E-mails fire away at USU professor

If cyber talk was a rope, Utah State University associate English professor David E. Hailey believes he'd be hanging from it by now.

According to Hailey, his only crime thus far appears to be his interest in researching the authenticity of documents critical of President George Bush's military record.

"This is academic research," Hailey told the Deseret Morning News. "There's nothing wrong with this research."

CBS News anchor Dan Rather apologized Sept. 20 on air for earlier presenting the four Bush memorandums in question as authentic.

"All indicators imply they are authentic," Hailey now says in research posted on the USU Web link imrl.usu.edu/bush_memo_study/index.htm. The link leads to Hailey's 17-page paper titled, "Toward Identifying the Font Used in the Bush Memos."

If Hailey had been one of the experts advising CBS, "I would have told them that from my point of view, the memos are worthy of presenting to the public," he states on the link.

By authentic, Hailey says he means the documents were in fact created through a "mechanical" process, such as a kind of typewriter used by the military around the 1970s — others have suggested the memos were digitally altered and therefore fake.

Hailey, who teaches technical communications at USU, spent seven years in the Army, typing training manuals and various memos on typewriters. That's where his interest in typography began. "This is the kind of stuff I've done since 1966," he said.

Critics who have posted comments on Internet "blog" sites — the arena where doubt was first cast about the documents CBS obtained — are calling Hailey a "fraud," alleging his findings are politically motivated and that other USU officials may have somehow guided his study.

Hailey did make a monetary donation to presidential candidate John Kerry's campaign, according to one USU official.

Since posting his findings on the Web, Hailey has for the past week received hundreds of e-mails that he now simply forwards to a file he created called "hate mail." The subject line of one e-mail reads, "In more ways than one, you are a fascist hack."

Hailey's plans are to read through the mail more thoroughly for another research project but not until he is "emotionally stable." He said he couldn't sleep Thursday night because people are attacking his credibility and credentials.

"In a virtual reality situation, they're coming on campus and trying to lynch me," Hailey said over the phone.