Overall summary of logic

  1. The spectrographic analysis done the night of the assassination was nearly worthless. At best, it showed only the broad similarities of composition mentioned in J. Edgar Hoover’s letter to Jesse Curry on 23 November 1963. No bullets or fragments could be definitely linked from these data.
  2. George Michael Evica’s conclusions drawn from these data in his 1979 book are so riddled with errors as to be useless.
  3. The FBI’s 1964 analyses of the particles by NAA were of much higher quality than recognized previously.
  4. Vincent P. Guinn’s reanalysis by NAA in 1977 involved compromises that rendered his results less useful than they appeared at first.
  5. Guinn found that the five basic fragments fell into two tight groups, one with two fragments that corresponded to the body shot, and another with three fragments that corresponded to the head shot.
  6. When the FBI’s data are corrected for systematic errors discovered by Guinn, they reveal the same two tight groups found by Guinn
  7. Measurements by Guinn on quarters of “reference” WCC/MC bullets reveal that his major indicator element, antimony, varies enough in concentration (is sufficiently heterogeneous) to make the two tight groups of fragments overlap and form one big group from which no conclusions about origins can be drawn.
  8. Taken at face value, this heterogeneity would destroy the usefulness of NAA in the JFK assassination.
  9. Counter to this is the extreme statistical improbability of having the five fragments randomly fall so tightly into the only two physically meaningful groups.
  10. The heterogeneity and the tight groupings, both of which seem to have been measured properly and calculated properly, cannot coexist as cause and effect.
  11. The obvious trial explanation is that the heterogeneity of quarters does not apply to these bullets and fragments.
  12. The FBI’s data on replicate aliquots of large fragments shows that antimony is in all cases nearly homogenous at this small scale—standard deviations of 5% within fragments, as opposed to 24% within bullets and 90% over individual bullets.
  13. This 5% within fragments strongly resembles the 3% standard deviations within the two groups of fragments and the 2%–3% from typical NAA analyses.
  14. Thus the fragments have the small heterogeneities of tiny subfragments rather than the larger heterogeneities of quarters.
  15. This would be compatible with the little fragments having been produced from irregular ends of the large particles that were recovered, i.e., very near each other.
  16. This is obviously what happened for CE 399, whose lead core remained intact except for fragments shorn from the small fraction of the lead extruded from the open, bottom end of the bullet. The little fragment would then match the remaining core, which was sampled only at the extruded end.
  17. Since only one large piece of the lead core from the head bullet was recovered, it is possible that it broke only once and that the tiny particles recovered from the rear carpet and the president’s brain all originated along this break. In fact, without another large lead core, this simple scenario has to be assumed.
  18. Thus the large heterogeneities in quarters of bullets do not apply to the fragments from the assassination, which are nearly homogeneous in antimony.
  19. If so, it is fruitless to analyze quarters of other WCC/MC bullets to try to refine the 24% heterogeneity because this figure does not apply to the fragments from the assassination.
  20. Other important consequences of this new interpretation of the NAA data include:
  1. Every fragment recovered and tested came from Oswald’s rifle to the exclusion of all other rifles.
  2. Two and only two bullets, both WCC/MC, are represented by the fragments.
  3. Both bullets were fired that day.
  4. Therefore, CE 399 was not previously fired and planted in Parkland Hospital.
  5. All the fragments are genuine, and we need not worry about chains of custody.
  6. The close match between the stretcher bullet and the fragments from Connally's wrist lends very strong support to the SBT but does not prove it.
  7. If JFK was hit from the right front, none of those fragments were found and tested.
  8. Anyone who speaks of another shooter is doing so in the complete absence of physical evidence.
  9. Dr. Guinn was right, even if he did fully justify his conclusions.
  10. With a chance of roughly one in a million of being wrong, the NAA evidence may be the strongest of the entire assassination.
  11. The sense of the simple two-bullet, one-rifle result for the fragments agrees with the sense of the two-motion, one bullet result from physical analysis of JFK's motions after the head shot. This crime was really very simple indeed.
  12. We no longer need to know the exact locations of the back wound or the entrance and exit wounds to the head in order to get the right explanation for the assassination.
  13. It is time to let this crime go and move on to new areas of research. One guy did it with a cheap rifle, and almost missed all three shots. It's time to close this chapter of American history.

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