On July 8, 1964, J. Edgar Hoover wrote to Warren Commission chief counsel J. Lee Rankin to inform him of the disappointing results of Gallagher’s efforts. “While minor variations in composition were found by this method,” Hoover wrote, “these were not considered sufficient to permit positively differentiating among the larger bullet fragments and thus positively determining from which of the larger bullet fragments any given small lead fragment may have come.”43
There the matter rested. But when early critics learned that spectrographic tests had been performed (they were mentioned in the testimony of FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier), but the specific results were not reported by the Warren Commission, they speculated that the Commission may have suppressed the results because they disproved the single-bullet theory.44 Unaware that NAA tests had also been performed, critics began screaming that the Commission didn’t submit the fragments to the superior NAA tests because the FBI was afraid that the fragments in Connally’s arm wouldn’t match the stretcher bullet.45
Dr. Nichols, a pathologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center with an abiding interest in the assassination, tried for a number of years to convince FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and later his successor, Clarence Kelly, to release the bullet fragments for independent NAA tests. He also enlisted the aid of Dr. Vincent Guinn, a professor of chemistry at the University of California’s Irvine campus and a twenty-year veteran of NAA, who agreed that such an examination might well produce new information about the assassination. Neither of them, however, were originally successful in convincing the FBI to release the fragments for analysis.
Finally, in September of 1977, the HSCA succeeded with the FBI where Nichols and Guinn had not, and gave Dr. Guinn a chance to develop his own data from the remaining fragments in the FBI’s custody to determine if the stretcher bullet matched up in the concentration of its metallic elements with bullet fragments found in the presidential limousine and those removed from Connally’s wrist.46† By the time Dr. Guinn, who had a PhD in chemistry from Harvard University, performed his NAA tests on the Kennedy assassination evidence at his Triga Mark I nuclear reactor at the University of California at Irvine, he had served as an expert witness on NAA in approximately fifty trials, had examined 165 different types of bullets, and had published fifty-three articles on forensic NAA. His research on NAA was supported by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) as well as the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice.47 Throughout his career, he had applied NAA techniques to many other kinds of materials involved in criminal cases—gunshot residues, glass, paint, paper, cloth, oil, greases, and many others.48 He first analyzed general Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition in 1973 after Dr. Nichols offered him samples for NAA testing,49 and discovered a peculiarity of this ammunition that turned out to have great significance for the fragments in the Kennedy case.
Dr. Guinn found that when it came to most manufactured rounds of ammunition, NAA could not detect any differences in metallic composition between bullets of the same production lot (a lot consisting of several batches or melts of lead)—they were essentially carbon copies of each other. However, Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition was very “unusual” in that the bullets seemed to have very little uniformity within a production lot. Bullets (which consist of 98 to 99 percent lead, the rest being trace elements) from a single box of twenty cartridges from the same lot varied widely in their composition, particularly with respect to the most important (for NAA purposes) of the three major trace elements, antimony, which manufacturers add to harden the bullet. (The other two most common elements are silver and copper.) In fact, the Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition made by Western Cartridge varied so much that individual bullets from a single box of ammunition could be identified and distinguished from each other, and hence are ideal for NAA since the possibility of a mere coincidence when you find a match is substantially reduced.50
In performing NAA on bullets, a sample of bullet lead—which can be extremely small—is first cleaned to remove any contamination by dust, moisture, or salt from handling or perspiration, and then put into a small vial, which in turn is placed in a small nuclear reactor,* where it is bombarded with neutrons until it becomes radioactive. The emissions given off by the sample as the radioactivity decays are then recorded, in Guinn’s case by a “high-resolution germanium” detector or counter, an instrument that is a great deal more sensitive and sophisticated than the relatively crude Geiger counter featured so prominently in movies made at the dawn of the atomic age.51 Since various elements form different radioisotopes, the counter not only distinguishes them in the sample material, but also is capable of measuring their relative quantities with extraordinary precision.
Ten different bullet samples were given to Dr. Guinn to analyze, each with an identifying Warren Commission exhibit number or an FBI “Q” number (“Q” for “questioned item”). Three of these were not suitable for testing,52 and the examination of two others added only basic, supportive knowledge to the case.
The five remaining specimens proved to have great value in corroborating what was already known about the assassination of President Kennedy. The first was the bullet found on the stretcher at Parkland Hospital (Commission Exhibit No. 399). The second (Commission Exhibit No. 567) was one of the two large fragments recovered from or near the front seat of the limousine, which had already been matched by firearms tests to Oswald’s rifle. (The other large front-seat fragment that was connected to Oswald’s rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons by the firearms experts, Commission Exhibit No. 569, was not subject to NAA because only the metal jacket remained, and there was no lead for analysis.) A third specimen (Commission Exhibit No. 843) consisted of two fragments recovered from President Kennedy’s brain during the autopsy at Bethesda. The fourth specimen (Commission Exhibit No. 842) consisted of three fragments removed by surgeons from Governor Connally’s wrist at Parkland. The fifth specimen (Commission Exhibit No. 840) included the small fragments found on the rug of the limousine under the left jump seat.53
When subjected to NAA by Dr. Guinn, all five of the specimens produced a profile highly characteristic of the Western Cartridge Company’s Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition. Even more interesting, the results fell into two distinct groups. Of the five samples, two had a concentration of antimony of about 800 parts per million, and three had a concentration of antimony of around 600 parts per million. This could mean only one thing: all five specimens had come from just two bullets. “There is no evidence for three bullets, four bullets, or anything more than two, but there is clear evidence there are two,” Guinn told the HSCA.54
Guinn concluded that the large fragment found in the limousine, the smaller fragments found on the rug of the limousine, and the fragments recovered from Kennedy’s brain were all from one bullet.55
His most important conclusion by far, however, scientifically defeating the notion that the bullet found on Connally’s stretcher had been planted, was that the elemental composition and concentration of trace elements of the three bullet fragments removed from Governor Connally’s wrist matched those of a second bullet, the stretcher bullet. The stretcher bullet, then, had to be the one that struck Connally, which all of the other evidence had already shown.*
Even without NAA, the idea that conspirators planted a bullet on the stretcher to frame Oswald makes no sense at all. You can only frame an innocent person, not a guilty one. And if Oswald were innocent, that would mean he wasn’t in the sixth-floor window firing at Kennedy with his Mannlicher-Carcano. Someone else (the hit man for the conspirators) was up there or elsewhere firing with a different rifle.
Note that at the time the conspirators supposedly planted the stretcher bullet (which, if we’re to follow the logic of the conspiracy theorists, must have been fired from Oswald’s rifle at some earlier time in order to frame him with it), they’d have to assume that at least one of the real bullets fired at Kennedy would be recovered, either from Kennedy’s body or inside the presi
dential limousine or elsewhere. And since they would know that firearm tests would reveal the bullet (or bullets) was not fired from Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano, this would automatically exonerate Oswald as the assassin, when the whole purpose of the alleged planting was to frame Oswald.
Moreover, the conspirators would have to know that if the real bullet (or bullets) was recovered and determined not to have been fired from Oswald’s Carcano, the presence of a planted bullet on Connally’s stretcher that had been fired from Oswald’s rifle would immediately signal to the authorities that a second gun (and hence, a conspiracy) was involved in the assassination. Since we can assume that the conspirators would not want the existence of a conspiracy to be known, why would they do something that could only advertise their existence? For their plan to plant the stretcher bullet to work, the conspirators would have to feel extremely confident, at the time they planted it, that they would be able to retrieve and destroy all of the real bullets that were fired, even those that, for all they knew, might still be lodged in Kennedy’s body. But how could they possibly believe they could do this?
Or are we perhaps to believe that the conspirators’ hit man did not fire from a different rifle, but with the Carcano itself, which was then left behind on the sixth floor, knowing it would be found and Oswald would be implicated in the murder? But if the hit man for the conspirators fired three shots from Oswald’s rifle and left it on the sixth floor, why would the conspirators have felt the need to plant a fourth bullet on the stretcher at Parkland to frame him? Wouldn’t the authorities finding the murder weapon (Oswald’s Carcano), as well as three shells from that weapon, on the sixth floor be enough to frame Oswald? What more could they possibly hope to achieve by gilding the lily and taking the additional risk of being caught by planting the fourth bullet at Parkland?
And if we follow the illogic of this scenario, how in the world did the conspirators come into possession of Oswald’s Carcano in the first place? Did they break into Ruth Paine’s garage sometime before the assassination, steal the Carcano, take it out and fire a bullet into some object from which they could recover it, then fire the Carcano from the sixth-floor window and leave it behind, then plant the earlier, recovered bullet on a stretcher at Parkland? Under that scenario, I guess the conspiracy theorists would want us to believe that Oswald was really having lunch on the first floor of the Book Depository Building at the time of the assassination while some stranger who had stolen his rifle was firing it on the sixth floor. Nurse, call the doctor. Our fine-feathered conspiracy friends seem to be hallucinating.
I hate to reduce myself to talking about such silliness, but if Oswald wasn’t the one who fired his Carcano that day, then after his arrest when the authorities asked him questions about the Carcano and showed him a picture of himself holding the murder weapon—the main piece of evidence, he knew, that connected him to the assassination—why did he deny holding the rifle, or even owning a rifle, two blatant lies that showed an unmistakable consciousness of guilt? If it wasn’t he who fired his Mannlicher-Carcano at the president, wouldn’t the automatic and natural thing for him to say be, “Yes, that’s of course my rifle, but some SOB stole it from me about a week or so ago. You find the person who stole it from me and you’ll find the person who killed the president.” Instead, Oswald told one lie after another about his own rifle because he knew, of course, that it was the murder weapon.
There necessarily is another piece of evidence against Oswald that would have had to be planted by the conspirators under this latter scenario—the famous backyard photograph of Oswald holding the Mannlicher-Carcano taken by Marina when she and Oswald were living on Neely Street in Dallas. As previously indicated, this photo was recovered from the inside of a brown cardboard box found in Ruth Paine’s garage the day after the assassination by Dallas police pursuant to a search warrant.56 Oswald, we know, told his police interrogators that his head in the photo had been superimposed on someone else’s body.57 Let’s see what the conspirators would have had to do to bring this about. After stealing Oswald’s Carcano from Ruth Paine’s garage at some time prior to the assassination, they had to take an Oswald stand-in to the backyard of the Neely address and photograph this person holding the Carcano, since irrespective of the alleged superimposition of Oswald’s head in the photo, the backdrop of the photo is the Neely backyard.58 Then the conspirators would have had to get a photograph of Oswald’s head and superimpose it on the other person’s body. They’d then have to sneak back into Ruth Paine’s garage to return the Carcano, and then plant this photo there, hoping the authorities would find it to implicate Oswald further in the assassination. I see. But wait. Even if the conspirators could have pulled this off, how could it possibly be that their fabricated scene with a stand-in for Oswald holding the Mannlicher-Carcano in the backyard just happened to match the actual photo Marina herself said she took of Oswald holding the Carcano in the same backyard, and with the stand-in dressed the same way Marina said Oswald was dressed that day? The alleged fabricated photo even shows Oswald’s stand-in with a pistol strapped to his waist and holding two newspapers, the very same situation that Marina clearly recalls when she took her actual photo.59 I could continue this safari into delirium, but enough.
With respect to the Tippit murder, critics as well as many supporters of the Warren Commission often say that it is the “Rosetta stone” to the solution of the Kennedy assassination, referring to the stone slab found in Rosetta, Egypt, in 1799 that was inscribed with ancient pictorial script (hieroglyphics) that proved to be the key to understanding Egyptian writing. The implication is that if it can be proved that Oswald killed Tippit, that would finally prove conclusively he had also killed Kennedy. I reject this thinking out of hand because it presupposes that without the Tippit killing, the evidence against Oswald for Kennedy’s murder, standing alone, might not be enough. But that, we know by now, is simply not true. Even if there were no evidence that Oswald murdered Tippit, the other evidence against him already proves beyond all doubt that he murdered Kennedy; hence, proof of this guilt does not depend on proving that he killed Tippit. However, the Tippit killing, showing that Oswald was in flight from some awful deed, does confirm Oswald’s guilt for the murder of Kennedy.*
Note that unlike the Carcano rifle, which the Warren Commission had to connect to Oswald, no such burden has to be met with the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, which was ultimately determined (see later text) to be the Tippit murder weapon, inasmuch as it was found on Oswald’s person at the time of his arrest.60 And in addition to his possession of the revolver, as with the Carcano, he was the owner of the weapon. As noted earlier, sometime after January 27, 1963, Seaport Traders Inc., a mail-order business in Los Angeles, received through the mail a mail-order coupon for a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver costing $29.95. Ten dollars in cash was enclosed, with the balance of $19.95 due on receipt (COD). The order was dated January 27 (no year given) and was signed “A.J. Hidell, age 28,” a little departure from Oswald’s “A. Hidell” on the purchase order for the Carcano, and the address listed was P.O. Box 2915, Dallas, Texas, Oswald’s post office box.61
Handwriting experts from the Warren Commission concluded that the handwriting on the mail-order coupon was Oswald’s, and that the name “D. F. Drittal,” written on the coupon as a witness attesting to Hidell’s representation that he was an American citizen and had not been convicted of a felony, was also in Oswald’s handwriting. Marina also identified the writing on the coupon for the revolver as being that of her husband* and when shown the revolver, she immediately recognized it as being the one owned by her husband.62
Seaport Traders’ records show that a “.38 S & W Special two-inch Commando [revolver], Serial No. V510210” was shipped by Railway Express on March 20, 1963 (coincidentally, the same day that Klein’s in Chicago sent Oswald his Carcano), to A.J. Hidell, P.O. Box 2915, Dallas, Texas. The Railway Express Agency shipping documents show that the balance owed of $19.95 plus $1.27 in shipping charges
was collected from the consignee, Hidell, although the date that “Hidell” paid the balance and shipping charges for the revolver is not reflected.63
So Oswald owned and possessed the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson. Was it also the murder weapon?
Quite apart from all the eyewitnesses who actually saw Oswald kill Tippit or saw him at or running from the murder scene, the firearms evidence, as with the Carcano, but not quite as strongly, shows that Oswald’s revolver was the Tippit murder weapon. Four lead bullets were retrieved in this case, one by Dr. Paul Moellenhoff at Methodist Hospital in Dallas, where Tippit was first taken by ambulance. This bullet had hit a button, which prevented the bullet from penetrating far beneath the skin, allowing Dr. Moellenhoff to easily remove it.64 The other three bullets were removed from Tippit’s body by Dr. Earl Rose, who performed the autopsy later that afternoon at Parkland Hospital.65
When the FBI firearms expert, Cortlandt Cunningham, test-fired Oswald’s revolver and then tried to match up the striations (marks or individual characteristics) on the test-fired bullets with those on the four slugs, he had difficulty, for two reasons. All of the slugs were badly mutilated, one being completely useless for comparison purposes. The other three did have microscopic marks, but although the barrel of this particular revolver (which, as indicated earlier in the text, had been shortened by 2¾ inches) had been rechambered before being sold to handle a .38 Special cartridge, the kind used to kill Tippit, the revolver had not been correspondingly rebarreled to handle a .38 Special bullet from the cartridge. Since a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson Special bullet has a slightly smaller diameter than a regular .38 Smith & Wesson bullet, the bullets were “slightly undersized” for the barrel, causing “an erratic passage down the barrel,” thereby causing “inconsistent individual characteristic marks to be impressed or scratched on to the surface of the bullets.” Cunningham said it was therefore “not possible” to positively determine whether the bullets removed from Tippit’s body were fired from Oswald’s revolver, since “each time it [revolver] was fired, the bullet would seem to pass down the barrel in a different way.”66 However, the other firearms expert employed by the Warren Commission, Joseph D. Nicol, the superintendent of the Illinois Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, was able to find “sufficient individual characteristics” on one of the four bullets to conclude it was fired from Oswald’s revolver to the exclusion of all other weapons.67
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