I was using white gloves at the time I examined this and the gloves became quite soiled from the fingerprint powder.
Mr. Eisenberg. Did you find anything else?
Mr. Stombaugh. No; nothing on the outside of the bag.
Mr. Eisenberg. How did you conduct that examination, by the way?
Mr. Stombaugh. With a low-power microscope.
Mr. Eisenberg. Did you find any cotton fibers on the outside of the bag at all, Mr. Stombaugh, white or colored?
Mr. Stombaugh. There were white cotton fibers on the outside but I was using a pair of white cotton gloves, so these would be of no value. White cotton is the most common thing we have in the way of textiles, and therefore it just doesn't have sufficient individual characteristics to be of value for comparison and identification purposes. It is for this reason that we use gloves of this material.
Mr. Eisenberg. And those fibers may have come from your white cotton gloves?
Mr. Stombaugh. Yes; they could very easily have come from my gloves from handling the object with a pair of gloves on.
Mr. Eisenberg. Did you proceed to examine the inside of the paper bag to see if there were any foreign objects?