibility is entirely shot, and it’s only a matter of time before the overwhelming amount of evidence forces them to give a major mea culpa for decieving the American public.
The attempts to smear Bush with these forged documents has completely backfired. It’s taken down CBS, and it could take Kerry down with it unless he immediately denounces the memos and moves on to the issues that really matter to Americans. However, the Democratic strategy is to continue to launch their smear attacks against the President, virtually assuring that the documents will stay in the news cycle.
There are times I wonder if Kerry doesn’t want to lose – or someone in the Democratic Party isn’t setting him up for a fall…
A Kerry supporter, evidently.
The memo isn’t that smart. The signatures aren’t exact, the nomenclature is wrong, and there are details that show that the forger was not familar with ANG orders at the time (such as the reference to a regulation that has both the wrong terminology and is related to foreign-language proficiency).
These documents aren’t even good fakes, and the only people falling for them appear to be Dan Rather and those whose overwhelming hatred of Bush have already ovewhelmed their common sense.