A former Secret Service agent who was with President John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in Dallas nearly 60 years ago has raised new questions about the infamous “magic bullet” theory and the possibility that multiple shooters were involved.
Paul Landis, now 88, was a young agent tasked with protecting first lady Jackie Kennedy as the president’s motorcade paraded through the city in 1963.
He remembers hearing the gunshot in Dealy Plaza while walking a few feet from the president in 1963, he told The New York Times. He then heard two additional gunshots and saw Kennedy slumped in the back of the open limousine.
Landis said he had to duck to avoid getting his brains splattered.
From there, Landis’s account differs from the government’s official conclusions: in the chaos that followed, he claims that he picked up a bullet that was lodged in the back seat of the car where Kennedy was sitting and placed it on the hospital stretcher. president for researchers. .
Paul Landis, 88, was just feet away from President Kennedy when he was assassinated. Westlake Porter Public Library
The 6.5mm bullet, long thought to have been found on Texas Governor John Connally’s stretcher after it fell from a wound in his thigh.
Dubbed “the magic bullet,” the Warren Commission concluded that the shot, fired by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, had incredibly passed through Kennedy’s throat from behind, then hit Connally’s right shoulder and then somehow also wounded your back, chest, wrist and airtight.
The report found that one of the shots missed the motorcade, another was the “magic bullet” and the last shot fatally hit Kennedy in the head.
Landis placed the bullet on Kennedy’s gurney at the hospital, but he now believes that at some point the bullet passed from the president’s gurney to the governor’s while they were together, he told The Times.
President John F. Kennedy, first lady Jaqueline Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally moments before the shots rang out on November 22, 1963.REUTERS
The Warren Commission ruled out that the bullet came from the president’s stretcher.
“There was no one there to secure the scene, and that was a big bother to me,” Landis said. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.”
“This was all happening so fast,” he continued, “and I was afraid it was a test that I realized right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear or be lost. “So it was, ‘Paul, you have to make a decision,’ and I made it.”
Landis, who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, believes the bullet hit Kennedy but did not have enough charge and did not penetrate deeply into the president’s body and was ejected before he was removed from the vehicle.
He told The Times that he had always believed Oswald was the only gunman, but six decades later, he questions that conclusion.
“At this point, I’m starting to doubt myself,” he said. “Now I’m starting to wonder.”
The bullet, found completely intact, compared positively to Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano through ballistic analysis, the Warren Commission said in its report.
The aging former agent made explosive revelations in his upcoming book “The Final Witness,” which will be published by Chicago Review Press on October 10.
The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole perpetrator of the JFK assassination.
James Robenalt, an Ohio-based attorney and author of several history books, extensively researched the murder and helped Landis unravel his memories of that day. He believes Landis’ book will raise new questions about Kennedy’s death.
“If what he says is true, which I tend to believe, the question of a second shooter is likely to be reopened, if not more so,” Robenalt told the Times. “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.”
Which, he added, could mean that Connally was shot by another bullet and not by Oswald, who he believes couldn’t have reloaded quickly enough.
Speculation about multiple shooters has been a popular theory since the immediate aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination.
“Others will have to look at the evidence in its entirety to see where it leads now,” Robenalt told Vanity Fair.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn