Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two

JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©Westlake Library
10/3/23

As one of two Secret Service agents assigned to safeguard the wife of President John F. Kennedy, Paul Landis (pictured right) was never far behind Jackie Kennedy wherever she went. That was the situation on November 22, 1963, when the Kennedys embarked on what should have been a routine motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas. As excited crowds clamored to catch a glimpse of America's golden couple in their open-top limousine, 28-year-old Landis was one of four agents keeping watch from the jump board of a Cadillac immediately behind.

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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©REUTERS
It meant that when shots rang out, he had a ringside view of one of the most shocking — and defining — events of the 20th century. Yet for almost 60 years Landis has remained largely silent, traumatized by what he witnessed after the limousine passed by the Texas School Book Depository and bullets struck the President's neck and head. It is only now, in his 88th year, that he feels able to fully recall the day President Kennedy was assassinated in front of him. This month, Landis publishes his book, The Final Witness, a compelling account of his time in the Kennedy detail, the elite team whose mission was to protect the President and the First Lady. Why did it take him so long to tell his story? 'I had nightmares for years about the President's head exploding in front of me, so I tried to remove myself from the whole situation,' Landis told the Mail, speaking exclusively from his home in Cleveland, Ohio. Intriguingly, however, his memories throw doubt on the official Warren Commission account of what happened at 12.30pm that sunny autumn day.


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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©Westlake Library
In particular, Landis's recollections are at odds with the Commission's finding that one bullet — the so-called 'magic' bullet — was able to pass through John F. Kennedy then hit Texas Governor John Connally in multiple places before emerging undamaged. Over the years, many have found this unconvincing, arguing that the trajectory wasn't possible, and that one bullet wouldn't have been able to cause so much damage and remain unscathed. But the magic bullet theory was formed, in part, because a bullet was found next to Connally on his hospital stretcher and was assumed to have come from his body. However, Landis is insistent this was the same 'pristine' bullet that he found at the back of the presidential limousine, resting on the top of the seat, and which he placed next to the President on his stretcher — a fact that he has only recently made public. He thinks that in the chaos it must have got moved.


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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©Alamy Stock Photo
It might seem like an insignificant detail, but to those who believe that the full truth of the assassination has never been told, this could be a major development. The Warren Commission eventually concluded that three bullets were fired by a single shooter — Lee Harvey Oswald — from the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the Book Depository's sixth floor. One bullet missed, and was thought to have hit a sign, as fragments were found nearby. The second — the infamous 'magic' bullet — hit JFK near the base of the back of the neck, slightly to the right of the spine. It then exited from the front of JFK's neck, from where they concluded it went on to hit Governor Connally — sitting directly in front of JFK, next to his wife Nellie — injuring his back, chest, wrist and thigh.

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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©AP
Another reason why the magic bullet theory made sense was that the inquiry determined the time lapse between the President and Governor Connally being hit was too tight for Oswald (pictured) to have reloaded his weapon in time. The third bullet struck President Kennedy in the head. Yet if, as Landis says now, the bullet on Connally's stretcher was the one he found elsewhere in the car (he thinks it must have hit the President in the back but didn't penetrate deeply and was somehow dislodged from his body) then that whole theory was based on a false premise. And if the Governor wasn't struck by that bullet, then how did he come to be shot?

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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©AP
Theories that a second shooter was involved have persisted over the years. In particular, some witnesses said they heard shots from a nearby 'grassy knoll', made famous in the Oliver Stone movie, JFK. Predictably, opinions about this development are divided in the U.S. 'If true, it makes it much more likely that there were other shooters,' says presidential historian and author James Robenalt. However, Gerald Posner, who wrote the 2003 book Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald And The Assassination Of John F. Kennedy, comments: 'It could help solve the riddle of the magic bullet, but it doesn't go further than that.' What is certain is that Paul Landis was there when it all happened.

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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©Provided by Daily Mail
He remembers hearing the first shot ring out from behind his right shoulder and turning to look at the President. 'He was leaning slightly to his left, towards Mrs Kennedy, and I thought he was turning around to see where the noise came from. I didn't realise he had been hit by a bullet at that time,' he says. 'I heard the second shot. From my position, standing on the running board of the follow-up car, I didn't see any reaction in the President's car, so I thought that shot had missed.'
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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©Getty Images
Meanwhile, Landis's colleague, Clint Hill, who had also been in the follow-up car, had leapt into action and sprinted forward to clamber aboard the limousine as the motorcade approached an underpass. 'I heard the third shot and I saw the President's head explode in a mist of blood and flesh and brain matter — and I ducked to avoid getting splattered,' continues Landis. 'The third shot came fairly quickly after the second... and then we raced to Parkland Memorial Hospital.' Landis found the First Lady cradling her husband's head in her lap. Her pink suit, which she wore with a matching pillbox hat, was stained with her husband's blood. I asked Mrs Kennedy if I could help her up and she said: No, no. I want to stay with him. I followed Clint Hill into the back seat area of the limousine and saw two bullet fragments in a pool of blood next to Mrs Kennedy.'
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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©C.Stoughton/White House/SWNS
'Mrs Kennedy, at that point, was standing up to follow the President's body, which was being removed. And where she was seated, right behind her, on the top of the seat, there was an intact bullet resting there. Everybody was concentrating on getting the President's body out of the car and people were beginning to converge on the limousine, so I was afraid this bullet might disappear with a souvenir hunter, or that it might get lost. There was nobody to secure the scene, so I made a snap decision to put the bullet in my pocket.' Landis recalls the pandemonium in the hospital's trauma room, where doctors were working on the catastrophic head injury suffered by the 46-year-old President. Connally — who recovered from his wounds — was being treated nearby 'The doctors were saying: 'Please! Please! Everybody! Make room so we can work!'
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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
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'People started to leave, and I reached into my pocket and I put the bullet next to the President's body.' He then followed Mrs Kennedy out and stood guard as the First Lady sat on a chair outside the trauma room. 'There was a blank expression on her face. No tears. I remember Mrs Johnson (the wife of vice president Lyndon B. Johnson and soon to become First Lady) coming over and talking to her. Mrs Kennedy was in shock. I was in shock. I was afraid I'd break down.' Shortly afterwards came the news that the President was dead. Landis accompanied JFK's body and Mrs Kennedy back to Washington DC aboard Air Force One; he also attended the state funeral. He was never interviewed by the Warren Commission or the FBI, instead providing two statements to the Secret Service in the week after the assassination in which he now admits he did not mention the intact bullet. 'When I wrote my report, I was under pressure and hadn't had much sleep for days,' he says.

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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©Bettmann Archive
Tormented by images and memories, Landis left the Secret Service just seven months later. 'I didn't read anything about the assassination, and I refused to think or talk about what I had done. I just assumed that whatever the Warren Commission came up with, that was the answer to the assassination.' Whatever the truth, for Landis the assassination brought to an end what had been his dream career. He had joined the Secret Service in 1959, aged 24, thinking it sounded like 'the coolest job in the universe'. Physically slight, Landis only just made the minimum height requirement of 5ft 8in. After President Kennedy was elected in 1960, Landis — code name Debut because he was the youngest agent at the White House — was assigned the job of protecting the Kennedy children — Caroline, then aged four, and John Jnr, 10 months.

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JFK: Secret Service agent casts doubt if there were two shooters
©ASSOCIATED PRESS
On another occasion, he had to loan the President a penny to allow Caroline to purchase a sweet from a gumball machine. Eventually, Landis was moved on to Mrs Kennedy's protection detail, along with senior agent Clint Hill. In the decades after he left the service, Landis became a businessman, married and had a son and a daughter, before divorcing in 1984. He now works as an ambassador at his local historical society. In 2013, Landis says he was given the book Six Seconds In Dallas, by author Josiah Thompson, and was dismayed when he learned for the first time about the 'magic bullet' found with Governor Connally. Read the full story: