On The Trail Of The Forgers

[Omlor]

Ally,

You are right and so am I. It is pointless and I'm not that bright.

Thanks,

--John

[Ally]

But it's the very last question in Caroline's post that I especially love, because it is such a completly twisted and irrational and illogical question that it demonstrates perfectly why a conversation with her here is so pointless.

If discussing this with Caroline is as pointless as you claim, why in the world do you waste so much time, effort and paragraphs doing it?

Obviously, you don't feel it is pointless, because intelligent people who feel a particular endeavor is pointless tend not to do it.

So either you aren't so bright, or you don't really feel it's pointless and said that just for rhetorical effect?

[Omlor]

One final thought in passing, before I head out to a place called “Busch Gardens” to spend a day looking at wild animals in a simulated Africa and drinking free beer and keeping watch over a pack of thirteen to fifteen year old girls and boys, two of whom are related to me…

If either Keith or Caroline or the diary’s owner are truly interested in what the McCrone labs could do (then or now) concerning thoroughly testing the diary and how much it would cost, there is absolutley nothing stopping them (Keith or Caroline or Robert) from simply picking up the telephone, calling the number on the website, and finding out for themselves directly.

Of course, that’s probably not going to happen.

And of course, that doesn’t explain the real mystery here. What the hell does McCrone have to do with the public claim made by Keith Skinner concerning his alleged secret squirrel evidence of the diary’s origins and his subsequent refusal to produce such evidence or even explain why he won’t?

Unless the whole McCrone thing is just another pointless rhetorical diversion…

Ya think?

--John

[Omlor]

Ah, I knew the "but I'm not Keith" dance was coming.

And here it is.

Of course, no one on these boards is so naive as to believe that Keith is not being kept aware of what is written here.

Remember, when Keith sent me his non-responsive response concerning his alleged secret squirrel evidence, he only copied one other person on the e-mail.

And we all know who that was.

And now, after another bit of trying to rewrite ancient history -- an attempt that gets so many things wrong that it is not even worth addressing -- Caroline finally runs out of dance steps and just collapses into shouting "liar" at me.

It's sad really.

For the record, I have already sent the complete and unedited exchanges concerning the previous testing efforts to a great many people, including the other principal player in the process upon her request. And even she admitted that I did indeed include every word written from both sides. Caroline, I suspect, knows this but is simply trying to play a silly little rhetorical game. And, of course, not a word I have ever written on this thread or any other has ever been a lie. Caroline knows that, too.

But it's the very last question in Caroline's post that I especially love, because it is such a completly twisted and irrational and illogical question that it demonstrates perfectly why a conversation with her here is so pointless.

I wrote and sent Keith, upon Caroline's own recommendation, a few simple and direct questions concerning his public claim to have secret evidence about the diary's origins.

Now Caroline offers, as an excuse for Keith's refusal to answer the questions that she suggested I ask him, a bit of ancient history that has nothing to do with the questions, nothing to do with the issue, and of which I was not even aware.

Only here, only in Diary World, only in her own bizarre and twisted mind, could such a thing be considered even remotely relevant or in any way a reasonable explanation for Keith's refusal to address directly the issue of his public claim or even to explain why he won't. She has become so desperate to think up excuses for Keith's public comments and his subsequent behavior in his non-responsive response to my simple and direct questions that she has fallen to this -- a bit of irrelevant nonsense that serves only to demonstrate why meaningful conversation with her about this topic has for so long been impossible.

The useful illustrations just keep piling up here. At least that's one good thing.

Thanks for reading along,

--John

[caz]

Hi John,

Ah, but why are you still expecting me to answer here any of the ‘original direct and simple questions’ you finally asked of Keith by email?

If anyone is doing any diversionary dancing here and now, sunshine, it’s not me and it’s certainly not Keith.

It is indeed, as you say, ‘a perfect illustration of precisely what is so tired and so sick and so useless and so perverse about Diary World’:

“For the record, I personally have no idea what information Peter or anyone else on their own might or might not have ever gotten from McCrone nor what they might or might not have done with that information.”

So now we know.

If you truly never knew that Peter was able to obtain, with no trouble at all, the information about tests offered by the McCrone Group, which the diary owner would very obviously have required before any tests could have been commissioned, then you know it now, courtesy of Maria.

But it doesn’t say much for your communication skills or common sense, does it? What on earth possessed you to accuse the diary owner of not asking McCrone to test the diary, if you had no idea until now whether Peter or anyone else was ever able or willing to obtain the necessary information and pass it on to him, and you never even thought to ask Peter?

You should be appalled to think of Peter just sitting there, keeping you in the dark and allowing you to think the worst of Robert and to make an utter fool of yourself in the process, when all the time the essential McCrone information was being kept away from him by the very person who was meant to be helping you get the diary tested again.

If this later testing proposal you keep referring to (which Keith did not ask you about in his email) is the one I assume it must be, you know very well that you did your level best not to keep the diary owner informed of any of the salient details ‘all along the way’. You insisted that all he should need was the thumbs up from the third party you appointed, and you flew into a rage when this person - a modern hoax believer like yourself - gave you the thumbs down instead.

And yes, we do know what happened on this occasion, and I doubt anyone was surprised in the end. This testing proposal required a certain formula of Diamine ink which was not available from any source, and even if its maker had been willing or able to make some up (he wasn’t) you would have had no idea how much he may have needed to charge.

In short, whether the tests were going to cost you nothing, or ‘twice as much as the initial estimate suggested’, they were never going to happen without Diamine. The diary owner (ironically on your own insistence) had nothing to do with it.

How can anyone trust you to send them the ‘complete and unedited record’ of anything, given your public performances here? You lied flat out about answering Keith’s McCrone related question, which you now admit you had no way of answering, since you never did get any details from anyone - not even from Peter apparently - about what tests were available or how much they might have cost you if you had honoured your original promise to help fund them. It’s a joke.

Why should you expect Keith to come and find you and keep you fully informed, when you quite obviously didn't expect Peter to do the same regarding his progress with McCrone?

Love,

Caz
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[Omlor]

I hope everyone is reading this exchange.

I hope everyone reads Caroline's post above.

I hope everyone pays attention to precisely what is happening here -- the diversionary dancing, the desire to focus on irrelevant questions and ancient history, Caroline's amusingly self-righteous and smarmy tone with its stench of bitter sarcasm but without substance -- and that everyone sees what questions are truly not being answered, indeed are not even being addressed (the original direct and simple questions asked of Keith about the alleged secret squirrel evidence).

This, right here, is a perfect illustration of precisely what is so tired and so sick and so useless and so perverse about Diary World.

For the record, I personally have no idea what information Peter or anyone else on their own might or might not have ever gotten from McCrone nor what they might or might not have done with that information.

And I'm certainly not going to rehash any of that ancient and currently irrelevant history here.

As for the testing proposal that did eventually get to the pricing stage, I certainly did inform all the involved parties of the "salient details" all along the way. If anyone has any doubts about that, they can write and I'll be happy to send them the complete and unedited record of every message sent and received concerning those tests, and yes I did happily agree to pay for 100% of the costs, and certainly would have even if they had cost twice as much as the initial estimate suggested.

But of course, you all know what happened.

And no one was surprised.

Just as no one is surprised that Keith still refuses to answer the simple and direct questions put to him about the secret evidence but instead responds only by dragging up ancient histories and personal animosities and using those as an excuse to avoid answering the questions.

I repeat my initial suggestion -- the one I made when I first received Keith's non-responsive response. Perhaps we might find someone who has not pissed him off to ask him the very same questions that I did in my first short and simple e-mail. Then, without the excuse of irrelevant history and personal pique that he offered to me, he would have no choice but to provide a clear and direct answer.

I doubt it would be forthcoming, but one can always live in hope.

Never surprised, but thankful that right here, right now, the illustration of just how things work here is so vivid,

--John

[caz]

Hi Maria,

Okay then. Since John has not corrected anything in your post I suppose I must scrap pretty much everything he told me about the McCrone fiasco at the time and start over.

So John didn’t resign for ‘personal’ reasons and suggest that someone more qualified than him take over the role of investigating what McCrone might be able to offer in the way of new tests; he was, as you claim, ‘looking for a partner’ to help out.

John’s preferred partner, Peter, phoned McCrone out of curiosity and ‘had no trouble at all in getting all the information’ on ‘all the tests that were available’.

But the reason this information was squirreled away and has been kept secret ever since is because the diary owner hurt Peter’s feelings by suggesting he might not be the best man for the job. In short, Peter didn’t feel that Robert Smith deserved the information he would have needed in order to commission McCrone.

Interesting. In my book, that makes Robert 100% correct in his judgement. How motivated could Peter really have been to help John with the testing process, if he could so easily let a personal fit of pique thwart his partner’s initiative? How pathetic is that for a piece of shameless blame shifting?

I’ll leave you and John to sort out between you how you choose to respond to this, but I think the readers deserve to know why Peter refused to pass on to John the relevant details, for onward presentation to Robert, considering that relations between John and Robert were perfectly amicable at the time.

If Peter’s excuse for letting the information fester was hurt pride, what was John’s excuse for not talking his ‘partner’ round and getting this essential information to the one person who needed it? Again, I'm at a loss to know how John could moan at Robert for these tests never getting underway if it was Peter who kept the details from him, or if two or more of you conspired to keep them secret.

John,

You’re damned right that the ‘games never end’.

Nobody could make any attempts to rewrite the past that would come close to your blatant attempt to rewrite what you wrote here very recently indeed.

You claimed you had answered Keith’s incidental question about ‘how much’ you were ‘personally prepared to invest financially’ in the McCrone tests. It was perfectly obvious that he was not talking about any subsequent testing proposals offered by anyone else.

If you have answered Keith directly via email, stop messing about and just say so. If not, you have certainly not answered him here, since you have now clarified that your willingness to cover 100% of the costs was not related to McCrone at all, but to some other proposal entirely.

So now your readers are left with two more secret squirrels of your own: what happened to Peter’s information about the McCrone tests, which has been assiduously (I think that’s the term for it) kept away from the diary owner for the most pathetic reason I think I have ever heard in my life; and whose testing proposal you were prepared to fund, and what your $500 would have paid for, if only you hadn’t failed, for a second time, to present any of the salient details to the diary owner.

I’m sorry you have no desire to set the historical record straight on the Obama thread. But I’m not really surprised. At least you have confirmed that Maria was completely wrong about you being too busy to do so. That will have to do for now.

Love,

Caz
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[Maria]

Michael the Good:

John the wisest with words !

Maria

[The Good Michael]

PS: I have no desire to discuss anything on the "Obama" thread.

John,

That may be the wisest statement I've ever seen on any thread.

Mike

[Omlor]

Simply incredible.

Upon Caroline's recommendation, I write a clear and direct e-mail to Keith Skinner asking him only about his public claim to have secret evidence that would prove the diary came from Battlecrease house. As she suggests, I ask him directly and in a straightforward manner what this evidence is and why he refuses to make it public or even to explain why he won't make it public despite his having announced in a public forum what conclusions he thinks it affords him.

What do we get in response? All this nonsense about unrelated and ancient history.

Does anyone really wonder why?

The games never end.

And incidentally, my earlier post was quite clear. I said, and I'll say again... I'm not going to rehash the entire McCrone fiasco or argue with Caroline's strange attempts to rewrite the past. I was clearly referring to a different testing proposal when I said that later, when "another testing process" (what was so confusing about that) did reach the stage of discussing costs, I was more than willing to pay 100% of those costs (and would have happily paid a good deal more than was being asked).

I don't find that confusing in any way.

Of course, my answering these questions will do no good. We still won't get any information about the alleged super secret squirrel evidence.

It's all a diversion.

In the end nothing will change and the ridiculous game playing and hinting and hiding nonsense will continue and there will be nothing real and nothing new.

Same as it ever was,

--John

PS: I have no desire to discuss anything on the "Obama" thread.

[Maria]

Caz:

At the time, John was looking for a partner to help out with the tests, so he approached Peter, John was told by Robert Smith in no uncertain way NO. They even got angry with John for daring to suggest Peter, even though Peter was happy to do it. So Robert Smith suggested Paul Begg. Begg was supposed to make contact with McCrone. Six months later, we went down to London for the Patty Cornwell show where Peter, Ivor and others participated and during that time, I took the opportunity to casually ask Paul Begg how was he getting on with the McCrone negociations, to my surprise, he told me that even though he had written an email to McCrone, he never got a reply from McCrone.

Intrigued I told Peter about it, Peter as curious as ever, phoned McCrone who told him all the tests that were available and Peter wrote them all down. Then he wrote to Casebook to say that he had had no trouble at all in getting all the information if Paul Begg cared to write to him. At this point, you must realize that Peter was hurt because he had been dumped of the testing and he was replaced by Paul Begg. Anyway, after writing that in Casebook Peter was accussed of being " undiplomatic " and " rude " when he had actually gone out of his way to call McCrone with the testing details and asked Paul to contact him. Paul Begg never contacted him, so as Peter was not officially approved to do anything by the owner of the diary, there it stayed. Joseph McCrone by the way, died shortly before Melvin Harris.

Yesterday Peter and my son appeared on T.V. in a re-run of the 15 part series and we are currently on negociatiations for the third series which has already been approved by the BBC. If everything sounds o.k. for us, the three of us will be appearing... and the filming will be starting in September, ( next month ) it will probably take 6 months like the last time, so I won´t have time to appear here, I´m afraid.

Maria

About the 40 pounds that Melvin paid, I do not think John was or is aware of that.

[caz]

Hi Maria,

Do you not wonder, in that case, why John would have 'happily paid a good deal more than' $500 for further tests, if £40 of Melvin's money proved back in 1994 that the diary was written with modern ink?

Incidentally, let's see if you are right about John being too busy right now to give a simple yes/no answer over on the Obarmy thread.

John,

I wonder if you could do Maria the smallest of favours and nip to the Obama thread when you get a spare second to clear something up. She is under the impression that before the casebook crash you had occasion to reason with me over my political views. I have no recollection of our having any kind of disagreement, since I discuss the subject even more rarely than you do and my views - at least on Iraq, Afghanistan and terrorist attacks - are very much on a par with your own and always have been.

PS: I think the amount of the costs of the proposed tests was in the three to five hundred dollar range, depending on what needed to be done as things proceeded, if I remember correctly. I would have happily paid a good deal more than that, though. Can I now assume that since I have answered the completely unrelated question that Keith asked of me, that Keith will do the same and answer the simple and direct questions asked of him regarding his public pronouncements? I'll bet anyone here that the answer is a decisive "no." Apparently, these things only work in one direction for some.

You’ve lost me here, John.

Do you mean you have answered one of Keith’s questions? If so, which one, and did you email him direct or can your answer be found and extracted from one of your posts here?

This is what you wrote concerning your offer to pay 100% of the costs of ‘the proposed tests’:

I'm certainly not going to rehash the whole McCrone fiasco yet again. Later, if it matters, when another testing process did reach the point of discussing prices I made it clear that I was willing to pay 100% of the costs.

This is becoming rather confusing because Keith’s questions concerning diary tests all relate to your personal involvement with the McCrone Group. So how much ‘later’ did this ‘other’ testing process reach the point of discussing prices? What were these 'proposed tests' exactly? You resigned from the McCrone ‘fiasco’ very early on, and I didn't think you managed to elicit any kind of testing proposal. In fact, I don't recall you obtaining a single detail about any testing processes or how much they might cost. Did you pass the information on to the diary owner when you received it? If not, why not? I'm at a loss to know how these tests could have got underway if he never got to hear the details.

Or are you talking about another testing initiative entirely, long after the McCrone one bit the dust?

Here are all of Keith’s (largely outstanding) queries again, to refresh your memory:

You and I were last in contact precisely four years ago when, in what I took to be a friendly and constructive exchange of information, I attempted to elicit from you the sequence of events which had led to the breakdown of the diary tests with the McCrone Group, which you had initiated. As I recall, (and like you I will have these emails on file), you backed off my questions, as you considered there was no point in trying to identify where it had all gone wrong and why…

…So, why should you be bothered, four years down the line, with what I have uncovered? Why should you even believe me?

…What I am mildly curious about is why you should at all be bothered about the date of creation of this journal if, as you have ruled, it is of modern origin? Why not just walk away from it ,as most of my colleagues have, resting on scholarship, common sense and a proper historical reading of the document? Might it give you a problem if ink met paper prior to 1987-89?

…This response to your email of course will not satisfy you but if you had shown yourself more willing to work with me, four years ago, trying to determine what went wrong with the McCrone Group - and possibly it had something to do with you realising that this type of operation is extremely time consuming and expensive and you'd rather delegate the responsibility to somebody else - then I might have been more forthcoming. How much, incidentally, were you personally prepared to invest financially in these tests and how proportionate would that figure have been to the final cost?

Don't worry if you are too busy to post any kind of response for the time being. I'm sure this can wait. But when you do get time, I'd be obliged if you could do it after solving Maria's little problem on the Obama thread.

Love,

Caz
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[Maria]

Except that it is not necessary to do further testing, since Melvin Harris already did that a long time ago and found chloroacetamide in the ink a modern component. Melvin Harris has been the only person to get a sample of the ink whilst unbeknown to the owner Robert Smith, when this one was trying to sell the rights to Warner Publications and surrepticiously the samples were sent to be analysed with Analysis For Industry who only charged Melvin 40 pounds to do it and the scientist there, was a good friend of Joseph McCrone.

Maria

[Omlor]

Caroline returns once again, I see. And once again she prefers to read her own desires into what I have written rather than read what I have written.

Fortunately, however, in doing so she says nothing new and adds nothing to the conversation. So I needn't bother correcting her.

I like it when things are this easy.

--John

PS: I think the amount of the costs of the proposed tests was in the three to five hundred dollar range, depending on what needed to be done as things proceeded, if I remember correctly. I would have happily paid a good deal more than that, though. Can I now assume that since I have answered the completely unrelated question that Keith asked of me, that Keith will do the same and answer the simple and direct questions asked of him regarding his public pronouncements? I'll bet anyone here that the answer is a decisive "no." Apparently, these things only work in one direction for some.

[caz]

Later, if it matters, when another testing process did reach the point of discussing prices I made it clear that I was willing to pay 100% of the costs.

In that case, Omlor, in the spirit of not being the sort of chap who would ever say anything publicly unless you were prepared to say it all, you can reveal what those costs were estimated to be. Obviously you can provide a rough maximum figure, since nobody in their right mind promises to cough up 100% of a completely unknown amount.

It's enough to make even the most jaded secret agent cackle, amused at the pompous self-importance and the melodramatic language of whispered catastrophe.

Gosh, it’s amazing how the written word can sometimes conjure up an image that’s the total opposite of what the writer presumably intended.

The image here is not that of a jaded secret agent, cackling to himself before shaking his head and getting on with better things, but that of an embittered Wicked Fairy, not invited to the Christening of a baby she can’t stand the sight of anyway, and completely unable to move on.

Now how did that happen, I wonder?

Love,

Caz
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