It's hard to verify a document when you don't have the original.
On the other hand, there are a number of things that do point to the documents being forgeries, specifically ones printed up in Microsoft Word.
I vividly remember when all this was going down back in 2004. I actually did the experiment of opening up Word and typing the memo into it, printing it out, and comparing it to the Killian memo. Like anyone else who did this, I got the same 99.999% perfect match everyone else did. Add to that the inconsistencies in terminology and formatting, the fact that his family says Killian didn't use a typewriter, and wasn't in the habit of keeping personal files, and you have a pretty good case that they are forgeries. However, because there are no originals, there is no way to be absolutely certain.
It is that uncertainty, along with other obfuscations, that makes up the bulk of Mapes' and others assertion that the documents "have never been proven false".
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radrobd
9 years ago
"It is that uncertainty, along with other obfuscations, that makes up the bulk of Mapes' and others assertion that the documents "have never been proven false". "
And therein lies the journalistic malpractice. It was her job to prove the authenticity of the docs before running with the story, not for others to prove the docs were false. She wanted an outcome and didn't verify the docs authenticity (or even really try) because of her bias in "investigating" this story.
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