By Steve Neavling
Paul Landis, a former Secret Service agent, has broken his 60-year-old secret about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Just feet away from Kennedy when the former president was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, Landis is raising questions about the Warren Commission’s theory that a single bullet hit both Kennedy and Tex Gov. John Connally Jr., according to an interview with The New York Times.
Now 88 years old, Landis has offered a new account that could “encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries,” the Times writes.
The Warren Commission concluded that a bullet had struck and exited Kennedy before hitting then-Texas Gov. John Connally Jr.
In his interview with The New York Times, Landis said he had heard several shots ring out and had seen Kennedy slump forward after being struck in the head. He said he picked up a bullet from the back seat of the limo where Kennedy was sitting, and placed it on the president’s stretcher so that it could be examined.
Connally, who was sitting in front of Kennedy, was also shot. But if the bullet was found in the back seat where Kennedy was sitting, it raises questions as to how that one bullet could have also hit the governor.
According to the official investigation, that bullet was found on Connally’s stretcher and was presented as evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. The Warren Commission said the bullet did not come from Kennedy’s stretcher.
“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Landis told NYT. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.”
Landis was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, and he had kept his secret for nearly 60 years. He’s always believed that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Now he says: “At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself. Now I begin to wonder.”
Landis spoke to NYT ahead of the release of his memoir, “The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After 60 Years.”
