Warren Omission: Flunking the Paraffin Test

The Commission and FBI suppressed the results of high-tech forensic analysis indicating Oswald never fired a rifle on Nov. 22, 1963

A Mannlicher-Carcano M91/38 bolt-action carbine rifle on permanent display in the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas. The model is the same as the one allegedly used by Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, located in the National Archives in Washington, DC (Credit: Carol M. Highsmith/LOC.gov)

As the 60^th anniversary of the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy arrives this week, JFK Facts is providing daily analyses of the commission’s work.

While reaching different conclusions about the nature of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Warren Commission in September 1964 and the House Select Committee on Assassinations in January 1979 concurred with each other that Lee Harvey Oswald had struck JFK with a WWI-vintage 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. Yet both panels also ignored much “reasonable doubt” about Oswald having fired a rifle at all.

The young ex-defector to the USSR himself insisted throughout his time in Dallas police custody that he “didn’t shoot anybody,” and substantial evidence supported Oswald’s declarations in his own defense. Unfortunately for historical truth, the Warren Commission omitted such evidence, some of it in the form of compelling forensic test results. Political considerations trumped science.