That's not a statement made publicly. It's hearsay. Thompson claims that there were two witnesses there. However, both are now deceased and neither of them went on record to confirm Thompson's claim.
I never claimed it was a public statement. It has already been noted that Warren commissions lack of either Tomlinson, or Wright, being to testify to authenticity in front of them is not just a neutral position There is the 64 FBI memo claiming ?appears to be the same one? However, the FBI agent who is supposed to have gotten that admission, Bardwell Odum, and the Bureau?s own once-secret records, don?t back up #2011. Those records say only that neither Tomlinson nor Wright was able to identify the bullet in question, a comment that leaves the impression they saw no resemblance
Mr. Odum told Aguilar, ?I didn?t show it [#399] to anybody at Parkland. I didn?t have any bullet ? I don?t think I ever saw it even.? [Fig. 11] Unwilling to leave it at that, both authors paid Mr. Odum a visit in his Dallas home on November 21, 2002. The same alert, friendly man on the phone greeted us warmly and led us to a comfortable family room. To ensure no misunderstanding, we laid out before Mr. Odum all the relevant documents and read aloud from them.
Again, Mr. Odum said that he had never had any bullet related to the Kennedy assassination in his possession, whether during the FBI?s investigation in 1964 or at any other time. Asked whether he might have forgotten the episode, Mr. Odum remarked that he doubted he would have ever forgotten investigating so important a piece of evidence. But even if he had done the work, and later forgotten about it, he said he would certainly have turned in a ?302? report covering something that important
In regard to the two Secret Service agents who were the other two individuals in the chain of custody
A declassified record, however, offers some corroboration for what CE 2011 reported about Secret Service Agents Johnsen and Rowley. A memo from the FBI?s Dallas field office dated 6/24/64 reported that, ?ON JUNE TWENTYFOUR INSTANT RICHARD E. JOHNSEN, AND JAMES ROWLEY, CHIEF ? ADVISED SA ELMER LEE TODD, WFO, THAT THEY WERE UNABLE TO INDENTIFY RIFLE BULLET C ONE
Hearsay is generally a term reserved for a courtroom I see no reason to call FBI reports little more than hearsay as well, but in this case there is evidence for wholesale fabrication on the part of the FBI as opposed to the research of Thompson It seems pretty likely that Wright was aware of the story by Josiah Thompson and one would assume would have protested if he had been misquoted
I am all for people being under oath, recorded or any manner of verifying statements But when there is a lack of any evidence to support a claim, simple interviews do have significance