Why CBS Covered up the JFK Case (pt1)

[Tom Neal]

I'm merely pointing out to you that you are wrong when you utilize the word "NEGATIVE" when describing the results of Oswald's NAA/Barium/Antimony cast tests. Some of those elements WERE present on the casts. Therefore, the casts showed a POSITIVE result.

VP,

A NEGATIVE test result does NOT mean a ZERO AMOUNT. If the count is below the minimum required level, then as everyone has already told you, the result is NEGATIVE. If the cheek test results are negative, then the subject did not fire a rifle.

Once again, you are dead wrong, but unable to admit it!

Tom

Edited April 26, 2016 by Tom Neal

[Tom Neal]

While researching the paraffin tests, I came across a study which showed the level of residue on Oswald's hands was far more suggestive that he'd fired a revolver than that he'd merely handled one. That's one of the reasons I came to conclude the tests suggested he'd killed Tippit, but not Kennedy.

Pat,

When you say Paraffin tests, are you referring to the nitrate tests or the NAA tests?

I don't think it's been mentioned, but the reason the NAA test was run later than normal was because there were no plans to perform it until LHO tested negative with the standard nitrate tests.

Disagree with you statement that the test is "suggestive". If too much time has passed then it is INVALID. No conclusions or suggestions can be drawn. Period.

Tom

Edited April 26, 2016 by Tom Neal

[James DiEugenio]

Sandy:

What I was saying is that the nitrate test is valid in the sense that that rifle does give off plentiful gases when its fired. Therefore, the idea that Bugliosi and the FBI try to pawn off, that it does not, is false.

And Guinn admitted this many times.

What DVP did was he quoted Aynesworth, not a reliable source, to try and say to Ben that it did not.

[James DiEugenio]

Pat:

I agree. There is no other way to explain Gallagher's odd behavior.

[Pat Speer]

I re-arranged the Feinman documents on my site, and added in a few captions for context.

http://www.patspeer.com/rare-files/feinman-cbs-documents

[Pat Speer]

While researching the paraffin tests, I came across a study which showed the level of residue on Oswald's hands was far more suggestive that he'd fired a revolver than that he'd merely handled one. That's one of the reasons I came to conclude the tests suggested he'd killed Tippit, but not Kennedy.

Pat,

When you say Paraffin tests, are you referring to the nitrate tests or the NAA tests?

I don't think it's been mentioned, but the reason the NAA test was run later than normal was because there were no plans to perform it until LHO tested negative with the standard nitrate tests.

Disagree with you statement that the test is "suggestive". If too much time has passed then it is INVALID. No conclusions or suggestions can be drawn. Period.

Tom

I discuss both the paraffin tests for nitrates and the NAA tests for GSR on my site. I wrote this chapter to bring everyone discussing this stuff using WC testimony, (e.g. Bugliosi), out of the dark ages.

http://www.patspeer.com/chapter4e%3Acastsofcontention

And yes, what I wrote was true. The paraffin test for nitrates was conducted later than preferred. The NAA test for GSR was still in the experimental stage. As a result, the NAA for GSR wasn't conducted for more than a month, but it didn't matter, as the GSR was captured in the paraffin.

As far as your final contention, this is incorrect, IMO. Most GSR tests are conducted within 4 hours or so. Beyond that, the assumption is that the suspect could have come in contact with something else, and thereby received a false positive, or washed his hands or face, and thereby received a false negative. In Oswald's case, he was in custody within an hour and a quarter of his supposedly shooting Kennedy, and a half hour or so of his supposedly shooting Tippit. He wasn't given the paraffin test for another six hours, however. And yet, his hands had plenty of residue but his face did not. This suggests that the passage of time had little or nothing to do with the lack of GSR on Oswald's cheek. Guinn was able to detect GSR on the faces of shooters up to 24 hours later. Studies suggest GSR should have been found on Oswald's cheek, should he have fired a rifle. And yet there was no GSR.

As stated, the NAA test for GSR was akin to a polygraph test. Oswald's passing this test by no means proves he didn't shoot Kennedy. But it was suggestive of this, and the public should have been told about this... And the excess barium on the back of the cast should have been investigated as well.

Edited April 26, 2016 by Pat Speer

[John Crites]

The MC gives of a lot of gasses and/or gun powder residue when fired.

And when injecting, a lot of smoke comes out of the chamber

In fact, I had to clean my glasses.

Didn't that also happen to someone testing the rifle for the gov? - needed to clean his glasses between firings?

Anyway, the tests, revealed Oswald did not fire the rifle. That's that. No more needs to be written about this.

If the testing would have turned out against Oswald, the results would have been written up on page 1 of the WR. And, Life Magazine would have printed a special issue titled:

The paraffin tests that proved Oswald fired the rifle.

this CBS story in amazing; what the MSM will do to lie to the public. I hope you all get back to that subject exclusively.

[Tom Neal]

DELETED

Edited April 26, 2016 by Tom Neal

[Tom Neal]

The paraffin test for nitrates was conducted later than preferred.

Most GSR tests are conducted within 4 hours or so - the NAA for GSR wasn't conducted for more than a month

Pat,

Do you mean that the paraffin cast must be made within "4 hours or so"? Because that is not what you are saying. You appear to be using the term GSR tests for both the nitrate tests and for the NAA tests.

Can you briefly restate your point using "Nitrate Test" and "NAA Test" as the two types of tests.

According to my son who works as a materials scientist, currently holds a Masters degree in the subject, and will receive his PhD in this field in two months, your opinion is pure speculation. Once a test exceeds its time limit its accuracy does not 'taper off' in a linear fashion as you believe. It could do anything...

Also, do you agree that the majority of scientists NOW regard NAA as junk science?

Tom

Edited April 26, 2016 by Tom Neal

[David Von Pein]

Sandy:

What I was saying is that the nitrate test is valid in the sense that that rifle does give off plentiful gases when its fired. Therefore, the idea that Bugliosi and the FBI try to pawn off, that it does not, is false.

And Guinn admitted this many times.

What DVP did was he quoted Aynesworth, not a reliable source, to try and say to Ben that it did not.

What a load of BS there. The ONLY reason I quoted from Aynesworth's article at my webpage below (after finding it in Pat Speer's article) was to emphasize the "7 out of 8 negative" results that Dr. Guinn got when he did the 8 PARAFFIN tests for NITRATES. (Not the NAA tests.)

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2014/01/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-583.html

I never even MENTIONED anything about "gases". And the excerpt from Aynesworth that I quoted doesn't mention that word either. You just made that up to make it look like I was being dishonest regarding the Aynesworth quote. Disgraceful, Jim.

You, however, Jim, WERE hiding some of the facts in Post 213 in this thread when you failed to mention that the Aug. 28 New York newspaper story didn't put in ALL of the Aynesworth quote. (Probably because you didn't even notice the "..." in the story and didn't even realize something had been cut out of it. I didn't notice it either, until looking further into it yesterday.)

Edited April 26, 2016 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

You have been shown to be "economical with the truth", Von Pein. In future, any dubious, misleading comment by anybody will be known as a "Von Peiny". Congratulations, you have entered the Lexicon of the Assassination story.

Oh, brother.

You need to re-read this whole thread again, Ray (starting with Post #213). Because something very interesting happened at that point, which I pointed out in a subsequent post of mine (which you apparently never saw, or just ignored).....

Here's what I said....

"Everybody go to Jim's Post #213 in this discussion thread.

After reading it (and my follow-up reply to it), it becomes fairly obvious that DiEugenio hasn't yet been able to figure out that I was talking about TWO DIFFERENT KINDS OF TESTS when I quoted from Pat Speer's article (where he quoted from the Aynesworth article re: Guinn).

DiEugenio, naturally, wants to make it look like Aynesworth was misquoting Guinn (or that Aynesworth just flat-out lied in his article). But the other articles cited by Speer LEAVE OUT the part about Guinn "repeating" the tests -- with only the second tests (the NAA tests) resulting in all 8 tests being "positive".

No deception by anyone there. (Except maybe by the person who inserted the three dots [the ellipsis] in the August 28 article.) There were two different sets of tests with wholly different results.

[...]

Please note the critical part that is left out (via the "...") in the version of this story that was printed in the New York World Sun & Telegram on August 28, 1964 (compared to the 8/31/64 Aynesworth version that appeared in the Dallas paper)....

The Aug. 28 version:

"One person fired the rifle on eight occasions...it was positive in all eight cases and showed a primer on both hands and both cheeks."

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Aug. 31 (Aynesworth) version:

"One person fired the rifle on eight different occasions and each time was given the paraffin test. 'Only one out of the eight experiments gave a positive identification,' Guinn said. Then they repeated the experiment using radioactivity. 'It was positive in all eight cases, and showed a primer on both hands and cheeks,' he said."

~~~~~~~~~~~

So, it would seem as if the tests were both POSITIVE and NEGATIVE. All of them being positive after the test was "repeated" for the NAA tests. But only one of the results was positive when tested ONLY for nitrates.

So citing only the August 28th story is misleading, because we're really talking about TWO different kinds of tests -- Nitrate & NAA."

[End Quote.]

So, Ray, who is it again who you think is being "economical with the truth"?

Edited April 26, 2016 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

If the cheek test results are negative, then the subject did not fire a rifle.

So, Tom, you think it was absolutely impossible for a gunman, after he had shot at somebody, to have washed (or wiped off) his face in order to remove most of the barium and antimony deposits? Is that correct?

Edited April 26, 2016 by David Von Pein

[Sandy Larsen]

"Barium and antimony were found on the cheek casts. .... The casts from Oswald bore elements--namely, barium and antimony--which were present in the powder residues from both the rifle, and revolver cartridges. .... I found that there was more barium and antimony on the inside surface of the cast than you would find on the cheek of an individual who had recently washed his cheek. However, the significance of this antimony and barium on the inside of the cheek is not known." -- John F. Gallagher (FBI)

David, lets break down Gallagher's statement to see what it tells us:

I found that there was more barium and antimony on the inside surface of the cast than you would find on the cheek of an individual who had recently washed his cheek.

This sentence, standing alone, makes it sound like Oswald fired the gun. Because his cheek had antimony and barium on it, more than what a newly washed cheek would have.

However, the significance of this antimony and barium on the inside of the cheek is not known.

Gallagher backs away from what his first sentence implies. Why? Because the levels of those elements on the inside of the cast were roughly the same as the levels on the outside. This means that Oswald's cheek apparently added very little of these elements to the inside of the cast.

So the barium and antimony found on the inside of the cast (the part that made contact with Oswald's cheek) had no significance as far as Oswald goes.

Of course, the fact that the cast had barium and antimony all over it begs the questions as to how these elements were introduced to it. One also has to wonder how much of these elements we are talking about. We know from the testimony only that it was more than what would have been deposited by a newly washed cheek. And that it was deposited all over.

[Pat Speer]

The paraffin test for nitrates was conducted later than preferred.

Most GSR tests are conducted within 4 hours or so - the NAA for GSR wasn't conducted for more than a month

Pat,

Do you mean that the paraffin cast must be made within "4 hours or so"? Because that is not what you are saying. You appear to be using the term GSR tests for both the nitrate tests and for the NAA tests.

Can you briefly restate your point using "Nitrate Test" and "NAA Test" as the two types of tests.

According to my son who works as a materials scientist, currently holds a Masters degree in the subject, and will receive his PhD in this field in two months, your opinion is pure speculation. Once a test exceeds its time limit its accuracy does not 'taper off' in a linear fashion as you believe. It could do anything...

Also, do you agree that the majority of scientists NOW regard NAA as junk science?

Tom

NAA is not junk science, Tom. The use of NAA for bullet lead analysis is, however, considered "junk science," in that its value was greatly over-represented by the FBI and others for a very long time. But this wasn't because the tests were inaccurate. It was because the underlying principle--that boxes of bullets and types of bullets had unique characteristics, and that NAA could prove a bullet was from a particular box--was just not true.

And yet, even so, the tests were of suggestive value. If I recall, the recent studies debunking NAA for bullet lead showed that but one of thirty randomly selected M/C bullets matched the Connally wrist fragment on antimony.

As far as the NAA tests for GSR, they were phased out in the 70's and 80's when a cheaper and easier test for GSR became available, but are still considered scientific, and admissible in a court of law.

As far as the time delay between the shooting and Oswald's being covered with paraffin, I decided to refer back to a top resource on this subject, chapter 4d of my website.

From chapter 4d:

At approximately 8:55 PM CST on 11-22-63--a bit more than 8 hours after President Kennedy had been slain on a Dallas street--Dallas crime lab detective W. E. Barnes coats Oswald's hands and cheek with paraffin. He then cuts the casts off for testing. Although studies have suggested that gunshot residue tests should be performed within six hours of a shooting, that Oswald has been in police custody all but 1 1/4 hours of the time since the shooting, and has been prevented from washing his hands or his face, and is suspected of firing his rifle 3 times and his pistol 5 times, gives us reason to believe these tests will prove helpful.

(Note: a subsequent study by Vincent Guinn will come to demonstrate that, under laboratory conditions, gunshot residue can be found on suspects as long as 24 hours after a shooting. A similar study by S.S. Krishnan published in 1974 will go further and claim "residue can remain for up to 17h during normal activity, but can be quickly removed by vigorous scrubbing with soap and water." A subsequent study by Krishnan published in 1977 would support this further by listing a homicide where gunshot residue was found on the hands of a suspect 24 hours after the shooting. While Oswald's odyssey after the shooting was far from what one would expect to find in a laboratory, it was also far less taxing than 17h of normal activity. As a consequence there is nothing in his saga to make one think the residue on his hands, face, and clothes that would be apparent should he have fired a rifle, would have vanished. From May 31 to June 3, 2005, the FBI crime lab held a symposium on gunshot residue analysis. One of the issues discussed was time limits, a time after which the various crime labs present at the symposium would refuse to conduct a test for gunshot residue. According to a summary of this symposium, found on the FBI's website, "Many participants stated that an acceptable cutoff time is 4 to 6 hours after the shooting event, whereas some felt that up to 8 hours was appropriate. Still others were comfortable accepting lifts taken more than 12 hours after the shooting." It was also noted that the FBI's cut-off was 5 hours. A 2006 article on Scienceevidence.com similarly notes that in Saunders v the State of Texas, Aug. 12 2006, "The State’s expert...testified that the time guideline for gunshot residue tests is four hours because of the diminished likelihood of finding the elements necessary for a positive result. The expert testified that it was possible, however, for the test to produce a positive finding even after six or eight hours, but such findings are described as inconclusive. They are not referred to as 'unreliable,' however, because the problem is the likelihood of the evidence disappearing, not the presence of a false positive." This suggests that, by today's standards, the test on Oswald was performed too late to be considered conclusive, but that a positive result would nevertheless suggest his guilt.)

[Tom Neal]

Pat Speer said:

"Many participants stated that an acceptable cutoff time is 4 to 6 hours after the shooting event,

whereas some felt that up to 8 hours was appropriate. Still others were comfortable accepting lifts

taken more than 12 hours after the shooting."

The expert testified that it was possible, however, for the test to produce a positive finding even

after six or eight hours, but such findings are described as inconclusive.

At approximately 8:55 PM CST on 11-22-63--a bit more than 8 hours after President Kennedy had been slain

End of PS quote

Since when is 25 minutes "a bit more?" That is a significant part of 8 hours. After 8 hours, "Many" and "Some" say no,

and "still others" are comfortable. How many in a "still others?" That is a seriously weak argument.

Is there any mention in your research regarding the number of shots fired v. the amount of GSR expected? Surely, after

5 shots, an "inconclusive" result *suggests* that LHO did NOT fire a handgun, more than it suggests that he did.

From your research, did LHO test stronger on his right hand than his left? How about his palms v. the backs of his hands?

This is important information, especially when you find something "suggestive"in an "inconclusive" result.

Edited April 27, 2016 by Tom Neal