Mr. Donovan. I don't recall to the contrary.
Mr. Ely. Would you have any reason to have an impression as to Oswald's proficiency in firing the rifle?
Mr. Donovan. No; I would not. I saw his record book, and I believe at that time he was qualified as a sharpshooter—or maybe a marksman. If he had not been qualified as a marksman, which is the minimum standard, I am sure I would have been aware of it, because I was training officer, and that is one of the things that you must try to train men in.
Mr. Ely. But you never had occasion to be with him when he fired a rifle?
Mr. Donovan. That is correct.
Mr. Ely. The marksmanship scores which are recorded in the Marine Corps—are they reliable, or is there an opportunity to falsify a score?
Mr. Donovan. I would say that in a vast majority of the cases they are reliable. Some people have what is called an M-1 pencil—namely, you can punch holes in the target the size of an M-1 shell to improve the score. This is a court-martial offense. I am sure it does happen.
I don't personally know of it ever having happened, but it might. If he had a score of 210, which would make him sharpshooter, I would assume that from the standing position he could hit a 10-inch bullseye 8 times out of 10.
Mr. Ely. Do you know how the score was recorded? Did the firer of the weapon ever go down personally to inspect the target?
Mr. Donovan. Never. That is one of the things that makes this quite difficult. The men are on a firing range, a minimum of 200 yards distance, a maximum of 800 yards distance. When you are put into what is called the butts, or the target area, you do not know whose target you are pulling, because they switch you around every day. A staff NCO or an officer comes around and verifies each given shot. And it is not impossible to cheat, but it would be most difficult to. And I have no reason to suspect that he did.