Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

APPENDIX X

Appendix X compiles the expert firearms testimony presented to the Commission. The principal witnesses were Robert A. Frazier, Cortlandt Cunningham, and Joseph D. Nicol of the FBI Firearms Identification Section, with supporting references to firearms evidence technician Joseph A. Mooney and Eugene Boone. Frazier and Ronald Simmons of the U.S. Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch also testified on rifle capability, a subject addressed earlier in the Report. The appendix cites Hatcher, Jury & Weller, “Firearms Identification, Investigation, and Evidence,” chapters 13-14, as the leading secondary reference. The cited testimony establishes the chain of custody and identification of the rifle (CE 139, 541), the recovery of the weapon on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, the matching of the rifle to cartridge cases and the bullet recovered from Governor Connally, the examination of the assassination weapon’s optics and condition, and the results of paraffin and nitrite tests. The appendix documents the FBI’s comparison of the rifle to test firings, the analysis of the cartridge case and bullet evidence (CE 139, 541), and the FBI’s reconstruction of the assassination weapon’s characteristics, and supports the Commission’s findings on rifle capability and bullet identification discussed at pages 188-194 of the Report.

第八章

Chapter VIII presents the forensic and physical evidence examined during the investigation, covering firearms identification, ballistics, fingerprints, document and handwriting analysis, photographs, wound ballistics experiments, and related scientific examinations. The chapter draws on expert testimony, laboratory analyses, and documentary exhibits to systematically evaluate the physical evidence associated with the case.