Who is Marcel Matley?

Here's CBS describing their document expert:

Document and handwriting examiner Marcel Matley analyzed the documents for CBS News. He says he believes they are real. But he is concerned about exactly what is being examined by some of the people questioning the documents, because deterioration occurs each time a document is reproduced. And the documents being analyzed outside of CBS have been photocopied, faxed, scanned and downloaded, and are far removed from the documents CBS started with.

Matley did this interview with us prior to Wednesday's "60 Minutes" broadcast. He looked at the documents and the signatures of Col. Killian, comparing known documents with the colonel's signature on the newly discovered ones.

"We look basically at what's called significant or insignificant features to determine whether it's the same person or not," Matley said. "I have no problem identifying them. I would say based on our available handwriting evidence, yes, this is the same person."

Matley finds the signatures to be some of the most compelling evidence.

Reached Friday by satellite, Matley said, "Since it is represented that some of them are definitely his, then we can conclude they are his signatures."

Matley said he's not surprised that questions about the documents have come up.

"I knew going in that this was dynamite one way or the other. And I knew that potentially it could do far more potential damage to me professionally than benefit me," he said. "But we seek the truth. That's what we do. You're supposed to put yourself out, to seek the truth and take what comes from it."

The current CBS document controversy isn't the only time that handwriting expert Marcel Matley has been the lone voice claiming authenticy.

Here is one person's opinion on Marcel Matley's role on the Vince Foster suicide note:

The only person that I aware of that disputed the three experts was some flack named Marcel Matley that appeared on Unsolved Mysteries. When they were contacted they said he was the ONLY person they could find that would say it was not a forgery.

Is there another that I am not aware of? thank you.

Here's another opinion:

BTW, I'm familier with Matley. Out of several hundred handwritting specialists contacted by the producers of NBC's Unsolved Mysteries, Matley was the only one they could find who would claim the note was genuine.

As for being "renowned", that's only within the pro-suicide cabal. Matley's reputation certainly does not come up to the level of Reginald Alton, or Vincent J. Scalice.

And:

As Matt Allison keeps saying, what is needed is courtroom worthy evidence on this matter and Marcel seems to have forgotten (as has Swopa) that whereas photocopies are suitable for proving a forgery, a photocopy of a document is inadmissable as evidence to authenticate.

Any claims of authenticity Marcel has made from a photocopy are useless. For him to promote that claim despite it's inadmissability calls into question his credability as an "expert".

I spoke via phone with the production office for "Unsolved Mysteries". Marcel was literally the only document examiner they could find in the country who would take the position that the note was genuine. Every other examiner, including the four on the "Unsolved Mysteries" segment on Foster were convinced it's a forgery. Marcel was invited on the show for "balance".

Finally:

FWIW, MM does not appear particularly unbiased in all this. During one of our phone calls (completely out of the blue) he launched in an attack of Reagan. I am not exactly a huge fan of what happened when Reagan was president, otherwise I might have taken offense at the irrelevance and other aspects of his attack, but so be it. IT would be a mistake to rely 100% on MM or anyone one other person re the torn note forgery issue.

It's true, usenet is not necessarily the best source of information on any subject. But none of those conversations seems heated in any way. Judge for yourself.

Most of Matley's comments for CBS concern the signature, which matches up with Matley's resume. It seems a little light on typesetting and fonts. But if Matley is concerned about the condition of the documents that other experts have seen, can we assume that he had access to an original? Wouldn't the original be required when verifiying a signature? And if he does have the original, how did the public copies get so "aged"?

Update: More on Matley's Vince Foster opinion:

Then the program [Unsolved Mysteries again] turned to Marcel Matley, identified as a "handwriting examiner" with no further credentials given, who offered his opinion that the "suicide" note is genuine. Matley believes that the "deteriorated copy" of the note.... that is, it's been copied over too many times.... and the "stress" Foster was presumably under account for the differences in handwriting. He then went on to show how Foster used different styles of letters in the genuine samples, such as both cursive and block letter "s", for example, and how the same multiple styles appear in the note; and from this he concluded that the same person wrote both the note and the samples known to be genuine.

One problem with Matley's statements is that it is impossible to determine to what extent the copy of the "suicide" note used by the experts has deteriorated from the original.... because the government has yet to release any official copy of the original, much less a high-resolution one. I just don't see how Matley can point out examples of "deterioration" in copies of the note without having seen the original note.

Matley is exactly right in pointing out the multiple letter styles used by Foster; I can vouch for these, as I have picked off images of the documents from the Internet, printed them out and examined them, and I am familiar with them. But for me, these variations are an argument in favor of the forgery; for if the letters in the note were painstakingly copied as the other experts suggest, one would expect the forger to also copy the letter variations in an effort to lend an air of authenticity to the forged note. Matley did not refute any of the major points made by the other experts, notably the number of strokes making up the letters, and the "hesitation dots", in the note.

I suspect Matley was put on the show so its producers would not be accused of being biased on a highly-charged political issue, and so they wouldn't wind up on the Clintons' sh*t list. At any rate, it shouldn't take too long for those intrepid Internet sleuths who follow every twist and turn of the Foster story to ferret out Matley's credentials and to find out how much he was paid to appear on the program.

Hmm. So that time, Matley used the degenerated state of a copy of a document to argue in favor of authenticity. Now, he's saying that the deteriorated copies available to everyone else prevents them from calling the CBS documents a forgery. Something's not right here.

Update: Matley, talking to the LA Times (rr), is saying he only authenticated the signature on one of the documents:

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 for comparison.

A CBS official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the network had two other document experts, who CBS did not identify, examine the documents, which were copies of the originals.

The experts studied the type font or style, spacing and other variables and deemed the memos legitimate, said the official.

Via RatherBiased.com. Is CBS looking for those unnamed font experts now?