The Sgrena Report

Please also see Updates below for important information.

In looking at the leaked Sgrena Report, now being talked about web-wide, I'm left with a few questions. According to the properties of the pdf file, it was created by Richard Thelin at 12:27:42 on April 30 and modified less than two minutes later at 12:29:19.

We know from the non-redacted version that Thelin was involved in the reporting:

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Thelin, USMC was appointed as my legal advisor for this investigation

So, the authorship makes sense. What isn't clear to me is why the report has the created on date it does. There could be a simple explanation in that Thelin generated the document in answering a standard media inquiry, or for its initial circulation. But given that the original document was released, or at least existed and was leaked days earlier, as reported in the New York Times on the 27th, the date could be suspect. You would think such a document would be subject to some review - the creation time so close to release time could give one pause.

Either way, it seems to me that Thelin can resolve any mystery, as he either created this document on the date and at the time it says, or if not, then it would almost have to be a forgery of some sort. I believe one can place any name one wants in the document author profile in Acrobat.

Perhaps someone more up on Adobe has the answer.

Update II: Michele Malkin links to Blogs of War who links to Italian Blog Macchianera, who claims to have been the first source for revealing the hidden information in the report. From that, it can clearly be determined that there is at least one forgery involved in this now.

While the Macchianera doc lists the same author, Lt Col Richard Thelin, that document was made with a different version of Acrobat, 1.5, than the one on the original Italian media site, 1.4 linked by Kevin Drum.

Also the times of creation are highly suspect. The media copy of the documents creation times are listed above. The document from the Italian blog was created at 12:46 PM on the 30th but purportedly revised at 11:32 PM on the 30th - that's virtually impossible. Likely this blogger took the file from the media site in the afternoon and republished it later after reformatting, but the media site already had an unredacted version up.

Also the table of contents is not in the document on the Italian media website. They could have removed it, but that would not account for the document retaining Thelin as author, while changing the version of Acrobat used to create it.

This can all be seen by downloading the pdf's, and clicking on "file" document info - general.

The document is also formatted differently than the one from Drum's link and is 3 pages longer - 45 versus 42. It matches with the unredacted document from the media site.

Update IIa- Just checked the time of the post on Macchianera. It jibes with that blog being behind the media site as the post time is 11:44. Assuming that's PM, it would also fit with their reformatting the pdf after the media site had it up.

Update I: What I meant to add was that if the redacting was done through PDF, for the April 30 date to be accurate would require doing a redacted version every time a pdf was made. That doesn't strike me as the way it would be done. You would think they would make the pdf from an ink redacted report.

It's at least possible that someone leaked a fully unredacted report, then used Adobe to redact it, knowing it could be hacked.

Updated for editing 1:37 AM 5/2/05

Updated: More NYTimes coverage here.

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Comments

[Kirby L. Whitfield,Jr./ Former U.S.M.C]

LT.COL.Thelin was and always will be the right man for the job,He defended me when I was a young Lance Corporal stationed at MCAS YUMA,AZ.He was a Captain at that time,although I have not spoken to him since that time the words of encouragement he gave and the sincerity he showed helped to save my life.I just wanted him to know that(if you could pass this along to him)I never let him down and I never will forget what he did for me.I have two sons now and evertday I do my best to bring them up with the same courage and concern that LT.COL. Thelin showed me in my time of need LTC if at all possible it would be a great honor to hear from you again,but if not I just wanted to say thank-you once again.May GOD Bless you and your family. SEMPER FI