Let us now dissect Dadrian’s Andonian-validating effort from 1986.

The reader must bear in mind that such a dissection would be all the more thorough were Dadrian’s carefully compiled sources available. Unfortunately, the handful of contra-genocide scholars — so many have been frightened away from this debate by the genocide industry’s below-the-belt ad hominem attacks — have generally not made an effort to evaluate Dadrian’s slippery claims. The only “word” I frequently have on the details boils down to the word of Dadrian himself. Luckily, most of the time, Dadrian’s “word” speaks for itself. This dissection would be all the more effective if the sources were at hand, to see exactly how Dadrian has taken matters out of context, as he has proven to do so many times. That is the job for a professional scholar who does research for a living. In the years ahead, I predict Dadrian’s claims will be effectively demolished, as genuine historians begin to awaken, and find their courage and commitment to historical duty, to separate fact from fiction.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty Dadrian excels at, let us keep in mind the BIG PICTURE.

Andonian did not work alone. (“The Armenian File”’s Kamuran Gurun has speculated: “It may be that the person known as Naim Bey is the person who was paid to arrange the forged documents.”) Although the forgery work was most likely Andonian’s alone, he was evidently part of a propaganda network, with the wherewithal to simultaneously publish the Naim work. The book was a coordinated effort, published in 1920 in Paris, London and (evidently in 1921) Boston (in French, English and Armenian, respectively), the first two just in time to influence the Allies further, during the Peace Conference proceedings.

The German kangaroo court trying Soghoman Tehlirian, Talat’s assassin, rejected the Andonian documents. Most importantly, the British, searching far and wide for evidence to convict the (up to 144) Ottomans held in Malta, also rejected them.

Governor Mustafa Abdülhalik, whose signature is supposed to appear on several documents, happened to be one of these Malta detainees. He could have been quickly convicted by the British, if the British determined Andonian’s work to be authentic. Abdülhalik was ultimately freed. Another Ottoman official whose signature appears on the Andonian documents, Abdulahad Nuri, was not even sent to Malta.

Andonian himself admitted, in a 1937 letter to an Armenian woman in Switzerland, that his work was meant as propaganda. (Yves Ternon referred to this, but excused Andonian as follows: “the author acknowledges it naively”..!)

Now these are the big truths. Only a determined propagandist such as Vahakn Dadrian will do his best to sow the seeds of confusion, in an immoral attempt to legitimize what serious scholars have already accepted as obvious forgeries.

I will try not to address every single assertion of Dadrian’s, as I normally prefer to do. I will try and highlight only his more obvious nonsense, because getting mired in Dadrian’s quicksand is already an exercise in frustration. (He is like a Hydra; shoot down a pathetic Dadrian argument, he will sprout two new pathetic arguments in its place.) Dadrian will also branch off into non-Andonian territory, which I’m going to attempt to avoid.

After the Dadrian analysis, we will summarize why practically everyone, except Dadrian, has rightly rejected the Andonian forgeries for the crock that they are. Aside from the sometimes confusing technicalities involved, toward the end of this study I'm going to provide some much needed logic (below) regarding why "The Memoirs of Naim Bey" is such an obvious fake... including reasons I have never seen elsewhere.

Let us interject first with a rundown of this Andonian inanity, as presented by Prof. Erich Feigl in "The Myth of Terror" (pp. 84-86):

In his introduction, Dadrian provides the set-up with how the “process of deportation ... became a process of destruction. The provinces in the interior of Turkey with heavy concentrations of Armenians were thus completely denuded of their indigenous population.”

By 1916, Dadrian himself has written that “the genocide had all but run its course”... a weird assertion in itself, if the idea was the destruction of the Armenians. (The Nazis’ “Final Solution” chugged away until the final bitter hours of WWII, as we were reminded of in the film, SCHINDLER’S LIST.) Armenophile bigot Consul J. B. Jackson prepared a report for boss Morgenthau on Feb. 8, 1916 contending that 486,000 represented “the statistics of Armenian immigrants, according to best information,” not too far from Boghos Nubar’s numbers of 600-700,000, as presented in a Dec. 11, 1918 letter to French Minister Gout. In March of 1916, Morgenthau — confirming Dadrian's "run its course" conclusion — was quoted by Vahan Cardashian, in a letter to Lord Bryce, as stating the Ottoman government's attitude toward Armenians was “passive”; and that the “Armenians were found in good numbers in almost all the interior cities of Turkey.” [The Armenian Review, Winter 1957, p. 107.] Already Dadrian is starting off with a big lie, stating that the “interior of Turkey” had been “completely denuded of their indigenous population.” Particularly since the Armenian Patriarch himself vouched for 644,900 remaining Armenians in 1921. (The pre-war population was some 1.5 million. The fact that nearly half was sticking around three years after the war is hardly a “complete denuding.” Hundreds of thousands of Armenians had left for other lands, on their own accord, by this time. And we won’t touch that other dubious assertion, regarding whether Armenians were truly the “indigenous population.”)

It is significant that of the "telegrams" attributed to Talat Pasha in this work, one is numbered 819 and dated March, 7, 1332 (or March 20, 1916). No such telegram was sent from the Ministry of Interior to the Governorship of Aleppo on that day, so we already know it is a fake. More tellingly, this “extermination order” is said to have been written in 1916, the year Vahakn Dadrian himself is on record for establishing, in Sept. 2004, that “the genocide had all but run its course”!

(The above info about "819" comes from Prof. Ataöv's round-up of the Sinasi Orel and Sureyya Yuca research; which I will refer to often, as I have not read the Orel-Yuca work. I could find no such numbered or dated telegram in the 1964 reprint, which appears to have — that is, I did not have the luxury to peruse it at length — featured 19 Talat telegrams, and not the 20 Prof. Feigl counted. It's possible this particular telegram might have been reproduced, but under a different date. The 1964 reprint appears to be a real sham.)

Dadrian next tells us his genocide “was attested to by multitudes of Armenian survivors; by ... missionaries; and by European and American consuls,” along with “Austrian and German officers.” Every one of the non-Armenians among these parties (with the exception of some missionaries, who contributed to the creation of stories) accepted second-hand testimony, because of their deep, ingrained prejudices against the Turks, regarded as a less-than-human species. Hearsay is not admissible for the truth-seeker, especially when derived from biased sources.

Dadrian points to the lack of real evidence, writing, “Such a preponderance of testimony is deficient, however, in one major respect... it does not inform specifically on the underlying mechanisms of these administrative measures.”

“In brief, there has been a paucity of specific documentation on the involvement of key power-wielders and the hierarchy of subordinate agents. That paucity was somewhat mitigated by the 1919-1920 Turkish Court Martial proceedings,” Dadrian eagerly tells us, since the findings of these kangaroo courts, conducted without due process and under enemy occupation, are his “bread and butter.” He tells us these are to be relied upon because the “competent” lackey officials of the puppet Ottoman administration “had authenticated them with the standard notation: ‘It conforms to the original.’" (When it serves his purposes, the Turks are as scrupulous as can be. When it does not, Dadrian has been known to provide the idea that the Turks were unreliable, lying scoundrels. For example, in Dadrian’s smear attack on Dr. Erickson, Dadrian set the stage for Turkish dishonesty with, “[M]embers of the German Military Mission to Turkey almost uniformly complained during and after the war, about the indolence and laxness with which the former went about preparing maps, compiling statistics, and, above all, preparing reports.”)

“Yet it was apparent that these were but the scattered fragments of a large volume of secret records that, according to Turkish testimony, were hastily whisked away and eventually destroyed.” He does not footnote what this “Turkish testimony” is. Here, he must be referring to how these records were destroyed after the nationalists had won and Turkey was independent again. The British had “whisked” into the defeated Ottoman Empire immediately after the Armistice of Oct. 30, 1918, quickly took over the Ottoman archives, and appointed an Armenian (Haig Khazarian) in charge... in the hopes of finding evidence for the 1919-21 Malta Tribunal process. There was no time to destroy anything then. If the Kemal administration destroyed the records of the 1919-20 Ottoman trials, there would have been no reason to do so “hastily.” The Turks were in control of their nation once more, and they had all the time in the world to dispose of these records, if dispose of them they did. (There is no evidence regarding the fate of these records.) The reason why the Turks might have felt there was no reason to keep these records was because the 1919-20 kangaroo courts were a travesty of justice; even the British felt the same way, when they dismissed the findings of these courts for their own Malta Tribunal.

And now we are getting into the meat of why Dadrian has prepared this classic example of the “Armenian AND? Anthem”:

This being the case, the Naim-Andonian documents, if authentic, assume extraordinary import for two main reasons. First, they are intrinsically valuable as primary sources on state secrets involving a major state crime. Second, by declaring these documents as forgeries, a host of Turkish scholars, supported and sponsored by the Turkish Historical Society, currently are mounting a large-scale campaign to challenge that contention of crime.[2]

Let’s take a moment to examine what Dadrian has provided in his “Footnote 2.” Look at what he is doing: he is strongly implying that Turkish scholars must be lying through their teeth, since everyone knows Turkish scholars are incapable of independent thought (unless supported by the Armenian network, such as in the case of Taner Akcam, or for other opportunistic reasons), and must work toward the contentions of their “totalitarian” state. Already Dadrian is planting doubt in readers’ minds that whatever the Turkish scholars have come up with cannot be trusted. This way he is detracting from the message, and concentrating on the messenger, which is Dadrian’s classic Dashnak style.

Dadrian singles out Türkkaya Ataöv’s “The Andonian Documents Attributed to Talat Pasha Are Forgeries,” based on Sinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca’s 1983 study. He also fires away at Kamuran Gürün’s “The Armenian File.” Copies of Ataöv’s work were made available in several languages and distributed to “universities, foreign offices, and, above all, key echelons of the media” (I can’t believe this was such an all-encompassing campaign as Dadrian is making it sound. “The Turkish government” could not have deterred from its typically passive and clueless state to such an extent. If they did, it must have been a great exception, and phooey on them for failing to continue on that tract.) Dadrian whines that this report made an impression on members of 1985’s U.N. Sub-Commission on Human Rights, when the Armenians had their man, Benjamin Whitaker, in place to push this genocide hoax.

Dadrian actually goes on to mislead by reporting that “Whitaker finally prevailed,” as the “Sub-Commission on August 29, 1985, voted to ‘take note’ of the Whitaker report. For what it is worth, an international body thus for the first time has registered its recognition of the historical fact of the Armenian genocide involving as victims ‘at least one million, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population.’"

Hoo-boy. Leave it to Dadrian’s pathetic attempts to deceive, as usual. The fact of the matter is, the Whitaker Report was politely refused and not transmitted to the Commission on Human Rights. The Sub-Commission’s “vote of 14 to 1, with 4 abstentions, on August 19, 1985,” as Dadrian sneakily tells us, referred to an adoption of Resolution 1985/9, and not the Whitaker Report. The Sub-Commission refused to receive the Report, deleting the word "receives" from the draft resolution. It merely took "note" of the study, as Dadrian singled out with his famously selective evidence, trying to pull the wool over our eyes. The Sub-Commission actually refused to praise the Whitaker Report by deleting the words "the quality of." (By 16 votes to none, with 4 abstentions!) It even added statements to the resolution, in order to emphasize the controversy on the Report, "Noting that divergent views w{ere ex}pressed about the content and proposals of the report..." They also added the following: "...Other participants felt that the Special Rapporteur should have dealt exclusively with the problem of preventing future genocides without referring to past events which were difficult or impossible to inves{tigate"} (para. 41). Various participants argued that the Armenian issue was not adequately documented and that "certain evidence had been forged" (para. 42). (Read: “What Really Happened in Geneva”)

Therefore, if Ataöv’s report made a difference with the U.N. body’s awareness of the real truth, that was to be lauded. Instead, Dadrian is making it seem like the lying Turks pulled a fast one. (We can well understand how upset this episode must have made him. Usually, the Armenian propagandists are accustomed to having their propaganda sail through, without opposition. The propaganda about the U.N. having accepted the mythological Armenian genocide was so prevalent, U.N. Spokesman Farhan Haq issued a declaration in late 2000 saying it simply isn't so. Juan Mendez, Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide to the Secretary General of the United Nations, confirmed this non-acceptance in a June 4-7, 2005 Florida Atlantic University genocide conference. But Mendez is a member of the genocide club, and to provide an example of why Dadrian is so spoiled with having his views automatically accepted, in the knowledge that his genocide industy’s tentacles reach far and wide: in March 2006, Mendez was likely instrumental in seeing to it that U.N. grounds were used in order to carry a commemoration of both the Armenian and Rwandan genocides. Dadrian was one of the speakers, and the event was monitored by a biased New York Times journalist. Ataöv pulled a surprise visit, rebuked the journalist for “choosing sides” [she did all she could to shut Ataöv up], and a circus resulted, with the Armenians in the audience yelping cries of pain. The Rwandan representative — hopefully having recognized the travesty his mission was sucked into, like a latter day Franz Werfel — later apologized to Ataöv, but the one to apologize should have been Juan Mendez, for putting his own prejudices before his responsibilities toward the U.N. organization, and for abusing his authority in making this conference possible, as it appears. [Mendez used to be president of the ICTJ; this body of lawyers recognized the Armenian myth, utilizing Armenian propaganda sources near-exclusively.])

Dadrian continues: “Consequently, this study will be limited to the task of probing, assessing, and, if possible, authenticating a set of documents the critical import of which is matched by the intensity with which their legitimacy is currently being contested.” That is precisely his purpose. He can’t authenticate them, but he will do his best to cast doubt on the facts that indicate they are forgeries.

“These documents depict the involvement of the organs of the Ottoman state apparatus and the role of the Ittihad Party in controlling that apparatus. The effort is therefore largely a historiographical one. Its central thrust is an attempt at exposing the fallacies rampantly in evidence in a new trend of revisionism bent on rewriting history relative to the World War I destruction of Ottoman Armenians. it is hoped that once the record is set straight, scholarship in this area will be kept free from the inroads of political expediency and partisanship.”

Doesn’t it make you sick? This professional partisan trying to make it appear as though he is above “political expediency and partisanship.”

Under “THE MAKE-UP OF THE MATERIAL,” Dadrian informs the material as consisting “mainly of 52 pieces purporting to be documents of which all but 2, which are letters, are decoded cipher telegrams.” (Prof. Feigl's count from above was 48 telegrams, referring to the English edition, so we have a difference of two. If I counted correctly, the 1964 reprint featured 45.) We are told “the English title referring to Naim's memoirs is a clear misnomer,” given that “a significant part of the material consists of Naim Sefa's annotations explaining and enlarging upon individual ciphers.” In addition, “Aram Andonian's own supplementary comments are interspersed in the main text, along with a whole series of footnotes and editorial opinions.”

So Dadrian himself is providing a reason that the material is a joke; whose idea, after all, was it to call this book “The Memoirs of Naim Bey”? If the propagandists misinformed with the title itself, what else could they have misinformed with? As Ataöv informs us (in “The Andonian Documents Attributed to Talat Pasha Are Forgeries”):

Andonian's work in English (84 pp.) includes 48 and in French (168 pp.) 50 such "documents". It is difficult to ascertain which portions of the book are part of Naim Bey's "memoirs" and which are Andonian's own composition, for several pages in the English edition, presented as Naim Bey's reminiscences, appear as Andonian's writing.

If Andonian decided to allow his “own supplementary comments” to be “interspersed in the main text,” and we can’t distinguish the propagandist’s words from those of the supposed Turkish official, the work clearly is without honest intention. In the 1964 reprint, there is no mention of "Naim Sefa" (is that the full name for Naim Bey? At first, I figured Naim Sefa was someone different, since Dadrian pointed to Naim Sefa’s “annotations” as the chief reason why the book’s title is a misnomer. But if they are the same person, the book’s title would be less of a misnomer) and Andonian is presented as the "translator" (even though Dadrian will inform us Andonian did not know English). If the work is called "The Memoirs of Naim Bey," and if Naim Bey is allowed to speak in the first person (examples will be provided later), and also if Naim Sefa is the same person as Naim Bey, then there is no "misnomer." The people behind this book intentionally attempted to represent Naim Bey as the primary voice behind this presentation. (Even though the first person voice is constantly interrupted with a voice that is clearly not Naim Bey's. What might more accurately be said is that the whole book is a misnomer. But that would not be an accurate usage of the word; better words would be misrepresentation... misdeed... miscreant.)

“Two letters from Dr. Behaeddin Shakir, the head of the Special Organization... are of paramount significance. They provide an ideological framework for the anti-Armenian measures to be initiated.”

Hold up. Isn’t Dadrian’s purpose, as he related in his introduction, to try and determine whether the work is “authentic”? But he is already coming from the position that the work has been authenticated. (The Armenian who posted this material at Hyeforum, someone who calls himself “QueBeceR,” has prefaced his post with, “Some have even tried to discredit [Dadrian], on the basis that he ‘claims’ ‘forgeries’ to be authentic.” The proof of Dadrian’s position lies with his own writing. Dadrian makes no bones about where he stands, in his letter to The Middle East Quarterly and the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) a generation later. Dadrian clearly wants to make us believe Andonian’s work is on the level, while this silly Dadrian disciple tries to present the notion that Dadrian is impartial, in typical Dadrian-style deception..!)

Dadrian must have dripped much saliva as he provides details on these phony telegrams, including the one that is widely published in genocide sites, Talat’s order to “show no mercy for women and children or the infirm and sick.” (One of these telegrams is featured in Dadrian pal Stephen Feinstein’s reprehensible CHGS site as “evidence.” Feinstein was Dadrian’s co-writer, in a letter to the TLS, ganging up on Prof. Norman Stone. Since Dadrian is supposedly so uncertain about the Andonian work, as “QueBeceR” assures us, you’d think he’d get Feinstein on the phone and tell him to either remove the suspicious telegram, or include a disclaimer.)

Among the gruesome details, Dadrian informs us Abdulahad Nuri “echoes” the above Talat extermination directive (No. 35), and further describes “the process of destruction through extermination” in two ciphers (Nos. 29 and 42). No. 51 from Nuri, described as “Deputy Director of Deportation,” reassures “the executioners of the deportees that they will not be held accountable.”

The stupidity of these telegrams becomes all the more apparent as they are completely contradictory to genuine Ottoman orders, or to historical realities. We know, for example, that Armenian orphans were cared for in droves, and survived. (The 1964 reprint is filled with photographs of Armenian orphans.) Yet Andonian concocted “a set of five telegrams from Talat ordering the disposal of Armenian orphans,” as Dadrian informs us. Now, how difficult would it have been to have exterminated defenseless orphans? Not one orphan could have survived, if this were a real order. Yet Dadrian is trying to make it seem as though it were.

From the 1964 reprint: "Halide Hamum, accompanied by converted Armenian orphans." Below: "Halide Hanum (sitting), a Turkish authoress, a most active worker at the conversion of Armenians orphans to Islam. An Armenian girl (standing) is being allured into harem life." The Chairman of AHRA, M. G. Sevag, wrote in the book's foreword, after referring to the Turks' "inhuman practices" and "demonic crimes, the case of Halide Edib Hanum is a loathsome example." An excerpt from a propaganda work is cited: "It was Halide Hanum, a graduate of the American College for girls at Constantinople, and Kemal's minister of education... who directed the tearing apart of thousands of children from their (Armenian) parents to be forced into Turkish homes, and the seizure of thousands of young women to be turned over to the Turkish army for immoral purposes."

(If these children were "orphans," how could they have had "parents" to be torn away from?)

How could Armenian propagandists be so absolutely bereft of morals? They actually made a villain of Halide Edip, a humanitarian to an extent that even Vahakn Dadrian has pointed to her for supposedly refusing to shake Bahaeddin Shakir's hand. We have no idea who these other girls in the photographs are, but we do know there were over 2.5 million Muslim deaths that produced many, many Turkish orphans, and we also know this vile book uses whatever photo and description that serve their disgusting purpose, as will become clearer below. Edip was active during the years of struggle after W.W.I, when desperate Turks had other things on their minds besides "harems"; here's a look at what lay behind this conversion/slavery propaganda, along with a heartbreaking account from Halide Edip, regarding what was going on in these post war orphanages.



Back to Abdulahad Nuri; he is clearly one of the stars of the show:

“In compliance with these instructions, A. Nuri in two ciphers reassures Talat; he informs Talat in one of the impending dispatch of 400 orphans from an orphanage (No. 13), and explains in the other that by marching off these children amidst the rigors of the winter, ‘their eternal peace’ will be ensured (No. 37).”

Now get this excursion into fantasyland: Naim appealed to A. Nuri to relax the “stringency of the measures” as “the public health consequences of the relentless mass murder would sooner or later strike the entire population of the region, leaving only ghosts in its wake.” Nuri’s reply: "My boy, we will be destroying this way two harmful elements at once. Aren't those who will be dying off along with the Armenians the Arabs? Is it bad? The paths of Turkey's future will thereby open up." ("Naim Bey" added his comment here that he "shuddered" at the man's evilness. Brother.)

So now we have an idea of how complicit Abdulahad Nuri was with the “Final Solution,” in the hands of Aram Andonian. Remember, Andonian’s work was released in London, in 1920, smack-dab in the middle of the desperate efforts of the British, hoping to find legitimate evidence in their Malta Tribunal process. Can anyone imagine for one moment that the British... the British, who were underhanded enough to come up with the Sèvres Treaty, signifying the death of the Turkish nation... would not have made good use of this material, had they not ultimately (and to their great credit) determined that their Malta evidence had better be genuine? Yet Abdulahad Nuri was not even arrested by the British. A work determined to be an obvious forgery back in 1920 is still being analyzed in the early 21st century, because of unscrupulous and deceptive practices of propagandists like Dadrian. It’s truly an unbelievable situation.

It’s also interesting that Naim, "entirely unimportant,” according to Andonian himself (as he privately revealed; in the book, the impression of Naim is otherwise), would have had the ear of such a big shot as Abdulahad Nuri. In Andonian’s 1937 letter, Naim would also be described as highly immoral. That is not in keeping with Naim serving as a voice of conscience to Nuri. (But Andonian hoped to present the image of Naim as a humanitarian, in the book itself. For example, in the book and in a letter of June 10, 1921 to the Berlin court, Andonian states that Naim Bey turned down all suggestions of payment. Yet in the July 26, 1937 letter to Mary Terzian, Andonian declares that the Armenians paid for every document that they got from Naim Bey. As Prof. Ataöv surmised: “It may be that a realistic description would create suspicion on the very authenticity of the ‘memoirs’ and ‘documents.’ Andonian was not trying to protect Naim Bey, but preserve the acceptability of his ‘documents.’"

In Dadrian’s WEIGHING AND COMING TO GRIPS WITH TURKISH CHALLENGES, get prepared for some serious mumbo jumbo regarding:

1. In discussing Abdulahad Nuri's cipher (No. 26), or rather the printed facsimile of its text, the authors contend that no Ottoman governmental office would deign to use "such a species of paper" (türden bir kagit); they find that paper "resembling . . . paper used for calligraphy lessons in French schools."

2. In disputing Naim's access to ciphers, they maintain, "It is utterly improbable that such highly secret documents would have been kept for three years without being destroyed."

3. Referring to the February 18 and March 25 letters, they argue that the texts betray ignorance of the Ottoman language and that "no Turk, then or now," would commit such errors of grammar and syntax.

4. They indicate irregularities in the use of cryptographie numbers found in some of the ciphers, explaining that code keys were frequently changed during the war, according to General Staff archive data.

5. Having juxtaposed Abdülhalik's signatures with two other documents, which the authors claim bear "the real signature" of the governor, they conclude that the signatures, and hence the documents (Nos. 11 and 19), are "false."

For [1], Dadrian informs us there was an “acute shortage of paper in wartime Turkey.” He dug up a reference by an Ottoman official (Ahmed Resit [Rey], Gördüklerim-Yaptiklarim [1890-1922], 1945) who wrote in his memoirs that Talat used "ordinary paper" one time when he recommended the official’s dismissal to the Grand Vezir. Well then, that must prove it! Prof. Norman Stone was equally impressed: “Dadrian had a wonderful time trying to salvage the documents, and I vastly admired the prestidigitation involved — for instance, if the paper was of the type used in French schools, and not of the type used in government offices, this can be explained by the paper shortage, he says. But if he cannot convince his major ally, who knows the Ottoman documents, well, there we are.”

The major ally (actually, Dadrian's protégé): Taner Akcam. ('There are important grounds for considering these documents fake'; "Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question," Istanbul 1992, note 8, p.119.) [ADDENDUM, 5-07: Genocideland's "village idiot," Akcam,  has reversed himself as the good propagandistic soldier he must be.]

Of course, in case this example doesn’t do the trick, Dadrian “proves” his contention with the following: “Moreover, in order to fashion the three makeshift notebooks he supplied to Andonian in three installments (November 6, 10, and 14, 1918), Naim had to use what scraps of paper he could scrounge, which he then tied together with a string.” That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, Dadrian is actually calling to his witness stand Naim Bey himself, in a case where the very existence of the man is in question..! And as a side note, how can we equate the quality of paper used by someone "entirely unimportant," for private purposes (relaying information to Andonian) with an official communique by A. Nuri?

2. These utterly secret and sensitive documents must have survived because Aleppo was “not considered in danger.” Brother! If such branches were lax about keeping secret documents, then the debate of the Armenian “genocide” would have long been over, since there would be a whole slew of such documents, instead of “zero” (save for Andonian’s forgeries). Dadrian continues with his desperation: one moment Aleppo was perfectly safe, and in the next moment, there was “panicky relinquishment of Aleppo, which was about to be stormed by British-led forces. There was neither anticipation nor enough time to destroy records.” (Aleppo fell to the British.) Dadrian supports his own panicky conclusion by calling on his witness stand Rössler himself, who opined Naim could have been in possession of the documents because “the Turks [in Aleppo] never catalogued and attached their documents." As if Rössler would have been in a position to know..!

Note what Dadrian is getting at, above. The British had taken Aleppo so suddenly in October 1918, the documents must have survived in order for Naim Bey to have gotten his hands on them. After reminding us that Naim Bey had been dismissed from office in early 1916, roughly the time when Andonian first met Naim Bey, Ataöv asked: “How can that be if he (Naim Bey) was dismissed long ago or how can he later 'steal' them, especially when the same Andonian argues that the Ottoman Government ‘did away with all the documents pertaining to the Armenian massacre’? Following Andonian's logic, while all documents pertaining to this issue were destroyed, a dismissed junior bureaucrat enters a government office and steals highly secret ‘documents’!” (But there is a much greater germ-carrying fly in this ointment, as we'll get into when we wind up our study; it has to do with the irrelevance of Naim Bey. The British would have discovered these documents themselves.)

3. Dadrian states: “handwriting, as compared with standardized printing, is intrinsically irregular in any language,” and pooh-poohs Andonian’s having given away his identity by lacking the knowledge of writing the religious formula “besmele.” (“The Historical Society authors single out, for example, the case of a dot for the consonant b that is off its mark by one-fiftieth to one-sixtieth of an inch to conclude” a non-Muslim’s being off the mark.) Yet Dadrian opines the two examples presented as handwritten, authentic besmele formulas are a lot more suspect than the one Andonian provided. Vahakn Dadrian began his working career first as a mathematician, then a sociologist, soon after a "genocide scholar," and now a handwriting analyst. Is there no end to Dadrian's talents?

Ataöv addresses the “besmele” issue: “[T]he first ‘document’ misses the long letter of ‘sin’ and the dot for the ‘b’ ought to be on the right, not in the middle. Both signs are bigger than usual, and the sign depicting ‘Allah’ is falsely written. It is of course not unusual for an Armenian, who is Christian, to write out such a clumsy besmele, not having written it before.” Orel and Yuca must have been fools to have provided two examples that are even more false than what Andonian provided, if Dadrian is to be believed.

Dadrian also takes issue with Turks making errors, providing examples of how difficult Ottoman Turkish could be. One is the Yozgat court martial correcting a sentence in an official document because of "very ineptly used Turkish." A Turkish historian even singles out Talat for his rotten Turkish. This reminds me of how Relief Worker Albert Mackenzie, in the New York Times, tried to discredit Admiral Chester’s notion of "In Turkey every man by law and by religion must adequately support and treat with kindness and faithful respect whomsoever he may marry, and, moreover, this he does"; Mackenzie pointed to an example of a Turkish creep once encountered, who treated his wife like dirt. Of course there are going to be exceptions to every rule. When Orel and Yuca wrote "no Turk, then or now," would commit such errors, they obviously were speaking figuratively. The point they were making was that errors would be rare, and the fact that Andonian tripped up, while not in itself conclusive evidence of forgeries, is a strong indication that these were not written by an in-the-know Turk.

To get the idea, Dadrian fan "QueBeceR" makes the kinds of mistakes in his English no native speaker would make, even though there are plenty of native speakers whose English is imperfect. But a proficient native speaker can often successfully distinguish between the errors of a fellow native speaker and the errors of a foreigner.

4. I was wondering how Dadrian would try and discredit the “codes” matter. Here is his best shot: “The matter of changing code keys is related to a regular, structured communication System, not necessarily applicable to the ad hoc improvisations surrounding the deportations and massacres. These improvisations were not enacted by the General Staff, the author's reference point, but by the Interior Ministry, its subsidiary agencies, and the Special Organization.” He provides a “chronic confusion in the archives of the Ottoman General Staff” reference by Stoddard, the one Western scholar who conducted a study of the Special Organization (Dadrian’s “Ottoman SS”! The only trouble is, Stoddard concluded the S.O. had nothing to do with Armenians, but now Stoddard must be pointed to as credible). Do you think Dadrian made a good effort here, grasping for his straws? Nobody really can pretend to know the internal workings of the CUP administration, and suddenly Dadrian has hopped aboard his time machine, telling us exactly what the situation was.

(What we are being told is that the Ottoman Turks’ methods were haphazard and unreliable. But if the Turks were that inept, they could not have managed to maintain their empire for over half a millennium. The code books have survived, and scholars may determine what the codes were. The reason to have created codes in the first place was to place a necessary safeguard during dangerous wartime, with spies afoot. These codes were not created for fun; as a rule, they had to have been followed. Is it true this rule was broken sometimes, as all rules have a tendency to be broken? Probably. Does that mean the baby must be thrown out with the bath water? No.)

5. As to the comparison of Abdülhalik's signatures, Dadrian concedes “This is the most serious issue raised thus far,” and distances himself by exclaiming, “the matter can hardly be settled on the basis of inspecting printed pages that consist of reproductions, and in some cases, of consecutive reproductions. The determination of whether there are substantial differences in the two versions of the signature in question is a much more complicated task than that performed by these critics; one may even dispute the existence of any important differences.” Uh-oh! V. D. is close to getting himself in hot water. If we can’t use reproductions to determine the validity of a claim, we might as well dismiss all of Andonian’s work right now, since Andonian suspiciously could not provide the originals. (He said he “lost” them.)

Isn’t Dadrian a hoot? He will truly claim anything and everything, in order to cast doubt. The man has no shame, whatsoever. He winds up this section by asserting that because this issue was so important, “the Armenian National Union at Aleppo and Andonian employed more than one method to probe and verify the authenticity of Abdülhalik's signatures.” This is like saying, in order to guarantee the safety of the chickens in the henhouse, the fox swore on a stack of Bibles.

Next up: “THE CREDIBILITY CONSTRAINTS OF NAIM AND ANDONIAN”

“Naim was tested on several occasions regarding his veracity and reliability. Despite his chronic need for money, and despite the prevalence of extortion by Turkish officials in charge of deportation measures, he reportedly passed up several opportunities to extort money from Armenians desperately at the mercy of his goodwill. As Andonian observed, ‘In comparison with those rogues Naim was a Saint. ... I cannot forget the fact that throughout my protracted dealings with him he never lied. We benefited from the kindly features of his complex character without being victimized by his vices.’ It is worth noting that this judgment was not included in Andonian's volume but in a private, confidential letter he wrote a quarter-century later as if wanting to bare his soul and clarify an important matter.”

Is this “confession” from the 1937 letter to Mary Terzian? (Let’s see... 1920 + “a quarter century” = 1945. No footnote has been provided; either this is another letter, or Dadrian the Mathematician has lost his touch.) Guenter Lewy cited the 1937 letter when he wrote:

But according to a letter composed by Andonian in 1937, Naim Bey was addicted to alcohol and gambling, and the documents he provided were bought for money. To have "unveiled the truth about him," Andonian wrote, "would have served no purpose." More likely, it would have undercut the very effectiveness of The Memoirs. Nobody would have believed the word of an alcoholic and gambler who might have manufactured the documents to obtain money.

Ataöv cites this letter as well, when pointing to Andonian having declared “that the Armenians paid for every ‘document’ that they got from him — who is now described as an alchoholic, a gambler, a lover of money and entirely immoral. If the latter description is true, then why did Andonian wait for seventeen years to give a correct account? It may be that a realistic description would create suspicion on the very authenticity of the ‘memoirs’ and ‘documents.’ Andonian was not trying to protect Naim Bey, but preserve the acceptability of his ‘documents’.”

Kamuran Gurun quoted from this letter, appearing in a book entitled Justicier du génocide arménien, le procès de Tehlirian. Editions Diasporas, Collection Documents, published in 1981 by the Dashnak organization, Comité de Défense de la Cause Arménienne. (Cited below as well, in our update for Yves Ternon.) Here are Andonian’s own words, regarding Naim Bey: “. . . He was addicted to alcohol and gambling, and it was indeed these shortcomings of his which led him to treachery. The truth of the matter is that everything he gave us as documents, we bought from him in return for money. . . . Naim Bey is an entirely dissolute creature.”

Vahakn Dadrian: busted once again, as the unethical scholar he is, employing his “misleading quotations” and the “selective use of sources.” Dadrian admits to have read this 1937 letter, yet insists on presenting the propagandistic image Andonian provided in the book, that Naim Bey was a saint. Note, for example, that Dadrian does not touch upon the fact that the Armenians paid Naim Bey off, as they would with other Turks such as Dadrian’s protégé, Taner Akcam (at least indirectly), years later; in the book and the 1921 letter to the Berlin court, the liar Andonian stressed that these documents were provided free of charge.

(Incidentally, regarding Dadrian’s line about “the prevalence of extortion by Turkish officials in charge of deportation measures,” on p. 13 of the 1964 reprint: “Abdullahad Nouri Bey never took bribes.” But before anyone gets a heart attack from the shock of an Ottoman official being painted in this book as falling short of Freddy Kruger, here is how Nuri was quoted, by way of explanation: “Of course I like bribes, but I am afraid to accept them. I am afraid that in the place of the money which enters into my pocket an Armenian — even if it is only one Armenian — will escape.”)

Now the next Dadrian contention is of the variety that would make the truth-seeker shoot the contents of his or her stomach even farther than Linda Blair managed in THE EXORCIST. He is actually trying to get away with the notion that the Armenian National Union conducted extensive tests to “probe the reliability of Naim.” We should not even dignify that incredibly dishonest assertion with a response.

But just for fun: “One involved a comparison of the set of ciphers that Naim earlier had copied down with the set of their originals, which Naim unexpectedly was required to deliver in the wake of the subsequent total Turkish defeat. The comparison held: The contents of the two sets did square with each other.” That was one of the tests. So Dadrian is implying every single original was delivered, and compared to the copies Naim had provided earlier, which Naim had copied from the originals. Now note how Vahakn Dadrian is busted, once again. According to the 1964 reprint, Naim only kept some originals, “perhaps fearing future responsibility.” (The slimy Andonian was a Dadrian-style speculator in his own right.) But we get the idea that most of the documents (the rest had to be the majority, because Naim only kept “some” of the originals) Naim Bey provided for Andonian were “written from memory,” and the “most important ones” were “photographed.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the mysterious Naim Bey actually made use of his trusty camera, a common household item in every Ottoman's possession, and then he managed to take his rolls of film to the corner Fotomat, and have them developed.

Can you believe Dadrian is trying to get away with the notion that every single original of what Dadrian counted as 50 telegrams was de