Friday, August 14, 1998
FBI To Test JFK Bullet Fragments
By JOSEPH SCHUMAN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) The FBI soon should resolve a lingering question about the bullet that killed John F. Kennedy.
An FBI crime lab will try to identify a thread-like material found on a fragment of the bullet in one of the Assassination Review Board's last moves to shed light on the events of Nov. 22, 1963.
Officials from the National Archives, which has custody of all evidence from the assassination and announced the new testing Thursday, said the material's relevance to investigations of the assassination was unknown. The examination is aimed at clearing up a discrepancy left over from a previous inquiry.
The Firearms Examination Panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 recommended testing the material found on the nose of the bullet in the panel's initial typed report. That recommendation was omitted from the committee's final printed report, and the Review Board says it was unable determine the cause of that omission.
"We're following up on a recommendation made almost 20 years ago," said Review Board spokeswoman Eileen Sullivan. "We would like to see that the record is complete regarding commission exhibit No. 567."
The FBI most likely will test the material next month at its Washington laboratory, Archives official Steven Tilley said.
Gerald Posner, author of a 1993 book, "Case Closed," which investigated Kennedy's death and the inquiries around it, said he doubted the testing would shed new light on the case. But he said the testing could help alleviate a public impression that the government "has dragged its feet" in releasing all information on the assassination.
"Even if it's a big so-what, if it adds some small answer about physical evidence to the record, then great," Posner said.
The Archives itself took more than 18 months to decide to let the bullet undergo examination after the Review Board requested the test. Tilley said preservationists had to determine first whether the tests were worth risking deterioration of what they consider to be a piece of history.
The bullet, which tore through Kennedy's head and caused the fatal injury, was dug out of the president's limousine by the Secret Service shortly after the assassination. To assassination buffs, it is known as the "seat bullet." A second shot, the so-called "magic bullet," hit Kennedy and then Texas Governor John Connally, while a third hit a nearby curb.
The bullet, now in five fragments, is kept in a plastic bag inside an acid-free wooden box at an Archives facility outside Washington.
National Archives preservationists are unwilling to speculate publicly on what exactly the fibrous material is, Tilley said. It is unclear from FBI photos taken at the time of the shooting whether the material adhered to the bullet fragment after it was retrieved, perhaps from the cotton wadding that originally contained it.
Also to be examined are four other fragments, pieces of unidentified organic material that were at one point considered part of the bullet. Archives preservationists believe they could be wax, perhaps the kind used to hold displays for photographers. They know only that the fragments are not metal.
Tilley stressed that like the Review Board, the National Archives' concern is only to make public all information about the assassination.
"We're not in the business of trying to reinvestigate the assassination," he said. "What effect it may have on the interpretation of what happened in Dallas is, I think, up to others."
The Review Board, created by Congress in 1992 to increase public access to the assassination's records, will close Sept. 30, regardless of the new test's results, Sullivan said. She added that it was important the testing take place "before we close."