Well, well, it turns out that one member of the Warren Commission (WC) and one of the WC attorneys knew that neutron activation analysis (NAA) had found no traces of nitrates on the paraffin mold of Oswald’s cheek, and that this meant he had not fired a rifle on the day of the assassination. WC attorney Norman Redlich advised WC member Alan Dulles about the NAA results in an internal memo, a memo that came to light only after a FOIA lawsuit filed by Harold Weisberg. Said Redlich,
“At best, the analysis shows that Oswald may have fired a pistol, although this
is by no means certain. … There is no basis for concluding that he also fired a rifle.”
(Memo from Redlich to Dulles, 7/2/1964)
This contradicts the WC’s later claim that nitrates were found on both sides of the paraffin cast of Oswald’s cheek and that therefore the paraffin test was “unreliable.”
The documents released by Weisberg’s FOIA lawsuit also reveal that the FBI arranged for a control test of the validity of the NAA paraffin test of Oswald’s cheek and found NAA to be 100% reliable in detecting nitrate traces. Since the test required a nuclear reactor, the test was done on the FBI’s behalf at the Atomic Energy Commission’s Oak Ridge facility. Seven marksmen fired a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle once and then three times in rapid succession, and then underwent an NAA paraffin test. In every single case, NAA detected substantial amounts of nitrates in their cheek paraffin molds. In other words, all seven cheek paraffin casts tested positive for nitrates, just as they should have (Weisberg, Post Mortem, 1975, pp. 436-438; see also FBI HQ JFK File, 62–109060–5; FBI HQ Oswald File, 105–82555–94).
The Weisberg-released documents show that FBI expert Cortlandt Cunningham lied through his teeth about the paraffin tests in his WC testimony. Yet, WC apologists still cite Cunningham’s testimony to justify their rejection of the negative paraffin results on Oswald’s cheek cast.
Moreover, in the Oak Ridge control test, two of the seven shooters also underwent the standard diphenylamine paraffin test, the same kind of test the Dallas police used, and in both cases their cheek casts tested positive for nitrates (General Atomic Report GA-6152 to the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, pp. 10-11). Also, all seven shooters had to wait three or four hours after firing the rifle before the paraffin molds were made of their cheeks.
Dr. David Wrone, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin, says the following about Oswald’s paraffin test:
Paraffin tests test on a well-known fact that when a rifle is fired, gases blow
back on the shooter’s face and hands, depositing detectable residues. At midnight
on November 22, the Dallas police performed the normal tests on Oswald to
detect any deposits, using warm liquid paraffin on his right cheek and both hands
to make casts. As it hardened, the paraffin would remove and capture any deposits
from his skin and pores. Police sent the casts to Dr. Martin F. Mason, director of the
Dallas City-County Criminal Investigative Laboratory at Parkland Memorial Hospital,
who at 10:45 AM on November 23 tested them with reagent diphenyl-benzidine.
The results showed “no traces of nitrates” on the right cheek, which meant Oswald
had not fired a rifle. . . .
In its Report the Commission dismisses paraffin tests by asserting that “a positive
reaction is . . . valueless” in showing a suspect fired a weapon and thus “unreliable.”
This is disingenuous. To be sure, ink, paper, and many other common objects that
Oswald’s hands touched that day during the normal course of his work could have
caused a positive reaction, but as the Commission’s own official evidence proved,
the absence of traces is exculpatory. Oswald’s cheek had none; he had not fired a rifle.
Not satisfied with the Dallas testing, the FBI in its laboratory also performed a more
refined spectrographic test of the samples, a scientific test used by law enforcement for
60 years in similar cases. The FBI lab drew the same conclusion about residues on the
cheek. Then, under pressure from the Commission, the FBI submitted the paraffin casts
to a third, even more sophisticated test. They took the samples to the Atomic Energy
Commission facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. . . .
Upon receiving word of the findings, FBI headquarters immediately ordered its agents
not to release or make known the results to anyone in order “to protect the Bureau”. . . .
Nevertheless, after a bitterly contested lawsuit that lasted ten years, critic Harold
Weisberg and his attorney James Lesar obtained the NAA raw data and the results from
the bureau and the Oak Ridge authorities.
Weisberg discovered an additional element to the tests that was devastating for
the official findings. The FBI had used a control in making the tests. Seven different
men had fired the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, and NAA officials had made paraffin casts
of their cheeks, which were then tested for residues by the reactor. The control firings
had deposited heavy residues on the control cheeks. Oswald’s check cast had no such
residues or any traces whatsoever. He had not fired a rifle. (The Zapruder Film:
Reframing JFK’s Assassination, University Press of Kansas, 2003, pp. 171-172)
We all know that if Oswald’s paraffin cheek cast had tested positive for nitrates in the DPD diphenyl-benzidine paraffin test, in the FBI spectrographic paraffin test, and in the Oak Ridge NAA paraffin test, the WC would have hailed this as powerful evidence that Oswald fired a rifle on 11/22/1963, and WC apologists would still be parroting this position to this day. But, since Oswald’s cheek cast tested negative for nitrates in all three of those tests, WC apologists bend over backward to not only ignore the negative result but to discredit even the NAA paraffin test, even though the FBI’s own control test found that the NAA paraffin test was 100% reliable for detecting traces of nitrates.
