THE PURSUIT OF FAKERY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740044-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 44
• Publication Date: September 1, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740044-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
TECHNOLOGY ILLUSTRATED
O1.4 PAGE o?.3
September 1983
In the war between
forgers and document
analysts, both*sides
are pushing for
the technological
high ground
by Ellen Ruppel Shell
Forgeries, like the previously unpublished excerpt from a Hitler diary at
left, keep document analysts like David Crown (above) in business.
Last spring it took historians, polit-
ical scientists, and journalists
weeks to conclude that the Hitler
diaries were fakes. It took David
Crown about 30 seconds.
"There was a scam like this fifteen
years ago," chuckles the 54-year-old sci-
entist. "Two little old ladies forged Mus-
solini's diaries and sold them to the Sun-
day London Times for a fabulous sum.
It's amazing what people will believe
when they really want to."
Crown's flippancy is hard-earned. As
chief of the Central Intelligence Agen-
cy's questioned-document laboratory for
15 years, he saw hundreds of forgeries-
many of which fell to him to discredit.
Like other document analysts with years
of experience, his close scrutiny of a sus-
pect signature was often sufficient to
wind up an investigation. But while
handwriting analysis has always played a
major role in such cases, particularly
when there's a sample available for com-
parison, it is by no means the only trick
up the document analyst's sleeve. Tech-
nological developments over the last 30
years have made identifying documents
as much of a science as an art, complete
with its own professional journals, aca-
demic specialties, and arsenal of elabo-
rate analytic devices.
The Hitler diary investigation illus-
trates just how far the field has come
since the days of magnifying glasses and
fingerprint powder. While writing ex-
perts examined samples of script from I
the leatherette-bound texts, chemists at
the West German Federal Criminal Of-
Tice put parts of three of the volumes
CONTiNU,ED
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Abraham Lincoln never even saw,
let alone signed, the document on
the top left, as a comparison with
the real Lincoln letter on the right
quickly indicates. Kenneth Rendell
(above), a world expert in histori.
cal documents, uses a stereoscopic
microscope to cull the real from the
fabricated.
through a battery of tests that included a
complete breakdown of paper, ink, and
binding material-The first hint of decep-
tion was the paper's whiteness under ul-
traviolet light, a glow typical of optical
brighteners used in paper and clothing
since the mid 1950s. The diaries were dat-
ed 1934,1941, and 1943. Chemical separa-
tion techniques verifying the presence of
the brighteners immediately cast doubt
on the diaries' authenticity. But the Ger-
man team went further, analyzing the
glue in the books' bindings with infrared
spectroscopy. The spectrograph showed
traces of an adhesive component and
synthetic fibers that were also not in use
until after World War II. Finally, a third
chemical test showed that two of the
three diaries sampled were written in ink
that was no more than two years old.
"The job the forger did on the Hitler
diaries was very, very bad," says Arno
Falk, press officer at the German crimi-
nal office. It was so bad that scientists
were convinced it was phony after run-
ning just a fraction of the available tests.
But Kenneth Rendell, a Boston-area
dealer in historical papers and the only
American to examine the Hitler diaries,
explains that most forgeries are so poorly
executed that a simple eyeballing of the
item is often enough to close a case.
"A lot of forgers overlook the impor-
tance of paper and use types that either
were not in use or were not even invented
at the time of the purported document,"
explains the 40-year-old handwriting ex-
pert. Paper made of wood pulp, the kind
this page is printed on, wasn't invented
until 1861, so a letter from George Wash-
ington written on pulp paper is a sure
fake. So is a note by Shakespeare written
on woven paper, which came into use be-
tween 1750 and 1800. Romeo and Juliet
were probably immortalized on laid pa-
per, a kind of rag paper formed on a wire
frame, while a document written before
1400 should be composed of parchment
or vellum made of animal skins. Paper
manufacturers' watermarks can give
even more specific information. Often
they contain codes, for which document
examiners have keys, that indicate the
exact date of manufacture. Many a will
has been thrown out of court for being
written on paper with a waiermark that
postdated the testator's death.
But according to Gary Herbertson,
unit chief of the document section of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, mere
dating is not always enough. "Getting
old paper is easy for a bad guy," he ex-
plains. If the dates are OK or irrelevant
to the investigation and more clues to the
paper's origin are needed, a sample of the
suspect document is boiled in an acid
bath, and the resulting slurry is mounted
on a slide, stained, and examined under
an optical microscope. Skilled examiners
can determine whether the pulping pro-
cess was mechanized or chemical and, if
the latter, what kind of chemicals were
used. Using X-ray defraction, they can
also determine what fillings and fibers
were used, even what kind of tree the
pulp came from. Such information some-
times leads to the manufacturing plant
itself; at least it may give investigators an
CO1 111 U/
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The fake George Washington letter 1968, initially to help the Internal Reve-
(top above) is easily distinguished nue Service track down checks backdat-
from the authentic sample beneath. ed by tax evaders. Ink analysis at the
But sometimes a mere eyeballing Treasury Department's .Alcohol, Tobac-
of handwriting is not enough. co, and Firearms laboratory entails lift-
That's when ink specialist Joanne ing a sample from the suspect document
Becker (above) comes into the pic- (with a hypodermic needle if the docu-
ture. If the ink is too new, the doc- ment is valuable, or simply dissolved off
ument is not genuine. the paper if it's not) and putting it
through thin layer chromatography to
separate it into its component dyes.
These dyes are then compared by hand
for color and concentration with those in
the ink collection to determine when the
ink formula was first used and how rare
or common it is. Naturally, a library
sample that matches perTect)y with that
in the ubiquitous Bic finepoint won't be
of much help in tracking down an un-
known perpetrator, but it may help es-
tablish backdating fraud if the formula
was not in existence at the alleged date of
the document. Antonio A. Cantu, for-
mer head of the Treasury Department's
ink-and-paper analysis section, now
working for the FBI, says that the physi-
cal decay of the ink: can sometimes be as
incriminating as its type- The longer the
ink has been on the paper, Cantu says,
the drier it should be. New ink is, up to a
point, easier to remove with solvents
than old. Also, naturally occurring elec-
trically charged atoms, or ions, of ink
migrate across paper with time, leaving a
trail that, to an expert examiner, can be
as easy to read as a clock dial.
"Even if the Hitler diaries had been
written on old paper with old ink, the
relatively small amount of ion migration
would have revealed them as fakes,"
Cantu says. Ion migration can help date
documents up to 10 years old, and a dif-
ference in the relative movement of the
ions on a 'single document is a giveaway
that an original has been tampered with.
Under Cantu's prodding, many manu-
facturers now tag inks with minute
amounts of rare earth elements to help in
their tracing. Still, even if an ink sample
matches that on, say, a ransom note or a
phony check, it can only implicate, not
incriminate, a suspect.
"This kind of evidence doesn't carry
much weight," says Cantu. "It is more
useful for eliminating incorrect possibili-
ties than for identifying correct ones."
coNYEVUED
idea of what country or state the paper
was made in. For exarrlple, most paper
made in the United States is of white
pine, so a sample that shows the woody
vessels of hardwood trees might lead to a
search for foreign sources.
Unfortunately for forensic scientists,
however, the paper industry changes
very slowly. A single process may be
used by hundreds of manufacturers for
decades, thereby making paper difficult
and sometimes impossible to trace. The
ink business is probably more mercurial,
Herbertson suggests, because getting ink
-to slow smoothly from a ball-point pen is
an ongoing challenge. So investigators
often look to ink for more specific clues.
The Federal Treasury Department
has the world's largest collection of ink
{ = samples-over 4,000 varieties submitted
I~
= voluntarily by ink makers the world
over. The ink library was ectahlichPrt in
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Phony documents attributed to
Charles Dickens and Robert Frost
(on the left in each top photo)
come close enough to the real ones
(on the right) to fool some hapless
buyers. Unfortunately, the threat-
ening letters filed by the thousands
in the FBI collection (above) are all
too real.
Catching criminals red-handed usual-
ly requires as much fortunate coinci-
dence as technological savvy. Paul Os-
born, a thir3-Jeneration document
analyst who helped expose Clifford Ir-
ving in the Howard Hughes "autobiog=
raphy" hoax l l years ago, has enjoyed
his share of such lucky breaks. One of the
most vivid occurred a few years back
when Osborn was hired by a brokerage
firm to track down the writer of hun-
dreds of poison-pen letters being sent to
the president of the New York Stock Ex-
change. Figuring the notes had to come
from an irate employee, Osborn went
through thousands of job applications in
search of a signature that would match
the writing on the hate mail. After perus-
ing four years' worth of resumes without
success, he decided to check some of the
threatening letters for indentations-
marks on paper made from the pressure
of a writing instrument on sheets from
above on the same pad. It was a tedious
task. Each letter had to be hand-held un-
der special spotlights and scrutinized for
faint markings. But the effort finally paid
off. Imprinted across one of the missives
was the name, address, and phone num-
ber of the writer, an emotionally unbal-
anced employee who had left the firm al-
most five years before.
"There's a new device called ESDA,
for electrostatic detection apparatus,
that is great for picking up indenta-
tions," Osborn says. "It can detect even
very slight indentations on paper seven
or eight sheets down from the sheet being
written on. If we'd had it when we went
through those stockbroker's letters, we
could have finished the job in a fraction
of the time."
Still, whether technology will ulti-
mately make the document analyst's lot
easier remains an open question. Crimi-
nals also keep abreast of scientific ad-
vances, and a forger's clever application
of technology can baffle even the most
astute criminologists.
Take a machine as seemingly benign
as the photocopier. By carefully affixing
a signature from another source, say a
thank-you note, to a document, say a
promissory note for a million dollars,
photocopying the resulting montage,
and "losing" the original, a forger can
create an unimpeachable document.
"Copying machines have created the
most dangerous pitfall in the business to-
day," laments Osborn. "Courts have be-
come very lax about allowing reproduc-
tions as evidence, and sometimes the
copies are just impossible to
authenticate."
Perhaps the biggest challenge today's
technology poses to the analyst, howev-
er, is in the identification of computer-
generated documents. Experts all over
the country are collaborating in a mas-
sive efTorl to identify computer-printer
makes and models by their printout.
"It's only a matter of time before com-
puter-printer-generated documents will
come into question," Osborn says. "And
when they do, we'll be prepared."
Ellen Shell is a senior editor at TECHNOL-
OG1' ILLUSTRATED.
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Although he declines-to give details of of putting the finger on an expert forger
:his CIA days (and the CIA will not con- or other malefactor, excites Crown the
:firm that his department even existed), way danger tantalizes a skyjumper.
.David Crown'.admits to having con- -' Plump, loquacious, his comments
evinced dozens of world leaders that a laced with sarcasm, Crown has no mark Imo'
'threat, .warning, or misleading letter, of the diplomat, yet the walls of the two-
=.supposedly instigated by the United /room office.in his Fairfax, Virginia,
States, was the work of an imposter. For home are covered with photos of Jimmy
example, in 1978 photocopies of a bogus Carter, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, former
I.J.S. Embassy press release were mailed Emperor Bokassa I of the Central Afri-
anonymously to newspaper and news- can Empire, and others for whom his
service correspondents in Paris. In it personally delivered reports have offered
Vice President Waiter Mondale was::. consolation. Other souvenirs--a magnif-
quoted as having questioned the compe icent array of African and Asian weap-
tence of both Prime Minister Menachem ons and a collection of antique phones, David Crown in his Virginia offices.
Beai.n of Israel and President Anwar Sa-.. including a 1920 Egyptian model-
dat of Egypt. The release was just one in
a series of forgeries aimed at undermin-.
crowd the space between scientific in-
struments and file cabinets. The equip-
ment includes cameras, infrared and ul-
tance. On his desk, for instance, is a will, i
supposedly signed by a woman just be
fore she died, leaving some valuable land']
East. David Crown's job, in this case and traviolet lights, several microscopes and to her niece. The signature is shaky os.
others, was to fly immediately to the of- spectrophotometers, test tubes, chemi- tensibly the last effort of a failing hand;;
fended . nation and prove scientifically call, a business computer, and a variety But Crown knows otherwise.. Compar-
that the documents were fake. of rather mysterious-looking devices tai- ing the tremulous scrawl with known;(
Retired from the CIA last year,. lored specifically to his trade. The cabi- samples of the dead woman's writing,'
Crown is now in private practice as one nets are crammed with documents from Crown dismisses the will as a fake. "You'
of North America's approximately 225 the dozens of cases Crown has cracked in can see by the checks she signed that the'
certified document analysts. It is an ar- a mere year of independent sleuthing. poor thing was a solid writer once she got
cane and lonely profession, requiring pa- Most of the papers come from attor- her pen to paper," he says. "It was find
tience, intuition, honed scientific skills, neys who are hopeful that Crown will ing the dotted line to begin with that gave
and an almost voyeuristic curiosity. But help prove medical malpractice or a cli- her trouble. I'm afraid this attorney -is
the prospect of solving criminal puzzles, ent's right to insurance money or inheri- going to be disappointed."
ing American relations d n the Middle
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