Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents feet away from Kennedy, remembers things differently
His memory challenges the theory advanced by the Warren Commission that has been the subject of so much speculation and debate over the years – that one of the bullets fired at the president’s limousine hit not only Kennedy but governor John Connally jnr of Texas, who was riding with him, in multiple places.
But he was there, a first-hand witness, and it is rare for new testimony to emerge six decades after the fact. He has never subscribed to the conspiracy theories and stresses that he is not promoting one now. At age 88, he said, all he wants is to tell what he saw and what he did. He will leave it to everyone else to draw conclusions.
Investigators came to that conclusion partly because the bullet was found on a stretcher believed to have held Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital, so they assumed it had exited his body during efforts to save his life. But Landis, who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, said that is not what happened.
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 moreLandis has been reluctant to speculate on the larger implications. He always believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. “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,” Robenalt said. “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.” And if Connally was hit by a separate bullet, he added, then it seemed possible it was not from Oswald, who he argued could not have reloaded that fast.
Merletti referred Landis to Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and a prominent presidential historian, who helped him find an agent for his book. In an interview, Gormley said he was not surprised that a traumatised agent would come forward all these years later, comparing it with a dying declaration in legal cases.
“People’s memories generally do not improve over time, and it is a flashing warning sign to me, about scepticism I have over his story, that on some very important details of the assassination, including the number of shots, his memory has gotten better instead of worse,” he said. “I didn’t want to talk about it,” Landis said. “I was afraid. I started to think, did I do something wrong? There was a fear that I might have done something wrong and I shouldn’t talk about it.”Indeed, his partner, Clint Hill, the legendary Secret Service agent who clambered on to the back of the speeding limousine in a futile effort to save Kennedy, discouraged Landis from speaking out. “Many ramifications,” Hill warned in a 2014 email that Landis saved and shared last month.
A year later, he was sent to Washington, where he joined the protective detail for president Dwight Eisenhower’s grandchildren. Once they reached the hospital, Hill and Landis coaxed the distraught first lady to let go of her husband so he could be taken inside. After they exited the car, Landis noticed two bullet fragments in a pool of bright red blood. He fingered one of them but put it back.
Investigators determined that the bullet, designated Commission Exhibit 399, was fired by the same C2766 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. They concluded that the bullet passed through Kennedy, then entered Connally’s right shoulder, struck his rib, exited under his right nipple and continued through his right wrist and into his left thigh.
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