Reclaiming History (192 page)

Lieutenant Day, in looking back on the event, told me, “I don’t fault the FBI for not being able to find the palm print. It was already faint when I lifted it, and it’s even more difficult to lift the same print a second time because some of the detail has been removed from the first lifting of the print.”
¹⁰⁸

For the great numbers of conspiracy theorists who maintain that the Carcano did not belong to Oswald and was planted on the sixth floor, how do they then explain Oswald’s right palm print being found on the weapon? How did it get there if he wasn’t in possession of it?

Predictably, many conspiracy authors have drawn sinister implications from these events, strongly suggesting that the Dallas police had framed Oswald by fabricating the palm print and its connection to the Oswald rifle after the FBI’s expert fingerprint examiner was unable to find any identifiable prints on the rifle.
¹⁰⁹
Apart from the absurd notion that for some reason Lieutenant Day would decide to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for Kennedy’s assassination, as he told me in 2002, “I don’t even think such a thing [transferring Oswald’s prints on the finger and palm print samples, or exemplars, he gave to the Dallas Police Department, onto the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle] could be done. In this day and age they might be able to figure out some way to transfer the ink print on the card to the weapon, but I wouldn’t know how to do it myself. Sounds like an impossible task to me.”
¹¹⁰

Conspiracy author Mark Lane also alleged that an investigation by the Warren Commission of this issue raised more questions than it answered.
¹¹¹
In the finest traditions of the conspiracy theorists’ profession, Lane neglected to tell his readers that the central question of whether the palm print originated from the rifle
was
answered,
conclusively
, by that very inquiry. Warren Commission assistant counsel Wesley Liebeler told the HSCA that in “late August or September” of 1964, he suggested questioning Day further in an attempt to resolve the multitude of questions that remained surrounding the discovery of the palm print. It had occurred to Liebeler and a few other assistant counsels, as it would later to Mark Lane, that perhaps the palm print didn’t come from the rifle at all. The Commission, at that time, only had Day’s word for it. It wanted something stronger. But when Liebeler approached Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin about it, he objected. “Mr. Rankin was not terribly enthusiastic about having a couple of Commission lawyers go down to Dallas and start questioning the Dallas Police Department,” Liebeler told the HSCA in 1978. “Quite frankly…it would have raised all kinds of questions at that time as to what in the hell was going on, what are we doing going down and taking depositions from the Dallas Police Department two months
after
the report was supposed to be out?”
¹¹²

But Liebler said they realized the problem could be resolved “in another way.” Several Commission assistant counsels subsequently met with FBI inspector James R. Malley, the bureau’s liaison with the Commission, and FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona. Liebeler asked Latona whether there was a way to prove that the lift came from the rifle. Latona reexamined the lift submitted by Lieutenant Day and noticed pits, marks, and rust spots on it that corresponded to
identical areas on the underside of the rifle barrel
—the very spot from which Day said the print had been lifted.
¹¹³
J. Edgar Hoover sent a letter by courier to the Commission on September 4 to confirm this finding, along with a photograph showing the corresponding marks on the barrel and the lift.
¹¹⁴
Liebeler was satisfied. Now, there was
no doubt whatsoever
—the palm print Day had lifted had come from Oswald’s rifle.
¹¹⁵

L
ost amid all of the controversy and politics swirling around the palm print lift are the fingerprint traces that Day had first discovered on the trigger housing. Dallas police crime-lab detective Rusty Livingston was with Lieutenant Day during the evening of the assassination and managed to squirrel away a set of first-generation photographic prints from five negatives Day had taken of the Carcano’s trigger housing. Photographic prints from three of the five negatives were never seen by the Warren Commission or the HSCA. In 1991, Livingston turned the five photographs over to his nephew, Gary Savage, who in turn asked Captain Jerry Powdrill, a fingerprint expert from Savage’s hometown of West Monroe, Louisiana, to compare fingerprint traces on the Mannlicher-Carcano’s trigger housing, as seen in the photographs, with a known fingerprint exemplar of Oswald’s. Powdrill only found three matching “points of identity” (in earlier years, the term was
points of similarity
and my sense is that the earlier term was more accurate) and said he was unable to conclude that the latent prints in the photographs belonged to Oswald, adding, however, that there were “enough similarities to suggest” that they possibly did.
¹¹⁶

In 1993, Savage turned the photographs over to
Frontline
for its thirtieth-anniversary special on the assassination.
Frontline
asked Vincent J. Scalice, the leading fingerprint expert for the New York City Police Department who had also been the HSCA’s fingerprint expert, to compare the latent prints in Livingston’s photographs with fingerprint exemplars of Oswald’s. Scalice had already examined two of the five Dallas police photos depicting the latent fingerprints on the trigger guard for the HSCA in 1978. At that time, he agreed with the FBI and Warren Commission that the photographs of the latent prints were not clear enough to make an identification.
¹¹⁷
After examining all five photographs for the first time in 1993 for
Frontline
, he said, “I found that by maneuvering the photographs in different positions, I was able to pick up some details [of the fingerprints] on one photograph and some details on another photograph. Using all of the photographs at different contrasts, I was able to find in the neighborhood of about 18 points of identity…These are definitely the fingerprints of Lee Harvey Oswald and…they are on the rifle. There is no doubt about it.”
¹¹⁸

Scalice told the press that had he seen all of the photographs in 1978 (not just two of them), “I would have been able to make an identification at that point in time.” After consulting with Scalice, Captain Jerry Powdrill also agreed with Scalice’s judgment—that the fingerprints on the trigger guard were those of Oswald.
¹¹⁹

So, in addition to Oswald’s palm print being found on the underside of the Carcano’s barrel, we know that Oswald’s fingerprints were found within an inch of the trigger of the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. The evidence is clear and unimpeachable—Lee Harvey Oswald bought, owned, and handled the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor. And as you’re about to see, it was
this
weapon that was used to murder John F. Kennedy.

In addition to the unfired cartridge found in the chamber of Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano, you will recall that police also found three 6.5-millimeter cartridge cases
¹
—or casings, shells, or “hulls,” as the Dallas police frequently called them—scattered on the floor of the sniper’s nest in the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Two of the empty shells were lying directly under the sniper’s window, about six inches apart and a foot or so west of the two book cartons that had been used as a gun rest. The other shell was another yard farther west, lying about sixteen inches back from the window.
²
(See photo section.) Two firearms experts, Robert A. Frazier of the FBI’s Washington laboratory, and Joseph D. Nicol, superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation for the state of Illinois, examined these spent shells for the Warren Commission.
³
By comparing the individual microscopic marks and impressions that the bolt (or breech) face and firing pin of the rifle left on the head (base) of the expended cartridge cases with those on the cases of cartridges test-fired in Oswald’s rifle, both experts concluded that all three cartridge cases found on the sixth floor had been fired in Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano to the exclusion of all other weapons in the world.
⁴
Fifteen years later, the firearms panel of the HSCA reached an identical conclusion.
⁵

In their bid to exonerate Oswald, critics have attacked these rock-solid conclusions by suggesting that the three cartridge cases were neatly planted to frame the hapless ex-marine. The suggestion that there might have been hanky-panky with the three hulls arose during a 1968 interview with former Dallas deputy sheriff Roger Craig,
*
who told the
Los Angeles Free Press
, “The shells found on the floor in front of the window—I saw ’em—they were laying, all the shells were facing the same direction—there was not one of them more than ¾ of an inch apart, and I’ve fired many a bolt action rifle and I have never had two shells land in the same place.”
⁶
Craig embellished the tale further in his unpublished 1971 manuscript, “When They Kill a President”: “Luke Mooney and I reached the southeast corner at the same time. We
immediately
found three rifle cartridges [actually, cartridge cases] laying in such a way that they looked as though they had been carefully and deliberately placed there—in plain sight on the floor to the right of the southeast corner window. Mooney and I examined the cartridges very carefully and remarked how close together they were. The three of them were no more than one inch apart
*
and all were facing the same direction, a feat very difficult to achieve with a bolt action rifle—or any rifle for that matter.”
⁷

Roger Craig’s embellishments could have easily been exposed early on had anyone bothered to look at his sworn testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964. When asked whether he saw the cartridge cases at the time they were found, Craig said that he was at the far north end of the building when someone yelled across the room, “Here’s the shells!”
⁸
Craig said that after “a couple of minutes” he went over to the sniper’s nest and saw three shells lying about a foot away from the window. Craig said that he didn’t get “too close” and went back to where he was because he didn’t want to bother the area.
⁹
Asked if he recalled any of the shells being up against the wall, Craig replied, “No, I don’t. I didn’t look that close.”
¹⁰
So much for Craig’s immediate discovery and careful examination of the shells. It should be added that when the FBI conducted tests to see where shells ejected from the Carcano at the window would land, the test landings were found to be “consistent” with where the three shells were found after the assassination, all at right angles from the ejection port on the rifle and all ricocheting in a random pattern within a forty-seven-inch circle.
¹¹
And Luke Mooney, the Dallas deputy sheriff who first discovered the shells, said they “appeared as though they had been ejected from the rifle and had possibly bounced off the cartons of the books to the rear.”
¹²

It should be noted that the three empty shells found in the sniper’s nest don’t necessarily prove that three shots were fired from that location, even though common sense dictates that this must be the case. Science can only prove that the three cartridge cases were fired in and ejected from Oswald’s rifle at some point prior to their discovery. It does, however, support and is consistent with all the other evidence—including earwitnesses—that three shots were indeed fired from the Book Depository.

T
he principal evidence connecting the bullets that struck Kennedy with Oswald’s rifle, and therefore establishing the identity of the assassin, are two bullet fragments that were found in the presidential limousine on the night of the assassination.
†
As anyone who has ever watched an episode of a TV detective show knows, guns fire bullets that can be matched to the weapons that fired them. Gun barrels, even those manufactured in the same factory on the same day and drilled by the same machine—even two successive barrels—have unique markings, called striations, that distinguish one barrel from the other, the individual markings being different. That’s because the drilling and cutting tools used in the manufacturing process leave behind a microscopically rough surface that is unique to each barrel and that engraves its imprint on all bullets subsequently fired through the barrel. As time goes by, normal wear and tear, cleaning, and corrosion add even more points of unique detail to the gun barrel, which are also engraved onto the surface of subsequently fired bullets. All of these markings compose the “signature” or fingerprint of the gun and can be used by firearms experts to determine whether bullet or bullet fragments recovered at a crime scene were fired in a particular weapon to the exclusion of all other weapons in the world.
¹³

In addition to the striations on the inner surface of the barrel (known in firearms identification parlance as “microscopic [or individual] characteristics”), weapons also have “rifling [or “general” or “class”] characteristics,” which, although not unique to each weapon, can, together with the diameter of the bore, aid a firearms identification expert in determining whether a bullet was fired from a particular gun. “Rifling” is the manufacturing process by which spiral grooves are cut into the inner surface of the barrel of a gun from end to end. The raised portions of the surface remaining from the process (the ridges between the grooves) are called lands. The purpose of the grooves is to impart to the bullet passing through the barrel a rotating or spinning motion that, like a tossed football as it passes through space, gives it stability and keeps it true to its intended course. The number of lands and grooves, which are imprinted on the bullet as it passes through the barrel, and the direction (left or right) of the spin or twist, are additional characteristics that help to identify a gun as the murder weapon. The science of firearms identification
*
is precise, exacting, and conclusive.

One of the two large fragments recovered from the front seating compartment of the president’s limousine (on the driver’s seat just to the right of the driver) and designated by the Warren Commission as Commission Exhibit No. 567, consisted of a piece of the copper metal jacket of a bullet with part of its lead core still attached to it. It weighed 44.6 grains (a tenth of an ounce), less than a third of the weight of an intact 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano bullet. FBI firearms expert Robert A. Frazier, who examined the fragment at the bureau’s Washington lab on the morning of November 23, and independent expert Joseph D. Nicol, superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation for the state of Illinois, found that the sides of the bullet fragment contained sufficiently distinctive barrel markings for the firearms experts to compare them, under a comparison microscope (two separate microscopes mounted side by side), with the markings on bullets test-fired from Oswald’s Carcano. The experts identified the bullet fragment as having been fired in Oswald’s rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons.
¹⁴
In 1978, a panel of five firearms experts from the HSCA came to the same conclusion.
¹⁵

The second fragment, found on the floor to the right side of the driver’s seat in the president’s limousine and designated by the Commission as Commission Exhibit No. 569, weighed less than half as much as the first, 21 grains (about an eighth of a whole bullet), and came from the base of a bullet. This was evident because the cannelure, a groove that rings a bullet near its base, was clearly visible. The fragment consisted entirely of the metal jacket, with no part of the lead core remaining. In spite of the heavy mutilation caused by the bullet striking a hard object, about a third of the surface area was sufficiently intact to show, under a comparison microscope, markings identical to those of test bullets fired from the Mannlicher-Carcano—again, to the exclusion of all other weapons.
¹⁶
The HSCA firearms panel came to the same conclusion.
¹⁷

So we know that Oswald’s Carcano was the weapon that murdered the president.

The experts were unable to determine whether the two fragments (Commission Exhibit Nos. 567 and 569) were parts of one bullet or came from two separate bullets, since they did not fit together, nor was the combined weight of the two fragments more than a whole bullet (which would have indicated two bullets).
¹⁸

There has been very little controversy about the identification of these bullet fragments, but the same can hardly be said for the nearly intact bullet found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital on the afternoon of the assassination, designated as Warren Commission Exhibit No. 399, the notorious “magic” bullet. After a comparison, by microscope, with markings on test bullets fired from Oswald’s rifle, FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier (and later, independent expert Joseph Nicol) concluded that the bullet
*
had been fired from Oswald’s rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons in the world.
¹⁹
The HSCA firearms panel came to the same conclusion.
²⁰
The Warren Commission would eventually decree the bullet to be the cornerstone of its single-bullet theory, concluding not only that it had been fired from Oswald’s rifle, but that it had passed through the president’s body and caused all the wounds to Governor Connally—shattering one of his ribs, breaking a right wrist bone, and puncturing his left thigh.
²¹

Ever since the release of the Warren Report, critics have had a field day with Commission Exhibit No. 399, dubbed the “pristine bullet” or “magic bullet” in assassination literature largely because it remained substantially intact after passing, as the Warren Commission maintained, through Kennedy’s and Connally’s bodies.

Though it has become an accepted part of the lore of the assassination that the stretcher bullet was pristine (defined as something in “its original condition”), that is, completely undamaged, remarkably, the only authority for this statement is one single photograph of the bullet published in the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits.
²²
Yet, it is almost impossible to see how damaged the bullet really is from this single-view photograph that does not show the base of the bullet. That left the critics free to burn the image of a pristine bullet into the consciousness of America without fear of their lie being exposed by accurate photographs. In 1978, the public got its first good look at the so-called pristine bullet during the televised hearings of the HSCA. Later published as part of the committee’s exhibits, the HSCA photographs depict the bullet from four views (not just one)—two sides, one frontal, and one base.
²³
The base view (see photo section) shows the base of the bullet badly smashed into an ovoid shape.
†
It is also evident that lead is slightly extruding from the base, like toothpaste from a tube.
‡
Indeed, a portion of the lead is missing, causing the bullet to weigh less, 158.6 grains, than in its original state, 161 grains.
²⁴
So much for the pristine bullet. But the myth has long survived the public hearings (which few watched) right up to the present day.

Dr. Michael Baden, the medical examiner who headed the forensic pathology panel for the HSCA, scoffed at the notion that the bullet was pristine, labeling it an inaccurate media description. “It is like being a little bit pregnant—it is either pristine or it is not pristine,” he told the committee. “This is a damaged bullet…not a pristine bullet. This is a bullet that is deformed. It would be very hard to take a hammer and flatten it to the degree that this is flattened.”
²⁵

He went on to explain that the bullet, in its course through the president and the governor, “did not strike much that would cause it to be damaged.” It passed through soft tissue on its course through the president’s body. The first hard structure it hit was the governor’s fifth rib, but it was a glancing blow to what Dr. Baden called “a very thin bone.” The only impact likely to have caused damage of any significance to the bullet was on the lower part of the forearm. His panel of experts felt that striking the radius there probably caused some flattening of the bullet, but they were not particularly surprised that the bullet was not more deformed. The radius in the wrist, unlike the bones of the skull or spine, is not very hard—it could damage some bullets but not others.
²⁶

At the trial in London, Dr. Charles Petty, chief medical examiner for Dallas County and a member of the HSCA forensic pathology panel, gave even stronger testimony. With a photo of the stretcher bullet on the screen, I asked, “Could this bullet have ended up in this
relatively
pristine condition if it had entered the president’s back, exited his throat, then entered Governor Connally’s back…and taken the path through Governor Connally’s body you have just described?”