Posted on 11/16/2023 6:07:01 AM PST by Red Badger
Now 88 years old, former Secret Service agent Paul Landis is breaking his silence regarding what he witnessed on the day US President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Telling his version of events in the book, The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After Sixty Years, Landis’ account could change the way the public has long understood the events of that infamous day.
While the official report states Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter that day, Landis’ account might suggest otherwise.
An eyewitness to John F. Kennedy’s assassination
Paul Landis first joined the Secret Service in 1959, and, by ’63, had been assigned to protect First Lady Jackie Kennedy and her children. Accompanying the family to Dallas, Texas, Landis was one of the agents walking behind the presidential limousine on November 22, 1963.
After hearing the first shot, Landis spun around to locate where it had come from, but didn’t spot anything. When he turned back, he watched fellow agent Clint Hill run toward the limousine. Landis then witnessed JFK get shot in the head. He was so close that he had to duck down to avoid being splattered with the president’s brain tissue.
The limousine rushed both Kennedy and wounded Texas Gov. John Connally to Parkland Memorial Hospital, with several agents following. Once the two men were removed from the vehicle, Landis noticed two bullet fragments in a pool of blood, but left them alone.
However, there was another bullet, still intact, that he found in the seam of the leather cushioning that has to potential to change how we understand the infamous assassination.
Confusion around the bullet
This bullet is the same one that’s the foundation of the single-bullet theory in the Warren Commission’s report. Doctors deduced that the round must have struck JFK from behind, exiting his throat before continuing toward John Connally. It entered the governor’s right shoulder, struck his rib and exited under his right nipple, before continuing through his right wrist and into his left thigh. The near-pristine condition the bullet was in has led many to regard it as a “magic” bullet.
The round was found on Connally’s stretcher and, as such, the Warren Commission stated it “eliminated President Kennedy’s stretcher as a source of the bullet,” as the president’s body was only moved from the stretcher upon it being placed in a coffin. However, Landis claims he was the one to find the bullet in the limousine, placing it in his pocket to prevent souvenir hunters from taking it.
Speaking with The New York Times, the former Secret Service agent says:
“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me. 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 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.”
Once Landis arrived at the hospital, he planned to hand over the round to a supervisor, but in the mass confusion placed it on Kennedy’s stretcher. In doing so, he’d hoped it would help the doctors determine exactly what had happened. He believes the bullet must’ve bounced from JFK’s stretcher onto Connally’s when they were pushed together, leading to the single-bullet theory.
Paul Landis’ account could debunk the single-bullet theory
Paul Landis thinks the bullet he found must have struck JFK in the back and was unable to penetrate deeply, causing it to pop out and fall back in the seat. If this account is true, then the single-bullet theory may be debunked after all.
James Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer and historical author who worked with Landis, tells The New York 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.”
Film footage of the assassination shows JFK and John Connally physically reacting to the shooting, but their reactions are about a second apart. Investigators have estimated that it would’ve taken Lee Harvey Oswald 2.3 seconds to reload and fire a second time.
“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,” Robenault explains in an article in Vanity Fair. As such, it’s believed that, had there been a second shooter, their shot hit likely Connally from “above and to the rear.”
Why is Paul Landis speaking out now?
Being an eyewitness to the assassination, Paul Landis has been haunted by what he saw that fateful day. “The president’s head exploding – I could not shake that vision,” he tells The New York Times. “Whatever I was doing, that’s all I was thinking about.”
After about six more months of trying to work, Landis called it quits and left the Secret Service. The Warren Commission never reached out to him, which was a surprise. He says he thought the agency was simply protecting their own, and after everything that had happened, he didn’t want to talk about it.
However, after reading Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-study of the Kennedy Assassination in 2014, he realized his memories of the event didn’t align with the account presented by the Warren Commission.
Speaking about the many theories surrounding JFK’s death, Landis says, “I just paid no attention to that. I just removed myself. I just felt I had been there. I had seen it, and I knew what I saw and what I did. And that’s all.”
However, this brought up mixed feelings. “I didn’t want to talk about it,” he explains. “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.” Even Clint Hill discouraged him from coming forward, suggesting how there could be “many ramifications.”
However, while it may have taken a few years, Landis still feels his account needs to be shared. “There’s no goal at this point,” he explains. “I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story.”
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Samantha Franco is a Freelance Content Writer who received her Bachelor of Arts degree in history from the University of Guelph, and her Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Western Ontario. Her research focused on Victorian, medical, and epidemiological history with a focus on childhood diseases. Stepping away from her academic career, Samantha previously worked as a Heritage Researcher and now writes content for multiple sites covering an array of historical topics.
In her spare time, Samantha enjoys reading, knitting, and hanging out with her dog, Chowder!
linkedin.com/in/samantha-v-franco
He was set up......................
Well, All bullets at the sniper’s nest on the 6th floor, all bullets fragments found and the “Pristine “ bullet were all tested. They came from the same production lot. They all had the same lead content, and well as all the other impurities were at the same percentages.
No person with a brain believes in the one bullet theory. It is more than shameful that our government has tried to pass that off on us for 60 years.
Probably wanted to live...
“ They came from the same production lot.”
Or so we are told…….
In 1963, I had just started my lifelong firearms hobby, and lots of us hunted deer and other game with surplus ammunition. It would still kill animals, you just had to place the bullet in the right spot. Most military rifles of the day (my first was a 1917 US Enfield) were entirely up to the accuracy standards that Oswald required. And, his rifle was equipped with a scope, so was probably more precisely zeroed for the range he anticipated using it. His feat was easily doable by even a moderately skilled rifleman.
Fascinating.
Unfortunately the kill shot came from the grassy knoll.
Only one of the other shots hit their target.
And yes I understand that one way of hiding the truth is to spread so many lies that the truth becomes lost within them.
And maybe it was the Botswanans. I'm sure I could come up with a better motivation for them to have killed JFK, than many that I have heard. Is theBotswanansdidit.com available? Why, yes, it is. If I ever join the conspiracist ranks, that will give me a project to work on.
You blew through the correct answer.
LBJ.
Means.
Motive.
Opportunity.
(and yeah he had help....)
BTTT
And what did Zapruder testify about that shot coming from the grassy knoll?
Posner is playing defense for the CIA.
It is highly likely that he is secretly working for them in some capacity.
The many witnesses who ran up the grassy knoll looking to see where the shots came from are what is important.
They knew the bullets were buzzing over their heads.
They were greeted by fake Secret Service agents flashing ID badges telling them to move along....nothing to see here.
You dismiss Aaron Zapruder, who had a view of the grassy knoll. And he was former Army. He would know what a rifle shot, going off at the level of his feet, would sound like. And they never show it but the end of the film shows nothing behind the fence. Nothing.
In 1984, Billie Sol Estes told a grand jury investigating the 1961 shooting death of Henry Marshall, an official with the Department of Agriculture, that Wallace was his murderer.[2] Estes, a long-time conman who served two prison terms for his crimes, said that Marshall possessed information linking Estes’s fraudulent schemes to a heavily funded political slush fund run by Lyndon B. Johnson.[2][18] According to Estes, he and Johnson discussed the need to stop Marshall from making their illegal ties public.[2] In exchange for immunity from prosecution, Estes was also prepared to provide the United States Department of Justice information of eight killings orchestrated by Johnson, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[18] He claimed that Wallace persuaded Jack Ruby to recruit Lee Harvey Oswald and that Wallace fired a shot that struck Kennedy.[18]
Glen Sample and Mark Collom implicated Wallace in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy in their mid-1990s book The Men on the Sixth Floor.[19] According to the authors, Collom met Loy Factor while confined in a hospital isolation ward in 1971 where Factor implicated himself, Wallace, and a woman named “Ruth Ann” in the assassination of Kennedy.[19] Conspiracy debunker Dave Perry charged the authors of relying upon unreliable witnesses, including Factor, Estes, and Madeleine Duncan Brown.[20]
Barr McClellan, author of Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK, reiterated many of Estes’s claims in 2003 stating that Johnson, Wallace, Estes, and Cliff Carter were responsible for the death of Marshall.[21] According to McClellan, Wallace fired one shot at Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, then ran and escaped.[21] He stated that fingerprints and an eyewitness placed Wallace in that location and that Wallace could be seen as a “shadowy figure” in photos of the building.[21] In their 2003 obituary of Estes, the New York Times wrote that none of Estes’s claims against LBJ were backed by evidence.[18]
Roger Stone, author of the 2013 book The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ, called Wallace “Lyndon Johnson’s personal hit man” and also said that Wallace shot Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.[22] Similar to McClellan’s account, Stone said six eyewitnesses placed Wallace in that location and that a fingerprint found on a box in the sniper’s nest was his.[22]
Describing Wallace as Johnson’s “hatchet man”, Joan Mellen’s 2017 book Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas also suggests that Wallace killed Marshall upon the behest of Johnson.[23][24]
There are dozens of witnesses who ran up to the grassy knoll at the time looking for a shooter.
I believe what people do, not what they say.
Ever been there? Echoes. Besides we have the film evidence which shows....nothing there.
It was placed in a coffin at the hospital, then transported to Love Field where AF1 was parked. It would not fit through the doorway of the plane, so they had to knock off the coffin handles.
I was a Comm. Agent for TTA and the office had a ground level window about 12-15 feet wide facing the ramp. The plane was parked ~150 ft. to the right and facing me. I watched SS, LBJ, Jackie in her pink suit, Justice Sarah T. Hughes, AND the coffin enter the plane.
The Parkland autopsy was stopped prematurely by the feds armed with machine guns. The Dr. had only completed a rough sketch of the bullet entry and exit wounds.
The feds were told that State law required a full autopsy before the body could be moved from the County. The feds aimed their guns and wheeled the gurney out. Body was placed in coffin, driven to Love Field, put on AF1 and eventually arrived at Bethesda Navy Hospital, where a phony autopsy was performed and documented. The wound sketches did not match the one from Dallas.
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