‘Stunning’ new FBI study casts doubt Warren Commission's

[Malcolm Ward]

Lee Harvey Oswald was linked to the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle alleged to have been used to shoot President Kennedy by the hair and fiber analysis of FBI expert Paul Stombaugh. The Warren Commission’s final report drew conclusions from Stombaugh’s testimony that buttressed assertions about Oswald’s guilt, particularly the association between hair and fiber evidence allegedly tying Oswald to the rifle.

The Commission considered Stombaugh’s testimony of “probative value,” the report stated.

But a devastating recent study by the Justice Department and the FBI shows that close analysis of cases involving hair and fiber testing raises grave concerns about the role of similar scientific testimony by law enforcement experts in criminal convictions.

Read full story here.

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/new-fbi-study-hair-analysis-warren-commission/#comment-754934

[Pat Speer]

Stombaugh was actually pretty careful in his testimony, and never claimed the fibers found on the rifle butt definitely came from Oswald's shirt. This didn't stop the media from claiming otherwise, of course.

As far as the recent flurry of stories going after the FBI's crime lab...this is basically an echo of what happened some years ago, when a few whistleblowers from within the crime lab came forward and admitted a number of their peers were overstating the significance of evidence in order to help prosecutors get convictions. The justice department investigated and found this to be true. This, then, opened the door for a re-appraisal of some of the more dubious techniques used by the crime lab. This led, ultimately, to the abandonment of comparative bullet lead analysis.

The recent revelations are basically that the problem was wider in scope than previously acknowledged, and that bite-mark analysis and fiber analysis, among others. are on pretty shaky ground, scientifically speaking.