JFK Assassination Documents to be released this year

[Herlock Sholmes]

On the palm print - from the National Archive.

The emboldened is me

On November 22, however, before surrendering possession of the rifle to the FBI Laboratory, Lieutenant Day of the Dallas Police Department had "lifted" a palmprint from the underside of the gun barrel "near the firing end of the barrel about 3 inches under the woodstock when I took the woodstock loose."

Lieutenant Day lifted the palm print on the day of the assassination.

52 "Lifting" a print involves the use of adhesive material to remove the fingerprint powder which adheres to the original print. In this way the powdered impression is actually removed from the object.

The method used to ‘lift’ the print actually removes the powder that was applied for the purpose of identifying the print in the first place and at least some of the actual print itself.

53 The lifting had been so complete in this case that there was no trace of the print on the rifle itself when it was examined by Latona. Nor was there any indication that the lift had been performed.

When Sebastian Latino of the FBI received the rifle he couldn’t see any powder (the adhesive had removed it) so he wasn’t aware that that particular area had been tested. He also saw no evidence of a print because the testing method had removed it.

54 Day, on the other hand, believed that sufficient traces of the print had been left on the rifle barrel, because he did not release the lifted print until November 26, when he received instructions to send "everything that we had" to the FBI.

Day didn’t immediately send the lifted print (which was on a card) because he mistakenly believed that there was sufficient trace of the print still on the barrel and that the FBI would therefore find it.

55 The print arrived in the FBI Laboratory in Washington on November 29, mounted on a card on which Lieutenant Day had written the words "off underside gun barrel near end of grip C2766."

Day sent the card to the FBI when he was told by the FBI to send all of their evidence.

56 The print's positive identity as having been lifted from the rifle was confirmed by FBI Laboratory tests which established that the adhesive material bearing the print also bore impressions of the same irregularities that appeared on the barrel of the rifle.

The FBI lab checked the print on the card and matched it with what was on the barrel of the rifle.

57 Latona testified that this palmprint was the right palmprint of Lee Harvey Oswald.58 At the request of the Commission,

Sebastian Latona (of the FBI) confirmed that this was the right palm print of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Arthur Mandella, fingerprint expert with the New York City Police Department, conducted an independent examination and also determined that this was the right palmprint of Oswald.

An independent examination confirmed that this was Oswald’s palm print.

59 Latona's findings were also confirmed by Ronald G. Wittmus, another FBI fingerprint Latona testified that this palmprint was the right palmprint of Lee Harvey Oswald.

A third check also confirmed that the palm print belonged to Oswald.

58 At the request of the Commission, Arthur Mandella, fingerprint expert with the New York City Police Department, conducted an independent examination and also determined that this was the right palmprint of Oswald.59 Latona's findings were also confirmed by Ronald G. Wittmus, another FBI fingerprint expert.

At the WC enquiry a fingerprint expert from the NYPD also confirmed that it was Oswald’s palm print. This was confirmed yet again by another FBI fingerprint expert. So that’s three different people in total, plus Day who saw the print but had no way of matching it to Oswald.

…..

I think that this gives us a really good illustration of what has gone on over the years when conspiracy theorists start ‘looking’ into things. They start ‘making’ evidence fit their own preconceptions. The passage above is a matter of record. It clearly sets out what occurred and yet over the years the same canards have been repeated so often that to many people they have become ‘facts.’ Simply because Latona didn’t originally see the palm print or that that particular area had been tested - due to the fact that the method used (adhesive) was, by its very nature, destructive to evidence - we have been served the absolute myth that the palm print ‘miraculously’ appeared in the FBI lab.

Now take the above example and multiply it to every aspect of the case. Just apply the same thinking, the same preconception that ‘something must be going on beneath the service,’ and ‘hey presto’ you get Mark Lane, you get Jim Garrison, you get Oliver Stone, to name but three. A 62 year old propaganda campaign. Hardly surprising that most people assume a conspiracy. It’s far more conducive to a lifelong hobby than is a disaffected, disturbed little nobody like Lee Harvey Oswald, who undoubtedly killed the President and Officer Tippit.

[Patrick Differ]

Check out NY Times July 12, 1993 oped which supports what you say Fiver but rejects the single bullet theory. In this OpEd the Warren Commission attorney is challenged on the Commissions inaccuracy of certain events regarding wounds.

Without the single bullet theory the Warren Commission falls apart. The 3 cartridges found on the 6th floor depository had an ejection pattern. This was replicated. The first shot likely hit the traffic light. This would have been the easiest shot to the forehead. The next 2 were fired downstream as the Zapruder film showed. Did someone panic? This all happened in less than 20 seconds.

According to Connally then the first shot hit Kennedy but not him. But if the first shot missed according to ejection. So that also means at least 2 shooters. What is true? There was also a bystander wounded, hit in the cheek, where did that fragment come from.

Hoover sent his FBI to Paul Groodys funeral home to get more prints from Oswald. After he was already finger printed by Dallas police. His testimony is available in public domain. Said he had a hard time getting ink off Oswalds hand?

It is true that LBJ, Dulles, Hoover, and Nixon had no love for the Kennedys. Texas was a center for the Military Industrial Complex and Space Program. Texas was heavy Military and Big Oil. Texas, New Orleans and Miami were training grounds for anti Communist and CIA regime change groups.The MOB was a CIA asset and trained them in Assassinations. It's true these men were not born there but rather tied to it. They weren't tied to Cape Cod.

Did these men have motive? Proving it is like proving who Jack the Ripper was.

[cobalt]

One reason for suspecting a conspiracy is because of the different stories we are told. First up, HS suggested the reason for the Dallas lieutenant not to proclaim finding the palm print was due to some sort of turf war. DP wanted the credit for finding it rather than the FBI. So why not proclaim it on 22nd November? Why sit on that important piece of evidence? It's tantamount to obstructing an investigation.

The next explanation is equally Byzantine. Apparently the DP did not realise they had eliminated the print in the process of lifting it, therefore assumed that there was enough remaining for the FBI to work with. Yet the FBI claim that far from a latent print, they could not identify any sort of print at all. So if the FBI experts couldn't find a trace, why did DP assume they should have been able to? The DP must have known when they sent the rifle what the chances were.

These discrepancies pop up all over the JFK case. We have the Dallas Police trying to cover their own backs since they took no proper record of Oswald's interviews and were responsible for him being killed in public. We have the FBI, who were supposed to be monitoring Oswald as an ex marine who deserted but seem to have lost him somewhere on their radar as he was giving TV interviews in support of Cuba. And the CIA who seemed befuddled about who visited what embassy in Mexico City and allegedly wiped intercepted telephone conversations. When the Mexico station enquired about Oswald they were given incomplete information from the CIA in the USA. So conspiracy exists within the survival instincts of the various agencies. Little wonder if the public suspect there was something bigger than institutional embarrassment being covered up.

[Fiver]

The evidence that Oswald, or someone resembling him, was at the 6th floor window at the time of the shots comes from a bystander (or maybe bystanders) at street level. There is nobody from within the TSBD to confirm that.

There is ample evidence that someone was shooting from the 6th floor of the Book Depository and that the person resembled Oswald.

"Howard Leslie Brennan saw a gunman fire from the "sniper's nest" window, and later identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the gunman.

15-year-old Amos Lee Euins saw someone fire from the window, though he could not positively identify the shooter as Oswald.

James Robert Worrell, Jr., saw a rifle firing from the window.

Robert Hill Jackson of the Dallas Times Herald and newsreel photographer Malcolm O. Couch saw a rifle in the window immediately after the shots were fired, as did Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell and his wife.

James N. Crawford and Mary Ann Mitchell each had their gaze attracted to the window during the shots and noticed movement in the window, which they both believed to have been a person.

Robert Fischer and Robert Edwin Edwards both noticed someone in the window shortly before the motorcade turned onto Houston Street from Main, though neither could positively identify the man as Oswald.

Texas School Book Depository employees Harold Norman, Bonnie Ray Williams, and James Jarman, Jr., were looking out windows on the fifth floor, directly below the "sniper's nest" window; all three men were certain that shots came from directly above them.

Dallas police officer Marrion L. Baker rushed into the building immediately after the shots were fired; his attention had been drawn, he would later testify, by a flock of pigeons that flew from the building's roof at the moment of the shots.

Police Inspector J. Herbert Sawyer testified that after the shooting, he talked to "a number" of people who "were pointing out one of the upper floors of the Texas School Book Depository" as the source of the shots.

Officer Welcome Eugene Barnett heard the shots and immediately believed they had come from the roof of the Book Depository. Numerous other witnesses believed the shots had come from the Depository building, based on the sound of the shots.

Two photographers in Dealey Plaza, Tom Dillard and James Powell, were independently motivated to snap photos of the south side of the Depository building, including the window later identified as that of the "sniper's nest."

[FISHY1118]

One reason for suspecting a conspiracy is because of the different stories we are told. First up, HS suggested the reason for the Dallas lieutenant not to proclaim finding the palm print was due to some sort of turf war. DP wanted the credit for finding it rather than the FBI. So why not proclaim it on 22nd November? Why sit on that important piece of evidence? It's tantamount to obstructing an investigation.

The next explanation is equally Byzantine. Apparently the DP did not realise they had eliminated the print in the process of lifting it, therefore assumed that there was enough remaining for the FBI to work with. Yet the FBI claim that far from a latent print, they could not identify any sort of print at all. So if the FBI experts couldn't find a trace, why did DP assume they should have been able to? The DP must have known when they sent the rifle what the chances were.

These discrepancies pop up all over the JFK case. We have the Dallas Police trying to cover their own backs since they took no proper record of Oswald's interviews and were responsible for him being killed in public. We have the FBI, who were supposed to be monitoring Oswald as an ex marine who deserted but seem to have lost him somewhere on their radar as he was giving TV interviews in support of Cuba. And the CIA who seemed befuddled about who visited what embassy in Mexico City and allegedly wiped intercepted telephone conversations. When the Mexico station enquired about Oswald they were given incomplete information from the CIA in the USA. So conspiracy exists within the survival instincts of the various agencies. Little wonder if the public suspect there was something bigger than institutional embarrassment being covered up.

Where ever we look we see the abundance discrepancies / contradictions of the Warren Commission report . Whether its to do with Doctors whos saw the massive hole in th back of JFKs head, to the C399 pristine bullet, to the fragments pulled from Gov Connally , to the bullet hole in the windshield , 2 semi automatic bullets pulled from officer Tippet , the different Rifle taken from the crime scene that didnt match Oswalds famous back yard pose , , the FBI Hoover memo stating no conclusive prints could be detected [palm or finger ] the list goes on and on its truly remarkable . No court on the planet in any time past or present would have convicted LHO for JFKs murder.


The Warren Report does not offer any proof that CE 399 came from the stretcher that Connally was using. That fact ispresumed by the Warren Commission based on the logic of “where else could the bullet have come from?” As we heard from Dr. Shaw at a press conference and saw in the medical report after Connally’s chest surgery, the bullet was still inside of Connally’s leg three hours after CE 399 was found. So, CE 399 defenders have a major problem with the timeline. This bullet cannot be inside of Connally’s leg at 4pm if it was found on a stretcher at 1pm.

[cobalt]

Just for clarity, I was not questioning whether shots were fired from the TSBD and I assume they were fired from the 6th floor window. I was making the point that apart from Brennan, nobody claimed they could really identify the shooter, which is perfectly understandable. Brennan was reluctant to commit himself to a positive ID initially since he feared being targeted by a Communist hit squad, an unlikely scenario in 1960s Dallas I would have thought.

I think the generic description put out on police radio probably comes from Brennan, or mainly from his observations. The judgment of the shooter's height at 5'10 always struck me as an odd detail given that the shooter was presumably crouched at the time of shooting; and even if he stood up it would be extremely difficult to gauge a person's height in a window frame from street level.

[Herlock Sholmes]

One reason for suspecting a conspiracy is because of the different stories we are told. First up, HS suggested the reason for the Dallas lieutenant not to proclaim finding the palm print was due to some sort of turf war. DP wanted the credit for finding it rather than the FBI. So why not proclaim it on 22nd November? Why sit on that important piece of evidence? It's tantamount to obstructing an investigation.
.

It wasn’t turf war Cobalt it was simply a slight error of judgment by Day. He knew that the FBI would be doing a raft of tests too and he thought that there was enough of the print still on the rifle butt for the FBI to find their own print. Therefore he didn’t need to say anything about it until he was required to.

[cobalt]

That won't wash. He could, in fact should, have advised the FBI that he already had lifted a print. If he couldn't understand that there was not enough print residue left -the FBI could not find any on the rifle - then his competence as a lifter of prints has to be called into question. Yet this is the man who only informed the FBI he had a print after they drew a blank themselves. (And after Oswald had his prints taken at the mortuary.) Did none of the five(?) fellow lab police in Dallas think to tell the FBI about the print they had lifted? No wonder people are sceptical.

[Herlock Sholmes]

That won't wash. He could, in fact should, have advised the FBI that he already had lifted a print. If he couldn't understand that there was not enough print residue left -the FBI could not find any on the rifle - then his competence as a lifter of prints has to be called into question. Yet this is the man who only informed the FBI he had a print after they drew a blank themselves. (And after Oswald had his prints taken at the mortuary.) Did none of the five(?) fellow lab police in Dallas think to tell the FBI about the print they had lifted? No wonder people are sceptical.

But was that established procedure that you are suggesting Cobalt or just your opinion of what Day should have done? I’d certainly be interested if you had evidence for that though. I can’t see an actual reason why the police should have told the FBI of their findings when they knew that the FBI would have been doing their own tests. Might it not just have been a case of the police doing their tests, then the FBI did theirs and then they compared findings. As a general rule, not simply re-fingerprints, mightn’t it have been procedure to give their results without any prior information (like the findings of another organisation) as there might at some point have been accusations of influence?

[cobalt]

Given that the FBI had no jurisdiction in the case I doubt there were any procedures in place. The DP could hardly resist political pressure to allow the FBI a role given that the POTUS had been assassinated on their patch; from that point on, any co-operation would have been on an ad hoc basis I guess.

I take your point about the tests being conducted independently of each other by DP and the FBI; that would be good scientific procedure and the results could then be compared when completed. But that is not what happened so far as I understand. It was not just the result of the DP palm print that was with held: it was the fact that any successful lift had taken place at all.

To compound this incompetence (if that is what it was) the DP then handed over a rifle from which no independent testing for prints was possible. My wife was a fingerprint technician and the danger of destroying prints is basic knowledge. Sometimes she used sellotape or super glue; other times she sprayed lacquer and took a photograph. There were a few other techniques I can't now recall. But the integrity of the print was crucial and discussion often took place before deciding which method was to be used. On occasions defence lawyers paid to conduct their own tests and under no circumstances would the police have been so cynical as to hand over items from which prints had been taken but destroyed in the process. That would have amounted to gross professional misconduct.

As an afterthought, I assume LHO would have been fingerprinted once he was charged with murder. Why was it necessary to fingerprint his corpse in the mortuary?

[Fiver]

According to Connally then the first shot hit Kennedy but not him. But if the first shot missed according to ejection. So that also means at least 2 shooters.

Connally believed the first of three shots hit JFK. Connally did not see this, it was his opinion. The Warren Commission concluded the first of three shots missed. The location of the ejected shell casings tells us nothing about the trajectory of the first bullet.

You are creating a bullet out of nowhere, then trying to use that imaginary bullet to create an imaginary second shooter.

[Fiver]

Hoover sent his FBI to Paul Groodys funeral home to get more prints from Oswald. After he was already finger printed by Dallas police. His testimony is available in public domain. Said he had a hard time getting ink off Oswalds hand?

Groody first made this claim in 1982, nearly two decades after the assassination. No witnesses or evidence back Groody's claim, which makes no sense. The Marines would have had Oswald's fingerprints on file. The Dallas police had Oswald's prints from when he was booked. The Parkland morgue took Oswald's prints as part of his autopsy.

Nobody had any reason to fingerprint Oswald's corpse at the funeral home.

[Fiver]

to the C399 pristine bullet

Claiming CE 399 was pristine is ignoring the evidence.

tto the fragments pulled from Gov Connally

The fragments pulled from Connally matched CE 399.

to the bullet hole in the windshield

There was no bullet hole in the windshield.

2 semi automatic bullets pulled from officer Tippet

There's no such thing as "semi automatic bullets", that is a characteristic of the gun. Sgt. Gerald Hill assumed the shells came from a.38 automatic, but multiple witnesses saw the shooter had to manually eject the shells.

Tippet was killed with a mix of Winchester-Western and Remington Peters bullets. When apprehended, Oswald's gun had a mix of Winchester-Western and Remington Peters bullets. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the evidence that Oswald killed Tippet.

the different Rifle taken from the crime scene that didnt match Oswalds famous back yard pose

It was the same rifle and the backyard photos taken by Marina Oswald matched.

the FBI Hoover memo stating no conclusive prints could be detected [palm or finger ]

Careful, an actual fact just slipped into your list.

the list goes on and on its truly remarkable .

It is a remarkable list of pro-Conspiracy lies that you accept as true.

No court on the planet in any time past or present would have convicted LHO for JFKs murder.

The case for Oswald killing Tippit would be a slam dunk. The case for Oswald killing JFK was not as strong, but still would probably lead to conviction.

[Fiver]

The Warren Report does not offer any proof that CE 399 came from the stretcher that Connally was using.

Correct. Bullet CE 399 came from one of two stretchers, one of which Connally had been on. However, the bullet fragments removed from Connally match CE399.

As we heard from Dr. Shaw at a press conference and saw in the medical report after Connally’s chest surgery, the bullet was still inside of Connally’s leg three hours after CE 399 was found.

No bullet was found inside Connally, only bullet fragments. The bullet fragments removed from Connally match CE399.

[Patrick Differ]

The shell casing pattern was tested and replicated. Anyone who believes in the magic bullet theory lives in a Fantasyland.