20 Comments

1. John Lynch:

Does this seem reminiscent of Kofi Annan appointing Paul Volker to investigate Oil-For-Food?

1) Appoint someone “above reproach.”

2) Appoint someone without subject matter expertise.

3) Appoint a panel.

4) Stonewall all other investigation or further comment.

5) Wait for storm to die down.

Sep 22, 2004 - 11:04 am 2. David Thomson:

Former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and retired AP CEO Louis Boccardi may indeed be “unimpeachable.” So what? They have no power to throw anyone lying to them into jail. This arrangement is also probably a stall tactic to assist John Kerry. Getting hard questions answered in the here and now would likely destroy Kerryís campaign. No, the public requires an investigation with some legal bite to it.

Sep 22, 2004 - 11:34 am 3. George Purcell:

I dunno Roger. The heads of the Commission have got to be old, really.

They’ll have younger staff who can sort it out.

Sep 22, 2004 - 11:36 am 4. Catherine:

Maybe, but at least they’re old enough to remember IBM Selectrics.

Speaking of which, in Danron we have another instance of “lost knowledge.”

NEW YORK POST ran a feature saying that it was virtually impossible to center a memo without Word.

They tried to do it using the tab key on the Selectric.

Anyone who took typing before PCs knows you don’t use the tab key to center a heading.

You use 4th grade math.

I conclude that knowledge of centering-without-Word is now lost to younger generations, along with, among other things, all knowledge of the different cuts of beef and their properties (something my mother knew by heart.)

Sep 22, 2004 - 12:06 pm 5. Crank:

As long as they are willing to talk to experts who can explain the obvious.

Could be worse. I had been preparing for a three-person panel of Walter Cronkite, Helen Thomas and Bill Moyers.

Sep 22, 2004 - 12:11 pm 6. Roger:

Actually, Catherine, intricate knowledge of beef cuts is making a big comeback with the younger foodie generation. As a former LA person, you should know Harvey Guss Meats – a mecca for the new post-Lipitor generation (advertising plug deliberate – maybe they’ll give me a discount).

Sep 22, 2004 - 12:25 pm 7. littlerockcubsfan:

I think their age can be an advantage. Maybe they remember when journalism was about reporting the news, and not “gottcha” politics.

Sep 22, 2004 - 12:42 pm 8. littlerockcubsfan:

I think their age can be an advantage. Maybe they remember when journalism was about reporting the news, and not “gottcha” politics.

Sep 22, 2004 - 12:48 pm 9. littlerockcubsfan:

I think their age can be an advantage. Maybe they remember when journalism was about reporting the news and not “gottcha” politics.

Sep 22, 2004 - 12:48 pm 10. dunderhead:

I am not so concerned about their age as I am the fact that Thornburgh has had a nasty litigation history with Rove, which will certainly curb his enthusiasm for pursuing this to the inner workings of the Jenjis John campaign because it might make Rove look good. Yet at the same time cBS innoculates itself against charges of partisanship by using the former Reagan AG. I would have hoped that the 1 lawyer they appointed would have been someone not connected in any way to politics or journalism — they would have then just pursued discovery as they would in any other case.

Sep 22, 2004 - 1:01 pm 11. NavySEAL Mom:

Roger, I’m with you on this one. I just wonder if these two have the Internet/research savvy necessary to understand what someone sitting in front of their computer can do in a matter of minutes.

For instance, that Karl Rove successfully sued Dick Thornburgh for expenses+damages/costs in money owed him from Thornburgh’s 1991 gubernatorial campaign.

As far as Baccardi — he’s AP. The AP has been found to be faulty in two stories that I am aware of in the last two weeks. One involving a fake Navy SEAL. The Navy SEAL story they made clear they were not going to go back and ask the man because he seemed so “genuine” and they believed him. Story over –NOT. AuthentiSEAL finally got a retraction out of AP, after two weeks!

Sep 22, 2004 - 1:04 pm 12. Buckland:

Catherine,

Centering with a typewriter is a trivial task with fixed width fonts. With a proportional font (Times New Roman in these memos) it is a real pain that can’t be done easily.

With a fixed width it’s just a matter of going to the center of the page and backspacing once for every 2 characters in the header. I tend to think that they just used the tab to get the the center of the page.

With a proportional font you have to know how wide each character is. About the only way to center with proportional fonts was to type the header on a scrap sheet, carefully measure the header, find the center and space back half the size of the header. Not at all a trivial task.

BTW, I thought the exact centering of the headers was the real giveaway on the memos, much more unusual than the ‘th’. In grad school I did my thesis in a proportional font so it would look good, but each and every title was done in a fixed width font because the centering was just such a pain.

Sep 22, 2004 - 1:19 pm 13. Howard:

There is an updated list of the Blue Ribbon panel posted HERE. Looks suspicious to me.

Sep 22, 2004 - 1:26 pm 14. doublecola:

age doesn’t matter. this is about ethics, not technology.

Sep 22, 2004 - 1:44 pm 15. Catherine:

Roger

intricate knowledge of beef cuts is making a big comeback with the younger foodie generation

There is hope!

Sep 22, 2004 - 2:33 pm 16. Michael B:

The “age doesn’t matter” theme is only true to a point, this is not about age discrimination per se, it’s about appointing someone with the passion and integrity and legal powers to see these investigations through to the end. Minimally it means they’re refraining from appointing a young, eager, ambitious D.A. type looking to make his or her mark on the world and instead are appointing once prominent bureaucrats.

Paul Volcker is 76 years old and Thornburg is presumably in that same age grouping himself. And what have we heard from Volcker so far, as compared to what we’ve heard from Claudia Rossett for example? And what are we likely to hear? Will there be the power of subpoena available to either Thornburg or Volcker? (Negative, I believe, in both cases, and it’s difficult to overstate the power that is lacking when subpoenas are not available to investigators.)

Id est, America is being hoodwinked and bitch slapped by CBS. These are the American public’s broadcast airwaves, not the airwaves of the DNC/CBS political committee.

Too, we’re simply asking for an investigation, not for a kangaroo court and a summary judgement by decree. But we’re asking for a real investigation with real investigative powers, including the power of subpoena and attendant legal reviews and supports. That’s the only thing that will get the job done, and both CBS and the U.N. know this.

If Rather/CBS, Mapes, et al are entirely innocent, then a thorough and properly supported investigation will reveal precisely that. In other words they should welcome such an investigation, not stonewall against it.

Sep 22, 2004 - 2:34 pm 17. Terrye:

I am not as old as these guys, but I am old enough to know that a lot of the technology does nto come second nature to that generation.

There is also the question of patience and stamina.

One thing about it, they are old enough to remember Watergate.

Sep 22, 2004 - 5:56 pm 18. John Lynch:

Catherine, Buckland

Centering goes deeper than Buckland’s explanatory post. Buckland is correct that proportional font requires extra steps; but it goes further.

The width of characters on the typewriter is variable, but not infinitely variable. It went in steps with the ‘m’ the widest and the ‘i’ the narrowest. I don’t recall the name that was used then but it was something like an ‘m’ had five whatever they were called, and an ‘i’ one.

Spacing backwards from the middle of a line was by full spaces or half-spaces. Simply backspacing from the center would leave the line “approximately” centered. It would be within a half-space or so, but would not be a fraction of a character such as 1/24th. Back then, that was ‘good enough.’ It was possible to put the carriage in ‘free’ mode and measure, but that was extremely difficult to get right as well.

These documents are ‘exactly’ centered, line after line for the three line headers. Modern computers and word processors don’t use character widths to center the line. Nor do they use fractions of characters. They use measurements such as ‘twips,’ or pixels. These are much finer in resolution, down to 1/1440th of an inch. The lines cannot be centered to that fine a resolution without extreme effort while ‘free-floating’ the carriage.

While I have not seen a study by the experts on this, relative to these documents, but it would not surprise me that these headers literally cannot be reproduced on any typewriter at all.

Sep 22, 2004 - 9:52 pm 19. John Lynch:

Furthering my earlier post, when looking at the copies of the documents, you can see one centered line above another and the characters do not line up, one above another, in a space, or half space increment, nor in mod 5 widths. They line up from center in a resolution finer than one-fifth of an ‘m.’

Again, I’m not a document forensic person, but measuring the displacements from center, and determining that the displacements are anything other than one-fifth of an ‘m,’ would mean those documents are computer produced.

Sep 22, 2004 - 10:08 pm 20. mshyde:

ROGER

Not relevant? Take a look at this.

So what’s CBS’s spin now?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=related:www.fec.gov/info/subj98.htm

Sep 23, 2004 - 10:48 am

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