REPORT: Released FBI Shrapnel-Related Documents
The FBI eventually located and released approximately 580 pages of responsive documents to Sephton.
While these pages were responsive in that they related directly to the FBI's extensive forensic efforts involving the foreign objects taken by the FBI during autopsies, none of the responsive documents were actually the forensic details themselves.
Those 580 pages can be broadly sorted into three categories as follows:
1. Evidence tracking listings of hundreds of foreign objects removed from bodies during the autopsies and entered on "1B" FBI evidence log listings. There were about 450 pages in this category. (see examples of 1B evidence listings: 1B-28, other 1B listings )
2. Descriptions and FBI investigation directives detailing the forensic efforts to diligently extract the precise characteristics of the explosion from this large reservoir of vital evidence. There were about 100 pages in this category. (investigation process memos: example )
3. The FBI managed to find/release just one single page to Sephton that detailed, at least in summary, the results of at least one forensic test on one evidentiary article collected during the autopsies. ( the one single forensic test result record) So there it is folks. And remember, even the NTSB doesn't have that report, so you saw it here first. And it only took a 7 year FOI litigation to find it and get it released. What this single page reports on is an article of clothing taken as evidence during the autopsies. The evidence "1B" logs mention some items of clothing that were taken noting unusual residues and other potential evidentiary factors. This particular test report seems to be a summary noting that "...the item has been examined by the undersigned Bomb Technician/Post Blast Investigator and has been determined to contain no evidentiary value." According to news reports at the time, on-site FBI bomb technicians had at least one state-of-the-art Aegis Explosive Residue analysis equipment. Presumably the "determination" mentioned involved various tests for residues and sophisticated analysis for any evidentiary clues. It was the only such forensic results report that was located in the FBI file area that was reviewed for responsive records.
The Court did not notice that this single page strongly implied that there actually were forensic tests performed and results recorded and therefore potentially hundreds and perhaps thousands of similar examination results pages relating to those routine forensic tests.
By chance another researcher, Don Collins, received a slightly different FOI response from the FBI for a similar request and the FBI sent him about 20 pages of actual forensic laboratory reports and data relating to a single item on FBI 1B-28 listing, referred to above. These forensic records were filed in the more general area of the FBI's archive because they were produced not by FBI forensic technicians but were sent to New York FBI from Brookhaven Lab (See: Brookhaven Forensic Report ). The final pages produced in that Brookhaven Lab report show 2 pages of actual chemical analysis plots for just one single item of foreign body evidence. The BNL Report notes that tthey did not have the type of evidentiary chemical catalog data to allow them to identify exactly what the mysterious 1B-28 item #10 pellets were. They left that for the FBI to do. The FBI took the bulk of the autopsy foreign body evidence and yet could not locater or produce one page of similar analysis produced by the FBI themselves.
The FBI did produce listings of the victims with a summary of foreign bodies removed from them such as the following. (See: Foreign Body V. Passenger Listing) Note in the final item on the final page of that listing "four (4) BB-type pellets" were listed as being removed from one passengers chest and neck. It is remarkable that such peelts and many other small fragments of metal and items noted as "rivets" and "electronic components" appear to generate no other forensic references or test results. It is as if it is quite usual to find such things in the average person. Were the "rivets" consistent with 747 rivets? What type of residues were on the BB pellets? There were no answers to such questions released via this search.