Somehow I wouldnt be surprised if there wasnt a mea culpa by CBS sometime over the weekend. That way Dan wont have to eat crow.

Interesting, NBC had them analyzed by a forensic expert, his conclusion/ Most likely created with a modern word processing program.

Even CNN ran a story citing an expert who says these documents are fakes. CNN! Rather is treading water hoping that something big is going to happen over the weekend to distract everyone from this story.

You get what you pay for!

I thiink at this time we need to start taking up collections for Mr. Rather - it would seem that the only way out of the hole he is in is to get a bigger shovel.

Look further in the Kurt Cobain article -- he was actually part of the Vince Foster commission.

I smell Clintonites at work!

Screenshot of what Dan calls "the same superscript" on my site:

http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/001564.html

Not to mention...this guy is from San Francisco. Could'nt they find anybody in NY?

Ok here is my little homework I did from the USA Today docs and the CBS docs with Killians signature attached....

Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out which ones are forged, and which are real.....

Of course when you are a partisan hack like Rather, McCauliffe, Harkin, and their morons minions, any lie will do..

enjoy....

Feel free to pass this around....

Signatures Captured and reviewed from:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-02-14-bush-docs.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/08/60II/main641984.shtml

If you have more let me know, and I will add them to the list with dates....

Regards,
Joe

View my Signature comparisons here:
http://www.aboutpolitics.net/images/killian.jpg

CBS's expert verified the Vince Foster suicide note?? Ooooh, boy, that fact alone guarantees that the conspiracy types are going to go to town on this!

Somebody posted in the comments at Polipundit that the segment with CBS' 'expert' was taped a few days ago. Makes you wonder what they were expecting?

You could find th's in other documents. Fair enough...

Is it? I've seen pretty convincing arguments on other sites that either the other th's may have been forged, or else came from completely different sources where their typewriters would be expected to have that superscript feature.

Why was Rather doing a news story about the possibility that they were forgeries? How is he supposed to be impartial about that?
This is a travesty. It was unprofessional of CBS to allow Rather to do this story because the outcome of it effects him. He cannot be impartial to it, and should have been taken off of the story.
CBS could have done a lot to revive its credibility by assigning a different reporter on this.

CV for Marcel Matley, found in a collection of documents related to discussion of Vince Foster's suicide note.

http://nick.assumption.edu/WebVAX/Foster/matley.html

So this guy seems to be an expert in verifying dead people's signatures...

This link, via Free Republic
http://sja.ucdavis.edu/SCC/scc001.htm

------ Begin quoting:

The committee also has questions regarding the relevance of Mr. Matley's expertise on our proceedings. Why, for instance, would a handwriting expert have more to say on this matter than, say, a forensic document examiner; an expert on paper composition, photocopying processes, or ink chemicals; or simply a statistician? How are we to weigh testimony of a "handwriting expert" in assessing the evidence of violation or innocence? Is a handwriting expert the most relevant authority for assessing the physical and probable elements associated with adjudicating this matter.

----- End quoting

Guy appears to be handwriting analyst only.

When did CBS get handwriting expert Marcel Manley to authenticate the document??

Was it after they aired the hit peice or before??

Note that Matley doesn't appear to comment on anything other than the signature, and on that, he's fairly careful: "I would say based on our available handwriting evidence, yes. this is the same person."

And the available evidence sucks, because it's a photocopy, but based on that, OK.

I'm not sure he was evene *asked* about any other aspect of the documents, based on this. So CBS' self defense in this, as in everything else, is accurate (they stand by their expert, who only looked at the signatures, and with poor evidence. but who made apparently reasonable conclusions given that), but woefully incomplete (doesn't address dozens and dozens of *other* points.)

Really embarrassing, the way they're cherry-picking isolated arguments to use and knock down as straw men, but not addressing the whole.

Fun thought exercise: can you imagine how this would go down if the organization in question was something other than CBS, and Mike Wallace in his prime was investigating it for "60 Minutes?" Do you think Wallace would say "Ah, case closed. We've got no story to cover here?"

Rather mentioned that Times New Roman has been around since the 1930's. True, but I'll bet it was as a font for linotype machines and not for typewriters. In other words, he failed to create a preponderance of evidence to support his case. The existence of the type means little if it didn't exist on typewriters...

Here's a link to the history of Times New Roman: http://www.linotype.com/7-510-7/stanleymorison.html
Created by Stanley Morison

Stanley Morison – born 6. 5. 1889 in Wanstead, England, died 11. 10. 1967 in London, England – typographer, type designer.

....From 1923 onwards: book artist. Designs covers for the Victor Gollancz publishing house. 1924–30: works for Cambridge University Press. 1929–60: typography consultant to "The Times" daily newspaper. On 3 October 1932 the first issue of "The Times™" set in Morison’s new typeface, Times New Roman™, is printed...

Fonts: Times™ (1931), Times™ Ten (1931), Times™ Eighteen (1931), Times™ Central European (1931), Times New Roman™ (1932, with Victor Lardent).

Some typewriter historian ought to be able to answer whether there were fonts other than Courier, Pica, Oratorand Elite in use in 1972 on typewriters and whether that list of fonts included Times New Roman.

Marcel Manley is also a hypocrite. CBS's "memos" were copies but in 2001, Manley wrote an essay saying that one could never authenticate a document based on a copy.

See http://ratherbiased.com/news/content/view/215/2

David C - sure Wallace would have passed just as he did whenever it was pointed out that some persecuted and tormented Viet Nam vet had NEVER been in the military.

Marcel Manley is also a hypocrite. CBS's "memos" were copies but in 2001, Manley wrote an essay saying that one could never authenticate a document based on a copy.

See http://ratherbiased.com/news/content/view/215/2

Oscar,
Not familiar with the specific story you're referring to, but I take your general point, that Mike Wallace has not always been a paragon of unbiased journalism himself. So to rephrase, imagine that CBS was an organization that Wallace wanted to "get," and what the "60 Minutes" coverage of the people trying to defend a forged document would be like....

Go to FreeRepublic

NOW!!

"What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman?"

I think they may have something... I´m not an expert.

Seems to me Rather and CBS made a tactical error in airing this on a Friday. Thanks to their attention, the issue has now risen to the top of the list, or at least top current controversy after the obligatory 9/11 anniversary segment, for the Sunday talk shows unless violence breaks out somewhere. And, by doing such a poor job of presenting the case against the memos, he almost forces those shows to present the other side fully and properly. In addition the Blogosphere gets a 36 hour window to research and prepare. If he had laid low, the top story would have been the Chechen hostage massacre. They could have presented Monday, if necessary, taken time to do a more careful refutation and gotten into the 24 hour news cycle they can manage better. The haste of the response as well as Rather's comportment indicate a bit of panic at Blackrock.

Why do I have this image of Saruman up in the tower surrounded by his ruined kingdom, perhaps with bloggers hanging out below smoking some Long-Bottom leaf and laughing.

CBS are going to let this guy take the fall for them. I think that it is in Manley's interests answer the following questions...

(a) When did you verify the document?
(b) Did you only verify the signature (which doesn't match), or the whole document?
(c) What areas of document analysis are you an expert in and qualified to verify?

btw Manley's website is http://www.thedocumentexperts.com/
(from Nathanyl at http://idexer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=782#782)

Mrs Davis--very good point--doesn't this remind you of Kerry's reaction to the Swiftboats? I think it ultimately comes from the Clintonian era of never letting anything go stridently unchallenged, even if you're lying, along with the smear-the-messenger philosophy.

I just blogged about this, but found it funny.

If you go to Drudge now, all the CBS links have been switched from his normal font...the replacement -- Times New Roman of course...

Handwriting analyst = junk science.

"According to Denbeaux, handwriting analysis by experts suffers in two respects. It has never been subject to meaningful reliability or validity testing, comparing the results of the handwriting examiners' conclusions with actual outcomes. There is no peer review by a"competitive, unbiased community of practitioners and academics." Starzecpyzel, 880 F.Supp. at 1038. To the extent that it has been"generally accepted," it is not by a"financially disinterested independent community, like an academic community," Id.; only other handwriting analysts have weighed in. It has never been shown to be more reliable than the results obtained by lay people. Some tests have been done, but all lacked a control or comparison group of lay persons. Thus, Denbeaux concludes, there is no need for expert testimony on handwriting analysis. Lay people can do as well. In this regard, I accept Denbeaux's testimony, and the article supporting it.

CBS might as well have hired a witch doctor.