Free Republic

Eager to stop an affiliate rebellion over Memogate, CBS News last night released a number of documents to affiliate stations following Wednesday's 60 Minutes episode. These documents are essentially the best defense that the Eyemark network has to offer on the week-old controversy. And a poor defense it is. RatherBiased.com obtained copies of all of these documents which include signed letters from two "experts" supposedly attesting to the CBS documents' authenticity. In truth, however, both letters (which are dated Sept. 14, almost a week after CBS's original report ran) could hardly be characterized as ringing endorsements. One of them comes...

Please place your comments regarding the statements to be made by CBS this afternoon. Hopefully, this can be a thread we can direct non freepers (ie MSM types) to so a concise argument can be made about this campaign.

CBSNEWS PLANS STATEMENT TO 'CLARIFY' BUSH GUARD DOCUMENTS STORY... NEW TIME: 5:00PM EDT...

It turns out that Marcel Matley, CBS' so-called "expert" who said the signatures on National Guard files obtained by the network are real, is not certified by the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners, has had no formal training in identifying either papers, inks, typewriters or photocopies, and has never been trained in a document lab or by any law enforcement entity. So where does Matley derive his authority? Well, according to the New York Post, he began his career trying to predict character traits through handwriting. In a 1988 piece titled "Spirituality in Handwriting," (search) Matley uses a woman's handwriting to...

CNN just reported that CBS is coming under fire for its document experts. It interviewed one of them, who insisted she told CBS there were problems, and it referenced another who says he told CBS before they ran the story that if they put them out on Wednesday, 100 document examiners would be asking the same questions he was on Thursday. But most importantly, I think, was a quote from Marcel Matley, who said he told them he could not authenticate the signatures ONLY THAT THEY CAME FROM THE SAME SOURCE. This is HUGE. Basically, all Matley appears to have...

<p>September 14, 2004 -- The expert chosen by CBS to check Dan Rather's disputed National Guard documents got his start as a graphologist analyzing "Spirituality in Handwriting" and lacks recognized document training, The Post has learned.</p> <p>Analyst Marcel Matley lists "Spirituality in Handwriting" and "Female/Male Traits in Handwriting" on the Web site for a foundation he serves as librarian. They were privately printed, but another analyst provided portions to The Post.</p>

<p>The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.</p>

.....SNIP KURTZ: Although I have interviewed Rather and Andrew Heyward, the president of CBS News, and I said, well, look, who are your document experts? So they finally gave me the name of a handwriting expert in San Francisco, and I called him, and he says, I am muzzled, I can't talk, CBS has asked me not to talk to the press....

BACK TO THE CBS MEMOS 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...

I cannot take credit for this. I saw it late last night on one of the blogs (I cannot remember which) and have not seen it posted here. Surely one of you good FReepers can give proper credit to the blogger who broke this. If this is a duplicate post, I also apologize. It turns out that Mr. Matley says you CANNOT authenticate an original using a copy; only the original will do. On the other hand, authenticity CAN be RULED OUT by using a copy. Here is an excerpt from his paper entitled "Using and Cross-Examining Handwriting Experts," which...

...As another of the corroborating experts for its report, CBS and Rather presented an on-air interview with Marcel B. Matley, a San Francisco document examiner. Rather said Matley had corroborated the four Killian memos. But in an interview with The Times, the analyst 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...

Mately is a graphologist. Not a Certified Questioned Document Examiner. He's not qualified to make handwriting comparisons. No attorney would use him as an expert witness--they'd get blown out of the water. I've been in law enforcement, and a private investigator working mostly in criminal defense. He is not a Certified Document Examiner. As an example, this is the C.V. of a typical CDE. http://qdewill.com/cv.htm

CBS thought they could muddy the waters, and ignored the other points. Nothing about kerning. Nothing about the paper size. Nothing about the stationary. Nothing about the widow or the son. Nothing about proportional spacing. Nothing about the difference in tone and writing style from other memos by this author. Nothing about the anachronistic language. They changed the story from coming from his personal files, to admitting that CBS only had a photocopy to work from. The said some typewriters had superscript. Yes, but how common were they? Would they have one of those typewriters in an Air National Guard...

MATLEY CONFIRMS DOCUMENTS WERE COPIES [Byron York] The New York Times interviewed CBS documents expert Marcel Matley, who confirmed that the documents the network gave him were photocopies -- and poor ones at that. According to the paper: "Mr. Matley said the documents the network sent him were so deteriorated from copying that it was impossible to identify the typeface." '''It's sheer speculation to say that you couldn't have done that until a computer came along,'' he said." "As a result, he said, he focused on the signatures. CBS sent him the four newfound documents, as well as others that...

And the PLOT THICKENS!!!  Matley may have committed ethics violations, and defied HIS OWN PUBLISHED CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING DOCUMENT AUTHENTICATION!!! Has Rather has gone completely looney.  He has produced a HANDWRITING EXPERT that has a "non-standards" certification in document certification. There is a damaging transcript from a hearing where another expert was being vetted by a court, and it exposes some very questionable information about Mr. Matley, Rather’s "Expert" witness. Matley is a HANDWRITING EXPERT, who snuck in UNDER THE RADAR to get certified under NON-EXISTENT STANDARDS! http://www.forensicdocumentexaminers.com/qdeindex.html http://iwhome.com/handwriting/library/libw.htmCited on handwriting - note 5 http://www.experts.com/showArticle.asp?id=53 http://www.aspghandwriting.org/Matab.htm One of the Courses Matley...

Here is a story of Dan Rather and CBS’s “ handwriting expert”, Marcel Matley who Rather pulled out of obscurity last night. A guy Nick Chase, who is writing this story below, found himself on an "Unsolved Mysteries" show that was being taped with a segment included on the Vince Foster suicide note.********* The Contrarian’s View "After a brief synopsis of Foster's death, the "Unsolved Mysteries" segment entirely focused its attention on the so-called "suicide" note. A short clip was shown of the October 25, 1995 Strategic Investment press conference at which graphologists Reginald Alton, Ronald Rice and Vincent Scalice...

Need to check this guy out. I will be posting the articles I find about him as I read them. here's the first. http://www.aspghandwriting.org/Matley.htm Marcel Matley Marcel Matley studied handwriting analysis with Rose Toomey and was certified by the Paul de Ste. Colombe Center. In 1985 he became a full time professional document examiner and has other interests in medical and psychological research, paleography, education, Western formal penmanship and Oriental calligraphy. He is the author of several published monographs and articles, taught private classes and seminars, and presented at conferences. The American Handwriting Analysts Foundation’s library, as well as a...

Marcel Matley was used by the Democrats to vouch for the aunthenticity of the Vince Foster suicide note Vince Foster's death on "Unsolved Mysteries" TV show March 22, 1996 Robert Stack as narrator: Our next story concerns the ontroversial suicide of a high-powered Washington attorney. It threatens to become one of the biggest political scandals of our time. It began with a somber announcement, and remains for many an unsolved mystery. Bill Clinton: I have just met with the White House staff, ah, to basically talk with them a little bit about the death of my friend of 42 years,...