No JFK Shirt Material on Bullets

By KAREN GULLO Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Testing of microscopic fibers found on a fragment of the bullet that killed President Kennedy revealed that the material didn't come from his clothing, according to a report released Friday by the National Archives.

Some assassination researchers say the finding supports the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in the Nov. 22, 1963, shooting of Kennedy in Dallas. Others say the results are not significant because the fragments have been contaminated over the years.

If the fibers had come from Kennedy's shirt, then it would mean that the fragments came from another bullet, not the one that struck his head. That would suggest another bullet was fired, possibly by a second shooter, researchers say.

A panel of scientists from the FBI and several government laboratories who examined the fibers concluded that they were from paper, not cloth. .

Four other bullet fragments examined were found to contain human skin and other tissue. Scientists couldn't determined what body parts the tissue came from. DNA analysis of the material was inconclusive.

The tests, which were concluded last fall, were a piece of unfinished business in the investigation of JFK's death. A firearms panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations recommended the analysis in 1979, but the committee left the suggestion out of its final report.

Second shooter theories have abounded. Assassination buffs have questioned whether a single bullet - the so-called ``magic bullet'' - could have hit Kennedy, then passed through him and wounded Texas Gov. John B. Connally, who was riding in a limousine with Kennedy at the time of the shooting.

The five fragments examined were from the nose portion of another bullet - the one that tore through Kennedy's head and caused the fatal injury. One of the fragments had fibrous material stuck to it.

``There was a theory that those little strands were possibly from Kennedy's tie or Connally's shirt,'' said John Tunheim, former chairman of the government's Assassination Records Review Board, a now-defunct federal panel.

The report released Friday bolstered the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald acted alone, Tunheim said.

But Jim Lesar, president of the private Assassination Archives and Research Center, questioned the finding. ``I don't know that this tells us anything. The integrity of the chain of possession of the fragments was abysmal.''

The bullet fragments had been stored for years in a metal cannister lined with cotton, but tests showed that material found on the bullet was not the same as the cotton from the can.

A letter released by the archives shows that the Justice Department wanted the fragments examined to test the ``assassination conspiracy theory'' of John Orr, chief of the antitrust division's Atlanta field office.

If the material was from Kennedy's shirt, tie or tie liner, there might have been a ``different trajectory than that previously identified - according to Mr. Orr's observations,'' John Keeney, acting assistant attorney general, wrote in a January 1996 letter to the FBI.

Justice Department spokesman John Russell said Orr had a ``narrow theory that this matter should be tested further.'' He couldn't specify what the theory was and said Orr would not comment.