Reporter: Recently fired a rifle?

Reporter: A gun.

Wade: A gun.

Wade's answers, while truthful, were a study in understatement. The district atorney neglected to state the additional facts that tests had been conducted on Oswald's face and that the tests revealed that there were no traces of gunpower on Oswald's face (Washington Star, Nov. 24). One fact emerges here with clarity. The paraffin test did not prove Oswald fired a rifle recently. The test tended to prove Oswald had not fired a rifle recently.... The rifle, an Italian carbine, had been purchased by Oswald through the mall and under an assumed name.

Wade said, "It (the rifle), as I think you know, has been identified as having been purchased last March by Oswald, from a mail-order house, through an assumed name named Hidell, mailed to a post office box here in Dallas." Wade said this was the weapon that killed the President....

Just after the arrest of Oswald, Dallas law enforcement officials announced that they had found the murder weapon. Wade and his associates studied the rifle. It was shown to the television audience repeatedly as some enforcement official carried it high in the air, with his bare hands on the rifle. After hours of examination, Wade said without hesitation that "the murder weapon was a German Mauser."

The next day it was reported that FBI files showed that Oswald purchased an Italian carbine through the mail. It was sent to a post-office box maintained by Oswald in his own name and also A. Hidell. (Clearly no serious effort to escape detection as the purchaser of the rifle was made by Oswald, if he did purchase it.)

Armed with the knowledge that Oswald could be connected with an Italian carbine (it then not being known that the Italian rifle in question might not be able to fire three times in five seconds), Wade made a new announcement. The murder weapon was not a German Mauser, it was an Italian carbine....

Oswald had in his possession an Identification card with the name Hidell.

Wade said, "On his (Oswald's) person was a pocketbook. In his pocketbook was an identification card with the same name (Hidell) as the post-office box on it."

Almost immediately after Oswald was arrested the police asserted that he was guilty of assassination, was a Communist, was the head of the New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had used an alias, "Lee," the name under which he had rented his $8-a-week room. The following day, after the FBI had revealed that Oswald had purchased a rifle under the assumed name Hidell, the Dallas DA announced for the first time that Oswald had carried an identification card under the assumed name Hidell on his person when he was arrested the previous day.

Oswald was seen in the building by a police officer Just after the President had been shot.

Wade said, "A police officer, immediately after the assassination, ran into the building and saw this man in a corner and tried to arrest him; but the manager of the building said he was an employe and it was all right. Every other employe was located but this defendant of the company. A description and name of him went out to police to look for him." (At this point it might be in order to state that all of the Wade quotations are reproduced unedited, and in their entirety. The text of the Wade remarks appeared in the New York Times, Nov. 26.)

Unexplained by Wade is why the officer was going to arrest Oswald, who was sipping a soft drink in the lunchroom along with others. If the officer had reason to single out Oswald for arrest for the assassination at that time, it seems unlikely that the mere statement that Oswald was an employe might result in immunity from arrest....

Oswald's wife said that the rifle was missing Friday morning.