Secret Service agent behind JFK speaks out for the first time — revealing he found the 'magic bullet'
Former Secret Service agent Paul Landis was feet from President John F. Kennedy when he heard the shots fired. First the first time in history, he's finally speaking out, and he has a lot to say to dispute some previous claims.
Writing in his new memoir, Landis explained that for years, he fought to forget. The sounds of the gunshots and what he saw next. The nightmares have finally subsided and he has been able to read about it, think about it, and publish his memoir The Final Witness.
"And he realized that what he read was not quite right, not as he remembered it. As it turns out, if his recollections are correct, the much-discussed 'magic bullet' may not have been so magic after all," Peter Baker wrote for the Times.
The Warren Commission did interviews, collected photos and videos, and explored theories about what happened and how. The so-called "magic bullet theory," argues that one of the bullets hit Kennedy as well as Texas Gov. John Connally, turned, and then hit the governor again.
Landis was riding on the right running board of the car behind Kennedy's on the passenger's side. He was behind the president. Photos and videos of the immediate second after Kennedy was hit show Landis looking behind him toward the sound of the gunshot.
It has been 60 years and even his details have prompted doubts from his former Secret Service partner, Baker explained in his report. Some of the information flies in the face of the official report and even with the statement he immediately filed. "Some of the implications of his version cannot be easily reconciled to the existing record," said Baker.
Still, he was there as a witness, and he's not spinning conspiracy theories. He explained that he wants people only to hear his comments and think for themselves.
“There’s no goal at this point,” he said in an August interview. “I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story.”
The Warren Commission said that the bullet fired on that day hit the president from behind, went through his throat, then through the car seat, through his back and chest, and then hit his wrist and thigh.
Oliver Stone's movie 1991 "JFK" shows the film of the assassination, with a kill shot coming from the front. District Attorney Jim Garrison, depicted by Kevin Costner, is seen in the movie slowing down the video frame by frame. It shows the late president's head flying backward and to the left. Over and over, Garrison repeats, "Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left."
The film goes on to suggest that there were six shots, not three, and another gunman was involved in shooting from the front. It's "totally inconsistent with the shot from the book depository," the film version of Garrison argues.
Landis doesn't believe the second gunman conspiracy and he firmly believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin.
The Warren Commission came to the conclusion of the "magic bullet" because they had the bullet on the stretcher that carried the governor into the hospital. They thought it was removed from his body. Landis said that's not what happened. He should know, he's the one who found the bullet, and it wasn't on the stretcher, it was in the limousine in the back of the seat behind Kennedy's body.
"When he spotted the bullet after the motorcade arrived at the hospital, he said he grabbed it to thwart souvenir hunters," the report says. "Then, for reasons that still seem fuzzy even to him, he said he entered the hospital and placed it next to Kennedy on the president’s stretcher, assuming it could somehow help doctors figure out what happened. At some point, he now guesses, the stretchers must have been pushed together and the bullet was shaken from one to another."
“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Landis recalled. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.” A crowd was gathering. “This was all going on so quickly. And I was just afraid that — it was a piece of evidence, that I realized right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or get lost. So it was, ‘Paul, you’ve got to make a decision,’ and I grabbed it.’”
For a long time, he believed that the bullet hit Kennedy in the back, but didn't go deep enough, popping back into the seat.
“At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself,” he said. “Now I begin to wonder.”
That said, he won't speculate further.
“If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, it is likely to reopen the question of a second shooter, if not even more,” said James Robenalt, a historian who has long researched the assassination. He helped Landis in collecting his memories for the book. “If the bullet we know as the magic or pristine bullet stopped in President Kennedy’s back, it means that the central thesis of the Warren Report, the single-bullet theory, is wrong.”
If the bullet was lodged in the back of the limo behind Kennedy, Robenalt explained it means Connally could have been hit by a second bullet. That then means there could have been a second shooter after all.
“I don’t know if that story’s true or not, but I do know that the agents that were there that day, they were tormented for years by what happened,” he explained to the Times.
Landis' book will be released Oct. 10.
The documents involved in the case were set to become public in the spring of 2018. Then President Donald Trump refused to release them, saying he was convinced by the intelligence community not to do it. It's the same intelligence community Trump spent the year before trashing for investigating the Steele Dossier.
In Oct. 2017, Trump pledged he would release all of the classified documents. He made the same promise again in July.
"When I return to the White House, I will declassify and unseal all JFK assassination related documents," he said on this Truth Social platform. "It’s been 60 years, time for the American people to know the TRUTH!"
President Joe Biden released a trove of documents on the assassination plot, revealing, among other things, a secret CIA operation with mafia members building casinos in Cuba. They were coordinating on a plot to kill dictator Fidel Castro. The documents were scheduled to be disclosed in Oct. 2021 but were put on pause due to national security issues.
There are still documents that are being held back.