Secret Service agent who was with JFK on day of his assassination breaks silence with claim that blows up the 'magic bullet' theory and suggests there WAS more than one shooter
Ex-Secret Service agent Paul Landis, 88, claims he retrieved bullet from JFK limo and placed it on president's stretcher. Casts doubt on 'magic bullet' theory and raises possibility of multiple shooters
By Keith Griffith
Daily Mail
Sep 9, 2023
Paul Landis, 88, broke his silence on Saturday, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead in a motorcade passing through Dallas on November 22, 1963
A former Secret Service agent who was present at President John F. Kennedy's assassination has come forward with a new claim that would debunk the 'magic bullet' theory and raises questions about whether there was a second shooter.
Paul Landis, 88, broke his silence on Saturday, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead in a motorcade passing through Dallas, to share his bombshell recollection with the New York Times.
Landis, who in 1963 was a young Secret Service agent assigned to protect First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy, said that in the chaos following the shooting, he picked up a nearly pristine bullet sitting on the top of the back seat of the open limousine, just behind where Kennedy was sitting when he was killed, and placed it on the president's hospital stretcher to preserve it for the autopsy investigators
That bullet, the first piece of evidence logged in the murder investigation, has for six decades been said to have been found on the stretcher of Texas Governor John Connally, and was hypothesized to have fallen free from a wound to his thigh.
It has long been known as the 'magic bullet' -- the bullet that supposedly passed through Kennedy's neck from the rear, then entered Connally's right shoulder, struck his rib, exited under his right nipple, passed through his right wrist and hit his left thigh.
A former Secret Service agent who was present at President John F. Kennedy's assassination has come forward with a new claim that casts doubt on the 'magic bullet' theory
According to the official finding of the Warren Commission, Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired three shots at the motorcade from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building with a 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
According to the report, one of the shots missed the motorcade, another was the 'magic bullet' that struck both Kennedy and Connally, and the final round fatally struck Kennedy in the head.
Now, Landis says that he believes the bullet he retrieved from the limo may have been undercharged, and dislodged from a shallow wound in the president's back, falling back onto the limousine seat when the fatal shot struck his head.
He theorizes that, after he placed the bullet on Kennedy's stretcher, it may have fallen onto Connally's stretcher when they were jostled together.
It's also possible that the hospital staffer who found the bullet and handed it over to the Secret Service misidentified which stretcher it was from, or that his account was mangled by investigators.
The bullet, which had been fired but was nearly fully intact, was positively matched to Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano through ballistics analysis.
But if Landis' claim is true, that suggests the bullet tagged as evidence item 'Q1' was not responsible for the injuries to Connolly, and there was no so-called 'magic bullet'.
According to the Warren Commission, Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository
The so-called magic bullet was nearly pristine, and matched the rifling on the 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle owned by Oswald, and found inside the Book Depository
Lee Harvey Oswald is shown after his arrest here on November 22, 1963. He was shot dead by Jack Ruby two days later as he was being transferred from Police Headquarters to jail
James Robenalt, an attorney and historian who worked with Landis on a book he plans to release in October, believes the new account suggests the possibility of multiple shooters.
'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.'
Robenalt explained in separate essay for Vanity Fair on Saturday: '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.
'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.'
The infamous Zapruder film shows that there was roughly a second between the physical reactions of Kennedy and Connally to being shot.
Landis, front in sunglasses, is seen with President Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy earlier on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination
The limousine carrying mortally wounded JFK races toward the hospital seconds after he was shot in Dallas. Secret Service agent Clinton Hill is riding on the back of the car. Hill's right knee is near the crease in the top of the rear limo seat where Landis says he found the bullet
Bystanders take cover on the grassy knoll and the motorcade escort speeds away moments after sniper bullets ended President Kennedy's life
FBI experts assessed that it would take Oswald a minimum of 2.3 seconds to fire, work the rifle's bolt action, aim, and fire another shot.
The shorter gap between Kennedy and Connally's reactions has long been explained as due to a single bullet striking both men, with Connally delayed slightly in realizing he'd been shot.
The possibility of multiple shooters has been a popular theory since the immediate aftermath of the assassination, with many pointing to the so-called 'grassy knoll' area along the route of the motorcade.
As well, the 'Triple Underpass' in front of the motorcade would have offered an elevated sniper position, and other tall buildings surrounded the book depository.
Robenalt acknowledged in Vanity Fair that 'neither this article nor Landis's book has the insight or forensic expertise to hazard any new conclusions' about a second shooter.
'Others will have to analyze the evidence in full to see where it now leads,' he added.
2 comments:
My good friend Zorg, who is an intelligent gas from the planet Tralfalmadore, assures me that this is all bullshit. Oswald was the only shooter. He did it for personal-political reasons.
Psst. The Mob did it. They had legitimate reasons to be mad and Joe, Bobby and JFK.
Post a Comment