DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In 2006, shortly after reading Warren Commission counsel David W. Belin's very good 1973 book "November 22, 1963: You Are The Jury", I wrote a review for the book. I'd like to offer up this excerpt from that review now....
[Quote On:]
"[The] opening section of "You Are The Jury" is a dandy section too, with Belin systematically demolishing the oft-uttered theory by the conspiracy kooks that the paraffin test given to Lee Oswald on 11/22/63 is virtual proof of his innocence in the JFK murder.
As Belin thoroughly explains, the paraffin test given to Oswald by the Dallas Police is a completely unreliable way to determine whether or not a person has recently fired a gun....in that the nitrates that can show up via such a test can also be present on a person's hands (or elsewhere on the body) if the person has recently come into contact with other substances, like tobacco or ordinary household cleaning products (like Clorox for instance).
Plus (and this is the kicker, which destroys the "Paraffin Tests Are Reliable" claims of many conspiracists) -- Belin points out that a test was done with Oswald's own rifle, where an FBI agent fired LHO's gun and, to quote the text directly from page 18 of [Belin's] book:
"There were negative reactions on both hands and on the cheek of the FBI agent who fired the assassination weapon. Thus, we had the other side of the coin: A negative reaction from the paraffin test did not prove that a person had not fired a rifle."
Given the above results done by the FBI, how can anyone then continue to tout the paraffin procedure as being at all a convincing test, either in a pro or con manner?" -- DVP; November 22, 2006
[End 2006 Quote.]
Until today (June 27, 2014), I had not been aware of the existence of any written reports or other source material which would verify the fact that an FBI agent, after firing Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle three times, tested "negative" on his hands and cheek after being given a paraffin test.
But such verification can be located in the form of a letter written to the Warren Commission by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on April 2nd, 1964. That letter is found in Warren Commission Document No. 787. The most important part of that letter is the final paragraph, which I have highlighted in the photo below (click the picture to see the whole page of the document):
So, apparently it's the view of many conspiracy theorists that the letter we find in Commission Document No. 787 is yet another of the many alleged lies told by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover following the assassination of President Kennedy. Because it's also stated by many conspiracy believers that the negative result of Lee Harvey Oswald's paraffin test conducted on his cheek proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Oswald did not fire a rifle at JFK in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963.
Commission Document 787 indicates otherwise, however, to the dismay of the conspiracists, including Doug Horne, who thinks the negative "cheek" test on Oswald is one of the best reasons there is to believe that Oswald didn't shoot the President.
David Von Pein
June 27, 2014
PARAFFIN TESTS
(PART 2)
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