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Post by Graveyardbride on Sept 20, 2023 13:58:59 GMT -5
Secret Service Agent Breaks Silence on JFK AssassinationFor decades, former Secret Service Agent Paul Landis, who was in a car following the limousine carrying President John F. Kennedy through Dallas on November 22, 1963, believed Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But recently, during an interview with The New York Times concerning additional shooters, Landis admits, “I’m beginning to doubt myself. Now, I begin to wonder.”
According to the 88-year-old man, discrepancies between the Warren Commission findings and his own experiences on the day of the assassination are what led him to write The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After Sixty Years, due for release next month.
While claiming he doesn’t buy into conspiracy theories, he is still disturbed by the so-called “magic bullet,” allegedly discovered on a stretcher carrying Texas Governor John Connally. The slug was dubbed the magic bullet because it reportedly struck Kennedy, passed through his body, then struck Connally, passing through his back, thigh, chest and wrist.
Recalling the first shot fired on that long-ago November day, Landis says, “I recognized it immediately as the sound of a gunshot, turned to look over my right shoulder, and I saw nothing. I was scanning forward.” He observed President Kennedy leaning slightly to his left, but still sitting upright, so it was impossible to ascertain if he had been injured. Landis then turned to scan the area, including the infamous “grassy knoll.” He was looking toward the overpass and other locations ahead of the car when, he adds, “I heard this second shot, and still no reaction from President Kennedy. I couldn’t see anything else in the limo. It still appeared that everything was okay.”
It was at this point that the third shot rang out, and an agent rushed to JFK’s side just before the motorcade began racing the approximately 3½-miles to Parkland Memorial Hospital. “It was like a flash of white, and then the air just filled with a cloud of blood and brain, flesh, bone matter – and I ducked so I wouldn’t get splattered as we drove through it,” the agent remembers.
Upon arrival at Parkland, Landis recalls rushing to the president’s limo, where he found the First Lady cradling her husband’s head in her lap. As other agents and hospital staff removed the president from the car, Landis examined the scene, observing blood and other matter “everywhere.” He also initially picked up two bullet fragments he saw in a puddle of blood, but during the chaotic scene, replaced them.
By this time, Clint Hill, another Secret Service agent, had removed his jacket to cover the president’s head and torso as he was lifted onto the gurney, and Mrs. Kennedy followed everyone into the hospital.
That’s when Landis saw what appeared to be a fully intact bullet “sitting on the back seat ledge, where the cushion meets the metal on the car.” Instinctively, he picked it up. “I looked at it and I started to put it back. I didn’t see anybody in the vicinity, I was wondering where all the agents were. And they all seemed to be over looking for the president or to help remove the president. So I put the bullet in my pocket,” he claims. It was “a quick decision,” he adds, and debated “just for a second,” but ultimately decided he “didn’t want that bullet to disappear.” The 28-year-old agent then entered the hospital and watched as Kennedy’s body was lifted from the gurney onto an examination table. “So all the time I’ve been standing there,” he continues. “I’ve been kind of fumbling with the bullet in my pocket. I took it out and I set it by the president’s left foot, and it was like a white cotton blanket on the table, and the bullet started to roll off the table, and I reached out and grabbed it, and there was a little wrinkle in the blanket. So I put the bullet so that it wouldn’t roll off. It stopped in that blanket. I figured this was the place the bullet needed to be. They would find it. And I felt a great relief that I had saved an important piece of evidence.”
The shooting took its toll on the agents who were in Dallas that day, Landis admits, and “I just kept telling myself, ‘Paul, you’ve got to hang in there. You have to hang in there,’ I didn’t want to be an embarrassment to the Secret Service and in my job.”
Although Landis wrote two brief reports concerning his actions and what he saw and heard that day, he doesn’t recall precisely what he said, anticipating extensive face-to-face interviews. “I just figured, well, I’m going to be questioned by the Warren Commission and I can tell my whole story then. And that time never came.”
It wasn’t until 2014, a half-century later, that Landis read Six Seconds in Dallas by Josiah Thompson, which includes a description of the bullet found on the gurney carrying Texas Governor John Connally that he realized the Commission got it wrong. “They showed a picture [of the bullet] in the book,” he says. “and my reaction was, ‘Well, wait a minute. That’s the bullet that I put on President Kennedy’s stretcher.’ And that triggered some thoughts and I wondered what to do. How do I straighten this all out?”
For the next several years, he talked with fellow former Secret Service agents and others, and decided it was time to come forward with his story. It is his contention that during the confusion, the gurney carrying JFK bumped into the one on which Connally was being transported, causing the bullet to become dislodged, ending up on the governor’s stretcher.
However, historian Steven M. Gillon, who has studied the assassination for years and wrote the 2010 book, The Kennedy Assassination - 24 Hours After: Lyndon B. Johnson’s Pivotal First Day as President, questions the former agent’s account. “[Landis’s] account and the Warren Commission can’t both be right,” the author insists. “So if what he remembers is true, then the Warren Commission is wrong ... It all revolves around the magic bullet.”
Nonetheless, Gillon admits that according to the Warren Commission, “that bullet was found on a gurney by a hospital employee in the hallway, and no one is certain what gurney it was and whether it was the one Connally came in or not. That was the speculation.”
So if, as Gillon contends, no one is absolutely certain the magic bullet was retrieved from the gurney that had carried Connally, why did the Warren Commission decide the bullet passed through JFK’s body before entering Connally’s back? If the bullet was found on the gurney upon which JFK had lain, then Connally was struck by another bullet, and this totally alters the findings of the Warren Commission.
Regardless of where the bullet was discovered, unlike Gillon, not everyone agrees with the findings of the Warren Commission. For example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims there is “overwhelming evidence” the CIA was involved in the JFK assassination and the Warren Commission covered up such evidence with its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. To bolster his allegations, Kennedy cites the fact that ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles, whom JFK fired in 1961, “insinuated himself onto the Warren Commission and essentially ran the Warren Commission,” and in so doing, suppressed crucial evidence.Sources: Nikolas Lanum, Fox News, September 12, 2023; Liz McNeil and Virginia Chamlee, People, September 12, 2023; Peter Baker, The New York Times, September 9, 2023, Matt Kelly, UVAToday, January 10, 2023, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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Post by steve on Sept 20, 2023 14:19:30 GMT -5
I don't believe Oswald acted alone, but isn't there kind of an "evidence protocol" for federal agents, or any other law enforcement officer? Maybe he had never been involved in a shooting incident before, but placing a bullet on a gurney like that instead of turning it over to his supervisor seems strange to me.
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Post by Kate on Sept 20, 2023 15:34:38 GMT -5
I don't believe Oswald acted alone, but isn't there kind of an "evidence protocol" for federal agents, or any other law enforcement officer? Maybe he had never been involved in a shooting incident before, but placing a bullet on a gurney like that instead of turning it over to his supervisor seems strange to me. |
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Post by madeline on Sept 20, 2023 16:01:53 GMT -5
I don't believe Oswald acted alone, but isn't there kind of an "evidence protocol" for federal agents, or any other law enforcement officer? Maybe he had never been involved in a shooting incident before, but placing a bullet on a gurney like that instead of turning it over to his supervisor seems strange to me. |
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Post by pat on Sept 20, 2023 19:10:22 GMT -5
I find it hard to believe that for a half-century, he didn't know about the "magic bullet." But I also find it disturbing that the Warren Commission never bothered to interview him. I suppose I don't know what to believe.
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Post by jason on Sept 20, 2023 21:45:36 GMT -5
If the bullet was recovered from the "ledge," the flat area behind the backseat, I don't see how it could have come from the rear, as the Warren Commission claimed. The final shot supposedly hit Kennedy from behind, striking the upper part of his skull, as in the illustration below, and then, as it exited, literally blew away the upper right part of his skull. For this bullet to have been the one found by Landis, Kennedy would have had to be facing backward, and no one saw him turn around. Zapruder was filming from JFK's right and from some of the photos I've seen, it appears that Kennedy was turned to the left when he was shot the second time. I've never understood how Oswald, who was in the "sniper's nest" behind the motorcade, could have hit him from that direction if his head was turned. For the bullet to have struck him from the right, it would have had to come from the direction of the grassy knoll. Still, if Landis is telling the truth, I don't see how it could be the bullet that struck the president in the back and throat either, unless it came from some direction other than the Book Depository. The only way the bullet could have ended up behind the backseat is if the shot came from some other direction and entered his throat first and exited through his back.
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Post by steve on Sept 21, 2023 9:49:05 GMT -5
If the bullet was recovered from the "ledge," the flat area behind the backseat, I don't see how it could have come from the rear, as the Warren Commission claimed. The final shot supposedly hit Kennedy from behind, striking the upper part of his skull, as in the illustration below, and then, as it exited, literally blew away the upper right part of his skull. For this bullet to have been the one found by Landis, Kennedy would have had to be facing backward, and no one saw him turn around. Zapruder was filming from JFK's right and from some of the photos I've seen, it appears that Kennedy was turned to the left when he was shot the second time. I've never understood how Oswald, who was in the "sniper's nest" behind the motorcade, could have hit him from that direction if his head was turned. For the bullet to have struck him from the right, it would have had to come from the direction of the grassy knoll. Still, if Landis is telling the truth, I don't see how it could be the bullet that struck the president in the back and throat either, unless it came from some direction other than the Book Depository. The only way the bullet could have ended up behind the backseat is if the shot came from some other direction and entered his throat first and exited through his back. I've looked at diagrams of the shooting and from where Oswald was reportedly located in the Book Depository, he would have had a much better shot when the motorcade was on Houston Street instead of waiting until it got way down Elm Street. I know there are hundreds of books about the assassination but do any of them explain what reason he would have had for waiting to shoot? This is, of course, assuming he actually did any of the shooting. |
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Post by Sam on Sept 21, 2023 23:00:50 GMT -5
I've looked at diagrams of the shooting and from where Oswald was reportedly located in the Book Depository, he would have had a much better shot when the motorcade was on Houston Street instead of waiting until it got way down Elm Street. I know there are hundreds of books about the assassination but do any of them explain what reason he would have had for waiting to shoot? This is, of course, assuming he actually did any of the shooting. That's something that I've never understood. The motorcade was going only about 15 mile per hour and Oswald would have had a clear shot all the way from Main Street up Houston before it turned onto Elm. Yet, he waited until it had made the turn and passed and was 150 feet away to start shooting. I don't think Oswald was the shooter, I think he was a patsy just like he said. |
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Post by snowfairy on Sept 22, 2023 8:49:00 GMT -5
That's something that I've never understood. The motorcade was going only about 15 mile per hour and Oswald would have had a clear shot all the way from Main Street up Houston before it turned onto Elm. Yet, he waited until it had made the turn and passed and was 150 feet away to start shooting. I don't think Oswald was the shooter, I think he was a patsy just like he said. |
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Post by steve on Sept 26, 2023 9:49:25 GMT -5
I don't know all that much about shooting, but I know several people in this group were in the military, so maybe one of them will know: Is it possible that the fatal shot entered from the front, caused the "explosion" in the top right of his head and then exited through the back of his skull?
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