Letters to the Editor
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One more comment
It's a shame to see this letters page bogging down on the memos, which were only a small part of the evidence showing Bush's absences from guard duty.
I'm tempted to start debating specifics, but to keep it brief, I'll just note that given a document of unknown origin, the burden of proof lies in showing that it is authentic, not the other way around.
It is impossible to show a fax to be an authentic document since there are so many ways to produce a fake one. Yet CBS made the decision to run with these faxes and consequently did the brunt of the work in turning a compelling circumstantial case against Bush into an indictment against those making the case.
So while it's clear TO ME that the digitized images are not facsimiles of 70s-era memos, I don't completely dismiss the view that they were planted intentionally. Even then, you get the obvious problem: if you were planting fakes to be discovered, why would you risk making them so obviously fake?
All of this is largely irrelevant, though, and I really wish people would stop pinning their hopes on the memos being vindicated somehow. While I consider them to be "proven" to be fake (in the sense of Occam's law: simplest explanation of their origin), what is certainly true is that no known party is in possession of original documents that can be proven authentic.