No material from JFK's shirt on bullet fragments, tests show
By Karen Gullo, Associated Press, 1/21/00
WASHINGTON -- Material found on the bullet that killed President Kennedy did not come from the clothing of Kennedy or John B. Connally, according to tests conducted to shed light on whether a second shooter fired at the president.
A scientific panel concluded in a report released today by the National Archives that material on the nose of a bullet retrieved from Kennedy's limousine consisted of paper fibers and nontextile material that could not have come from Kennedy or Connally's shirt.
If it had, that would have supported theories that a second gunman was involved.
The Justice Department asked the FBI to test the fragments to determine whether the materials had any relevance to the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.
Connally, the Texas governor, was riding in Kennedy's limousine in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when the president was shot and killed. One of three shots hit Kennedy and then Connally. The Warren Commission, which conducted the official U.S. government investigation of Kennedy's slaying, concluded that Oswald was the sole gunman. Connally died in 1993.
If the material was from Kennedy's shirt, tie or tie liner, there might have been a "different trajectory than that previously identified" by the commission, said John Keeney, acting assistant attorney general, in a January 1996 letter to FBI Director Louis Freeh requesting a bureau investigation of the bullet fragments. The letter was released by the Archives along with the bullet report.
The bullet fragments had been stored for years in a metal can lined with cotton, but tests showed that material found on the bullet was not the same as the cotton from the can.
Government scientists also found human skin and tissue on four bullet fragments, "but it was not possible to establish the precise body areas of origin (e.g. scalp, torso, limb)," the report said. DNA analysis of the material was inconclusive.
The panel of scientists from the Archives, the FBI Laboratory, the Armed Forces Medical Examiner and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory had considered getting DNA samples from Kennedy and Connally family members for comparison, but ruled that out after DNA analysis proved inconclusive.
The tests were a piece of unfinished business in the investigation of Kennedy's assassination. The firearms-examination panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations had recommended the analysis in 1979, but the recommendation was left out of the committee's final report and the tests were never done.
The tests on the fragments, which are government property, began in September 1998 and were completed last fall.
