Henry quickly told Janet that she could stop taking notes while the committee huddled off the record. Feverishly, he opened the analyst report and scanned the relevant paragraph. After a few moments, Henry and Frank Anuse exchanged glances. Anuse nodded and Henry told Janet they were back on record. Immediately, Anuse sarcastically claimed that he didn't under stand what all the fuss was about. He could see no tampering.
Trenchant explained again. "It is obvious. A known standard is affixed to an unknown document. It is made a part of that unknown document."
Anuse seemed to deliberately misunderstand. He continued this over and over, taking different tacks but essentially he was bent on wearing Diana down.
Careful, thought Henry. A court would say Anuse was badgering the witness. Henry knew this was not proper questioning, it was arguing, but he let it continue.
"Oh," Anuse would say in an annoying, baiting way, "it was not altered since Lyle had stapled it there so it wouldn't get lost." and "I don't understand where you have a problem with this."
After several minutes of this, he dismissed the whole complaint. Scathingly, he said that it didn't matter since the whole document had been written by Trenchant anyway. The document analyst had said so.
"Yes they had," Diana agreed. "Despite the fact that there were three PRINTED words on the SmurFF. The WRITING they identified was only on the slip of paper that Lyle had attached."
The panel was silent. Trenchant addressed them. "When I was first charged with writing these critiques, I spoke to a few professional document examiners. Right off, I discovered that I could not afford to hire one to do an unbiased analysis. However, they usually were willing to answer general questions on the phone for a small consulting fee.
"In talking with them and reading the material they suggested to me, I came away with some interesting information. None that I talked to felt they were infallible or claimed that handwriting was as unique as fingerprints, but they enjoyed the benefits of that illusion.
"Both tape recordings and polygraph (lie detector) evidence is not allowed in courts. The so-called expert testimony of doctors, psychiatrists, as well as various technical expertise such as fingerprint and document analysis is. Deus ex machina is evidently not looked highly upon by judges, possibly because they allow no other gods before them in their courtrooms.