Nano-Biotechnology

New FBI Analysis of Kennedy Bullet Points to a Second Shooter

Evidence used to rule out more than one shooter flawed

By Lucian Dorneanu, Science Editor

18th of May 2007, 12:06 GMT

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It may be the dream come true for conspiracy theory adepts in the JFK assassination. Using 21st century science, the FBI has performed a new analysis of the remains of the bullet that was used by the US government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

A research team led by a former FBI top scientist has concluded, after intensive metallurgic and forensic studies on the bullet that "the evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed."

Thus, former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James are contradicting the original analysis of now-deceased University of California at Irvine chemist Vincent P. Guinn.

The new method consisted of new statistical calculations and a modern chemical and metallurgic analysis of the lead bullets from the same batch Oswald is purported to have used. Their conclusion is that "Given the significance and impact of the JFK assassination, it is scientifically desirable for the evidentiary fragments to be re-analyzed."

For the new study, they bought the same brand and lot of bullets used by Oswald and used a new set of standards and applications to analyze the lead. As the bullets from that batch are still on the market as collectors' items, it wasn't very hard for them to compare those bullets with the one used by the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded that only one shooter, Oswald, fired the shots that killed Kennedy in Dallas.

"This finding means that the bullet fragments from the assassination that match could have come from three or more separate bullets," the researchers said. If the assassination fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely, as the additional bullet would not be attributable to the main suspect, Mr. Oswald," concluded the scientists.

The former FBI expert is among the most respected in the field, having performed complex metal analysis in major cases, like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, for more than twenty years.

TAGS:

bullet | metal | analysis | bomb

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