JAHS Chapter 4

11-25--11-26

On 11-25, the next morning, President Johnson met with Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr, who'd flown in for Kennedy's funeral. In his book, Texas Politics in my Rearview Mirror, Carr described this meeting as follows: "Before going to the cathedral for the funeral, I talked with a White House staff member and explained that Texas laws authorized a Court of Inquiry--which I could convene as the Attorney General--to establish the facts surrounding the assassination through a public hearing. After talking with the President, and getting his approval, the staff member instructed me to call a press conference, and say only that I would hold a Court of Inquiry on the assassination as soon as I returned to Texas. He emphasized that I should limit my remarks to those simple facts and not reveal, under any circumstances, that I had discussed this with the White House or had White House approval. I agreed and called to make arrangements for what I thought would be a very short speech to a small group of Texas reporters." Carr's words confirm what should already be clear--that Johnson was anxious to avoid any suspicion he was supervising the investigation of Kennedy's murder. They also reveal a related, but less obvious point--that most everyone was looking to him to take charge of the investigation, even though his doing so represented a clear conflict of interest.

After Carr left the White House, at 10:30 AM EST President Johnson spoke to J. Edgar Hoover about the mounting pressure to create a Presidential Commission. He assured Hoover: "Now we can't be checking up on every shooting scrape in the country, but they've gone to the Post now to get them an editorial, and the Post is calling up and saying they're going to run an editorial if we don't do things. Now we're going to do two things and I wanted you to know about it. One: we believe that the way to handle this as we said yesterday--your suggestion--that you put every facility at your command, making a full report to the Attorney General and then they make it available to the country in whatever form may seem desirable. Second: It's a state matter, too, and this State Attorney General is young and able and prudent and very cooperative with you--he's going to run a court of inquiry which is provided for by a state law and he's going to have associated with him the most outstanding jurists in the country..." Johnson then proposed to Hoover that "any influence you got with the Post, have them point to them that you don't want too many things...and sometimes a Commission that's not trained hurts more than it helps," to which Hoover responded "I don't have much influence with the Post because frankly I don't read it. I view it like The Daily Worker." (The newspaper of the American Communist Party.)

Immediately after talking to Hoover, Johnson talked to influential newspaper columnist Joe Alsop. Johnson tried to build support for his plan. When Alsop questioned Johnson if somebody outside of Texas was gonna look into the shooting, Johnson slapped him down, telling Alsop "this is under Texas law and they take all the involvements and we don't send in a bunch of carpet-baggers. That's the worst thing you could do right now." (Johnson, it should be noted, was not nearly as concerned about Texas law when it required that he allow Texas authorities an inspection of the President's corpse and limousine.) When Alsop began to explain that nobody was lobbying him to create a Presidential Commission, Johnson snapped "They're not lobbying you, they're lobbying me...last night. I spent the day on it...I had to leave Mrs. Kennedy's side at the White House and call and ask the Secret Service and FBI to proceed immediately...I spent most of my day on this thing, yesterday. I had the Attorney General from Texas fly in here. I spent an hour and a half with him yesterday evening. I talked to the Justice Dept. lawyers and to the FBI and the FBI is of the opinion that the wisest, quickest, ablest, most effective way to go about it is for them to thoroughly study it and bring in a written report to the Attorney General at the earliest possible date which they've been working on since 12:30 yesterday."When Alsop proceeded to point out that there were many others demanding some sort of oversight of the investigation, Johnson insisted "My lawyers, though, Joe, tell me that the White House must not ...the President...must not inject himself into local killings." Alsop responded "I'm not talking about an investigative body, I am talking about a body which will take all the evidence the FBI has amassed when they have completed their inquiry and produce a public report on the death of the President."When asked why the FBI couldn't do this itself, Alsop explained "on the left they won't believe the FBI...and the FBI doesn't write very well." Johnson then asked if he meant that Katzenbach should oversee it, and Alsop responded "I just wouldn't put it on Bobby and Nick Katzenbach...I'd have it outside...I think it's unfair to put it on Bobby...it is his own brother's death." To which Johnson agreed: "Not going to touch it on Bobby."

From this sprang the Warren Commission. Thus, the Warren Commission was born just before Kennedy's body was buried.

Now here's where I would normally make some snarky comment about the truth being buried along with his body. But let's not go there. No, let's instead honor the dead with these photos of the march to Kennedy's funeral mass...

and the moments that followed the mass...

and compare those with these photos of Oswald's funeral...

and burial...

If Oswald had been hoping that by killing Kennedy, he would somehow become a "big man", as so many would later muse, he had sorely miscalculated.

The eternal flame by Kennedy's grave was lit at 3:13 PM EST. (Oswald's casket was in the ground by nightfall...)

With his break from power concluded, and his pursuit of power resumed, moreover, President Johnson used the evening to energize some of his biggest supporters, many of whom had flown in for the funeral. Unfortunately, he was still so firmly in the dark regarding just what happened in Dallas that he told a crowd of Governors that Texas Governor John Connally, who'd been sitting in front of Kennedy in the limousine and had been wounded in his chest, right wrist, and thigh, had had his left hand blown offby the impact of Oswald's rifle.

(California Governor Pat Brown is the source of that tidbit...)

And yet, even so, the situation was clear enough to Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach that he wrote a memo to press secretary Bill Moyers informing him that "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that he did not have confederates who are still at large, and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial" and, stunningly, "Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off." The investigation into whether or not the man who murdered Oswald in front of a basement full of cops and cameras, Jack Ruby, was trying to silence Oswald was only beginning, and yet Katzenbach wanted the press to tell the American people Oswald had no confederates! Elsewhere in the memo, Katzenbach mentions the possibility of the President creating a Commission to look into the killings and concludes "We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort." One can only conclude from this that Johnson at least initially viewed the assassination as a political situation that needed to be controlled, and not as a crime that needed to be solved, and that the Warren Commission was a vehicle to implement this desire. How else could he be certain that the Commission would not conduct hearings of the "wrong sort?"

To be fair, it should be noted that the "speculation of the wrong sort" so feared by Katzenbach had already begun. An 11-25 newspaper column in the St. Louis Democrat by former Major General Thomas Lane, an outspoken right-wing critic of the Kennedy Administration, surmises that, as "the assassination of President Kennedy would jeopardize larger communist interests", "the assassin had orders to shoot Gov. Connally and that he continued to fire until he did so." It then concludes: "In summary, the available information suggests that the communist underground directed the assassination of Gov. Connally; that Lee Harvey Oswald bungled the job and killed President Kennedy by mistake; and that Jack Ruby murdered Oswald to protect himself and the communist underground."(This column is notable not only because it undermines the oft-repeated factoid that the earliest conspiracy theorists were leftists, but because it undermines the oft-repeated argument among leftists that no one on the right would want to kill Kennedy because Kennedy was, at his core, an anti-communist and a hawk. Perhaps Noam Chomsky and others holding this view and believing that, in essence, no one on the right would want to kill Kennedy because he wasn't worth killing, should have ran their "pet theory" anti-theory past the likes of Major General Lane, who so adamantly believed Kennedy was so far to the left that no leftist would want to kill him.)

In any event, it seems clear the assassination and subsequent confusion had triggered something within the country, whereby people and institutions were now projecting onto the chaotic events not what actually had happened, but what they on some deep level wanted to believe had happened. The New York Times, the premier newspaper of its day, for example, came to a journalistically indefensible decision in the aftermath of Oswald's murder, by treating it as the end of a trail, instead of the beginning of an even darker trail. Yes, in a scene straight out of Orwell's 1984, the 11-25-63 morning edition of the "grey lady" both convicted Oswald without a trial by declaring "PRESIDENT'S ASSASSIN SHOT TO DEATH" and cut off speculation about Ruby's motivation by describing him as a "Dallas Citizen" "who admired Kennedy."

An 11-25 memo about the Katzenbach memo is also quite revealing. This memo, from the FBI's Courtney Evans to his boss Alan Belmont, notes that Katzenbach said it was prepared "after his discussions with the Director (Hoover) yesterday." The memo then goes on to say that Katzenbach felt "that this matter can best be handled by making public the results of the FBI's investigation...he was thinking in terms of the end of the week if at all possible." Belmont, in turn, wrote his own memo to William Sullivan, who was leading the investigation into Oswald's Russian contacts. After referring to the investigation as the "Oswald case" as opposed to the investigation of the murder of the President, Belmont wrote "this report should include everything which may raise a question in the mind of the public or the press...this report is to settle the dust, in so far as Oswald and his activities are concerned, both from the standpoint that he is the man who assassinated the president, and relative to Oswald himself and his activities...the Director desires that it be out as quickly as possible."

And it's not as if this rush to judgment was a secret. In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin supplied President Bill Clinton with a number of previously secret KGB files on the assassination. Included among these files was an 11-25-63 report written by Russian Diplomat Anastas Mikoyan on his trip to Washington for Kennedy's funeral. Mikoyan concluded: "Judging from everything, the U.S. government does not want to involve us in this matter, but neither does it want to get into a fight with the extreme rightists; it clearly prefers to consign the whole business to oblivion as soon as possible."

And the government wasn't alone in its rush to judgment. Oswald's brother Robert would later reveal that he had difficulty even burying his brother because "One cemetery after another refused even to discuss the possibility of accepting Lee's body" and that "I was astonished by the reactions of the ministers I talked to. The first one, the second one, the third one and the fourth one flatly refused even to consider my request." One of them told him that he wouldn't perform even a simple service because "Your brother was a sinner." Ultimately, after "The Lutheran minister who had promised to be there at four had not appeared, and the Secret Service received word that he would not be coming out" the Rev. Louis Saunders, who'd come out just to see if he could be of help to the family, performed the service.

And here's another head-scratcher... While only the day before federal officials were anxious to find out everything they could about Oswald and present the evidence for his guilt to the public, by the time of Oswald's burial the thinking had become that he was dead and buried, and so was the case against him. A New York Times article by Fred Powledge (found in the next day's paper) reports:

Dallas Nov. 25 — Dallas authorities were willing today to make public all their physical evidence connecting Lee H. Oswald with the murder of President Kennedy, but the revelation was postponed at the suggestion of Federal officials here and in Washington.

Two local authorities involved in the case, Chief of Police Jesse Curry and the Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade said they would like to place the evidence before the public. Both men added, however, that they would not do so if authorities in Washington wished otherwise.

Justice Department sources in Washington said that when they discuss a subject of such grave importance as the Oswald case they must be absolutely correct.

They said no pressure had been brought on officials here. They expressed confidence that all the evidence would eventually be made public.

Hmmm. Perhaps these "Federal officials" were beginning to believe that the evidence against Oswald was not as convincing as they'd thought...only the day before. Or Perhaps they were simply trying to avoid embarrassment. The FBI, after all, had concluded there were no legible prints on Oswald's rifle. And Wade, in the press conference the night before, had claimed there was a palm print on the underside of the rifle. Placing the evidence before the public, then, might expose either that Wade had lied, or that the FBI had somehow missed the most damning evidence against Oswald. And no one wanted that.

Where Was Box A on 11-23-63?

Unbeknownst to the Dallas PD, FBI agents Robert Barrett and Ivan Lee gained access to the sixth floor sniper's nest on the morning of 11-23-63. They then took some pictures of their own.

These pictures were published by the FBI as part of the 11-30-63 FBI summary report of Robert Gemberling (aka CD 5). Two of the FBI's photos are shown above. The top box of the stack of three boxes captured in a series of DPD and press photos on 11-22-63 was now missing.

Two more of the FBI's photos are shown below.

And so I ask again...

No, Seriously, Where Was Box A on 11-23-63?

The FBI's 11-23-63 photos show but TWO boxes stacked up by the sniper's nest window, when the pictures from the day before showed THREE boxes stacked up by the sniper's nest window. Box A--the only box from the stack that could ever be linked to Oswald (via a subsequently discovered fingerprint and palm print)--was missing!

Now, I know what some are thinking. They're thinking that the box was sitting on the floor somewhere out of sight. But no, the box was missing. Really.

And we know this because... Texas School Book Depository warehouse manager William Shelley told us so...

Consider...

Mr. BALL. Now, you recall going up to the sixth floor after the shooting, do you?

Mr. SHELLEY. Yes.

Mr. BALL. Did you go over to the southeast corner of the building where there was a window open?

Mr. SHELLEY. Not all the way; they had it blocked off.

Mr. BALL. Did you at a later time go over there?

Mr. SHELLEY. No, sir; not for several days afterwards.

Mr. BALL. Did you several days afterward go over there?

Mr. SHELLEY. After they released us to go back to work in the corner. We kept out for several days.

Mr. BALL. When you went back there, were there two Rolling Readers on top of a larger box?

Mr. SHELLEY. No, sir; those were carried in by the local authorities. The boxes---the Rolling Readers were there.

Mr. BALL. They were?

Mr. SHELLEY. But the boxes that they were originally packed in were gone--- they had been carried up to the police station.

Shelley claimed the boxes containing the Rolling Readers--boxes A and B--had already been carried off when he first saw the sniper's nest after the shooting. This was presumably the 25th--the day the DPD re-constructed the sniper's nest for a new set of photos.

But he also said the Rolling Readers themselves, which came 10 to the box, were there in the sniper's nest when he first got a look at it after the shooting.

So...let's look again at the FBI's 11-23-63 photos. If the Rolling Readers can be found in the FBI's photos, we know Box A (and B?) were carried off on the evening of 11-22-63, and not minutes before Shelley saw the sniper's nest on 11-25.

The Disappearance of Box A

As shown above, these Rolling Readers are not apparent in the DPD Photo taken on 11-22 (across top), but are readily apparent in the FBI Photo taken on 11-23 (across bottom).

So let's not be coy. Shelley's testimony about Box A, when coupled with Photo 19 from CD 5, more than suggests Box A was missing on the 23rd, it suggests Box A was missing on the 23rd because it was removed from the building by the Dallas Police on the night of the 22nd.

This did not go unnoticed, moreover. On 11-29-63, FBI agents Robert Barrett and Ivan Lee (who'd taken the 11-23 photographs) wrote a 4-page memo on the photographic evidence (the aforementioned memo found in the Weisberg Archives). It reveals: "A comparison of photographs taken by the PD, 11/22/63, of the sixth floor as they found it, and photographs taken by the FBI, 11/23/63, definitely shows that some items have been moved or removed, during the interim."

And that was it. The FBI failed to follow-up and conduct detailed interviews regarding the removal of a key piece of the crime scene prior to their photographing the scene the next day.

Perhaps they assumed the missing box had been taken to the crime lab on the 22nd.

But that's not all the memo reveals...

Oh, Yeah... Come to Think of It...

The memo reveals as well that Barrett and Lee had forwarded Dallas Police crime scene photos to the FBI on the 27th, and that "All PD photographs of the pertinent crime scene area on the sixth floor were taken on 11/22/63, between the hours of 1:30 PM and 3:30 PM."

Well, wait a second. The most revealing of the sniper's nest photos provided the FBI by the DPD was photo 14 (in Warren Commission Document 5, aka CD 5), and this depicted the sniper's nest as re-constructed on 11-25. Had the DPD "failed" to tell the FBI this photo was a re-construction? Apparently so.

This failure was not without its ramifications, moreover. Beyond the misrepresentation of the photo taken on 11-25 as a photo taken on 11-22 in CD 5, it was also misrepresented in Warren Commission Document 1 (the 12-9-63 summary report provided President Johnson on 12-5). Now, let's be clear. This was a photograph taken of a re-constructed sniper's nest on 11-25 incorrectly presented as a photo of the sniper's nest as found on 11-22...in a report provided the President.

This deception didn't last long, however. The earliest reference to photo 14 as a re-construction, and acknowledgement that most of the sniper's nest photos were of a re-constructed sniper's nest, for that matter, came in a 12-4-63 Dallas to FBI HQ Airtel built upon a 12-2-63 phone call with Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry, which then led to a 12-3-63 handover of negative copies of the crime scene, and descriptions of these images provided by Lt. Day. (FBI file 62-109060 sec 25, p 78-83)

Had Day simply forgot to tell Agents Barrett and Lee that he'd taken a box or two to the lab on the 22nd, and returned them on the 25th, and that some of the photos he gave them on the 26th were re-creations?

Fables of the Reconstruction

No. It's worse than that. To begin with, the stack of four large boxes directly to the right of the presumed sniper's position were removed entirely. This is demonstrated by comparing this photo taken on 11-23 by the FBI...

with the following photos taken by the Dallas Police on 11-25...

Note here that the four boxes directly behind the window boxes have gone missing.

Now note the box eclipsing part of the seat box in this second photo. It seems probable that this box was atop the second stack from the seat box in the photos taken on 11-22-63 and 11-23-63. No, scratch that. As the stack with the box turned on its side was shorter than the stack closest to the camera in the photos of a re-constructed sniper's nest, but taller than this stack in the photos taken on 11-22 and 11-23, it seems fairly certain the top box from this stack was removed, for one reason or another...

So that's five missing boxes. No explanation has ever been offered for their disappearance, mind you. Were they taken to the crime lab and exposed to chemicals? Were they just shoved aside? No one was ever asked about this, and no one ever explained.

Now these boxes could have been moved for photographic reasons...so the window boxes and the seat box could get captured in the same shot.

But there's just something fishy about the movement of these boxes. The drawing below can be found in the Dallas Police archives, and on the University of North Texas website. It is the sniper's nest window area (with the south west corner of the building in the upper left corner) on a diagram listed as "Map of Texas School Book Depository #1." The University of North Texas website claims this was created by Officers B.G. Brown and Robert Studebaker. on 11-25-63. The rectangles represent stacks of boxes, and the numbers reflect the number off boxes in these stacks.

Note that in this drawing Box D, with its missing corner, is labeled A, and that the stack to the west of Box D...has been crossed-out. Hmmm...

Now let us look at the sniper's nest window area on "Map of Texas School Book Depository #2." This is the finished product. In the lower right corner of this map it reports "Sketch made 11-25-63 10:00 A.M. by Det.s B.G. Brown + R.L. Studebaker."

Well, why make this "map," if not to deceive? Sure, it may have been accurate--as of 10 A.M. on 11-25--but the officers creating this map knew full well it was inaccurate as of 11-22-63, when there were three stacks in the wall of boxes in back of the window, and not two.

Heck, if the UNT website is correct about the handwritten drawing being created on 11-25, they knew it was inaccurate as of earlier that morning...

Why remove this stack, and then create a "map" with an inaccurate presentation of the sniper's nest?

And why... yes, it took me a long time to realize this but, yes, it's true...turn around and change the measurements?

Look back at the original drawing. The distance from the wall provided for the two stacks behind the window is 1'11." Now look at the "map" created later. Has someone changed the 1 to a 2, to try and make out that this wall of boxes was really 2'11' from the south wall? I mean, I must admit this never occurred to me--it's so clear from looking at both the original photos and the re-enactment photos that this wall of books was 1'11" from the south wall. It's hard to believe someone would lie about it.

And yet someone did. Here's Lt. Day in his 4-22-64 testimony before the Warren Commission. They are discussing the location of a box visible in the Dillard photo taken just after the shooting, and whether or not this box--not the one on the window sill but the one on the west end of the "sniper's nest"--was also on the window sill.

Mr. BELIN. Let me give you another question. On Exhibit 715 there is only one box shown in the window actually resting on the ledge, which is the box that you identified the corner out of in the eastern part of the window shown on 482. Now, what is the fact as to whether or not this other box on 482 would have been resting on the ledge, or is it a pictorial view of something that actually was in back of the window?

Mr. DAY. I think this is one of the boxes 2 feet 11 inches back from the wall. There were two stacks of them, one behind the window sill that you see here.

(4H251)

WOW. That's three whopping lies in two sentences. More than one per sentence. (That's math. Pretty smurt, huh?) The boxes were not 2 feet 11 inches back from the wall. Obviously. And there were three stacks of boxes. Obviously. And two of these were behind the window sill, until someone (most assuredly Mr. Day and his team of crime scene specialists) removed one of the stacks for the "reconstruction" photos taken on 11-25-63. Obviously.

One struggles to come up with a legitimate excuse for this. If the DPD wasn't trying to fool anyone with the re-constructed photos, why oh why would they have gone back and altered their original drawing--which showed a stack in the sniper's nest that had been removed for the re-construction. I mean, why cross out the stack?

And why lie about the measurements? And number of stacks? In sworn testimony before the Chief Justice of the United States, even?

And why, come to think of it, create more than one false "map" of the evidence?

The Photo 3 Mystery

No, I'm not kidding. The evidence suggests the DPD faked another "map" as well...

Let's look at the "map" created by Studebaker to record the locations and directions of the crime scene photos taken on 11-22-63.

Here is a blow-up showing Studebaker's signature in the bottom left corner of the map.

And here is a blow-up of the southeast corner of the building.

Note the location and direction of photo #3 on the map. Here it is.

Now look at the blow-up below. The Rolling Readers apparent in the 11-23-63 FBI photos are apparent in this photo as well. Now look at the box I've marked with an "x".

As shown below, this box is in a different orientation than it is in DPD Photo #!, taken on the 22nd, and FBI photo #19, taken on the 23rd.

So why was this box flipped around or switched out for Photo #3?

Well, it seems obvious, doesn't it? Photo #3 was taken after the FBI took its photos on the 23rd. As the highest box in the front row of boxes by the window is missing in Photo #3, and is also missing in the re-enactment photos, moreover, it seems probable Photo #3 was actually taken on the 25th. But why?

And why did the DPD pretend Photo #3 was taken on the 22nd, to the extent Studebaker (R.L.S.) stamped it and signed it as being taken on the 22nd?

Hmmm... Was the "map" created by Studebaker to show the locations of the photos taken on 11-22 a fake, and not an honest record of the photos taken on 11-22? Or was this "map" legit, and Photo #3 a fake--inserted into the record as a replacement for a photo showing something that wasn't supposed to be shown?

Now, I know some are thinking, "Well, wait a second! Maybe the original Photo #3 was too blurry, so Studebaker re-took it on the 25th, and then told a white lie when he dated it as being taken on the 22nd."

Well, that's quite a stretch, but possible, I suppose. But, alas, that's not the last of the problems with the re-construction...

Two Bricks Down

As it turns out, boxes A, B, and C were also misrepresented in the reconstruction. This is shown on the slide above, and is confirmed by all the photos taken of the sixth floor window in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. These show Box B in the window, with its southeast corner on the ledge about half-way across the easternmost pane of the window. The photos of the re-constructed sniper's nest, however, place Box B 6 inches or so to the west.

So, yeah, the DPD misrepresented the location of the boxes. And this wasn't the last time this happened, mind you.

Here is a frame from some newsreel footage shot on 5-9-64. It is believed to a Secret Service Agent reenacting the shooting from the sniper's nest window, while Warren Commissioners Dulles, Cooper, and McCloy look on.

And here is a photo of a similar re-enactment performed on 9-6-64, when Warren Commissioners Russell and Boggs followed suit and performed their own Grand Tour of Dallas, along with repeat customer Commissioner Cooper. (And yes, you're seeing correctly. In this re-enactment the shooter was none other than Senator Richard Russell himself.)

Note that in both instances, the corner of the window box aligns with the center of the window. Well, this is the wrong location. It is, instead, the location the box was placed in the DPD's 11-25-63 re-enactment, 6 inches or more to the west of where it was at the time of the assassination.

Now, one might argue that the commission had no way of knowing the actual location of the window box at the time of the assassination, and that they had simply deferred to the DPD's photos of the re-constructed sniper's nest.

But that should not have been the case. They knew the DPD's photos were re-constructions, and they knew there were photos showing the actual location of the box. And they had them in their files. Photographer Tom Dillard, who took a photo of the sniper's nest window mere seconds after the shooting, testified before Commission Counsel Joseph Ball in Dallas on 4-1-64.

Here's a crop from one of the exhibits entered into evidence by Ball.

Now, let's not forget that Joe Ball had a junior partner, David Belin, with whom he worked so closely that they came to be known as a single-entity, Ball-Belin. Now let's add further that it was David Belin who hosted Dulles, McCloy and Cooper on their "Grand Tour" of Dallas in May 1964, including their viewing of the sniper's nest window, as Warner re-enacted the shooting.

So, yeah, it's crystal freaking clear that Belin, at the very least, should have known that the window box was in the wrong location during the 5-9-64 re-enactment.

Well, this raises some questions. Is it just a coincidence that the DPD's failure to accurately present the stack to the west of Box D, and its simultaneous failure to accurately present the location of Boxes A, B, and C, have the identical effect of giving a sniper sitting on Box D more room to maneuver, and fire?

And, similarly, is it just a coincidence that Belin and whoever set up the sniper's nest for the commissioners on 5-9-64 and 9-6-64 did so in accordance with the DPD's inaccurate re-enactment photos, even though photos depicting the boxes in their (presumably) original locations were available?

Was the actual sniper's nest just too crowded for anyone to comfortably fire three shots at a moving target, and re-write history?

Let me show you what I mean.

The Crowded Nest

The sepia overlays on the slide above provide an idea of just how crowded the nest really was.

Was this considered "too crowded" by the DPD? Did they seek to conceal this by constructing a more comfortable sniper's nest for their "re-construction"?

Now, this might seem a "so-what." The DPD placed Box B 6 inches too far to the west in their re-construction. So what? The DPD moved five boxes out of the way so they could take better pictures of the sniper's nest on 11-25. So what? And they took Box A to the crime lab on the 22nd. So what? Much as they brought the piece of cardboard torn from Box D back to the sniper's nest for the 11-25 re-construction of the sniper's nest, they brought Box A back to the sniper's nest for the re-construction. Right?

Wrong.

Let me explain. For photo 40 in Drain's 12-5 memo--this is the photo designated as photo 14 in CD 5, that had already been misrepresented as a photo of the crime scene as first observed in two FBI reports--it was claimed that the photo was taken while "Standing on top of boxes looking down towards boxes that were used in shooting."

But this just wasn't true--at least one of the boxes featured in the photos of a reconstructed sniper's nest was not a box that had been "used in shooting."

You see, not only did Day not tell the FBI most of his sniper's nest photos were of a re-constructed sniper's nest when first providing them with copies, he also failed to admit--ever--that the Box A used in these photos was not the original Box A.

I kid you not.

First, let's read the 4-6-64 testimony of Robert Studebaker (in which he discusses a photo that would become Studebaker Exhibit J, a photo of his and Lt. Day's 11-25-63 re-construction of the sniper's nest)...

Mr. BALL. The picture of the boxes; this is after they were moved?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. Yes, sir; they were moved there. This is exactly the position they were in.

Mr. BALL. It is?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. Yes - not - this was after they were moved, but I put them in the same exact position.

Mr. BALL. Were they that close - that was about the position?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. Yes.

Mr. BALL. Let's take one of these pictures and mark it the next number, which will be "Exhibit J."

(Instrument marked by the reporter as "Studebaker Exhibit J," for identification)

Mr. BALL. After the boxes of Rolling Readers had been moved, you put them in the same position?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. Yes.

Mr. BALL. And took a picture?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. And this is Exhibit J, is it, is that right?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. Exhibit J, yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Now, the box that had the print on it is shown?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Was there any other indentation on that box besides that which is shown in the circle on 3?

Mr. STUDEBAKER. No.

And now let's read the 4-22-64 testimony of Lt. Day (in which he discusses CE 733, a different print of this same photo)...

Mr. BELIN. When you came back on the 25th where did you find this box, 641?

Mr. DAY. They were still in the area of the window but had been moved from their original position.

Mr. BELIN. Does that scar appear on the box in 733?

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. I see there was one box in the window which you have reconstructed as being box 653, am I correct on that?

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. And then there is a box which is stacked on top of another box, the upper box of that two-box stack is 641, is that correct?

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. And there is a scar on top of that. Is this the same one that you referred to at the top of 641?

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. Do you have any independent recollection of this being the same box that you saw in the window, if you don't remember when you initialed it?

Mr. DAY. No, sir; except that it was still there in that area and had been dusted on the 25th. We did dust it on the 22d.

Mr. BELIN. Let me ask you this: When you were dusting it were there remains of the dust on there?

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. When you put your initials on on the 25th were the dust remains still there?

Mr. DAY. The dust was still there; yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN. On all of these boxes, 641 and 653, and now handing you 654, was there dust on 654 also?

Mr. DAY. All boxes had dust on them when I collected them.

Mr. BELIN. Were boxes Nos. 641, 653, and 654 open or closed?

Mr. DAY. They were closed and had books in them.

Mr. BELIN. Did they have tape around them?

Mr. DAY. They were sealed with tape.

Well, the sum of Studebaker and Day's testimony is that the boxes used in the sniper's nest re-construction were the boxes found (and dusted) on 11-22-63, and that they remained unopened. (This, as we've seen, was incorrect). Now, to make matters worse, they also claimed the indentation or scar on Box A (CE 641) is apparent in photos Studebaker Exhibit J and CE 733 (which are actually two prints of the same photo.)

Were they lying?

The Tell-Tale "Scar"

As demonstrated above, the "scar" on Box A in the re-constructed photo (at M) is not the "scar" on Box A in the original crime scene photo (at L), nor the "scar" on Box A currently in the archives (at R).

Well, it follows from this that the "Box A' used in the sniper's nest re-construction was not the real Box A, and that the re-construction was essentially a sham.

I mean, think about it. That the "scar" on Box A was simulated for the re-construction seems obvious, and suggests the use of the "wrong" box in the re-construction was not only not an accident, but a deliberate deception. That Box A was missing in the FBI photos taken but two days before, moreover, further feeds the probability something smelly was afoot.

And, yes, I know. Some of you are thinking the "scar" on the box in CE 733 could be the "scar" in the other photos, only filmed from a different angle, etc.

But the "scar" is not the only problem with the box in CE 733.

Here, see for yourself. Here is Box A as photographed in the sniper's nest on 11-22-63.

And here is "Box A" as photographed during Day and Studebaker's re-construction of the sniper's nest, on 11-25-63..

There are a number of differences between these two boxes. These include:

1. The "scar" is different on the two boxes, with the "scar" on the first box having a deeper gouge..

2. There is a dark mark on the top of the box photographed on the 22nd, that is not visible on the box photographed on the 25th.

3. The rectangular stamp on the side of the box facing the camera is aligned differently with the circular shape above it on the first box, than on the second box. To be clear, the left side of this stamp lines up below the right side of the circle on the first box, and the left side of the circle on the second box.

4. The ink on the left side of this stamp is much thicker on the box photographed on the 22nd than it is on the box photographed on the 25th.

5. There is a line within this stamp that is visible on the box photographed on the 22nd (the real Box A, if you will) that is not apparent on the box photographed on the 25th.

6. There is a dark line to the right of this stamp on the second box that is only sporadically apparent on the first box.

7. The upside-down words "Second Rolling Readers" near the middle of the top of the side of the box run parallel to the top edge of the box photographed on the 22nd, but run at an angle to the top edge of the box photographed on the 25th.

And that's not all. Look at the two pieces of tape along the shadowy side of the box in the re-constructed photo above. The piece of tape on the left is slightly higher than the piece of tape on the right side. Now look at what is supposedly the same two pieces of tape in Archives photo 33-3374a, the National Archives' most recent photo of this box. (Note that the arrow in this photo is purported to point to where a print of Oswald's right index finger was found on this box, and that this was thereby the west-facing side of the box.)

The tape on the right is higher. And not only that, the printed letters above the tape on the right in the re-constructed photo are nowhere to be seen.

Now I know some of you are skeptical. So here's the other side of Box A, in Archives photo 33-3375a.

The bottom of the tape on the right is well below the bottom of the tape on the left. This stands in opposition to the box in the re-constructed photo, in which the bottoms of the right side and left side are at the same level.

It's clear then. It's not the same box!

So what was up? Why would the Dallas Police use a replacement box for the photos of a re-constructed sniper's nest, and then send the original box on to Washington?

Well, the thought occurs that the original Box A was unavailable on the 25th. As this box was subsequently found to bear Oswald's prints, of course, the additional thought occurs that it was unavailable on the 25th due to its being in the possession of some person (or organization) involved in planting these prints on the box.

Now, this could have been a huge problem for the Warren Commission. Day and Studebaker's probable complicity in the faking of the "scar" on the box A used in the 11-25 re-construction undermined its entire case against Oswald.

I mean, think about it. If Day and Studebaker would so brazenly lie about the boxes why wouldn't they also lie about the bag? Or any and all of the evidence compiled by their department against Oswald?

It should come as no surprise, then, that Warren Commission counsel Ball and Belin either failed to catch their deceptions or failed to confront them about these deceptions on the record, and the problems with Exhibits 729 (which proves Day lied about Box D) and 733 (which proves Day and Studebaker lied about Box A) slipped under everybody's radar until I noticed them decades later.

Now, to be clear, I tend to suspect the latter--that the Warren Commission's staff was aware of some or all of the DPD's deceptions, and that they either opted to do nothing about it, or actively encouraged these deceptions.

And here's why...

mention palm print and boxes

The Vanishing Thumb Print

Should one wish to comb through the Dallas Police records on the assassination available on the University of North Texas website, one will discover a number of surprises. One such surprise can be found in the DPD's evidence book for the assassination...on a list of the physical evidence...

A thumb print! What thumb print?

Now, this document was provided the Warren Commission, and published on page 753 of CD 81. As a result, one can assume this has been noticed before... One might assume, for that matter, that this was just a simple mistake and that it was supposed to read "palm print" not "thumb print" and "cardboard" not "cardboard box.

Only not so fast... When one turns the page in the evidence book, one finds that there is a separate listing for the palm print on the cardboard--the cardboard from Box D. Here it is on page 754 of CD 81.

Now, that's a mystery. And it's just beginning...

Here's another image from the UNT website. This is the DPD inventory for the items sent the FBI on 11-26-63. It is signed by Lt. Day and Capt. Doughty. (This was published by the commission on 24H332.)

Well, there it is again--a thumb print--only this time in quotes. Now, just what is being quoted? Lt. Day's notes? His writing on the box?

If so, these notes have never been published and this writing has never been found.

And, should that not be enough, there's this...

These pages come from the evidence list accompanying Capt. Fritz's 12-23-63 report on the assassination. The tan page is from the UNT website and the white page is from the Warren Commission's volumes (24260-261). This report was written weeks after the FBI inspected Box D and failed to ID any prints belonging to Oswald on the box. And yet...somehow...for some reason...Fritz is still under the impression Oswald's thumb print was found on Box D. He's not mistaking the palm print found on the cardboard for a thumb print, moreover, as he lists both prints on his report.

This mystery has never been explained. Although the documents we've discussed were available to the Warren Commission, moreover, none of its members or staff is known to have noticed that, oh yeah, the DPD originally claimed there was a thumb print on Box D.

It seems possible, moreover, that this wasn't just a coincidence, and that the Warren Commission was trying to conceal an awkward fact--that the DPD ID'ed a thumb print on Box D as Oswald's but the FBI disagreed...and that it was then determined that this print should be "disappeared." The first report by Lt. Day to ever see the light of, well, day, we should recall, wasn't written till 1-08-64. This was weeks after Fritz wrote his report mentioning the thumb print. Was the thumb print "disowned" by the Dallas Police sometime between 12-23-63 and 1-08-64? And, if so, why?

Was it someone else's thumb print? Who knows?

Let's refresh. We have identified significant problems (forensically speaking) with the fibers found on the rifle butt, the paper bag supposedly used as a gun case, and Box D, the box upon which Oswald was purported to have been sitting while firing his rifle. This leaves us with Box A, the top box of the two boxes stacked by the window, and the rifle itself, as the only remaining pieces of evidence tying Oswald to the sniper's nest."

Well, guess what?

There are a ton of questions about these items as well.

We'll get to them in a minute.

But first let's put on our debunking hats. When discussing the boxes in the sniper's nest window, most conspiracy theorists leap to "Yeah, someone moved them between the Tom Dillard photo taken mere seconds after the last shot, and the James Powell photo taken seconds later." And they are within their rights to do so. The HSCA, after all, concluded that the boxes had, inexplicably, been moved between the two photographs.

But on this point, conspiracy theorists should concede defeat. Photographer Craig Lamson and I had a moderately heated discussion about this somewhere around 2010, and he helped convince me that there is a vast disparity in the perspectives of the two photos, and that this led to a box in back and to the west of the box on the window sill (Box B) to change its apparent location. I even tested this out at home, placing items a foot or so behind a railing on the side of our dining room, and then viewing these items from different perspectives in the living room on the other side of the railing. Sure enough, as I moved from a sharp angle to the right of the object (as in the Powell photo, in color, below) to a more direct view of the object (as in the Dillard photo, in black and white), the object a foot behind the railing jumped to its left (in comparison to the railing).

Some years later, moreover, I noticed that someone (aka John Mytton) had made a gif of the Powell and Dillard photos demonstrating this very point, and had posted this gif on the JFK Assassination Forum. I present this gif below. Note that the box in question slides to the left (in comparison to the box on the window sill) with the shifting of the angle of the camera to the front of the building. This does not appear unnatural in a manner suggesting the box had been moved between the photos.

Okay now, let's continue on our journey through Questionland.

Starting with...

The Prints That Got Away

Well, there it was--the smudge first observed in the Alyea film made more apparent through the application of powder and tape.

And no, it wasn't just a smudge. A close-up view of a rifle parade photo taken for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reveals three dark shapes inside the taped-off dark area. These would appear to be isolated prints, as opposed to smudges. (This is shown below).

And no, this dark shape with the apparent prints on the right trigger guard wasn't something one could only find in the Alyea film, and press photos of the rifle parade.

As shown below, this shape was also apparent in Lt. Day's photos of the rifle.

Well, on the one hand this makes sense. Lt. day claimed he'd found prints on the trigger guard, and here are photos showing prints on the trigger guard.

Only...something's wrong? Right? Right?

The prints are supposed to have been left. On the left trigger guard, that is...

So what happened?

Good question.

Role Reversal

As the photos of Lt. Day in the rifle parade reveal a taped-off black smear on the right trigger guard, but no such smear on the left trigger guard, it seems probable the prints Day discovered on the sixth floor, and resumed working on when he returned to the crime lab around 6:00, were the prints on the right trigger guard, not left.

If so, this is a huge bombshell. Not only does this raise questions about these prints--why were they never mentioned by Lt. Day or Sebastian Latona, etc--but about the prints on the left trigger guard. Were those prints allowed to continue in the record because Lt. Day et al thought the prints on the left trigger guard were Oswald's, but knew the prints on the right trigger guard were not Oswald's?

Let's look, then, at the record and try to figure out...

Which Print Was Which?

Let's start with an FBI memo written on the afternoon of the assassination.

The FBI's 11-22-63 Memo on Its 11-22-63 Discussion With Lt. J.C. Day

Now, this is clearly a reference to one of the trigger guard prints, which Day first noticed at the school book depository. It was the discovery of this print, moreover, that led Day to bring the rifle to the crime lab. As Day did not return to the depository after his purported discovery of a palm print on the barrel of the rifle, moreover, it's crystal clear this memo was not written in reference to the palm print. (Note: this version of the memo was never provided the Warren Commission, but was discovered in the archives and made available by Malcolm Blunt.)

The FBI's 11-23-63 Memo on Its 11-22-63 Discussion With Lt. J.C. Day.

Now, this is essentially a re-wording of the Pinkston memo from the day before. Since it fails to specify where Day was when he spoke to Pinkston, however, this re-wording made the memo less clear, and left open (for those desperate to believe Day found a palm print on the rifle on 11-22-63) that the print discussed within this memo was the palm print.

The FBI's 11-24-63 Report on its 11-22-63 Discussion with Lt. J.C. Day

Well, we're off and running. While these three FBI memos, written by Nat Pinkston, don't tell us much about the location of the partial print discovered by Lt. Day, they do tell us that Lt. Day was at the depository when he told Pinkston about the print, and that he planned on returning to his lab and photographing this print. Well, this reveals the print to be one of the trigger guard prints. There is certainly nothing about this memo and report to suggest this was a reference to a palm print Day later claimed to lift from the rifle hours--hours--after beginning his work on the trigger guard.

Now, here is an 11-22-63 memo from FBI agent James Bookhout, found in the Weisberg Archives. Apparently, this report was never forwarded to FBI headquarters. In any event, this report details the evidence against Oswald as of late in the evening on the day of the shooting.

The FBI's 11-22-63 Memo Detailing the Evidence Uncovered up to this Point by the Dallas Police.

For completeness' sake, here is the other page of Bookhout's memo.

Now this is pretty interesting. First, let's note that Day has already identified the print on the cardboard ripped from Box D as Oswald's print. Now note as well that Bookhout thinks the Dallas Police have photographed the box from which this cardboard has been torn (which, of course, they have not), and that this print came from the top box in the stack by the window, Box A.

And now note that beyond working on the print on the cardboard, Day has been studying a print from the middle of the rifle, and that he has found 4 points on this print which he will try to match up to Oswald's prints.

Was this print on the right trigger guard? Or left? If this print was on the right trigger guard, one should wonder, what happened to it? Did Day prove to himself this wasn't a print made by Oswald, and then make it disappear?

In any event, the only trigger guard prints mentioned in the Warren Report are the prints Day claimed he found on the left trigger guard.

Photos of these prints can be found in the Dallas Police Archives. Photos of these prints were purportedly sent the FBI. And photos of these prints were published by the Warren Commission.

The Dallas photos appear to match the commission photos, moreover.

So all is well and good, right?

Nope, there's a whole heap of questions about these prints as well.

The Secret Photos

Here is what FBI fingerprint examiner Sebastian Latona had to say about the prints found on the trigger guard:

Mr. LATONA. There had, in addition to this rifle and that paper bag, which I received on the 23rd--there had also been submitted to me some photographs which had been taken by the Dallas Police Department, at least alleged to have been taken by them, of these prints on this trigger guard which they developed. I examined the photographs very closely and I still could not determine any latent value in the photograph. So then I took the rifle personally over to our photo laboratory. In the meantime, I had made arrangements to bring a photographer in especially for the purpose of photographing these latent prints for me, an experienced photographer--I called him in. I received this material in the Justice Building. My office of operations is in the Identification Division Building, which is at 2nd and D Streets SW. So I made arrangements to immediately have a photographer come in and see if he could improve on the photographs that were taken by the Dallas Police Department. Well, we spent, between the two of us, setting up the camera, looking at prints, highlighting, sidelighting, every type of lighting that we could conceivably think of, checking back and forth in the darkroom--we could not improve the condition of these latent prints. So, accordingly, the final conclusion was simply that the latent print on this gun was of no value, the fragments that were there. After that had been determined, I then proceeded to completely process the entire rifle, to see if there were any other prints of any significance or value any prints of value--I would not know what the significance would be, but to see if there were any other prints. I completely covered the rifle.

Mr. LATONA. I was not successful in developing any prints at all on the weapon.

Well, this is quite clear, isn't it? The DPD sent the FBI some photographs of the trigger guard prints. The quality of the prints on these photos was lacking. The FBI then spent a considerable amount of time trying to improve upon these photos, by taking their own photos of the prints apparent on the rifle. But they were, reportedly, unable to improve upon them. So Latona gave up and re-processed the rifle. And found no prints anywhere.

Well, this is quite a problem, wouldn't you say? Lt. Day taped-off some prints on the right trigger guard. These disappeared from the record. He also found some prints on the left trigger guard. Copies of these photos were published by the Warren Commission. But the FBI said these were a no-go...

Now, I must admit I have a problem with this. The photos published by the Warren Commission were horrible. This led many to claim, over time, that the prints on these photos were smudged. But better versions of these photos were later put on line by the City of Dallas. These showed at least one of the prints to have been faint, but un-smudged.

Well, it only follows, then, that the FBI should have been able to create an image of similar quality, and to have created some photos in which this print, at the very least, could have been identified as Oswald's print, or not Oswald's print. This very thought, moreover, haunted researcher James Olmstead. For years, he begged the FBI to release the photos created by Latona, that Latona said were of no use. But the FBI refused to co-operate.

Now, should we take from this that the FBI knows full well that these prints weren't Oswald's? I don't know.

But it's important, nonetheless, that we realize there were no prints linking Oswald to the rifle before his death. None. And that, much as Howard Brennan popped up after Oswald's death so the assassination story could be changed to reflect there'd been an eyewitness who'd ID'ed Oswald as the shooter, the DPD popped up a print after Oswald's death so the story could be changed to reflect Oswald's prints had been found on the rifle.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves.... We're still discussing the prints on the left trigger guard...

And the strange fluctuations in their supposed value...

Let's reveal then that these prints were written off as smudged and/or of no value by everyone to take a look at them or even write about them prior to the release of First Day Evidence in 1993. There, author Gary Savage, working with a fingerprint examiner named Jerry Powdrill, claimed that the most prominent print apparent on the DPD's photos of the trigger guard matched Oswald's right middle finger on three points, and shared "very similar characteristics" on three more. Powdrill said, moreover, that this gave him a "gut feeling" the prints were a match.

So how seriously should we take this?

Not too seriously. As we've seen, First Day Evidence was a book written by the nephew of Rusty Livingston, one of Lt. Day's employees. It had an obvious bias. This bias was revealed, moreover, in the following passage: "Latona could not make a positive identification since the fingerprints were extremely faint following the removal of the protective tape." (First Day Evidence, 1993, p.109)

Now, should the bias in this passage not be clear, let me explain. Lt. Day said he covered the trigger guard prints with cellophane to protect them. He did not say he covered them with cellophane tape. The removal of cellophone tape from a print, for that matter, would create a "lift" of the print which could then be applied to a card. No cards were created in this manner. Latona, furthermore, claimed he received the rifle with "cellophane material" over the area on which latent prints had been detected. He never called this material tape or mentioned any problems created by the cellophane.

In fact, he said just the opposite...

Mr. DULLES. Is is likely or possible that those fingerprints could have been damaged or eroded in the passage from Texas to your hands?

Mr. LATONA. No, sir; I don't think so. In fact, I think we got the prints just like they were.

So, yeah, Savage was blowing smoke to hide that the wafer-thin ID of the print as Oswald's he'd received from Powdrill contradicted the sworn testimony of Latona, a top FBI fingerprint examiner.

But wait, it gets worse. Spurred on by Savage's book, the producers of the 1993 PBS program "Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?" hired HSCA fingerprint examiner Vincent Scalice to take a look at the photos published by Savage. Scalice said the prints in the photos were "barely distinguishable" and "partially distorted," but nevertheless concluded they were Oswald's.

Here is an excerpt from the transcript to this program.

"When Livingston began working with his nephew, Gary Savage, on a book about the assassination called JFK: First Day Evidence, they decided to have the fingerprints reexamined. They turned to Captain Jerry Powdrill of the West Monroe, Louisiana, Police Department, a qualified fingerprint examiner. Powdrill found three points of identity between the trigger guard prints and Oswald’s known prints and three possible points of identity. Six to ten points of identity are normally required in the U.S. to make a positive identification. Powdrill told FRONTLINE, “I cannot say that sufficient evidence exists to conclude that the latent print [in the photograph] is in fact that of Lee Harvey Oswald; however, there are enough similarities to suggest that it is possible they are one in the same.”FRONTLINE asked George Bonebrake, a former supervisor of the FBI latent fingerprint division to examine copies of the fingerprint photographs. Bonebrake told FRONTLINE the prints were not clear enough to make an identification of anyone. “They lack enough characteristic ridge detail to be of value for identification purposes,” said Bonebrake. FRONTLINE also asked Vincent Scalice, former head of the New York City Police latent fingerprint unit to examine the trigger guard prints. In 1978, Scalice had examined all the prints in the Kennedy case for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. At that time, he concluded that the trigger guard prints were “of no value for identification purposes.” But after examining Rusty Livingston’s original fingerprint photographs in Louisiana, Scalice reversed his 1978 assessment. Scalice told FRONTLINE: “I took the photographs. There were a total of four photographs in all. I began to examine them. I saw two faint prints, and as I examined them, I realized that the prints had been taken at different exposures, and it was necessary for me to utilize all of the photographs to compare against the inked prints. As I examined them, I found that by maneuvering the photographs in different positions, I was able to pick up some details on one photograph and some details on another photograph. Using all the photographs at different contrasts...! was able to find in the neighborhood of about eighteen points of identity in the two prints. I feel that this is a major breakthrough in this investigation, because we are able for the first time to actually say that these are definitely the fingerprints of Lee Harvey Oswald and that they are on the rifle. There is no doubt about it.”

The transcript continues:

"How could Scalice have missed an identification in 1978 that he was able to make in 1993? The answer appears to lie in the number of photographs of the prints that were available for experts like Scalice to examine. Sebastian Latona, the head of the FBI fingerprint division in 1963, told FRONTLINE that the FBI examined only the rifle itself in making its determination that the trigger guard prints were of no value. Latona said the FBI never looked at the Dallas Police photographs of the trigger guard fingerprints. Although the record is not precise on this point, it appears that only one or two of the Dallas Police photographs of the trigger guard prints were forwarded to the Warren Commission, where they were examined by Arthur Mandella, a consultant to the commission. Mandella came to the same conclusion as the FBI, that the trigger guard prints were of no value. When Vincent Scalice examined photographs of the trigger guard prints in 1978 for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he apparently only had the one or two Dallas police photographs that were part of the Warren Commission files. “I have to assume,” says Scalice, “that my original examination and comparison was carried out in all probability on one photograph. And that photograph was apparently a poor quality photograph, and the latent prints did not contain a sufficient amount of detail in order to effect an identification. I know for a fact that I did not see all these four photographs in 1978, because if I had, I would have been able to make an identification at that point in time. So where these photographs were, I don’t know. But after this reexamination, I definitely conclude these are Oswald’s prints.” After consultations with Scalice, Captain Jerry Powdrill told FRONTLINE that he also now agrees with Scalice’s judgement-that the trigger guard prints are those of Lee Harvey Oswald. 'Vincent Scalice’s identification of the trigger guard fingerprints is a significant development in our understanding of the Kennedy assassination,' says FRONTLINE senior producer Sullivan. 'But clearly the experts do disagree on this matter. We hope that this story will spark a proper professional debate among the nation’s leading fingerprint experts that will lead to a more definitive conclusion to the question.”

Well, this sounds pretty definitive, right? Scalice says he sees 18 points and everyone, sans Bonebrake, falls in line.

But whatever happened to research? Here are the "4 photographs" published in First Day Evidence.

The Five Photos of Mr. Savage

Well, by golly, there weren't four photographs, were there? There were five. And by five I mean Savage thought the five photos on the slide above represented five different photos from five different negatives.

Here is an excerpt from his book that proves this:

"Rusty has copies of five photographs taken by Lieutenant Day made directly from the original Dallas police negatives which show latent fingerprints found on the trigger housing of the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle from the sixth floor of the Depository. The fingerprints are visible to the naked eye even before enhancement. Each of the fingerprint photographs was taken with a light shining on the trigger housing from different directions in order to produce various contrasts of the fingerprints. This was an attempt by Lieutenant Day to bring out as much of the ridge detail as possible in order to do a comparison for identification of whoever had previously handled the rifle (the shooter)."

Now, even at first glance, some of these photos look similar, as if they are not different photos from different negatives, but prints from the same negative.

So let's crop 'em down and line 'em up.

Here they are, in order from photo 33 to 37.

Well, hell, it's clear from this that photos 33 and 35 came from the same negative, as did 34 and 36. This means there were actually but 3 photos taken of the left trigger guard--at least that were developed, and of quality enough that Livingston would make himself a copy.

Now look again at 37, the bottom photo. It appears that this photo was not only taken from further back than photos 33 and 34, but over-exposed in the area of the trigger guard on which prints can be seen. If so, well then this tells us Scalice was full of beans when he implied he used four different photos to come to his conclusions, and that he, at most, used two different photos.

And that's not even the biggest eyebrow-raiser among the statements made by Scalice. He claimed as well that he'd never viewed the trigger guard photos before, beyond perhaps one "poor quality photograph." And this excuse almost makes sense. When one combs through the Mary Ferrell Archives, however, one can find a "2 pg listing of material made available to HSCA" with the following paragraph at the bottom of the second page. (HSCA Admin Folder M-3, p5-6)

Well, if this doesn't suggest Scalice saw more than one photo of the trigger guard prints, I don't know what does. It says "Photos of Latents on rifle" not "photo." And it says there were "8 small negs w/10 small prints." While some might assume these "negs" were actually of the rifle, and not "latents on rifle," moreover, the rest of the items on the 2 pg list are items bearing prints, fingerprint cards, and photos and negatives of photos depicting prints. The 8 "negs" are thereby almost certainly "negs" of the Dallas Police photos of the trigger guard prints, or the FBI's photos of the trigger guard prints, or both. Well, wait. If the date for this folder is to be believed, it would suggest these photos are the FBI's own photos of the trigger guard prints, with the possible exception of the photos sent the FBI from Dallas. Such a circumstance, moreover, would explain why there were 10 prints, but only 8 negatives.

Now, Frontline was, and is, a respected news source. It's bad enough that they failed to take a close look at the photos Scalice claimed he'd studied, and to check with the research community or archives to see if he was correct in stating he'd never seen these photos before. But this wasn't the only questionable part of the segment.

Here is Sebastian Latona in his 4-2-64 testimony before the Warren Commission...

"...in addition to this rifle and that paper bag, which I received on the 23d--there had also been submitted to me some photographs which had been taken by the Dallas Police Department, at least alleged to have been taken by them, of these prints on this trigger guard which they developed. I examined the photographs very closely and I still could not determine any latent value in the photograph(s)."

and here is Frontline, almost 30 years later...

"Sebastian Latona, the head of the FBI fingerprint division in 1963, told FRONTLINE that the FBI examined only the rifle itself in making its determination that the trigger guard prints were of no value. Latona said the FBI never looked at the Dallas Police photographs of the trigger guard fingerprints."

Are we really to believe no one at Frontline studied Latona's testimony before interviewing him, and that no one at Frontline knew he was incorrect or lying when he claimed the FBI never studied the photographs?

And it's not as if Latona's testimony was the only time the FBI admitted they'd studied the photographs. Here's an excerpt from the FBI's 11-23-63 report on the evidence sent them on the night of the shooting (24H263)...

Now, aha!, one might say. That report reveals that the FBI was sent but one of the DPD's photographs!

Only not so fast... Let's take a look at this 11-26-63 FBI report provided the Warren Commission (CD5 p167).

And then this 11-29-63 FBI report (FBI HQ, sec 17, p176).

It's clear, then, that the FBI not only studied the Dallas Police Department's photographs of the trigger guard, they sought out and studied the original negatives...all 3 of them.

So, Latona's excuse was Bullshit with a capital B.

Of course, he was an old man in 1993. So, of course, he could have been mistaken. And, of course, there's always the possibility the trigger guard photos mentioned in the 11-26 memo were photos taken of the right trigger guard, and that Latona is guilty of covering that up but not guilty of lying to Frontline about studying photos of the left trigger guard. But that's beside the point.

The excuse Latona fed Frontline is not credible. Period.

Well, this is disturbing. The Warren Commission's fingerprint expert, and the HSCA's fingerprint expert, appeared on the same TV program, and they both blew smoke. They both made out that they'd never studied photographs of the trigger guard, when the record suggests they had.

Still, this does little to disprove Scalice's latter day identification of the trigger guard prints as Oswald's.

Was he mistaken, or worse?

The Missing Charts

I suspect worse... There are reasons to believe Scalice was biased. He worked for the New York City Police Dept. from 1956-1977. He spent much of that time as the Coordinator of the NYPD's Latent Fingerprint Unit. He was almost certainly trained by Arthur Mandella. Mandella, as we've seen, testified in a suspicious manner before the Warren Commission, with his conclusions and testimony being pretty much a rubber-stamp of the FBI's conclusions and testimony.

Was Scalice determined to support his mentor, and/or his colleagues in the FBI, by adding another piece to the evidence pile supporting Oswald's guilt? Scalice's latter-day C.V. boasted that he'd "worked closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning deaths of President John F. Kennedy and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King." Well, this is a bit of a shock seeing as he was supposed to be coming to an independent conclusion regarding the fingerprint evidence for these cases.

Or was Scalice merely out for attention? It seems a bit of a coincidence that, but 18 months after his appearance on Frontline, in which he presented himself as a fingerprint expert, Scalise appeared at a press conference funded by right-wingers opposed to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and presented himself as a handwriting expert, and not just any handwriting expert, mind you, but as a handwriting expert claiming Vince Foster's suicide note had been forged.

And that wasn't the last we heard of Scaiice. On March 22, 1996, Scalice appeared once again on national TV, this time on the program Unsolved Mysteries. Well, did he add any details regarding his matching the trigger guard prints to Oswald's prints? Nope, no such luck. His appearance was devoted to his latest project--he doubled-down on his claim the Foster note was forged.

Scalice died on Nov. 25, 1997.

Now, think about this. Scalice died four years after announcing a major breakthrough in the Kennedy assassination. He claimed he'd ID'ed 18 points of similarity between Oswald's prints and the trigger guard prints. And this even though Lt. Day, working with the actual trigger guard prints and not just photos of the trigger guard prints, told FBI agent Bookhout there were but 4 points on these prints that he was going to try to match to Oswald's prints.

Well, what is one to take from this? It sure seems as though Scalice was trying to make a name for himself, and that he grossly oversold the similarity between the trigger guard prints and Oswald's prints. But that doesn't mean he was wrong.

No, what we have here is not a case of a dog that shouldn't have barked, but a case where the dog didn't bark...when he should have.

Scalice was a veteran fingerprint examiner. He knew, better than most anyone else, that juries expect fingerprint examiners to show them charts in which the points of similarity between a known print and a latent print are matched up and numbered. He knew, better than most anyone else, that juries, or even better, the American people, would withhold judgement on any fingerprint identification for which no charts of this nature had been supplied. And yet he supplied no charts.

He said he found 18 points of similarity. Oh wait, did I write "18 points?" In 1998, Gus Russo, the chief researcher for Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, published his first book on the assassination, Live By the Sword. There, he related: "In 1992, I met with Rusty Livingston, a former Dallas policeman assigned to the crime lab at the time of the assassination. Livingston had saved high contrast photo prints of the rifle, taken before it was shipped to FBI headquarters in Washington. The photos contained evidence that had gone unnoticed, and when Frontline had them analyzed, Oswald's guilt seemed even more certain. Vincent Scalice, a renowned fingerprint expert and HSCA consultant, was engaged by Frontline and expressed astonishment at what he saw -- three fingers from Oswald's right hand had left their mark just inches from the trigger. Scalice, in fact, had located a whopping 18 points of identification. After the production aired, he continued his work and increased the total to 24 points. 'If I had seen these four photographs in 1978,' says Scalice, 'I would have been able to make an identification at that point in time. After this reexamination, I definitely conclude these are Oswald's prints. There is no doubt about it.'

In any event, 18 points or 24 points--take your pick--it would have been relatively easy for Scalice to match up a copy of a Dallas PD photo with a copy of Oswald's prints, and draw arrows between the two showing these numerous points of similarity. If he had to do this with more than one of the police photos, well, then so be it. This would have taken Scalice perhaps a day or two, and it would have earned him a cover story in the Journal of Forensic Identification, or whatever publication on fingerprinting he admired. And he could have used this as a calling card to drum up more business, a la the Foster business.

But his charts never appeared. And have still never appeared, more than 20 years after his death.

The "proper professional debate" about these prints which Frontline hoped to "spark" never came to pass.

And I think we know why.

Right on Left?

Let us turn our focus to the second print.. The central print purported to be Oswald's right middle finger print is accompanied by a print to its right, at the upper edge of the trigger guard on the image above. This is clearly the second print described by Scalice, which accounts for an unspecified number of the 18 points of similarity he identified.

So what print was this? While Latona never told, Lt. Day was a bit more forthcoming...

Mr. BELIN. Do you have those photographs, sir? I will mark the two photographs which you have just produced Commission Exhibits 720 and 721. I will ask you to state what these are.

Mr. DAY. These are prints or pictures, I should say, of the latent--of the traces of prints on the side of the magazine housing of the gun No. C-2766.

Mr. BELIN. Were those prints in such condition as to be identifiable, if you know?

Mr. DAY. No, sir; I could not make positive identification of these prints.

Mr. BELIN. Did you have enough opportunity to work and get these pictures or not?

Mr. DAY. I worked with them, yes. I could not exclude all possibility as to identification. I thought I knew which they were, but I could not positively identify them.

Mr. BELIN. What was your opinion so far as it went as to whose they were?

Mr. DAY. They appeared to be the right middle and right ring finger of Harvey Lee Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Mr. BELIN. At the time you had this did you have any comparison fingerprints to make with the actual prints of Lee Harvey Oswald?

Mr. DAY. Yes, sir; we had sets in Captain Fritz' office. Oswald was in his custody, we had made palmprints and fingerprints of him.

The second print was, purportedly, the print of Oswald's right ring finger. Well, think about it. How likely is it that a right ring fingerprint would be found just to the right of a right middle fingerprint if the prints hadn't been created at the same time? Not very likely, right? And then add in that these right fingerprints were found on the left trigger guard in a manner suggesting someone had held the rifle with the trigger guard in the palm of his right hand, with his fingers stretching up across the left trigger guard. And then add in that the print for this right ring finger is higher on the trigger guard than the right middle finger. Well, this suggests the ring finger was stretched forward of the middle finger.

Now how does one do that while holding a rifle? I've tried to contort my hands into this position but it's incredibly awkward. It makes no sense. Non-smudged fingerprints are left on objects when fingertips are pressed straight down onto the object, and not when they briefly slide across the object. As a result, it's hard to see how the right middle finger and right ring finger of Oswald's hand could have left the prints in question.

Let us now remember that a faked print can sometimes be detected by its reflecting "an orientation inconsistent with normal handling."

When the fingerprint evidence presented against Oswald is re-examined by a forensic body--and it will be re-examined by a forensic body--an analysis of the orientation of these prints should be made.

That is, of course, if these examiners can get beyond arguing about the other print supposedly found on the rifle--the barrel print.

The Rifle Barrel Polka

Let us begin our discussion of the barrel print by reminding ourselves what should have happened.

"If a fingerprint is visible, an effort should be made to photograph it before any attempt is made to develop it. In every case a print developed with powder should be photographed before lifting. It sometimes happens that the print does not lift properly although it may be quite clear after development."

The Science of Fingerprints (the FBI's manual on fingerprinting), Chapter 15, p.187

Mr. LATONA. The purpose of the lift is simply to insure the probability of getting a good record of the print, because a lot of times when you photograph a print, you have to go through the process of having it developed and then printed and at the same time by lifting it you may, that would be an additional security that you are getting the best results. Then you take your choice as to which result turns out the best.

Mr. EISENBERG. So these are alternative routes?

Mr. LATONA. That is right.

Mr. EISENBERG. Lifting and photographing?

Mr. LATONA. That is right. Well, primarily our recommendation in the FBI is simply in every procedure to photograph and then lift. Then you choose the one which you feel gives you the best results in your final photograph.

(The 4-2-64 testimony of FBI fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona)

Mr. DAY. In the matter of fingerprints, I have been assigned to the identification bureau 15 years. During that time I have attended schools, the Texas Department of Public Safety, on fingerprinting; also an advanced latent-print school conducted in Dallas by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have also had other schooling with the Texas Department of Public Safety and in the local department on crime-scene search and general investigative work.

(The 4-22-64 testimony of Dallas Crime Scene Search Section Chief Lt. J. C. Day)

So now let's go through the various accounts of what did happen, and see if we can spot changes in the story. .

Newsman Robert MacNeil on NBC around 11:00 PM CST on 11-22-63

“Dallas Police Chief Jess Curry has recently reported that his men have found a partial fingerprint on the rifle believed used in the assassination. The weapon will be sent to Washington to assure proper handling of the print.”

Well, okay. This appears to be a reference to the main print on the trigger guard, which Lt. Day first developed in the school book depository.

Newsman David Brinkley on NBC around 12:30 AM CST on 11-23-63

"The Dallas Police reported a moment ago that the foreign-made rifle believed to have been used in the shooting of the President had no fingerprints on it but has been sent here to the FBI laboratory in Washington for an analysis".

So why the change? As Lt. Day would later admit, he just couldn't bring himself to conclude the trigger guard print was Oswald's. Well, this is interesting, no? Rather than admit there is a print that they can't match to Oswald's prints, someone in the DPD has decided to claim there are NO prints. Period...

But as for the honchos leading the investigation, they've decided that mum's the word...

NBC Transcript of Post-Midnight 11-23-63 Interviews of Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry and Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade (CE 2142, 24H750)

Q. Any particular thing that he said that caused you to file the charges regarding the President's death against him?

Curry. No, sir. Physical evidence is the main thing that we are relying upon.

Q. Can you name the physical evidence?

(No response)

(Later, 24H751)

Q. Mr. Wade, could you elaborate on the physical evidence?

Wade. Well, we've gone on into some other things that were gathered; the gun is one of them.

(seconds later)

Q. Are there any fingerprints on the gun?

(No response)

That there really were no prints found on the gun, moreover, was repeated in the mainstream press the next day.

11-23-63 UPI Report on the Evidence Against Oswald (found in, among many newspapers, the New Castle News)

"Police also found the imported rifle with the telescopic sight which fired the fatal bullet into Kennedy's brain, but they said there were no fingerprints on it."

JAHS Chapter 5