Modern forensic techniques needed to fully test Casement’s ‘Black Diaries’
But these diaries portray Casement as not only gay, but as mentally unbalanced and with paedophile tendencies; they undermine his credibility as a witness to, and commentator on, the times in which he lived.
Dwyer referred to “exhaustive forensic tests”, which he believes establish the handwritten volumes as genuine. Perhaps he is under the spell of Roy Foster, Carroll professor of Irish history at Oxford, who made similar unwarranted claims on the diaries in his recent book on the 1916 generation, Vivid Faces.
In April ,1999, at the annual, Fianna Fáil 1916 commemoration, Bertie Ahern promised that: “… in justice to the memory of Roger Casement, there is now a compelling, prima facie case for a new and rigorous enquiry … using modern forensic and analytical techniques.”
In 2002, an examination of sorts was organised by the literary historian, Dr WJ McCormack. Modern forensic techniques, such as x-ray fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy, which can detect where writing has been erased and overwritten, were not used. A cursory handwriting analysis was carried out by Dr Audrey Giles, on the basis of which the diaries were declared genuine.
In the newsletter of the British Association of Irish Studies, in July, 2002, James J Horan, a document examiner attached to John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, wrote: “To the question, ‘Is the writing Roger Casement’s?’, on the basis of the ‘Giles Report’, as it stands; my answer would have to be ‘I cannot tell’.” Another document examiner, Marcel Matley, commented in Graphodigest, 2002, edited by Nigel Bradley, of the University of Westminster: “Even if every document examined were the authentic writing of Casement, this report does nothing to establish the fact.”
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