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FTR#‘s 1273 & 1274 Interviews #12 and #13 with Jim DiEugenio and Dr. Gary Aquilar about “JFK Revisited”

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— George Orwell, 1946

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FTR#1273 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1274 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: This broad­cast con­tin­ues our vis­its with Jim DiEugenio–author of Des­tiny Betrayed and JFK Revis­it­ed–select­ed by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his lat­est doc­u­men­tary.

In these broad­casts, we are addi­tion­al­ly priv­i­leged by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Dr. Gary Aquilar, one of the experts fea­tured in the Stone/DiEugenio doc­u­men­tary, as well as being one of the ground-break­ing fig­ures in the ongo­ing inquiry into the med­ical evi­dence in the assas­si­na­tion.

Dr. Aquilar high­light­ed the deep pro­fes­sion­al com­pro­mis­ing of peo­ple who filled “expert” roles in the var­i­ous med­ical exam­i­na­tions, the involve­ment of a num­ber of them as “experts” in oth­er, impor­tant intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed cas­es such as the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King.

In par­tic­u­lar, Dr. Aquilar parsed the incon­sis­ten­cies in a review of the med­ical evi­dence in the JFK assas­si­na­tion case that was insti­tut­ed by then Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark–“inconsistencies” which are dif­fi­cult to ascribe to caprice or error.

In addi­tion to his pre­sen­ta­tion of new mate­r­i­al with which even Jim DiEu­ge­nio was unfa­mil­iar, Gary was instru­men­tal in dis­cus­sion of the medical/forensic evi­dence in the JFK assas­si­na­tion case.

1a.—We begin with review of the Secret Ser­vice con­fis­cat­ing JFK’s corpse in con­tra­ven­tion of Texas Law, there­by deny­ing Dr. Earl Rose his oblig­ed duty of per­form­ing an autop­sy on JFK.

Into the Night­mare: My Search for the Killers of John F. Kennedy and Offi­cer J.D. Tip­pit by Joseph McBride; High­tow­er Press [SC]; Copy­right 2013 by Joseph McBride; ISBN 978–1939795250; pp. 168–170.

 . . . . [Park­land physi­cian Dr. Charles] Cren­shaw recalled, “A man in a suit, lead­ing the [fed­er­al] group, hold­ing a sub­ma­chine gun, left lit­tle doubt in my mind who was in charge. That he wasn’t smil­ing best describes the look on his face . . . . Keller­man took an erect stance and brought his firearm into a ready posi­tion. The oth­er men in suits fol­lowed course by drap­ing their coat­tails behind the butts of their hol­stered pis­tols.” When Dr. Rose insist­ed on hold­ing the body in Dal­las for autop­sy, explain­ing, “You can’t lose the chain of evi­dence,” one of the men in suits screamed, “God­damit, get your ass out of the way before you get hurt,” and anoth­er snapped, “We’re tak­ing the body now.” . . . .

1b.—Next, we review Secret Ser­vice Agent Clint Hill’s tes­ti­mo­ny about being able to see deeply into JFK’s head wound because there was no brain mate­r­i­al in the fis­sure.

2.—We then syn­op­size the Park­land Hos­pi­tal M.D’s’ views and state­ments about JFK’s wounds.

Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: We begin our in-depth dis­cus­sion with analy­sis of the med­ical evi­dence put for­ward by the doc­tors and nurs­es and Park­land Hos­pi­tal in Dal­las: Dr. Kemp Clark’s obser­va­tion of a huge wound in the back of JFK’s head; Cor­rob­o­ra­tion of Clark’s view by Dr. McClel­land, Dr. Charles Cren­shaw (a third-year res­i­dent at the time) and nurse Audrey Bell; Dr. Mal­com Perry’s state­ment that the wound in JFK’s throat was an entrance wound; Review of the pres­sure put on Per­ry to change his tes­ti­mo­ny by Secret Ser­vice Agent Elmer Moore (who was act­ing at the direc­tion of his supe­ri­ors) and unnamed per­son­nel at Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal in Mary­land; the Secret Service’s appar­ent destruc­tion of the tape of the Park­land press con­fer­ence by Dr.’s Clark and Per­ry; The War­ren Commission’s pre­sen­ta­tion of an oppo­site point of view by Per­ry fol­low­ing pres­sure on him by Arlen Specter; ARRB mem­ber Dou­glas Horne’s dis­cus­sion of Doc­u­ment 1327c con­firm­ing what Per­ry had orig­i­nal­ly said; Perry’s col­league Dr. Don­ald Miller who relates that Per­ry stat­ed that the throat wound was an entrance wound (fol­low­ing their long surgery at a Wash­ing­ton hos­pi­tal; Dr. Gary Aquilar’s 100-page after­ward to Dr. Crenshaw’s book Con­spir­a­cy of Silence; Dr. Gary Aquilar’s dis­cov­ery that 26 wit­ness­es to the Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal autop­sy did not con­tra­dict the Park­land med­ical personnel’s obser­va­tions but con­firmed and rein­forced those obser­va­tions! (In its 1979 report, the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions fal­la­cious­ly stat­ed that the Bethes­da wit­ness­es con­tra­dict­ed the Park­land personnel’s obser­va­tions.)

3.—Next, we turn to the sub­ject of the autop­sy per­formed at Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal per­formed on the evening of 11/22/1963

Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions of Navy physi­cians Humes and Boswell; The inclu­sion of the under-qual­i­fied Army physi­cian Dr. Pierre Finck; Dr. Finck’s reluc­tant tes­ti­mo­ny on the wit­ness stand at Clay Shaw’s tri­al that an unnamed Army Gen­er­al had ordered him not to dis­sect the back wound in JFK; Dr. Humes’ destruc­tion of his notes; The “dis­ap­pear­ance” of Colonel Finck’s notes; Arlen Specter’s 8–10 meet­ings with Dr.’s Humes and Boswell pri­or to the War­ren Commission’s con­struc­tion of their tes­ti­mo­ny; Dr.’s Humes and Boswell’s shep­herd­ing of young Naval artist Harold Ryd­berg in which they said, in effect, “We’ll tell you what to draw;” Rydberg’s mov­ing of the loca­tion of the back wound up, to make it con­sis­tent with the Sin­gle Bul­let The­o­ry; The fact that Rydberg’s draw­ings were not based on the autop­sy pho­tos; The fact that the fal­la­cious plac­ing of the back wound at the base of the neck empow­ered “the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry;” FBI agents Sib­ert and O’Neill’s con­tra­dic­tion of the Bethes­da autop­sy report, say­ing of Specter “What a Liar” and opin­ing that he was “fol­low­ing orders;” The War­ren Com­mis­sion’s omis­sion of Sib­ert and O’Neil­l’s infor­ma­tion; House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions’ 1979 report that 26 Bethes­da autop­sy wit­ness­es con­tra­dict­ed Park­land M.D’s descrip­tions of wound in the back; Dis­cov­ery that this is not true! The con­sum­mate sig­nif­i­cance of this!

4. Next, we review the “Harp­er frag­ment” of JFK’s skull, dis­cov­ered in Dealey Plaza on 11/23/1963; the trans­fer of pos­ses­sion of the frag­ment to Dr. Burkley, JFK’s per­son­al physi­cian; the sub­se­quent dis­ap­pear­ance of the frag­ment.

5. We then take up the sub­ject of Dr. Burkley (an Admi­ral, JFK’s per­son­al physi­cian and the only doc­tor present at both Park­land Hos­pi­tal and the Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal autop­sy.)

Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Dr. Burkley plac­ing of the back wound at rough­ly ver­te­brae T‑3 (at vari­ance with what the War­ren Com­mis­sion said); The War­ren Commission’s omis­sion of JFK’s death cer­tifi­cate (signed by Dr. Burkley) from the vol­umes of tes­ti­mo­ny and exhibits; the absence of Dr. Burkley’s sig­na­ture on the autop­sy sketch­es in the tes­ti­mo­ny and exhibits; Burkley’s 1967 refusal to state how many bul­lets hit JFK (in an oral his­to­ry com­piled for the Kennedy Library); Burkley’s let­ter to HSCA head Richard Sprague stat­ing that he knew oth­ers beside Oswald were involved; Sprague’s abrupt removal of Sprague two weeks lat­er; Burkley’s state­ments in the ear­ly 1980’s to both Hen­ry Hurt and Michael Kurtz that he could con­tra­dict the War­ren Com­mis­sion the­sis, fol­lowed by Burkley’s abrupt rever­sal of field short­ly after mak­ing the state­ments (prob­a­bly reflect­ing pres­sure); Efforts by the ARRB to get Burkley’s daugh­ter and the law firm that had rep­re­sent­ed him dur­ing his life to dis­close infor­ma­tion; the abrupt rever­sal of field by Burkley’s daugh­ter, rather like the Admiral’s rever­sal of his state­ments to Hurt and Kurtz; Dr. Don­ald Miller’s account of Burkley’s son’s relat­ing of the Admiral’s bewil­der­ment that the War­ren Com­mis­sion had nev­er called him to tes­ti­fy.

6. Turn­ing to the sub­ject of the mys­tery of JFK’s brain, we take stock of a num­ber of impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions.

Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: In an encore, nurse Aubrey Bell notes that she saw brain mat­ter and spinal flu­id leak­ing from the back of JFK’s mas­sive head wound and drip­ping into a buck­et; Dr. McClel­land also saw por­tions of the cere­bel­lum portrud­ing from the mas­sive head wound; Humes’ autop­sy report and War­ren Com­mis­sion report’s omis­sion of the obser­va­tions of Nurse Bell and Dr. McClel­land; At Park­land, Dr. William Midgett notes copi­ous brain mate­r­i­al in JFK’s lim­ou­sine; Secret Ser­vice cleaned back of limo before ship­ment; FBI agent Frank O’Neill’s state­ment that almost ½ of the brain was miss­ing; the fail­ure to sec­tion JFK’s brain–those sec­tions could have deter­mined the tra­jec­to­ry of bul­lets strik­ing JFK’s head ; ARRB’s Dr. Robert Kir­sh­n­er opines that JFK’s brain appears to have been in formalde­hyde for 2–3 weeks; The sig­nif­i­cance of Kirshner’s observation—JFK’s brain exam­ined right after assas­si­na­tion per Dou­glas Horne; Dr. Chessler notes for the cam­era that the brain was pho­tographed after assas­si­na­tion; X‑Rays of JFK’s brain showed very small frag­ments in the front of the head wound, larg­er frag­ments far­ther in–this indi­cates a shot from the front.

7. The bulk of the dis­cus­sion focus­es on the autop­sy pho­tos and pho­tos of the brain in par­tic­u­lar.

Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: John Stringer pho­tographed brain autop­sy 3 days after assas­si­na­tion; Jere­my Gunn’s pre­sen­ta­tion of pho­tos to Stringer; Half of pho­tos are tak­en from the top but oth­ers from bottom—Stringer says all pic­tures were from top and notes that type of film used is incon­sis­tent with what he did; Stringer says that scalp wound was peeled back to [sup­pos­ed­ly] show entrance wound in back of head, both inte­ri­or and exterior—no pic­tures of that; The dis­ap­pear­ance of tis­sue slides that had been tak­en and a large met­al con­tain­er appar­ent­ly con­tain­ing JFK’s brain; Robert Knud­sen’s hav­ing been cred­it­ed with tak­ing the autop­sy pho­tos in his New York Times and Wash­ing­ton Post obit­u­ar­ies; Knud­sen says he took autop­sy pic­tures that showed probes in Kennedy’s body; Sup­pos­ed­ly, no probes were used in the autop­sy; Those pho­tos appear to have “van­ished;” Dis­cus­sion of the sig­nif­i­cance of probes, and what those are; Knud­sen told his wife that the Secret Ser­vice destroyed pho­tos; ARRB mem­ber Dou­glas Horne’s opin­ion that both Stringer and Knud­sen took autop­sy pic­tures.

8. We review John Stringer’s salient obser­va­tion:

JFK Revis­it­ed: Through the Look­ing Glass by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2022 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Intro­duc­tion Copy­right 2022 by Oliv­er Stone; ISBN 978–1‑5107–7287‑8; p. 168.

Doug Horne: On Novem­ber 1st, 1966, the Nation­al Archives and an offi­cial from the Depart­ment of Jus­tice met with Humes, Boswell, pho­tog­ra­ph­er John Stringer, and the radi­ol­o­gist [John] Eber­sole. And they looked at the autop­sy pho­tographs for the first time and they cre­at­ed a cat­a­log, an inven­to­ry sim­ply say­ing: this is what this pic­ture describes. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion the DOJ wit­ness, Mr. Belch­er, who was an attor­ney, not­ed they were dis­cussing miss­ing pho­tographs. Jere­my Gunn, my boss, the gen­er­al coun­sel, did ask why these peo­ple signed an inven­to­ry which they knew not to be true. And Stringer said, “Well, some peo­ple do object, but they don’t last very long.”. . . .

9. We then review Dr. Burkley’s dis­patch­ing of his aide James Young and his sub­or­di­nates, Mr.‘s Mills and Mar­tin­dale to retrieve mate­r­i­al from JFK’s lim­ou­sine.

Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Mills and Mar­tin­dale’s retrieval of a piece of JFK’s skull; Their retrieval of a bul­let with a bent tip; Their retrieval of a bul­let frag­ment; The appar­ent impact of a bul­let on the met­al fram­ing the wind­shield; The appar­ent pas­sage of a bul­let frag­ment through the wind­shield of JFK’s lim­ou­sine; The dis­ap­pear­ance of the skull frag­ment, intact bul­let with the bent tip and bul­let frag­ment; the rebuild­ing of JFK’s lim­ou­sine, fea­tur­ing replace­ment of the wind­shield and the met­al fram­ing of it–this fol­low­ing the Secret Ser­vice’s clean­ing of JFK’s lim­ou­sine.

 

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR#‘s 1273 & 1274 Interviews #12 and #13 with Jim DiEugenio and Dr. Gary Aquilar about “JFK Revisited””

  1. Bril­liant pro­gram!

    Clear­ly, the mil­i­tary med­ical pro­fes­sion­als at Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal, US Navy CDR. Humes, US Navy CDR. Boswell & US Army Lt. Col. Finck soiled their uni­forms by will­ing­ly destroy­ing, per­vert­ing and fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence sur­round­ing the autop­sy of the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, their own Com­man­der-In-Chief — at the very least, the Depart­ment of Defense should posthu­mous­ly strip them of their hon­or­able ser­vice records, rank and mil­i­tary awards.

    Posted by Robert Ward Montenegro | December 13, 2022, 7:58 am
  2. Just how mag­ic was the mag­ic bul­let? It’s one of many ques­tions raised by lat­est eye-wit­ness of the JFK assas­si­na­tion to come for­ward with an account that threat­ens to blow up the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ the­o­ry: Secret Ser­vice agent Paul Lan­dis, who was part of the detail around Kennedy’s lim­ou­sine in Dal­las, just came for­ward last week with an account of the events of that day that don’t just refute the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ the­o­ry but do so in man­ner that strong­ly points towards a sec­ond shoot­ing from the front. Either that or, as Ger­ald Pos­ner seems to sug­gest, Lan­dis­’s account may just mean the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ was more mag­i­cal than first assumed.

    As Lan­dis describes the events of that day, he heard the first gun shot and swung his head around towards the sound. He then turned back towards Kennedy, see­ing his arm raised as if he had been hit. Lan­dis then heard a sec­ond, loud­er, shot, and saw the back of Kennedy’s skull blown out in his direc­tion. That expe­ri­ence of see­ing Kennedy’s brains blown out report­ed­ly haunt­ed Lan­dis for months, caus­ing him to leave the ser­vice 6 months lat­er. As Lan­dis put it, his mem­o­ry was like his own 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.”

    So we have an eye­wit­ness who heard a sec­ond loud­er shot and saw Kennedy’s head blown out back­wards in his direc­tion. That obvi­ous­ly does­n’t fit the ‘sin­gle bul­let from behind’ War­ren Com­mis­sion nar­ra­tive. But it gets worse. Because it turns out Lan­dis made anoth­er dis­cov­ery that day: first, he sees seome bul­let frag­ments immersed in blood. But then he finds an intact bul­let lodged in the back of the lim­ou­sine back seat cush­ion behind Kennedy. Lan­dis claims he took the bul­let the bul­let amid all the chaos of the moment so sou­venir seek­ers could­n’t find it and lat­er placed it on Kennedy’s stretch­er, assum­ing that it would be rel­e­vant for Kennedy’s med­ical treat­ment. It appears that is the same bul­let that was found on John Con­nal­ly’s stretch­er, with Lan­dis assum­ing that it must have been bumped from Kennedy’s stretch­er to Con­nal­ly’s as they were being trans­port­ed and bumped togeth­er side-by-side. Cru­cial­ly, it was the dis­cov­ery of that bul­let on Con­nal­ly’s stretch­er that was used to arrive at the con­clu­sion that the bul­let had fall­en out of Con­nal­ly’s body at some point while he was on the stretch­er. In oth­er words, Lan­dis found the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ embed­ded in the back of the lim­ou­sine seat cush­ion behind where Kennedy was sit­ting.

    Now, why did­n’t Lan­dis report all of this at the time? Well, as Lan­dis tells it, he was large­ly in a state of shock over what hap­pened and had­n’t real­ly been fol­low­ing the details of how the inves­ti­ga­tion was play­ing out. Beyond that, Lan­dis asserts that the War­ren Com­mis­sion nev­er actu­al­ly ques­tioned him. He then spent the fol­low­ing decades try­ing to for­get about all of it. It was­n’t until he was giv­en a copy of the book “Six Sec­onds in Dal­las” and start­ed to believe the offi­cial account of the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ was wrong, lead­ing to him reach­ing out to experts and even­tu­al­ly writ­ing the mem­oir that’s about to come out.

    As Lan­dis also notes, fel­low secret ser­vice agent Clint Hill active­ly warned him back in 2014 against com­ing for­wards with this sto­ry, warn­ing of ‘ram­i­fi­ca­tions’. Hill, today, open­ly ques­tions Lan­dis­’s account and sug­gests it can be trust­ed after so many decades. This is a good time to recall how Clint Hill him­self was a wit­ness to some­thing else that punc­tures a giant hole in the offi­cial nar­ra­tive: Hill was able to see deeply into the head wound because there was so much brain mate­r­i­al already blown out, which obvi­ous­ly isn’t exact­ly con­sis­tent with an entry wound from a shot from behind.

    Could we be look­ing at a real stress test for the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ the­o­ry? It’s hard to imag­ine that actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing at this point, but it’s worth not­ing the laugh­able expla­na­tion Ger­ald Pos­ner gives in the fol­low­ing NY Times inter­view of Lan­dis: even if what Lan­dis says is true, that could sim­ply mean that the bul­let that was assumed to have stopped in Con­nal­ly actu­al­ly exit­ed Con­nal­ly and end up in the seat cush­ion behind Kennedy. It points to one of the most mag­i­cal prop­er­ties of the bul­let: more mag­ic can be pro­vid­ed as need­ed:

    The New York Times

    J.F.K. Assas­si­na­tion Wit­ness Breaks His Silence and Rais­es New Ques­tions

    The account of Paul Lan­dis, one of the Secret Ser­vice agents just feet away from John F. Kennedy when he was struck down, could change the under­stand­ing of what hap­pened in Dal­las in 1963.

    By Peter Bak­er

    Peter Bak­er, who has cov­ered the past five pres­i­dents, report­ed from Cleve­land, where he inter­viewed Paul Lan­dis.

    Sept. 9, 2023

    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 what hap­pened in Dealey Plaza.

    ...

    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.

    ...

    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.

    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.”

    ———–

    “J.F.K. Assas­si­na­tion Wit­ness Breaks His Silence and Rais­es New Ques­tions” By Peter Bak­er; The New York Times; 09/09/2023

    “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.”

    The ‘mag­ic bul­let’ the­o­ry takes anoth­er hit. Will this final­ly stop the zom­bie lie that refus­es to die? Prob­a­bly not, but it’s going to be inter­est­ing to see how it man­ages to sham­ble on after this: the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ bul­let found on John Con­nal­ly’s stretch­er and long pre­sumed to have fall­en of out Con­nal­ly’s body was instead found in the back of the lim­ou­sine by agent Paul Lan­dis embed­ded in the seat behind where Kennedy was sit­ting. Lan­dis recalls plac­ing it on Kennedy’s stretch­er and assumes it must have bumped over to Con­nal­ly’s stretch­er at some point. If true, it com­plete­ly up-ends the mag­ic bul­let the­o­ry and opens all sorts of inves­tiga­tive avenues that have long been blocked from any offi­cial inquiry. Which, of course, means this sto­ry will be allowed to die just as all the oth­er accounts that under­cut the War­ren Com­mis­sion are allowed to die. The zom­bie lie must live on. It’s a nation­al imper­a­tive, appar­ent­ly:

    ...
    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.’”

    ...

    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.
    ...

    And note one of the very obvi­ous poten­tial impli­ca­tions of find­ing a bul­let in the back of the lim­ou­sine: it hints at a sec­ond shoot­er hit­ting Kennedy from the front. Either that or this is an extreme­ly mag­i­cal bul­let:

    ...
    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.
    ...

    Also note how Lan­dis appears to recount see­ing Kennedy get hit twice, with Kennedy rais­ing his arm, evi­dent­ly hit, after the first shot, only to have his brains blown out all over the back of the lim­ou­sine by a sec­ond shot. A sec­ond shot that sound­ed loud­er to Lan­dis. Was the sec­ond shot mag­i­cal­ly loud­er too?

    ...
    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.
    ...

    So Lan­dis expe­ri­ences a sec­ond loud­er shot that caus­es Kennedy’s brains to splat­ter in his direc­tion (he was behind Kennedy), then finds the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ embed­ded in the back of the lim­ou­sine seat behind where Kennedy was sit­ting. Giv­en that this obvi­ous­ly points towards a sec­ond shoot­er from the front, it’s also worth not­ing that this would go a long ways towards explain­ing the mag­ic bul­let’s rel­a­tive­ly pris­tine con­di­tion:

    ...
    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.
    ...

    So how could this have pos­si­bly been kept out of the War­ren Com­mis­sion? Espe­cial­ly the parts that con­tra­dict his state­ments at the time? Well, the fact that the War­ren Com­mis­sion nev­er actu­al­ly ques­tioned him should gives us a clue as to how these con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments end­ed up in the record. There sim­ply was­n’t an offi­cial inter­est in get­ting an accu­rate account of what hap­pened:

    ...
    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.

    ...

    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.
    ...

    And then we get to the pre­dictable defens­es of the increas­ing­ly absurd mag­ic bul­let the­o­ry, includ­ing the seem­ing­ly oblig­a­tory quote from Ger­ald Pos­ner. As we might imag­ine, he’s been busy late­ly refut­ing this sto­ry. In this case, Pos­ner seems to be sug­gest­ing that even if what Lan­dis is claim­ing is true, it might sim­ply mean that the bul­let exit­ed Con­nal­ly and end­ed up in the back of the seat behind Kennedy. We just need­ed to add a few extra twists to its mag­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry and it’s all explained away!

    ...
    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.”
    ...

    Also note how Lan­dis was active­ly warned against going pub­lic by his fel­low Secret Ser­vice agent Clint Hill. “Many ram­i­fi­ca­tions,” as Hill warned. And here was have Hill now work­ing to dis­cred­it Lan­dis. This is a good time to recall how Hill wit­nessed the large amount of Kennedy’s brain that was miss­ing from the alleged ‘entrance wound’ in the back of his head. Which is a reminder that one of the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of com­ing for­ward with these kinds of accounts is that you might be dis­cred­it­ed by the oth­er wit­ness­es who also have to deal with such ram­i­fi­ca­tions them­selves:

    ...
    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.”
    ...

    What type of ram­i­fi­ca­tion might Paul Lan­dis be fac­ing now, at the ripe old age of 88? We’re going to find out. But it’s not like there’s a lot that can be done to the guy at this point. He’s not on his death bed, but he’s not exact­ly far from it either. How many more eye wit­ness­es are there who are too old to care about the ‘ram­i­fi­ca­tions’ of com­ing for­ward? With the 60th anniver­sary approach­ing, there can’t be that many peo­ple left. Which is too bad. So let’s hope the remain­ing wit­ness­es can draw inspi­ra­tion from Lan­dis­’s deci­sion to cor­rect the record and clear his con­science. There’s only so much time remain­ing for the sur­viv­ing eye­wit­ness­es, where­as the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ will clear­ly nev­er get too old to update its mag­i­cal sto­ry.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 18, 2023, 5:22 pm
  3. With for­mer Secret Ser­vice agent Paul Lan­dis hav­ing just fired lat­est fatal shots into undead corpse of the ‘mag­ic bul­let’ the­o­ry, it’s worth not­ing that Lan­dis isn’t the sole eye-wit­ness of the pris­tine bul­let sit­ting on Kennedy’s stretch­er. Nurse Phyl­lis Hall came for­ward with her own accounts almost a decade ago. As we’re going to see, Hall not only recalls see­ing the bul­let lay­ing on the stretch­er but also recalls hav­ing nev­er seen that bul­let men­tioned in any of the inves­ti­ga­tion mate­ri­als. In oth­er words, this is some­one who knew some­thing was very wrong with the JFK inves­ti­ga­tion from the begin­ning. Hall asserts she wait­ed decades to come for­wards over fears of harass­ment and retal­i­a­tion. But, for what­ev­er rea­son, she decid­ed to break her silence a decade ago. So it’s worth not­ing that the new­ly avail­able account from Lan­dis appear to back up the rec­ol­lec­tions Hall brought for­ward to the pub­lic despite those retal­i­a­tion fears:

    Dai­ly Mail

    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

    * Nurse Phyl­lis Hall pre­vi­ous­ly said she saw a bul­let sit­ting on Kennedy’s stretch­er
    * That backs up a new eye wit­ness claim by Secret Ser­vice agent who says he set bul­let there
    * Lan­dis, 88, broke his silence after 60 years with the bomb­shell claim, and plans to write a book about his expe­ri­ence

    By Kei­th Grif­fith For Dailymail.com
    Pub­lished: 14:59 EDT, 12 Sep­tem­ber 2023 | Updat­ed: 03:58 EDT, 13 Sep­tem­ber 2023

    The 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.

    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.

    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.

    ...

    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.

    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.

    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.

    Lan­dis’ sto­ry also rais­es dis­turb­ing ques­tions about how to account for Kennedy’s wounds.

    Kennedy’s autop­sy report indi­cat­ed the fol­low­ing bul­let wounds: a small neat one in his back, around the area of his right scapu­la; a small neat one in the front cen­ter of his throat; a small neat one in the rear right of his skull; and a mas­sive, jagged exit wound in the right front of his skull.

    The bul­let hole in his upper right back had long been explained as the entry point for a bul­let that then exit­ed the front mid­dle of Kennedy’s throat.

    (The throat wound was expand­ed by ER doc­tors for an emer­gency tra­cheoto­my, and their descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal wound as ‘a few mil­lime­ters in diam­e­ter’ was cit­ed by the autop­sy. Nurse Hall recalled the throat wound as a larg­er exit wound.)

    But if the bul­let wound to his back, which autop­sy report said could not be deeply probed to trace the bul­let’s path, was caused by an under­charged bul­let that then fell back onto the lim­ou­sine seat, then where did the throat wound come from?

    Robenalt rais­es the haunt­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that the throat wound was actu­al­ly an entry point, as ER doc­tors ini­tial­ly sus­pect­ed, say­ing the bul­let might have frag­ment­ed on hit­ting Kennedy’s spine.

    He not­ed that autop­sy X‑ray tech­ni­cian Jer­rol F. Custer tes­ti­fied in 1997 that he had seen evi­dence of metal­lic shards near Kennedy’s upper spine, but that the X‑ray slide was one of three miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives.

    If a bul­let entered Kennedy’s throat from the front, it could not have been fired by Oswald from the Book Depos­i­to­ry, which was direct­ly behind the motor­cade at the time of the assas­si­na­tion.

    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 to the right of the motor­cade route.

    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 to the rear of the motor­cade.

    ...

    ———-

    “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” By Kei­th Grif­fith; Dai­ly Mail; 09/12/2023

    “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.”

    You can’t call Paul Lan­dis­’s claims — that he placed the bul­let on Kennedy’s stretch­er and maybe it got bumped onto Con­nal­ly’s stretch­er — out­landish or absurd unless you call nurse Hal­l’s accounts from a decade ago out­landish and absurd too. Both eye­wit­ness­es saw the pris­tine bul­let sit­ting on Kennedy’s stretch­er. Lan­dis lit­er­al­ly placed it there.

    But Hall does­n’t just rec­ol­lect see­ing the bul­let sit­ting on Kennedy’s stretch­er. She also recalls hav­ing nev­er seen this bul­let pre­sent­ed as evi­dence or hav­ing ever heard what hap­pened to it. It’s the kind of detail that indi­cates Hall was fol­low­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion and haunt­ed by what she was­n’t see­ing report­ed:

    ...
    ‘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.

    ...

    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.

    ...

    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.
    ...

    Even more haunt­ing for Hall must have been the fact that the bul­let she saw matched hap­pened to match the descrip­tion of the ‘mag­ic’ C1 (CE 399) bul­let recov­ered on John Con­nal­ly’s stretch­er. Imag­ine how trou­bling it must have been to know about a miss­ing bul­let that just hap­pens to match the ‘mag­ic’ bul­let:

    ...
    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.

    ...

    The bul­let, which had been fired but was near­ly ful­ly intact, was pos­i­tive­ly matched to Oswald’s Mannlich­er-Car­cano through bal­lis­tics analy­sis.

    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.’

    ...

    The infa­mous Zaprud­er film shows that there was rough­ly a sec­ond between the phys­i­cal reac­tions of Kennedy and Con­nal­ly to being shot.

    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.
    ...

    And note how, while the dis­cov­ery that this pris­tine bul­let and spec­u­la­tion that it was an under­pow­ered bul­let that fell out of his back sug­gests there could have been anoth­er shoot­er from above and behind, that sce­nario would also pre­clude the bul­let exit­ing his neck. And that, in turn, points towards the fact that the ER doc­tors ini­tial­ly char­ac­ter­ized Kennedy’s throat would as an entry wound. The kind of entry wound that would have required a shot from the front:

    ...
    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.’

    ...

    Lan­dis’ sto­ry also rais­es dis­turb­ing ques­tions about how to account for Kennedy’s wounds.

    Kennedy’s autop­sy report indi­cat­ed the fol­low­ing bul­let wounds: a small neat one in his back, around the area of his right scapu­la; a small neat one in the front cen­ter of his throat; a small neat one in the rear right of his skull; and a mas­sive, jagged exit wound in the right front of his skull.

    The bul­let hole in his upper right back had long been explained as the entry point for a bul­let that then exit­ed the front mid­dle of Kennedy’s throat.

    (The throat wound was expand­ed by ER doc­tors for an emer­gency tra­cheoto­my, and their descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal wound as ‘a few mil­lime­ters in diam­e­ter’ was cit­ed by the autop­sy. Nurse Hall recalled the throat wound as a larg­er exit wound.)

    But if the bul­let wound to his back, which autop­sy report said could not be deeply probed to trace the bul­let’s path, was caused by an under­charged bul­let that then fell back onto the lim­ou­sine seat, then where did the throat wound come from?

    Robenalt rais­es the haunt­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that the throat wound was actu­al­ly an entry point, as ER doc­tors ini­tial­ly sus­pect­ed, say­ing the bul­let might have frag­ment­ed on hit­ting Kennedy’s spine.

    He not­ed that autop­sy X‑ray tech­ni­cian Jer­rol F. Custer tes­ti­fied in 1997 that he had seen evi­dence of metal­lic shards near Kennedy’s upper spine, but that the X‑ray slide was one of three miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives.

    If a bul­let entered Kennedy’s throat from the front, it could not have been fired by Oswald from the Book Depos­i­to­ry, which was direct­ly behind the motor­cade at the time of the assas­si­na­tion.

    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 to the right of the motor­cade route.

    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 to the rear of the motor­cade.
    ...

    There can’t be that many eye-wit­ness­es left who have yet to give their accounts of that day. The clock is tick­ing. Of course, it’s not as if we real­ly need that much more evi­dence. Sure, there are still some foren­sic mys­ter­ies remain­ing about this case. But it’s most­ly a mass psy­cho­log­i­cal mys­tery revolv­ing around why it is that we can’t actu­al­ly accept the over­whelm­ing evi­dence long star­ing us in the face. A mys­tery that only grows more mys­te­ri­ous with each new rev­e­la­tion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 20, 2023, 4:56 pm

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