Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
[ kerry spot home | archives | email ]

The only expert cited by CBS in this case, Marcel Matley, wrote in the September 27, 2002 issue of the journal, "The Practical Litigator":

In fact, modern copiers and computer printers are so good that they permit easy fabrication of quality forgeries. From a copy, the document examiner cannot authenticate the unseen original but may well be able to determine that the unseen original is false. Further, a definite finding of authenticity for a signature is not possible from a photocopy, while a definite finding of falsity is possible.

Attempting to authenticate a signature from a photocopy is exactly what Matley did for CBS.

Game over.

UPDATE: A couple of readers question whether this really is "game over" - whether CBS can hunker down and wait for the storm to blow over.

Actually, it appears CBS no longer has any witnesses backing up its case.

RatherBiased.com notes that Robert Strong told the New York Times that he does not believe that his former associate [Jerry Killian] used a proportional font typewriter during his time in the Texas guard. "'I'm skeptical that Killian was working on that,' Mr. Strong said."

Now we also hear that in an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Marcel B. Matley, CBS' document examiner "said he had only judged a May 4, 1972, memo — in which Killian ordered Bush to take his physical — to be authentic. He said he did not form a judgment on the three other disputed memos because they only included Killian's initials and he did not have validated samples of the officer's initials to use for comparison."

The sole remaining individual cited in CBS's report is author Jim Moore, who Rather said, "has written two books critical of President Bush and his service in the Guard." Moore, however, simply asserts that the documents are real and that the lack of a White House statement discrediting the documents (yet) shows that "the White House probably knows that these documents are, in fact, real."

Uh, no. That statement is meaningless. By that standard, I can assert that the fact that Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and the rest of the Sunday 60 Minutes crew haven't come to defend Rather means they "probably know that these documents are, in fact, fake, and so badly done that a third-grader could recognize the differences between a document created with a typewriter and one created on a modern computer, and that Rather has gone cuckoo for cocoa puffs."

Right now, the camp that believes the documents are the real deal consists of Dan Rather, Jim Moore, Tom Harkin, and possibly Terry McAuliffe, although the DNC head also apparently thinks Karl Rove did it.

[Posted 09/11 02:32 PM]