Бывший агент Секретной службы, присутствовавший при убийстве президента Джона Кеннеди, выступил с новым заявлением, которое развенчивает теорию “волшебной пули” и ставит вопрос о том, был ли второй стрелок. Пол Лэндис (Paul Landis), 88 лет, нарушил свое молчание в субботу, спустя почти 60 лет после того, как Кеннеди был застрелен в кортеже, проезжавшем по Далласу, и поделился с газетой New York Times своими потрясающими воспоминаниями.
Лэндис в 1963 г. был молодым агентом Секретной службы, призванным охранять первую леди Жаклин Кеннеди. Он рассказал, что в хаосе, возникшем после стрельбы, он подобрал почти нетронутую пулю, лежавшую на верхней части заднего сиденья открытого лимузина.
По его словам, она находилась как раз за тем местом, где сидел Кеннеди, когда был убит. По словам Лэндиса, он взял её и положил его на больничные носилки президента, чтобы сохранить для следователей и судмедэкспертов.
Эта пуля, первая улика в расследовании убийства, уже шесть десятилетий считается найденной на носилках губернатора Техаса Джона Коннелли и, как предполагалось, просто выпала из раны на его бедре.
Лэндис считает, что пуля могла перекатиться на носилки Коннелли с носилок Кеннеди, когда они находились рядом друг с другом. Эта пуля давно известна как “волшебная” – пуля, которая якобы прошла через шею Кеннеди сзади, затем вошла в правое плечо Коннелли, пробила его ребро, вышла под его правым соском, прошла через его правое запястье и попала в левое бедро. Но утверждение Лэндиса о том, что пуля действительно вышла из Кеннеди в его “Кадиллаке”, может разрушить теорию “волшебной пули” и подкрепить утверждение о том, что Ли Харви Освальд действовал в день убийства не один.
88-летний Пол Лэндис прервал свое молчание в субботу, спустя почти 60 лет после того, как 22 ноября 1963 г. Кеннеди был застрелен в кортеже, проезжавшем по Далласу.
Согласно официальному заключению комиссии Уоррена, Кеннеди был убит одиночкой Ли Харви Освальдом, который произвел три выстрела по кортежу с шестого этажа здания Техасского школьного книгохранилища из 6,5-миллиметровой винтовки Mannlicher-Carcano. По отчету, один из выстрелов прошел мимо кортежа, второй был “волшебной пулей”, поразившей Кеннеди и Коннелли, а последний смертельно ранил Кеннеди в голову.
Теперь Лэндис говорит, что, по его мнению, пуля, которую он извлек из лимузина, могла быть недозаряжена и вылететь из неглубокой раны в спине президента, упав обратно на сиденье лимузина, когда смертельный выстрел поразил его голову.
Он предполагает, что после того, как он положил пулю на носилки Кеннеди, она могла упасть на носилки Коннелли, когда их соединили. Возможно также, что сотрудник больницы, нашедший пулю и передавший ее в Секретную службу, неправильно определил, с каких носилок она была извлечена, или же его рассказ был искажен следователями. Отстрелянная, но почти полностью целая пуля была положительно сопоставлена с пулей из “Маннлихер-Каркано” Освальда в результате баллистической экспертизы.
Но если утверждение Лэндиса верно, то это говорит о том, что пуля, помеченная как улика “Q1”, не нанесла ранения Коннолли, и так называемой “волшебной пули” не существовало.
По мнению комиссии Уоррена, Кеннеди был убит одиночкой Ли Харви Освальдом, который произвел три выстрела с шестого этажа техасского школьного книгохранилища
Кеннеди сидел в лимузине прямо за губернатором Техаса Джоном Коннелли, когда оба были поражены выстрелами. Долгое время считалось, что в обоих мужчин попала “волшебная пуля”.
Так называемая “волшебная пуля” была практически нетронутой и соответствовала нарезке 6,5-миллиметровой винтовки Mannlicher-Carcano, принадлежавшей Освальду и найденной в книгохранилище.
Ли Харви Освальд после ареста здесь 22 ноября 1963 года. Через два дня он был застрелен Джеком Руби, когда его переводили из штаб-квартиры полиции в тюрьму.
Джеймс Робеналт, адвокат и историк, работавший с Лэндисом над книгой, которую он планирует выпустить в октябре, считает, что новый рассказ указывает на возможность существования нескольких стрелков. Если то, что он говорит, правда, во что я склонен верить, то это, скорее всего, вновь откроет вопрос о втором стрелке, если не больше”, – сказал Робеналт в интервью газете Times.
“Если пуля, которую мы знаем как “волшебную” или “первозданную”, застряла в спине президента Кеннеди, это означает, что главный тезис доклада Уоррена, теория единственной пули, неверен”. пояснил Робеналт в отдельном эссе для Vanity Fair в субботу: Во-первых, если “первозданная” пуля не прошла сквозь Кеннеди и Коннелли, каким-то образом оказавшись на носилках Коннелли, то вполне логично, что в Коннелли могла попасть отдельная пуля, прилетевшая сверху и сзади”.
По данным ФБР, Освальд не успел бы произвести два выстрела так быстро, чтобы попасть в Коннелли после ранения президента в спину”.
На печально известной пленке Запрудера видно, что между физическими реакциями Кеннеди и Коннелли на выстрел прошла примерно секунда. По оценкам экспертов ФБР, Освальду потребовалось не менее 2,3 секунды, чтобы выстрелить, передернуть затвор винтовки, прицелиться и произвести еще один выстрел.
Более короткий промежуток между реакциями Кеннеди и Коннелли долгое время объяснялся тем, что в обоих мужчин попала одна пуля, и Коннелли с некоторой задержкой понял, что в него стреляли.
Лэндис (на первом плане в солнцезащитных очках) с президентом Кеннеди и первой леди Джеки Кеннеди 22 ноября 1963 года, в день убийства.
Лэндис (в круге), услышав выстрел, оглядывается через правое плечо. В лимузине Кеннеди можно увидеть сгорбившимся, сжимающим шею, за секунду до того, как очередная пуля пробила ему голову и убила его
Лимузин, в котором находился смертельно раненый Кеннеди, мчится к больнице через несколько секунд после того, как он был застрелен в Далласе. Агент Секретной службы Клинтон Хилл едет на заднем сиденье автомобиля. Правое колено Хилла находится рядом со складкой в верхней части заднего сиденья лимузина, где, по словам Лэндиса, он обнаружил пулю.
Очевидцы укрываются на травянистом холме, а кортеж уезжает через несколько минут после того, как пули снайперов оборвали жизнь президента Кеннеди
Рассказ Лэндиса также поднимает тревожные вопросы о том, как объяснить ранения Кеннеди.
Вскрытие Кеннеди показало наличие следующих пулевых ранений: небольшое аккуратное отверстие в спине, в районе правой лопатки; небольшое аккуратное отверстие в передней центральной части горла; небольшое аккуратное отверстие в задней правой части черепа; и массивное, зазубренное выходное отверстие в правой передней части черепа.
Пулевое отверстие в правой верхней части спины долгое время объяснялось как место входа пули, которая затем вышла из передней средней части горла Кеннеди (рана в горле была расширена врачами скорой помощи для проведения экстренной трахеотомии, и на их описание первоначальной раны как небольшой пришлось опираться при вскрытии).
Но если пулевое ранение в спине, которое, как сказано в протоколе вскрытия, не поддается глубокому исследованию, чтобы проследить путь пули, было вызвано недозаряженной пулей, которая затем упала обратно на сиденье лимузина, то откуда тогда взялось ранение в горле?
Робеналт выдвигает версию о том, что рана на горле на самом деле была входным отверстием, как первоначально предполагали врачи скорой помощи, и что пуля могла раздробиться при попадании в позвоночник Кеннеди.
Он отметил, что рентгенолог Джеррол Ф. Кастер, проводивший в 1997 г. вскрытие, показал, что видел металлические осколки в районе верхней части позвоночника Кеннеди, но слайд рентгеновского снимка был одним из трех, пропавших из Национального архива.
Если пуля вошла в горло Кеннеди спереди, то она не могла быть выпущена Освальдом из книгохранилища, которое в момент убийства находилось непосредственно за кортежем.
Сразу после убийства была выдвинута версия о том, что стреляли несколько человек, причем многие указывали на так называемый “травяной холмик”, расположенный справа от маршрута кортежа.
Кроме того, “тройной подземный переход”, расположенный перед кортежем, мог бы стать удобной снайперской позицией, а другие высокие здания окружали книгохранилище, расположенное сзади кортежа.
Робеналт признал в журнале Vanity Fair, что “ни эта статья, ни книга Лэндиса не обладают достаточной проницательностью или криминалистической экспертизой, чтобы сделать какие-либо новые выводы” о втором стрелке.
Другим предстоит всесторонне проанализировать улики, чтобы понять, к чему они ведут”, – добавил он.
Кто такой Пол Лэндис и почему он заговорил сейчас?
Лэндис, которому в день покушения исполнилось 28 лет, был одним из самых молодых агентов Секретной службы своего времени, что отразилось в его кодовом имени “Дебют”.
Он вырос в Уортингтоне, штат Огайо, и после службы в Национальной воздушной гвардии штата Огайо работал в магазине одежды, когда друг семьи рассказал ему о работе в Секретной службе, что зажгло его воображение.
Несмотря на свой маленький рост (ему пришлось потянуться, чтобы достичь требуемых 5 футов 8 дюймов), Лэндис поступил на службу в элитное ведомство в 1959 г. и несколько лет работал в офисе в Цинциннати, занимаясь расследованием мошенничества с чеками и фальшивомонетчиками.
Во время правления Эйзенхауэра он был принят в отряд охраны президента, где ему поручили следить за внуками президента.
Когда Кеннеди вступил в должность, Лэндису было поручено охранять его детей, а затем и первую леди Жаклин Кеннеди, вместе с которой он совершил поездки в Италию в 1962 году и в Грецию в октябре 1963 года.
В тот роковой ноябрьский день он находился в Далласе, поскольку Жаклин отправилась в Техас вместе с президентом, что ознаменовало неофициальное начало его кампании по переизбранию.
Агент Секретной службы Пол Лэндис, которому было поручено охранять детей Кеннеди, а затем и его жену Жаклин, поднимает Джона Кеннеди-младшего в воздух на Южной лужайке Белого дома
Лэндис (крайний справа) охраняет Жаклин Кеннеди и ее сестру, принцессу Ли Радзивилл, когда они осматривают экспонаты музея в Гераклионе (Крит, Греция) в октябре 1963 года.
По данным газеты “Таймс”, в момент рокового выстрела Лэндис стоял на подножке автомобиля, следовавшего непосредственно за президентским лимузином.
Он услышал первый выстрел и посмотрел через правое плечо в направлении звука. Обернувшись к президенту, он увидел, что Кеннеди поднял руки, очевидно, пораженный.
Когда его напарник Клифф Хилл бросился к лимузину, он услышал второй выстрел, более громкий. Затем раздался третий, который, как он рассказал газете “Таймс”, и стал роковым выстрелом, поразившим голову Кеннеди.
Этот день преследует его до сих пор. Голова президента взорвалась – я не мог избавиться от этого видения”, – сказал он в интервью Times. Что бы я ни делал, я думал только об этом”.
Травмированный убийством, Лэндис через полгода уволился из Секретной службы и вернулся в Огайо.
Он никогда не давал показаний Комиссии Уоррена, а в двух его письменных заявлениях, сделанных сразу после выстрела, не упоминается о нахождении пули.
В других аспектах они также отличаются от его нынешних воспоминаний – после выстрела Лэндис сказал, что слышал только два выстрела.
Лэндис стоит в центре со скрещенными руками за спиной семьи Кеннеди, когда Джон Джон отдает честь гробу своего отца
Роберт и Эдвард Кеннеди провожают Джеки Кеннеди из Белого дома на похороны президента Джона Ф. Кеннеди 25 ноября 1963 г., Лэндис идет справа сзади
По словам Лэндиса, в течение многих лет он старался выбросить убийство из головы и не читал о нем. Он никогда не сомневался в том, что Освальд был одиночным стрелком.
Сейчас он утверждает, что не понимал, что его переживания расходятся с выводами Комиссии Уоррена – расследования, учрежденного президентом Линдоном Б. Джонсоном.
Все изменилось в 2014 году, когда он наконец-то прочитал книгу об убийстве, которую ему подарил друг. Книга 1967 года под названием “Шесть секунд в Далласе” утверждала, что стрелков было несколько.
Узнав, что официальная версия о том, где была найдена нетронутая пуля, была ошибочной, Лэндис отправил письмо своему давнему партнеру Хиллу, который в ответ предупредил его о “многочисленных последствиях”, если он выскажется по этому поводу, сообщает Times.
Лэндис мучился совестью и в конце концов решил написать книгу, которая должна выйти в свет 10 октября и называется “Последний свидетель”.
На данный момент у него нет цели”, – сказал он в интервью Times о причинах, побудивших его высказаться. Я просто думаю, что прошло уже достаточно времени, чтобы я мог рассказать свою историю”.
Он отказался сообщить газете, что теперь считает, что был второй стрелок, сказав лишь, что теперь он не уверен.
На данный момент я начинаю сомневаться в себе”, – сказал он. Теперь я начинаю сомневаться”.
Статья в НЙТ
He still remembers the first gunshot. For an instant, standing on the running board of the motorcade car, he entertained the vain hope that maybe it was just a firecracker or a blown tire. But he knew guns and he knew better. Then came another shot. And another. And the president slumped down.
For so many nights afterward, he relived that grisly moment in his dreams. Now, 60 years later, Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents just feet away from President John F. Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas, is telling his story in full for the first time. And in at least one key respect, his account differs from the official version in a way that may change the understanding of what happened in Dealey Plaza.
Mr. Landis has spent most of the intervening years fleeing history, trying to forget that unforgettable moment etched in the consciousness of a grieving nation. The memory of the explosion of violence and the desperate race to the hospital and the devastating flight home and the wrenching funeral with John Jr. saluting his fallen father — it was all too much, too torturous, so much so that Mr. Landis left the service and Washington behind.
Until finally, after the nightmares had passed at last, he could think about it again. And he could read about it. And he realized that what he read was not quite right, not as he remembered it. As it turns out, if his recollections are correct, the much-discussed “magic bullet” may not have been so magic after all.
His memory challenges the theory advanced by the Warren Commission that has been the subject of so much speculation and debate over the years — that one of the bullets fired at the president’s limousine hit not only Kennedy but Gov. John B. Connally Jr. of Texas, who was riding with him, in multiple places.
Mr. Landis’s account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way. It may not mean any more than that. But it could also 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.
As with all things related to the assassination, of course, his account raises questions of its own. Mr. Landis remained silent for 60 years, which has fueled doubts even for his former Secret Service partner, and memories are tricky even for those sincerely certain of their recollections. A couple elements of his account contradict the official statements he filed with authorities immediately after the shooting, and some of the implications of his version cannot be easily reconciled to the existing record.
But he was there, a firsthand witness, and it is rare for new testimony to emerge six decades after the fact. He has never subscribed to the conspiracy theories and stresses that he is not promoting one now. At age 88, he said, all he wants is to tell what he saw and what he did. He will leave it to everyone else to draw conclusions.
“There’s no goal at this point,” he said in an interview last month in Cleveland, the first time he has talked about this with a reporter in advance of his book, “The Final Witness,” which will be published by Chicago Review Press on Oct. 10. “I just think it had been long enough that I needed to tell my story.”
What it comes down to is a copper-jacketed 6.5-millimeter projectile. 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. It seemed incredible that a single bullet could do all that, so skeptics called it the magic bullet theory.
Investigators came to that conclusion partly because the bullet was found on a stretcher believed to have held Mr. Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital, so they assumed it had exited his body during efforts to save his life. But Mr. Landis, who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, said that is not what happened.
In fact, he said, he was the one who found the bullet — and he found it not in the hospital near Mr. Connally but in the presidential limousine lodged in the back of the seat behind where Kennedy was sitting.
When he spotted the bullet after the motorcade arrived at the hospital, he said he grabbed it to thwart souvenir hunters. Then, for reasons that still seem fuzzy even to him, he said he entered the hospital and placed it next to Kennedy on the president’s stretcher, assuming it could somehow help doctors figure out what happened. At some point, he now guesses, the stretchers must have been pushed together and the bullet was shaken from one to another.
“There was nobody there to secure the scene, and that was a big, big bother to me,” Mr. Landis said. “All the agents that were there were focused on the president.” A crowd was gathering. “This was all going on so quickly. 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.’”
Mr. Landis theorizes that the bullet struck Kennedy in the back but for some reason was undercharged and did not penetrate deeply, therefore popping back out before the president’s body was removed from the limousine.
Mr. Landis has been reluctant to speculate on the larger implications. He always believed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.
But now? “At this point, I’m beginning to doubt myself,” he said. “Now I begin to wonder.” That is as far as he is willing to go.
A native of Ohio and son of a college sports coach, Mr. Landis does not come across as a swaggering security agent. He had to stretch to meet the 5-foot-8 height requirement when he joined the service, and could no longer do so. “I’m too little now,” he said, to make it in today’s agency. He is quiet and unassuming, dressed in a coat and tie for an interview, his gray hair neatly trimmed. He has a little trouble hearing and speaks softly, but his mind is clear and his recollections steady.
In recent years, he confided his story with several key figures, including Lewis C. Merletti, a former director of the Secret Service. James Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer and author of several books of history, has deeply researched the assassination and helped Mr. Landis process his memories.
“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,” Mr. Robenalt said. “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.” And if Mr. Connally was hit by a separate bullet, he added, then it seemed possible it was not from Oswald, who he argued could not have reloaded that fast.
Mr. Merletti, who has been friendly with Mr. Landis for a decade, was not sure what to think about his account. “I don’t know if that story’s true or not, but I do know that the agents that were there that day, they were tormented for years by what happened,” he said in an interview.
Mr. Merletti referred Mr. Landis to Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and a prominent presidential historian, who helped him find an agent for his book. In an interview, Mr. Gormley said he was not surprised that a traumatized agent would come forward all these years later, comparing it to a dying declaration in legal cases.
“It’s very common as people get to the end of their lives,” Mr. Gormley said. “They want to make peace with things. They want to get on the table things they’ve been holding back, especially if it’s a piece of history and they want the record corrected. This does not look like a play by someone trying to get attention for himself or money. I don’t read it that way at all. I think he firmly believes this. Whether it fits together, I don’t know. But people can eventually figure that out.”
Mr. Landis’s account varies in a couple of respects from two written statements he filed in the week after the shooting. Aside from not mentioning finding the bullet, he reported hearing only two shots. “I do not recall hearing a third shot,” he wrote. Likewise, he did not mention going into the trauma room where Kennedy was taken, writing that he “remained outside by the door” when the first lady went in.
Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” a 1993 book that concluded that Oswald indeed killed Kennedy on his own, said he was dubious. While he did not question Mr. Landis’s sincerity, Mr. Posner said the story did not add up.
“People’s memories generally do not improve over time, and it is a flashing warning sign to me, about skepticism I have over his story, that on some very important details of the assassination, including the number of shots, his memory has gotten better instead of worse,” he said.
“Even assuming that he is accurately describing what happened with the bullet,” Mr. Posner added, “it might mean nothing more than we now know that the bullet that came out of Governor Connally did so in the limousine, not on a stretcher in Parkland where it was found.”
Mr. Landis said the reports he filed after the assassination included mistakes; he was in shock and had barely slept for five days as he focused on helping the first lady through the ordeal, he said, and not paying enough attention to what he submitted. He did not think to mention the bullet, he said.
It was not until 2014 that he realized that the official account of the bullet differed from his memory, he said, but he did not come forward then out of a feeling that he had made a mistake in putting it on the stretcher without telling anyone in that pre-C.S.I., secure-the-crime-scene era.
“I didn’t want to talk about it,” Mr. Landis said. “I was afraid. I started to think, did I do something wrong? There was a fear that I might have done something wrong and I shouldn’t talk about it.”
Indeed, his partner, Clint Hill, the legendary Secret Service agent who clambered onto the back of the speeding limousine in a futile effort to save Kennedy, discouraged Mr. Landis from speaking out. “Many ramifications,” Mr. Hill warned in a 2014 email that Mr. Landis saved and shared last month.
Mr. Hill, who has set out his own account of what happened in multiple books and interviews, cast doubt on Mr. Landis’s version on Friday. “I believe it raises concerns when the story he is telling now, 60 years after the fact, is different than the statements he wrote in the days following the tragedy” and told in subsequent years, Mr. Hill said in an email. “In my mind, there are serious inconsistencies in his various statements/stories.”
Mr. Landis’s rendezvous with history began in the small town of Worthington, Ohio, north of Columbus. After college and a stint in the Ohio Air National Guard, he was working in a clothing store when a family friend described his job in the Secret Service. Intrigued, Mr. Landis joined in 1959 in the Cincinnati office, where he chased thieves who swiped Social Security checks out of mailboxes.
Mr. Landis’s rendezvous with history began in the small town of Worthington, Ohio, north of Columbus. After college and a stint in the Ohio Air National Guard, he was working in a clothing store when a family friend described his job in the Secret Service. Intrigued, Mr. Landis joined in 1959 in the Cincinnati office, where he chased thieves who swiped Social Security checks out of mailboxes.
A year later, he was sent to Washington where he joined the protective detail for President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s grandchildren. After Kennedy was elected, Mr. Landis, code named Debut because of his youth, was assigned to guard the new president’s children and later the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, alongside Mr. Hill. Because the first lady accompanied her husband to Dallas that fall day in 1963, Mr. Landis, then 28, was part of the motorcade, riding the rear of the right running board on the black Cadillac convertible, code named Halfback, just feet behind the presidential limousine.
At the first shot, Mr. Landis turned to look over his right shoulder in the direction of the sound but spotted nothing. Then he turned to the limousine and saw Kennedy raising his arms, evidently hit. Suddenly, Mr. Landis noticed that Mr. Hill had leapt off their follow-up car and was sprinting toward the limousine. Mr. Landis thought about doing the same but did not have an angle.
He said he heard a second shot that sounded louder and finally the fatal third shot that hit Kennedy in the head. Mr. Landis had to duck to avoid being splattered by flesh and brain matter. He knew instantly that the president was dead. Mr. Hill, now on the back of the limousine, turned back and confirmed it with a thumbs down.
Once they reached the hospital, Mr. Hill and Mr. Landis coaxed the distraught first lady to let go of her husband so he could be taken inside. After they exited the car, Mr. Landis noticed two bullet fragments in a pool of bright red blood. He fingered one of them but put it back.
That’s when he said he noticed the intact bullet in the seam of the tufted dark leather cushioning. He said he slipped it into his coat pocket and headed into the hospital, where he planned to give it to a supervisor, but in the confusion instinctively put it on Kennedy’s stretcher instead.
The hospital’s senior engineer later found it when he was moving Mr. Connally’s stretcher, by then empty, and bumped it against another stretcher in the hall, resulting in the bullet falling out.
The Warren Commission report said that it “eliminated President Kennedy’s stretcher as a source of the bullet” because the president remained on his stretcher while doctors tried to save his life and was not removed until his body was placed in a coffin.
Investigators determined that the bullet, designated Commission Exhibit 399, was fired by the same C2766 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. They concluded that the bullet passed through Kennedy, then entered Mr. Connally’s right shoulder, struck his rib, exited under his right nipple, continued through his right wrist and into his left thigh.
Doctors concurred that the single bullet could have caused all the damage. But the bullet was described as nearly pristine and had lost only one or two grains of its original 160 or 161 grains in weight, causing skeptics to doubt that it could have done all that the commission said it had. Still, ballistic experts using modern forensic techniques concluded at the 50th anniversary of the assassination that the single-bullet theory was perfectly plausible.
Mr. Landis said he was surprised that the Warren Commission never interviewed him, but assumed that his supervisors were protecting the agents, who had been out late the night before socializing (Mr. Landis until 5 a.m., although he insisted they were not drunk). “Nobody really asked me,” he said.
Many pictures of those days of mourning show Mr. Landis at Jacqueline Kennedy’s side as she endured the rituals of a presidential farewell. Night after night, those seconds of violence in Dallas kept replaying in his head, his own personal Zapruder film on an endless loop. “The president’s head exploding — I could not shake that vision,” he said. “Whatever I was doing, that’s all I was thinking about.”
With Mr. Landis and Mr. Hill still protecting her, the former first lady was in constant motion in the months afterward. “She’d be in the back seat sobbing and you’d want to say something but it wasn’t really our place to say anything,” Mr. Landis recalled.
After six months, he could not take it anymore and left the Secret Service. Haunted, he moved to Cape Cod in Massachusetts, then New York, then Ohio near Cleveland. For decades, he made a living in real estate and machine products and house painting, anything as long as it had nothing to do with protecting presidents.
He was generally aware of the conspiracy theories, yet never read a book about them, or the Warren Commission report for that matter. “I just paid no attention to that,” he said. “I just removed myself. I just felt I had been there. I had seen it, and I knew what I saw and what I did. And that’s all.”
He did a few interviews in 2010 and thereafter, but never mentioned finding the bullet. Then, in 2014, a local police chief he knew gave him a copy of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” a 1967 book by Josiah Thompson arguing that there were multiple shooters. Mr. Landis read it and believed the official account of the bullet was wrong.
That led to conversations with Mr. Merletti and Mr. Gormley and eventually, after many years, to his book.
It was not easy. As he finished the manuscript, he stared at the computer screen, broke down and cried uncontrollably. “I didn’t realize that I had so many suppressed emotions and feelings,” he said. “I just couldn’t stop. And that was just a huge emotional relief.”
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Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last five presidents for The Times and The Washington Post. He is the author of seven books, most recently “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” with Susan Glasser. More about Peter Baker
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JFK assassination nurse says she SAW the ‘pristine bullet’ Secret Service agent Paul Landis now claims he retrieved from limo and placed on stretcher – upending the ‘magic bullet’ theory
he prior eyewitness testimony of a nurse present in the emergency room after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot in 1963 seems to corroborate a former Secret Service agent’s bombshell new claim. Multiple interviews given by nurse Phyllis J. Hall a decade ago appear to back up former Secret Service agent Paul Landis’ claim, after she described seeing a bullet sitting on the mortally wounded president’s stretcher next to his head. Landis, 88, broke his silence in an interview on Saturday, nearly six decades after Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, to share a claim that upends the infamous ‘magic bullet’ theory and raises the possibility of multiple shooters.
In short, he claimed to have picked up a nearly pristine fired bullet from the back seat of the limousine where Kennedy was shot and placed it on the president’s hospital stretcher to preserve as evidence. That bullet would seem to be the one that the Warren Commission claimed was recovered from Texas Governor John Connally’s stretcher – the so-called ‘magic bullet’ that appeared nearly intact despite the Commission’s theory that it struck both Kennedy and Connally. 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
A decade ago, nurse Phyllis J. Hall gave interviews that appear to back up Landis’ claim, after she described seeing a bullet sitting on the mortally wounded president’s stretcher
Several interviews given by nurse Hall in 2013 seem to corroborate Landis’ fresh claim. ‘On the cart, halfway between the earlobe and the shoulder, there was a bullet laying almost perpendicular there, but I have not seen a picture of that bullet ever,’ she told The Telegraph almost 10 years ago. Separately, she told the Sunday Mirror: ‘I could see a bullet lodged between his ear and his shoulder. It was pointed at its tip and showed no signs of damage. I remember looking at it – there was no blunting of the bullet or scarring around the shell from where it had been fired.
‘I’d had a great deal of experience working with gunshot wounds but I had never seen anything like this before. ‘It was about one-and-a-half inches long – nothing like the bullets that were later produced. ‘It was taken away but never have I seen it presented in evidence or heard what happened to it. It remains a mystery.’ In fact, her description of the mystery bullet nearly perfectly matches the first piece of evidence logged by the FBI under the tag number ‘C1’ – the bullet supposedly recovered from Connally’s stretcher after falling from a wound on his leg. It also offers a point of corroboration to the claim of Landis, who says that he believes the bullet was undercharged and fell from a shallow wound in Kennedy’s back onto the limo seat – a far cry from the two-person through-and-through wounds proposed by the Warren Commission.
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
The bullet described by Hall matches the first piece of evidence logged by the FBI under the tag number ‘C1’ (seen above) – the bullet supposedly recovered from Connally’s stretcher after striking both him and Kennedy and falling from a wound on Connally’s leg
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Other bullet fragments recovered from the front of the limousine (left and right) showed significantly more damage than the so-called ‘magic bullet’
One of three expended rifle shell casings recovered from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building
Hall openly admits that she personally believes that multiple gunmen were involved in the assassination, and also waited decades to come forward with her story, explaining that she feared harassment and retaliation. She was not on the list of ER personnel who attended Kennedy, because she was not assigned to the emergency room, explaining that she was visiting a friend in triage when she was pulled in to assist the futile attempts to save the president’s life. Attempts by DailyMail.com to reach Hall, who would now be 88, were unsuccessful on Tuesday. 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. But the recollection Landis newly shared with the New York Times throws that account, long doubted by skeptics, into chaos, and suggests Oswald did not act alone. On November 22, 1963, Landis was a young Secret Service agent assigned to protect First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy, who was seated beside the president in the motorcade. In his new account, he 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 to preserve it as evidence.
It was just behind where Kennedy was sitting when he was killed, he says. Landis says he took the projectile and placed it on the president’s hospital stretcher to preserve it for the autopsy investigators. Landis speculated the bullet may have rolled onto Connally’s stretcher from Kennedy’s while they were next to each other, giving rise to the official report of where it was found. 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.
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. But Landis’ assertion that the bullet had actually fallen from a shallow wound in Kennedy in his Cadillac could lay waste to the magic bullet theory – and bolster the claim that Oswald did not operate alone on the day of the murder. The bullet, which had been fired but was nearly fully intact, was positively matched to Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano through ballistics analysis.
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
