[+/-] Expert says Bush service memos are authentic

The specialized characters and type format used in the controversial documents that suggest George W. Bush the coward disobeyed a direct order from his Texas Air National Guard commander and then got special treatment excusing his actions were common to electric typewriters in wide use in the early 1970s when Bush was a first lieutenant, forensics experts say.

Philip D. Bouffard, an Ohio-based forensic document examiner, had expressed suspicions about the documents but not says that, after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time.

Bouffard, an Ohio document specialist with more than 30 years experience, said that he originally dismissed the Bush documents because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database. But Bouffard yesterday said that he had not considered one of the machines whose type is not logged in his database: the IBM Selectric Composer. Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, his view shifted.