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Pat Speer

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  1. The paraffin tests were not considered reliable, even in 1963. The NAA tests are considered reliable, even today. But, as to your larger point, yes, you are correct. The tests were performed too late to be conclusive. But there was plenty of gsr on his hands, and he was not believed to have washed his face, so the negative result for antimony on his cheek is undoubtedly suggestive of his innocence. When one takes into account, moreover, that the cheek casts ended up with more barium on the control side of the cheek cast than the side that had been applied to his face, the suspicion someone tried to rig the tests is justified.
  2. Upon double-checking it is clear you are correct in that Griggs didn't say the scope had to be removed. He did say, however, that one couldn't remove the scope and barrel without mis-aligning the scope. "The main metal component consists of the barrel and the firing mechanism. The latter includes the chamber, firing pin, bolt and trigger. For the purposes of this exercise the telescopic sight, permanently screwed to the top of this metal section, can be described as being part of it. It is not necessary to remove the scope when disassembling the rifle. It is inevitable, however, that during disassembly/reassembly, the precise alignment of the scope must be affected. This may be only minimal but nevertheless, it must have an effect."
  3. The possibility exists that Oswald washed his face at the rooming house, and that the gsr on his hands came from the Tippit shooting. BUT... the housekeeper insisted he was in and out and had not visited the bathroom. AND...despite constant claims of as much, it's clear the rifle was not wiped down for fingerprints. Well...it makes little sense for Oswald--assuming he was the shooter--to not wipe down the rifle--when the study of fingerprints at crime scenes was common knowledge--and then turn around and wash his face to remove gsr--when the testing of cheeks for gsr was not nearly as commonplace or well-known--and he had no intentions of getting captured. So, perhaps he got "lucky" on two counts--he washed his face without realizing it might help him claim his innocence--AND no one noticed.
  4. Minor point, Joe. The problematic Hosty notes are clearly a draft for a report, and not notes taken down during the interrogation itself. As this draft would have to have been written within a day or two of the assassination, it still carries some weight. It raises a secondary question, moreover. Bookhout wrote a solo report and a joint report with Hosty, but Hosty wrote no solo report. The notes/draft may very well have been the draft of a report which Hosty wrote, but was destroyed. Just spit-balling here. But the thought occurs that Hosty did in fact believe Oswald had said he'd been outside, and had put this in a report. And that his superiors noticed this, and said well this isn't what Bookhout remembers! And tossed his report. Now, we can recall here that Hosty was severely reprimanded after the WR was out and about, and shipped out of town/basically demoted. And I'm wondering if there's a paper trail within the FBI's records spelling out exactly what he'd done that was so embarrassing to Lord Hoover. We know, for one, that he wasn't supposed to mention Mexico City to Oswald. And we know, for two, that he went behind the backs of his superiors at times. But I'm curious if there's any mention of his writing an inaccurate report or some such thing in his records. Now, I think Hosty actually confronted this issue in his book, and said he tried to get access to his file, but that they'd refused to give it to him, or said it had been destroyed. I don't recall. But the thought remains that there could be some evidence somewhere that he did in fact write a report and that it was then thrown in the trash.
  5. Ian Griggs bought a rifle like the one found in the building, and wrote an article and gave a number of presentations on the disassembly and re-assembly of the rifle. As I recall, Mark, among his findings was that the WC image showing the scope attached to the barrel was deceptive, as the scope would have to be removed from the barrel during disassembly, and added back on during assembly.
  6. Thanks, Martin. It's good to know someone could watch the video and appreciate it for what it is.
  7. FWIW, I get into this in Chapter 4 on my website. From looking at all the statements regarding Jack Dougherty, I came to believe he was not in the elevator that came down while Baker and Truly ran up. So who was? It may very well have been the shooter.
  8. Why thank you, Sandy. It sounds like you think there's a chance of my getting into heaven.
  9. For those with an interest, fellow Forum member Francois Carlier has recorded a discussion of ours and put it up on YouTube. This is not a research presentation. It is an informal discussion between two people with an interest in the Kennedy assassination. As proved by the video, age and cancer have taken a toll on me, and I am often forgetful. But those who know me will see that my spirit remains intact, and that lone-nutters such as Francois and conspiracy theorists such as myself can have a friendly conversation. And it is in that spirit that I bring this video to the attention of our fellow Forum members. One viewing this should not take anything we say as gospel. Or start attack threads questioning our character or intelligence. This is not propaganda designed to fool anyone. It is simply a friendly chat that I hope will inspire more friendly chats. If you can accept it for what it is...Enjoy.
  10. I make the argument on my website that they knew the answer but didn't want to deal with its repercussions. 1. They decided from the get-go that the FBI would perform the tests on the cheek cast to see if it contained gsr, and that the tests performed to see if M/C rifles leaked residue which should be found on the cheek of a shooter would be out-sourced. 2. They out-sourced these tests, the controls, to Vincent Guinn, the top scientist in the field. By outsourcing these tests, they could deny they'd hired Guinn, and Guin could deny he'd worked for them, which he did when subsequently testifying before the HSCA on the NAA he'd conducted at their request on the bullet fragments. (I found a letter from Guinn in Weisberg's files which indicated he was supposed to write a report for the HSCA on his gsr studies as well as his bullet lead studies. But, if such a report was written, it was never released. To me, this is suspicious as heck. I mean, they had Guinn perform new tests on the bullet lead--tests the FBI had performed back in '64 but had found inconclusive--but failed to have him even submit a report on the tests he himself had performed in '64, which he'd claimed were conclusive, but which had been buried by the FBI and WC. Now I've thought about this and the only thing I can come up with is that a decision was made to elevate Guinn's NAA tests for bullet lead--which Guinn now claimed supported Oswald's guilt--and conceal Guinn's tests for gsr--which had suggested Oswald's possible innocence.) 3. The FBI failed to tell the WC about their tests until a scientist who'd been spurned by the FBI told the WC such tests should be performed. The WC then asked such tests be performed and the FBI then told them they'd already performed such tests. 4. The FBI's tests were negative--as Oswald's cheek cast had sufficient barium on its surface to suggest he'd fired a rifle, but insufficient antimony, when both elements needed to be present in sufficient quantities. They said these tests were inconclusive, however, because there was more barium on the back side of the cheek cast than on the cheek side. This should have led them to investigate, IMO, as this may have come as a result of a deliberate tainting of the evidence by the Dallas PD. But they failed to do so. 5. The FBI did perform one control of their own, while using the assassination rifle. This gave them positive results. The name RF was written by these results, suggesting that the shooter was Robert Frazier, who performed the ballistic tests on the rifle. 6. Guinn's control tests gave a positive result for gsr on the cheek even when the subject was not tested for hours after firing the rifle. Guinn reported his results to the FBI, informally, in a phone call, which then recorded his results in an internal memo, and not a report that was handed over to the WC. 7. Guinn did wish to get paid for his tests, of course, and so he created a report on these tests and submitted it to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, which was exploring the commercial applications for NAA. (I was, I thought, the first researcher to find this report, and then report on it. But I later found a copy in Weisberg's papers.) 8. The FBI never told the WC about Guinn's tests, nor his results. Instead they had Cortlandt Cunningham, Frazier's partner, testify that his "personal expectation" was that no residue would leak from Oswald's rifle onto a cheek cast, and that the negative result on the nitrate test (the chemical test on the cast performed by the DPD) was therefore as expected. This concealed that his partner had participated in the FBI's tests of the cheek cast and had established that the rifle could leak residue onto the cheek. 9. A few weeks before the publication of the WR, however, Guinn, who was a bit of a showboat, bragged about his tests at an international conference. An article on his comments at this conference was then published in the states. An internal FBI memo reflects that the FBI was displeased. 10. As a result of this article, the WC asked the FBI's John Gallagher, who'd supervised their tests, to testify. Working off a script, which I found in the FBI's files, he said there was sufficient barium and antimony on the hand casts to conclude Oswald had fired a weapon, and sufficient barium on the cheek cast to conclude he'd fired a rifle, but that there was an excess of barium on the control side of the cast that made the result for the cheek cast inconclusive. His statements dodged the question--which I thought to be pertinent--of whether or not the numbers for antimony were sufficient to claim a positive result for gsr irrespective of the unusual numbers for barium. 11. Thus began a years-long quest on my part, which led to my acquisition of the materials received by Weisberg as a result of his FOIA case and my finding and studying numerous papers by Guinn, which led me to suspect his zeal for self-promotion had led him to both mis-represent the significance of the tests he performed for the HSCA, and flat-out lie about his results afterwards. 12. The NAA results for antimony on the cheek cast, to my understanding (from reading numerous articles on NAA) are negative, as there was insufficient gsr (composed of both barium and antimony) to support Oswald's guilt. While these results can not be considered conclusive, due to the delay in the tests being performed, the positive results on Oswald's hands cut into the possibility gsr had been removed from his cheek via the washing of his face and hands, or time. 13. I think we can suspect then that the test results would be presentable in a court of law, as evidence for his innocence in killing Kennedy. While the submission of these results into evidence would simultaneously support Oswald's guilt re the death of Tippit, the value of a positive result on the hands could be questioned, due to the inordinate amount of barium on the backs of the casts. (The nitrate tests gave positive results for a number of elements including barium and antimony without differentiating between them. Someone familiar with the nitrate tests, but unfamiliar with NAA protocols, then, may have thought that by sprinkling barium--which would presumably have been present in the DPD lab at Parkland Hospital, where the nitrate tests were performed--onto the casts, they were assuring a positive result when the casts were later tested by the FBI.)
  11. It is your interpretation that they lied. If we are gonna pretend everyone who said something at odds with the films and photos lied, well, then, most all your favorite witnesses lied.
  12. Greetings, Martin. Stu has been encouraging me to reach out to the scientific community for awhile now. But I have been busy battling cancer and apathy. In any event, if you find any scientists with an interest in any aspect of the case, I will gladly explain my conclusions and share materials with them.
  13. I think you are correct in that sometimes chipping occurs at an entrance, but in this case I think it's just that the photo was taken at a slight angle from the entrance hole, and that you can see the wall of the hole in the thick bone. Here is another skull fired upon by a similar rifle. This was not a cadaver skull but a live human skull--if I recall it is the skull of a prisoner killed while trying to escape. The entrance at the back of the skull gives a similar appearance. But it's just the angle of the camera.
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