Sunday, September 12, 2004

Rather's House of Cards

A few days ago, a CBS official told the Washingon Post that it considered the testimony of Retired Major General Bobby W. Hodges to be its "trump card" in terms of authenticating the Killian memos.

But today, The New York Times, among others, is reporting that Bobby Hodges has concluded that the Killian memos were falsified. According to Hodges, CBS only read portions of the memo over the phone to Hodges. He had not even seen them until Friday--two days after the story ran.

Friends, CBS's house of cards has fallen. But to make matters worse:

The only expert cited by CBS in their report on Friday was Marcel Matley, who argued that the signature of Killian's was authentic. Recall that Matley did not have access to the original documents, only to photocopies of it. But notice what Matley wrote in a recent article entitled Using and Cross-Examining Handwriting Experts (September 27, 2002):

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.
As the Kerry Spot's Jim Geraghty said: "Game over."