Secret Service agent there when JFK was shot breaks his silence for first time
A former secret service agent who witnessed the assassination of John F Kennedy from just feet away has broken his silence - and raised questions on a second shooter.
Paul Landis, who was standing behind the President, claims he heard two extra shots during the 1963 attack - and claims he found the “magic bullet” but it got misplaced.
Landis who was standing on the running board of the car behind the president, has never testified over the death - but has now spoken out in a jaw-dropping interview.
He claims he picked up a bullet from the back seat of the car where JFK had been sitting, and placed it on the president’s stretcher for investigators to examine.
Lee Harvey Oswald (Getty)But in the chaos, the bullet was found on Texas governor John Connally’s stretcher, fuelling the “magic bullet” theory that it passed through Mr Kennedy and hit Mr Connally.
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The government’s examination of the assassination originally decided that the bullet must have through the president’s throat before hitting Mr Connally’s shoulder, ribs, wrist and thigh.
It was concluded that a single bullet caused Mr Kennedy’s neck wound, and all the injuries suffered by the Texas governor - forming part of the assumption that assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone.
John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy (EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)But at 88 years old, Mr Landis has written a memoir, questioning the official findings. At the time, he quit his job shortly after the shooting, and refused to take part in the investigation.
Speaking about the bullet, he told the New York Times that he thinks it was transferred from one stretcher to the other when they were pushed together.
“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Mr. Landis said. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.
“This was all going on so quickly. And I was just afraid that — it was a piece of evidence, that I realised 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’.”
Mr Landis, whose memoir The Final Witness is out next month, claims the bullet did not have enough velocity to go through Kennedy - and he isn't convinced Oswald acted alone.
“At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself,” he told the NYT. “Now I begin to wonder. That is as far as he is willing to go.”
He also said that it could have been misidentified after it was handed over to the Secret Service.
James Robenalt, an attorney and historian who worked with the former agent on a book he plans to release in October, believes his account could suggest there was another shooter.
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He told the Times: "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. 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."
In an essay in Vanity Fair, he added: "First, if the 'pristine' bullet did not travel through both Kennedy and Connally, somehow ending up on Connally's stretcher, then it stands to reason that Connally might have actually been hit by a separate bullet, coming from above and to the rear.
Joe Biden recently delayed the release of records concerning the assassination of JFK (NY Daily News via Getty Images)"The FBI recreation suggests that Oswald would not have had enough time to get off two separate shots so quickly as to hit Connally after wounding the president in the back."
Footage taken of the shooting shows a second between the physical reactions of the two men who were shot. Previously the difference was explained as due differing reaction times.
But the new claims suggest there could have been another bullet fired, from the front, suggesting that another shooter was in close proximity.
Mr Landis had planned to stay quiet after being told he shouldn't meddle too much but after grappling with his conscience, he decided to write a book, which is due for release on October 10, and titled The Final Witness.
"There's no goal at this point," he told the Times of his reason for speaking out. "I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story."
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