Cryptonym: MXWINDFALL-1
11/30/94 meeting between Ken Rahn and his case officer Christopher Jagger who used the alias of Zachary T. Huntington: "Rahn is spending a considerable amount of time, money, and effort to prove his theory of how the late President John F. Kennedy was killed by only one person firing from one direction (Lee Harvey Oswald). " (Rahn) has purchased dozens of cassette tapes of past conferences on the subject, laser disc movies, and video tapes all in an effort to prove his theories, "(Rahn) appears to case officer to be very lonely and is using this (JFK) hobby and music to fill his void. "(Rahn) daughter began college REDACTED this year and along with the loss of his wife a couple of years ago. (Rahn) is staying busy with work and hobbies." "(Case officer) could also tie in (Rahn's) interest REDACTED to this loneliness."
1995 meeting: NOC (Nonofficial cover) officers Jagger and Cordle met with MXWINDFALL-1 (W/1) at his residence REDACTED. Purpose of the meeting was to brief W/1 on his upcoming (temporary duty) to Russia for attendance at the 3rd International Meeting - Nuclear Physics for the Protection of the Environment at Dubna, Russia and to introduce NOC as his future c/o (case officer). Meeting lasted five hours and included a strong defensive briefing for high risk travel and a general discussion of intelligence requirements. Evening also included a cordial dinner at a Chinese restaurant...CI briefing: W/1 was given an overview of CI and security concerns for US travelers to Russia involved in defense related and scientific areas...Purpose was to heighten his awareness to potential approaches and to instruct him in the proper deportment while attending conference and visiting scientific facilities...(his) trip will include...attendance at a small conference on the JFK assassination in early June...W/1 has become an amateur sleuth and serious investigator of the JFK assassination. In this regard, he will be giving a credited (sic) course this fall semester at the University of Rhode Island on the scientific aspects of the JFK investigation. W/1 believes firmly in the lone gunman theory consistent with results of the Warren Commission. While this interest has no direct bearing on W/1's relationship with (CIA), it is an aspect of W/1's persona which is notable for its strength. C/O's dealing with W/1 should be prepared for W/1 surfacing this interest in great detail. File: 201-1224541."
http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/JFK.html
2003: Welcome to Kenneth A. Rahn's Academic JFK Assassination Site. It takes its "academic" name from the fact that it attempts to approach the assassination in a way that is as scholarly, dignified, and rigorous as possible. As with many other English words, "academic" has two levels of meaning here. The narrow, obvious meaning refers to the way we can study the assassination formally, as in my long-time course at the University of Rhode Island...But that is not how the JFK field has generally operated. Its "research community" remains mired in confusion because its members operate largely ad hoc — they feel their way along from point to point without a higher-level compass to guide them. They need to forget the relentless chase for details, take a few steps back, and think about what they are doing...My original interest in the assassination was in its scientific aspects, because that was what my background allowed me to approach best. I ultimately produced two monograph-length treatises, one on the neutron-activation (NAA) data from the bullets and fragments and the the other on the physics of JFK's movements after the killing head shot..."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/01/cia-crosses-over/
William Casey’s ghost haunts the Central Intelligence Agency. That ghost, a Central Intelligence Agency program revived by the late director in the 1980s, marries the spy agency to corporate America in order to gather intelligence on economics, trade, and technology. Now that the Cold War is over, agency officials have latched onto the idea of collecting clandestine economic data to justify the CIA’s inflated budget, even as the CIA’s competence–indeed, its very existence–is being questioned. And dozens of U.S. corporations–from Fortune 500 companies to small, high-tech firms–are secretly assisting the CIA, allowing the agency to place full-time officers from its operations divisions into corporate offices abroad. Serving under what is referred to as “nonofficial cover” (NOC), CIA officers pose as American businessmen in friendly countries, from Asia to Central America to Western Europe. There, they recruit agents from the ranks of foreign officials and business leaders, pilfer secrets, and even conduct special operations and paramilitary activities..One hundred and ten CIA officers currently serve as NOCs, according to a recent CIA retiree. Some of the most familiar firms in America’s corporate hierarchy, CIA sources report, have sponsored NOCs overseas: RJR Nabisco, Prentice-Hall, Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble, General Electric, IBM, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, Pan Am, Rockwell International, Campbell Soup, and Sears Roebuck.
(continued) https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/01/cia-crosses-over/
"In recent years...NOCs have increasingly turned their attention to economics. Using their business covers, they seek to recruit agents in foreign government economic ministries or gain intelligence about high-tech firms in computer, electronics, and aerospace industries. They also help track the development of critical technologies, both military and civilian. NOCs frequently stay 5, 10, or more years in one place. During that time, the NOC is truly “out in the cold.” Their contacts with control officers in the CIA station are strictly limited; they do not have access to embassy files; and they must report through secret communications channels and clandestine meetings. The NOC program is one of the CIA’s most sensitive and closely held secrets. ..."(I)f American corporate executives do lend their overseas offices to the CIA, Colby adds, “They have my strong applause. They only do it because they’re patriots.” The CIA has used private U.S. companies for cover overseas since its inception in 1947. “When the agency was being put together in the late 1940s, they made pretty extensive use of nonofficial cover,” says Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a former CIA deputy director. Since it was cheaper to station spies in the U.S. embassy, cost-cutting led the CIA to scale down the number of NOCs by the 1960s. The program shrank further after ITT’s involvement with the CIA in the 1973 military coup against Salvador Allende’s government in Chile was revealed. “That clearly scared a lot of U.S. corporations,” Inman says. But events in the 1970s revived the use of NOCs. Investigative journalists and CIA defectors like Philip Agee publicized the fact that a cursory study of the State Department roster could identify CIA officers in any embassy, and publications like Counterspy even named individual CIA personnel.
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Commentary_on_Dr_Ken_Rahns_Work_on_the_JFK_Assassination_Investigation.html
Introduction by Gary Aguilar. MD In 2004 longstanding Warren Commission supporters, Ken Rahn, Ph.D. and Mr. Larry Sturidvan, published two back-to-back articles in the scientific literature hailing a sophisticated scientific technique, neutron activation analysis (NAA), as the “Rosetta Stone” of the JFK assassination. They said that NAA offered irrefutable evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone, had killed JFK. [1] For since NAA could provide a “fingerprint” consisting of the precise quanta of trace elements in the bullet fragments recovered from the crime, NAA, they said, could prove that all the fragments traced directly to but two bullets fired from Oswald’s rifle... The first, and perhaps most devastating, critique was a paper, Proper Assessment of the JFK Assassination Bullet Lead Evidence from Metallurgical and Statistical Perspectives, published in the Journal of Forensic Science by Erik Randich, Ph.D. and Pat Grant, Ph.D., two Lawrence Livermore Lab scientists. [5] Unlike Rahn and Sturdivan, who are longstanding Warren Commission supporters, Randich and Grant are completely agnostic on the question of conspiracy. Their critique is manifold, but a key element of it is that Rahn and Sturdivan (and Guinn before them) misunderstood, and so misinterpreted, basic bullet metallurgy. In addition, as first suggested by Art Snyder, [6] Guinn, Rahn and Sturdivan used a flawed statistical model. It was not long after Randich and Grant published that Rahn responded, however not in the time-honored, scientific manner, with a letter to the editor of the Journal of Forensic Science. Rahn instead put out a rebuttal on his personal website. [7] Apprised of Rahn’s unconventional response, Erik Randich declined to comment. Pat Grant, however, did respond, as per the following, making clear why, despite Ken Rahn’s claims to the contrary, understanding metallurgy does matter."
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2006/08/21/jfk-single-bullet-theory-in-question/
8/21/06, BETSY MASON, East Bay Times: LIVERMORE — More than four decades after his death, John F. Kennedy’s assassination remains the hottest cold case in U.S. history, and the clues continue to trickle in. Now Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientists say a key piece of evidence supporting the lone-gunman theory should be thrown out. A new look at evidence gleaned from studies of crime-scene bullet fragments shows previous clues may have been misinterpreted. “It basically shatters what some people call the best physical evidence around,” said chemist Pat Grant, director of the lab’s Forensic Science Center. Grant and Livermore Labmetallurgist Erik Randich found that the chemical “fingerprints” used to identify which bullets the fragments came from are actually more like run-of-the-mill tire tracks than one-of-a-kind fingerprints. “I’ve spoken with people on both sides of the conspiracy divide and there’s no question but that (Randich and Grant’s) work is going to be very difficult, if not outright impossible, to refute,” said Gary Aguilar...“It looks impregnable.” The government’s claim that Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed President John F. Kennedy spawned a vitriolic debate between conspiracy theorists and lone-gunman supporters... Oswald’s rifle couldn’t have fired two shots in such rapid succession. So in order for Oswald to be the lone gunman, it had to be a single bullet. Skeptics and believers alike say the bullets amount to the most important piece of physical evidence for the single-bullet theory. Throwing it out is like removing a leg from a four-legged table. “Warren Commission defenders consider this evidence central to the single-bullet theory,” Aguilar said. But Grant and Randich say the bullet-lead analysis was faulty. Lead impurities: In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, the FBI analyzed five bullet fragments recovered from the limousine, the governor’s wrist, the president’s brain and from a hospital stretcher.
(continued) https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2006/08/21/jfk-single-bullet-theory-in-question/
"The FBI used a technique known as “neutron activation” analysis to find the precise composition of the fragments. By determining the exact amounts of impurities in the lead, such as antimony and silver, they hoped to be able to tell which fragments came from the same bullet. But the FBI decided it couldn’t draw any conclusions from the results..The FBI claimed that like a fingerprint, each batch of lead has a unique chemical signature, so the specific amounts of impurities in a lead bullet could match it to other bullets from the same batch. For example, if bullets at a suspect’s house were found to have the same impurity signature as a bullet or fragment found at a murder scene, it was treated as evidence tying the suspect to the crime. Randich’s training as a metallurgist told him there was something wrong with this reasoning. “I realized these people could put my sons in jail with bogus science,” he said. “I thought I ought to do something about it.” By analyzing years of data kept by lead smelters, Randich found that batches are not unique, bullets from different batches of bullets poured months or years apart could have the same chemical signature, and bullets poured from the start of a batch could differ slightly, but measurably, from those at the end. Randich has testified in about a dozen cases. Because of his work, courts now reject bullet-lead analysis and the FBI no longer uses it as evidence. JFK case problems The JFK case has similar problems. Guinn said the variation between bullets of this type was so great that he could use it to tell individual bullets apart, even from the same batch of lead. Randich and Grant say that assumption is dead wrong.
(continued) https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2006/08/21/jfk-single-bullet-theory-in-question/
They analyzed the same type of bullets and discovered that within a single bullet, there is a significant variation in impurities on a microscopic scale. The range of concentrations of impurities in each bullet is large enough to make small fragments from different parts of the same bullet have very different chemical fingerprints. Some of the fragments in the JFK case are so small that the differences in antimony could be explained entirely by this microscopic variation, instead of by differences between bullets...Randich and Grant’s study was published in July in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. “We don’t know if there were two bullets,” said Randich. “There could have been two bullets, but the lead composition data shows there could be anywhere from one to five bullets.” Losing Guinn’s bullet-lead evidence is a major blow to the single-bullet theory. That evidence “knits together the core physical evidence into an airtight case against Lee Oswald,” according to a 2004 paper by Larry Sturdivan and Ken Rahn in an issue of Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry that celebrated Vincent Guinn after his death. “It is, thus, the key to resolving the major controversies in the JFK assassination and putting the matter to rest,” the paper said. Rahn, an atmospheric chemist recently retired from the University of Rhode Island, stands by this statement and Guinn’s research, despite Randich and Grant’s study. He says he believes it is possible that microscopic variation occurs within bullets of this type, but Grant and Randich can’t say for sure whether it happened in the JFK bullets because they didn’t analyze those particular fragments. Rahn thinks it is far more likely the fragments fell into two distinct groups, one with 0.06 percent antimony and the other with 0.08 percent, because they came from two distinct bullets. This fits the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was the lone shooter..."