New releases about JFK assassination

The National Archives released more than 13,000 documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in December 2022. These documents were made public after President Biden issued an executive order authorizing their release2. The documents sparked a feeding frenzy among historians and conspiracy theorists alike. The documents were expected to provide more insight into exactly how much U.S. national security agencies knew about Oswald before the assassination, and how much information the CIA and FBI withheld from the official investigation into the assassination, which concluded in 1964. Among the revelations to emerge from the files were CIA notes on an intercepted telephone call on September 28, 1963, from Lee Harvey Oswald to a KGB agent in Mexico City. There was also evidence that the FBI’s Dallas office received a threat on Oswald’s life on November 23, 1963, the night before Jack Ruby shot him, from a man saying he was a “member of a committee organized to kill Oswald”.
However, it is important to note that despite these revelations, there is still no conclusive evidence that suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

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Secret Service agent who was with JFK raises new questions about assassination
Story by Patrick Reilly •
August 10th, 2023

Aformer 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 multiple shooters 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 recalls hearing the gunshot ring out in Dealy Plaza while he was walking just feet away from the president in 1963, he told The New York Times. He then heard an additional two shots and saw Kennedy keeled over in the back of the open limousine.

Landis said he had to duck down to avoid being splattered by brains.

From there, Landis’ account differs from the government’s official findings: In the ensuing chaos, he claims he picked up a bullet that was lodged in the back seat of the car where Kennedy had been sitting and placed it on the president’s hospital stretcher for investigators.

Secret Service agent who was with JFK raises new questions about assassination
Secret Service agent who was with JFK raises new questions about assassination
© Provided by New York Post
Paul Landis, 88, was just feet away from the President Kennedy when he was killed.Westlake Porter Public Library
The 6.5 mm bullet, which had long been thought to have been found on the stretcher of Texas Gov.John Connally 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 the rear, then hit Connally’s right shoulder, then somehow also wounded his back, chest, wrist and thigh.

The report found that one of the shots missed the motorcade, another was the “magic bullet,” and the final shot fatally struck Kennedy in the head.

Landis placed the bullet on Kennedy’s stretcher at the hospital, but now believes at some point the bullet shuffled from the president’s to the governor’s stretchers while they were pushed together, he told The Times.

The Warren Commission ruled out the bullet coming from the president’s stretcher.


Secret Service agent who was with JFK raises new questions about assassination
© Provided by New York Post
President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally moments before shots rang out on Nov. 22, 1963.REUTERS
“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Landis said. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.”

“This was all going on so quickly,” he continued, “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.’”

Landis, who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, believes that the bullet hit Kennedy but was undercharged and did not penetrate deeply into the president’s body and popped out before he was removed from the vehicle.

He told The Times he always had believed that Oswald was the lone gunman, but six decades later, he questions that conclusion.

“At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself,” he said. “Now I begin to wonder.”

Secret Service agent who was with JFK raises new questions about assassination
© Provided by New York Post
The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in JFK’s assassination. AP

The bullet, found fully intact, was positively matched to Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano through ballistics analysis, The Warren Commission said in its report.

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The aging former agent made the bombshell revelations in his upcoming book “The Final Witness,” which will be published by Chicago Review Press on Oct. 10.

James Robenalt, an Ohio-based lawyer and author of several books of history, has intensely researched the assassination and helped Landis work out 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, it is likely to reopen the question of a second shooter, if not even more,” 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 a separate bullet and not by Oswald, whom he believes could not have reloaded fast enough.

Speculation about multiple shooters has been a popular theory since the immediate moments after Kennedy’s assassination.

“Others will have to analyze the evidence in full to see where it now leads,” Robenalt told Vanity Fair.

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Paul Landis & the ‘Magic Bullet Theory’: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Story by Jessica McBride •
1h

Paul Landis is an 88-year-old former Secret Service agent for Jacqueline Kennedy whose revelation that he found a bullet in the JFK assassination casts doubt on the single gunman and “magic bullet” theory.

Landis provided new information about the assassination in an interview with The New York Times and in a forthcoming book called “The Final Witness.” His account shatters what was known as the “magic bullet theory” that formed the foundation for arguments that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Landis did not draw conclusions about who shot Kennedy in his interview with The New York Times.

“There’s no goal at this point,” he told the newspaper.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Paul Landis Says He Found a Bullet on the Top of the President’s Car’s Back Seat
paul landis
paul landis
© Getty
GettyPresident John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963) and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy ride with Texas Governor John Connally and others in an open car motorcade shortly before the president was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963.

According to a Vanity Fair article by James Robenalt, Landis “was one of two Secret Service agents tasked with guarding first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on November 22, 1963.”

The caption for his book reads, “Special Agent Paul Landis is in the follow-up car directly behind JFK’s and is at the president’s limo as soon as it stops at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He is inside Trauma Room #1, where the president is pronounced dead. He is on Air Force One with the president’s casket on the flight back to Washington, DC; an eyewitness to Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office.”


According to Vanity Fair, Landis was standing “on the right rear running board of the Secret Service follow-up car” when JFK was shot in Dallas, Texas, about 15 feet away. He and another agent had to coax Jackie Kennedy into letting go of her husband’s wounded body, the magazine reported.

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In the key revelation, Landis claims that he found a bullet on the top of the back seat of the president’s car, and later placed it on JFK’s stretcher at the hospital.

According to The New York Times, it was long believed that the bullet was located on a stretcher holding Texas Governor John Connally, who was also shot in the assassination but who survived.

The Warren Commission “decided that one of the bullets fired that day struck the president from behind, exited from the front of his throat and continued on to hit Mr. Connally, somehow managing to injure his back, chest, wrist, and thigh,” The Times reported, adding that this theory came to be known by skeptics as the “magic bullet theory.”

The key is that if the so-called “magic bullet” did not injure both Kennedy and Connally, then it would not have been possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to have fired three shots, as evidenced by the Zapruder film.

“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Landis told The Times. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.”

The bullet “was a piece of evidence, that I realized right away. Very important. And I didn’t want it to disappear to get lost. So it was, ‘Paul you’ve got to make a decision,’ and I grabbed it.”

According to his book caption, Landis was never called to testify to the Warren Commission, which advanced the “magic bullet” and lone gunman theories.

2. Paul Landis, Who Was Raised in Ohio, Joined the Secret Service in 1958

Vanity Fair reported that Landis is from Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus.

He joined the Secret Service in 1958 at age 23, the magazine reported, graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University the year before.

A neighborhood friend had joined the Secret Service, giving him the idea, Vanity Fair reported, adding that, at 5 foot 8 inches tall, he barely made the agency’s height requirement.

The Times noted, “A couple elements of his account contradict the official statements he filed with authorities immediately after the shooting.”

In his original statement in 1963, Landis said he traveled from Fort Worth, Texas, on board a U.S. Air Force Flight and then went to Love Field.

He said that he “heard a second report and it appeared the President’s head split open with a muffled exploding sound. I can best describe the sound as I heard it, as the sound you would get by shooting a high-powered bullet into a five-gallon can of water.”

He estimated the time between the first and second report “must have been about four or five seconds.”

Landis said he was not certain which direction the second shot came from but “my reaction at this time was that the shot came from somewhere towards the front, right-hand side of the road.”

He wrote then, “I do not recall hearing a third shot,” it was Nov. 27, 1963. The statement does not mention Landis finding a bullet.

A blog post in 2015, however, says, “Landis later reported, ‘And when my eyes came back to the president again, it was a third shot and that was the one that hit him in the head.'”

3. John F. Kennedy’s Nephew Wrote on X, ‘The Magic Bullet Theory Is Now Dead’

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of JFK’s brother Bobby Kennedy, wrote on X that the Landis revelation has killed the “magic bullet theory.”

“The magic bullet theory is now dead,” RFK Jr. wrote. “This preposterous construction has served as the mainstay of the theory that a single shooter murdered President Kennedy since the Warren Commission advanced it 60 years ago under the direction of the former CIA Director Allen Dulles whom my uncle fired.”

Kennedy continued: “The recent revelations by JFK’s Secret Service protector Paul Landis have prompted even the New York Times-among the last lonely defenders of the Warren Report-to finally acknowledge its absurdity.”

4. Paul Landis, Who Guarded the Kennedy Children & First Lady, Was Called ‘Debut’
jackie kennedy
jackie kennedy
© Getty
GettyJackie Kennedy

Landis was given the Secret Service code name, “Debut,” according to Vanity Fair, which said he was assigned to guard the Kennedy children and then the First Lady, along with Clint Hill.

in 1962, he traveled with Jacqueline and Caroline Kennedy to Italy, Vanity Fair reported.


Vanity Fair reported that Landis’s PTSD was so bad from witnessing the assassination that he did not read about it for 50 years.

5. Paul Landis Works as a Security Guard for the Cleveland History Center

According to Vanity Fair, Landis “exercises daily and plays golf once a week.”