Bouffard

You can reach Karen Bouffard at (734) 462-2206 or kbouffard@detnews.com.

Heroes or Villains? 2010

Philip D. Bouffard, a forensic document examiner in Ohio who has analyzed typewritten samples for 30 years, had expressed suspicions about the documents in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, one in a wave of similar media reports.

09/11/2004 2004

But Bouffard told the Globe yesterday that after further study, he now believes the documents could have been prepared on an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter available at the time ....

09/11/2004 2004

Once he compared the Bush memos to Selectric Composer samples obtained from Interpol, the international police agency, Bouffard said his view shifted.

09/11/2004 2004

As for the raised '' th that appears in the Bush memos -- to refer, for example, to units such as the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron -- Bouffard said that custom characters on the Composer's metal typehead ball were available in the 1970s, and that the military could have ordered such custom balls from IBM.

09/11/2004 2004

But Bouffard yesterday provided a document indicating that as early as April 1969 -- three years before the dates of the CBS memos -- the Air Force had completed service testing for the Composer, possibly in preparation for purchasing the typewriters.

09/11/2004 2004

Bouffard, the Ohio document specialist, said that he had dismissed the Bush documents in an interview with The New York Times because the letters and formatting of the Bush memos did not match any of the 4,000 samples in his database.

09/11/2004 2004

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.

09/11/2004 2004

'' You can't just say that this is definitively the mark of a computer, Bouffard said ....

09/11/2004 2004

In the Times interview, Bouffard had also questioned whether the military would have used the Composer, a large machine.

09/11/2004 2004