THE BULLET FRAGMENTS IN GOVERNOR CONNALLY:
WERE THERE TOO MANY TO HAVE COME FROM CE 399
The following is from John Lattimer's KENNEDY AND LINCOLN,
pp. 285-288.
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So-called Pristine Bullet Is Not Pristine; It Is Both
Flattened and Bent
This bullet, if seen only in a side view, which has
been widely republished by critics of the Warren Commission
report, appears to be deformed very little. In fact, its
apparent lack of deformity permitted critics to describe it
inaccurately as a pristine bullet.
Assassination buffs have tried to discredit the Warren
Commission report deduction that bullet 399 could come out
with so little deformity after doing all this dirty work in
two victims. They have even elected to try to discredit the
bullet itself, without inspecting it themselves.
When I actually picked up this bullet and inspected it,
I found it to be flattened on its rear end to a significant
degree, as if from a severe blow on one side. (Photographs
taken from the side do not show this flattening.) It is also
slightly bent, on its long axis.
The soft lead at the base of bullet 399 appeared to be
scooped out slightly on one side, with fine transverse
scratch marks across the base in the direction of the
scooping effect. Some of the soft lead of the interior of
the bullet still projected slightly from the base of the
bullet, at the edge toward which the scooping effect led
(see arrow in figure 109, left lower end). This extruded bit
of lead lay on the side of the bullet away from the
flattened side.
That bullet 399 was fired from Oswald's rifle has been
verified by tests done by the FBI laboratory staff, who
found that the rifling scratches on bullet 399 conformed
exactly to the rifling scratches on the test bullets fired
from the same gun. No one appears to have contested this
point.
Were the Four Fragments in Connally Excessive?
Critics also contended that the four fragments of
bullet seen in the preoperative X-rays of Connally s wrist
and thigh were too many to be produced from the amount of
lead estimated to be missing from bullet 399, that is, 2.2
grains. Again, they said this without checking for its
validity. Once more it appeared to me and my sons that we
could contribute answers to this question.
It would be necessary, it seemed to us at once,
carefully to weigh 100 of the sample bullets. These would
have to be identical to those fired by Oswald.
First, however, I closely examined the fragments of the
bullets removed from Kennedy's head, from Connally's wrist,
and from the automobile. Neutron activation analysis
revealed that the wrist fragments all came from bullet 399.
All the other bullet fragments, from the Presidents brain
and from the floor of the car, came from the head bullet No
other bullets were represented in the car. The unfired
cartridge found in Oswald's rifle was next examined at the
National Archives. After considerable difficulty, I
obtained a substantial supply of exactly the same cartridges
as Oswald had used. Around 1954, four lots of these
cartridges had been manufactured. I was finally able to
procure samples from lots 6000, 6001, 6002, and 6003, and
the FBI obtained samples from lots 6000 and 6003, all of
which proved consistent and reliable. One hundred of these
bullets were pulled from cartridges, and my son Jon weighed
them on a precision balance in the laboratories of the
Englewood School for Boys. The weights ranged from 159.80
grains for the lightest bullet to 161.50 grains for the
heaviest, with an average weight of 160.844 grains and a
median weight of 160.80 grains.
This compared fairly closely with the weight range of
three sample bullets weighed by the FBI laboratory and
reported by firearms expert Robert Frazier. He found them to
weigh 160.85 grains, 161.1 grains, and 161.5 grains, with an
average weight of 161.15 grains, whereas our larger sample
yielded a mean weight of 160.84 grains.
Since bullet 399 weighed 158.6 grains when found, we
have assumed that it lost between 1.2 grains and 2.9 grains,
with a mean probability of 2.2 grains.
Compressing a Bullet Like 399 Squeezes Soft Gray Lead from
the Rear End
Next, we compressed a bullet like Warren Commission
Exhibit 399 sideways in a special vice until its
configuration was as close as possible to that of bullet
399. This required great force because of the high
structural density of these bullets, but it did cause the
softer lead from the center of the bullet to be extruded
from the open rear of the encompassing jacket (which was
made of a tougher, copper-colored gilding metal) much as
toothpaste is extruded from a tube.
The extruded leaden metal was then sliced off flush
with the base of the bullet and the cylindrical fragment
weighed. It was found to weigh exactly 2.1 grains, almost
precisely the same as the weight of lead estimated to be
missing from the base of bullet 399.
The extruded cylinder of lead weighing 2.1 grains was
first placed on one of our test wrists in the same location
as the large fragment seen on the X-rays of Connally's
wrist. Three additional particles the same size as the other
particles in Connally were then removed from the extruded
cylinder and arranged in the same configuration as those
seen on his X- rays of the wrist and thigh, and pictures
were taken for comparison. The density of the materials was
the same as from a bullet like 399.
It was seen that the largest fragment from our test
bullet was slightly larger than the largest fragment in
Connally.
Next, Dr. Myron Tannenbaum, our pathologist, sliced the
remainder of this extruded cylinder of metal into thin
fragments, each approximately the same size as those seen in
Connally's X-rays, to see how many such fragments could be
obtained from it.
Fragments from Our 2.1-grain Sample of Test Bullet Lead
Compared with Fragments from Bullet 399
A grand total of forty-one such fragments (slices) were
made from the extruded metal, as compared with the total of
only four fragments seen in Connally's arm (three fragments)
and leg (one fragment) X-rays. It should be noted that while
one of the fragments in Connally's wrist was about twice the
diameter of our test slices, the other three were much
smaller than our slices.
For those who might argue that bullet 399 in its
unfired state might have weighed only as much as our
lightest sample bullet, namely 159.8 grains, we still have
the fact that twenty-two such slices could have been
produced from the 1.2 grains of metal that would have been
involved.
At the other extreme, if it were assumed that bullet
399 happened to weigh as much as our heaviest sample bullet,
161.5 grains, then fifty-three slices might have been
produced from the missing portion.
It must be pointed out that only one of the four
Connally fragments was slightly thicker than those from our
sample of forty-one, and that certainly the number of
metallic fragments was not a valid criterion for judging how
much weight was missing from bullet 399. Using the actual
amount of metal (2.1 grains) extruded from our test bullet,
we were able to produce forty-one fragments from it.
Next, the fragments extruded from the experimental
bullet were examined as to appearance, color, and texture,
and were found to be a similar lead-gray color (containing
none of the copper color of the bullet jackets) and to be of
the same texture as the fragment removed from Connally's
wrist. In both cases the fragments appeared to be extruded
soft lead like that from the centers of both the test bullet
and bullet 399.
The experiment of compressing bullets to the same
extent as bullet 399 was repeated ten times to rule out
possible gross differences in the malleability of the
materials in different bullets. The results were closely
similar in every sample tested.
