It was based on documents later exposed by U.N. weapons inspectors as sloppy forgeries -- with the wrong letterhead and wrong names
Where have we seen THIS before?
If you look at the copy released to Scott Shane and Alan J. Weberman (interesting juxtaposition of players), you'll recognize just how little work it would take to put together, provided you had access to other certified documents from which to copy the notaries' stamp and signature. All you have to do is scan those documents, cut-and-paste them into Photoshop, and composite them with a Rhodes coat of arms lifted off the web, the phony signatures and the lettering. Print it out, run it through a copier a few times to obscure any imperfections, and -- voila! -- instant forged PhD certificate à la Weberman, conveniently pre-dated to 1995. I wouldn't be at all surprised if those notarized documents were from Hatfill's time in Oxford. I wonder if the solicitors keep copies of the documents they notarize?
Mind you, if Hatfill really forged and notarized those documents back in 1995, all by his lonesome, then it wasn't no Photoshop job. You can't walk into a Oxford solicitors' office and ask them to notarize some crappy-looking black-and-white copy of a diploma. That thing would have to look real, with fancy parchment, embossed lettering, coat of arms, etc. Certainly not impossible to do, but, even with the color lasers and the like available today, not a piece of cake. I could do the Shane-Weberman-Photoshop version myself in a couple of hours max, but a real-looking original would be another story. This whole Hatfill scam is looking easier every day. Like 9/11, it uses the minimum number of people and resources to create the maximum psychological effect. Neat, huh?