Tornado Alley (PROG)

[rico7]

It has been asserted by some that the CBS Killian memos were probably computer generated, presumably by MS Word, based on the use of the "th" super/subscript feature. While I am interested in knowing more about the provenance of these Memos and CBS's internal investigation, I don't find this particular argument convincing.

Consider this one of the four Memos:

http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf

Since the super/subscript feature is automatic in MS Word, then why isn't the "th" subscript found in both instances where it occurs in this Memo? It appears twice in the foregoing Memo, first as "normal" size type and then as super/subscript. So, if this Memo is a fake, then its author would have typed the first "th", erased it when it automatically appeared in super/subscript, and then somehow manually override the automatic feature and retype it in the same font as the rest of the document.

When I try this with MS Word using Times Roman type, I am unable to actually accomplish this with the as-factory installed features of MS Word intact. Perhaps it is possible to override this automatic feature, but not readily. And, if a forger took the effort to have somehow disabled or overwrite this automatic feature in the first instance, why did he/she not do so in the second instance?

There is yet another instance where this automatic super/subscript feature would have had to been overridden in this Memo ("1st Lt. George Bush"). The "st" in this Memo is in the regular type face and font. It is not in super/subscript as the auotmatic feature of MS Word would have done.

In my version of MS Word at its as-installed factory settings, I can only defeat the automatic super/subscript feature for "st" and "th" by placing a space between the them and preceding numerals. This is not the case with the Memo.

I previously posted that IBM Selectrics that were widely used at the time these Memos were supposedly written had this subscript feature.