ROBERT HARRIS SAID:
David, I can't believe how hard you are trying to distort what I said. Why do you feel compelled to twist my words to make it appear that I said others "implied" that [Audrey Bell's] initials were forged?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, Robert, you're correct (this time). And that's precisely why yesterday I deleted my two separate posts that I made at both the acj & aaj newsgroups that contained that comment about others thinking Bell's initials were "forged".
Perhaps you are unaware that I deleted both of those posts many hours before you wrote your last post concerning this matter. They have been deleted off of the Google Groups server anyway. I can't control all the other servers, however. But, I did delete those two posts, because I agree with you that the comment wasn't totally germane to this topic.
ROBERT HARRIS SAID:
David, you have been asserting over and over again that the Secret Service agents who refused to sign off on CE399 failed to initial the bullet that Tomlinson found. How did you make that discovery, David?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Simple. Those Secret Service people (Johnsen and Rowley) said in June 1964 that they could not positively identify CE399 as the exact bullet they each handled on 11/22/63. And that's because their initials obviously are NOT on that bullet. Otherwise, they would have seen their individual markings on the bullet (just like FBI agent Elmer Todd did; Todd saw his mark on CE399 and said so in the FBI report that can be found in CE2011, at 24 H 412).
Quite obviously, the Secret Service men who handled the bullet didn't feel the need to initial the bullet at all. The only people who put their mark on the bullet were the FBI people.
Naturally, all CTers will claim that this breaks the chain of custody entirely (by not having Richard Johnsen's or James Rowley's initials on CE399). But, of course, it doesn't break the chain at all. If Oswald had stood trial for JFK's murder, the prosecuting attorney would have merely called each man who handled the bullet to the stand and asked them if they had received a whole bullet from another man on November 22.
The answers from these witnesses, quite obviously, would establish the fact that each man in the chain had, indeed, received a whole bullet from another man on 11/22/63.
And the fact that Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen, and Rowley said (in CE2011) that they could not positively identify CE399 doesn't mean that CE399 WASN'T the bullet that those four men handled on November 22nd.
And the answer to this is really easy too -- HOW COULD those four men have said with ironclad 100% certainty that CE399 was the EXACT same bullet they each handled when they had no identifying marks on the bullet to show it was the exact bullet?
If any of those men had stated: "Yes, I know that is the exact bullet I touched on November 22", they would have been silly and disingenuous. Because that whole bullet--CE399--pretty much looked like ANY OTHER rifle bullet to those four men. Therefore, there's no way they could have stamped CE399 as THE EXACT BULLET they touched on November 22.
But the totality of evidence certainly indicates that CE399 WAS, indeed, the same bullet those men failed to positively identify as the stretcher bullet.
However, to a conspiracy theorist who is bent on ignoring the Single-Bullet Theory, the above logic regarding the very obvious reason for why Tomlinson, Wright, Johnsen, and Rowley couldn't possibly have positively identified CE399 will also be totally ignored (or misunderstood).
Right, Bob?
David Von Pein
May 18, 2010
