For those who don't surf political websites and are wondering what the big stink is over the memos used by Dan Rather on the CBS network show 60 Minutes, below is an overlay of a portion of a memo relied upon by 60 Minutes which Dan Rather claims was created in 1973 and the same memo recently retyped in Microsoft Word using all standard default settings and automatic page-breaks:

You don't have to be an expert in fonts, kerning, proportional spacing, typesetting, and military protocols to see the two documents are exactly identical in every way. Well, except that one was copied a few dozen times to "age" it before it was faxed to CBS News. All credible experts are in agreement that the memos Dan Rather relied upon for his story were not created in the early seventies--in other words, they're forgeries, really really bad forgeries. So bad, the person making them didn't even bother using a manual typewriter to create documents supposedly written a decade before the advent of personal computers.

The completely discredited Dan Rather, still maintains the memos may be authentic but, most damningly, he nor anyone else can recreate the same type of perfect overlay as above using early seventies equipment.

For what it's worth, the 60 Minutes story involved years old allegations about George Bush's Texas Air National Guard (TANG) service made by political partisans who have never had any support to their allegations. Dan Rather has been asking for documentation for years and, when exactly what he'd been asking for arrived, he was so excited about being able to do his hatchet job on President Bush that he put aside what was left of his credibility and journalistic integrity and went forward with a story based on documents which had not been authenticated and in which his own experts expressed doubts.

While many internet sites played a role in breaking the story, two of the most prominent websites responsible for uncovering the true nature of the memos were Little Green Footballs and Power Line. Check them out for more information.