A Secret Service agent working on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy claims that he secretly found one of the bullets that hit his limousine that fateful day.
(Video Credit: On Demand News)
The former agent says that he kept the bullet a secret and didn’t file it in his official report. He claims that he moved the “magic bullet” and hopes the evidence helps investigators figure out what really happened that day.
Paul Landis’ memoir was released on Tuesday, laying out his life as a Secret Service agent and including the explosive claim about the assassination of the Democrat president. “The Final Witness” chronicles his time protecting the Eisenhower grandchildren, the Kennedy offspring, and eventually First Lady Jackie Kennedy.
“That’s the best job I ever had,” he recounted in an interview with News 5 Cleveland. “I was fortunate to be there when I was, and I was unfortunate to be there in Dallas when I was.”
Landis is now 88 years old and is from Ohio. After all these years, he’s finally opening up about the assassination of JFK.
The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After Sixty Years
Paul Landis details his recollections of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
— Corrina McFarlane ️✨ #WeHaveAgency (@planetweaver) October 9, 2023
He started off his career with the code name “Debut” because he was so young. Landis was riding in the car and sitting right behind Kennedy and the First Lady in Dallas when the president was shot.
“I had terrible nightmares after that assassination,” he admitted in the interview. “I had been looking at the president when the third shot hit him in the head, and the vision of everything happening, it was a loop over and over. I took that baggage with me wherever I went.”
Landis was evidently nearest to the first lady during the events that surrounded that day, including Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as president and the funeral of the former president.
His account of the assassination differs from the official one.
“Investigators determined what’s known as the ‘Magic Bullet Theory,’ that one shooter fired all the shots, and one bullet entered JFK, then entered Texas Governor John Connally’s right shoulder, struck his rib, exited his chest, and continued through his right wrist and into his left thigh,” News 5 Cleveland reported.
2/#PaulLandis “refutes the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory, which posits that one of the bullets fired that day entered Kennedy’s body from behind, then exited through his throat before striking Texas Governor John B. Connally Jr.’s back, chest, wrist and thigh…
— Corrina McFarlane ️✨ #WeHaveAgency (@planetweaver) October 9, 2023
“Investigators came to the conclusion in part because the bullet was found on a stretcher for the Texas governor, assuming it had exited his body,” the media outlet added.
Landis never spoke to investigators about the assassination and never told his story. In his report, he omitted that he moved the bullet to a gurney after he found it lodged in the back of the limousine. He claims he didn’t want the bullet to get lost.
“I didn’t want that to disappear,” he remarked. “It was an important piece of evidence. And with the stress and everything, I have tried to analyze all the things, and I can’t really answer. You had to be there to know how bad and how stressful and the chaos that was going on.”
Landis doesn’t buy into the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s death, but he now wishes he had come forward earlier about what he saw that day.
“I don’t know if it will change the conclusions [of the Warren Commission],” he commented. “It’s just another bit of information that they can take and go back and reexamine everything.”
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“….Haunted by what he’d seen that day in Dallas, he all but forgot about the bullet for the next 50 years.”
“This bullet, per the commission, was later found on Connally’s stretcher.”
— Corrina McFarlane ️✨ #WeHaveAgency (@planetweaver) October 9, 2023
Shortly after Kennedy’s death, Landis left the Secret Service and has led a quiet life. It took a mental toll on him.
“It was still painful to think about or talk about, and that’s why I never talked to anyone about the assassination for 45 years,” he asserted. “I wasn’t trying to hide anything; it was just something I did, and unfortunately, I never said anything about it until now. I never read anything. The assassination was so hard for me that I just buried everything in the back of my mind.”
“At that time, I was a committed agent, and that would have been my career,” Landis stated.
“My quiet life has disappeared,” he noted now that “The Final Witness” has been published.