The term “conspiracy theory” came famously into use in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. to dismiss those who questioned the official story of the murder. You were a tinfoil hat wearing “conspiracy theorist” if you thought Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. (Let alone if you thought he was a patsy.)
With the 60th anniversary of the assassination just two months away, news broke this week that the father of all conspiracy theories may well be true. And few are even batting an eyelash.
“The Magic Bullet”
A former Secret Service Agent who was in Dallas that devastating November day has finally come forward to put into serious question whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The official story of the JFK assassination hinges on just one element: the so-called “magic bullet.” Only three shots were fired and Lee Harvey Oswald fired those shots, the official story goes. There’s no way he could have fired four. Originally, the case seemed simple. The first shot hit John F. Kennedy in the back. The second shot hit Texas governor John Connolly, seated in front of him. The third shot was the fatal head shot. Connolly himself told how he was hit by the second shot.
Except evidence soon emerged that the second shot from the Texas School Depository had missed. It bounced off a curb, with the debris hitting a car salesman named James Tague. Meaning for the “Lone Gunman” story to work, that first shot had to have passed through JFK and into Connolly.
According to the Warren Commission report, a single bullet struck the president’s back and exited through the front of his throat before hitting Connolly and injuring his back, chest, wrist and thigh.
That bullet, they reported, was found on John Connolly’s stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital. In pristine condition, in fact. This bullet not only managed to cause all those wounds to Kennedy and Connolly (on a rather dubious trajectory), it survived passing through all that bone and tissue intact, working its way out of Connolly’s body during emergency treatment efforts.
Hence, your “magic bullet.”
“The Magic Bullet” Debunked? By the Agent Who Found the Bullet?
Except … except … former Secret Service agent Paul Landis has come forward after six decades to finally admit publically he had found the bullet in the presidential limo, lodged in back of Kennedy’s seat. Meaning, nowhere near Connolly, which strongly suggests the bullet did not pass through the president. (The New York Times broke the story, but it’s behind a paywall. Here’s Just the News’ account.)
Landis says he grabbed the bullet in the chaos at Parkland Hospital, fearing souvenir hunters, and placed it on Kennedy’s stretcher. He theorizes the two stretchers were together at one point and the bullet transferred.
Landis had not shared his story with many people beyond former Secret Service Director Lewis Merletti. Astonishingly … no, suspiciously … he was never interviewed by the Warren Commission despite being not only the agent who found the bullet, but mere feet away from Kennedy in the follow-up car to the presidential limo. Kennedy was killed right in front of his eyes.
Landis broke his silence to author, researcher and lawyer James Robenalt. Robenalt sets the stakes: “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.”
It means there must have been two or more assassins.
Why Change His Story?
Landis in two written statements after the assassination did not mention finding the bullet. He says he was in shock and had hardly slept for five days and didn’t pay attention to what he was writing. Shattered by the assassination happening on his watch, Landis did not question the official Lone Gunman story, and says it wasn’t until the 50th anniversary of the assassination that he even started reading about alternative theories of the JFK case. In 2014, he realized the official story differed from his memory. But he kept quiet.
“I didn’t want to talk about it,” Landis told the NY Times. “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.”
But now on the eve of the 60th anniversary, Landis is telling all in a memoir out October 10, The Final Witness.
Reopen the Case
John F. Kennedy’s assassination was one of the most horrific events in the history of the United States. For 60 years, the federal government has insisted that one man, a “loner,” a former Marine turned defector to the Soviet Union named Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. That he fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository in Dealy Plaza, killing the nation’s 35th president and the dream of Camelot.
For over 60 years and to this very day, the CIA has fought tooth and nail to keep certain documents from the case away from the American people. Why? What, if anything, was the agency’s involvement in Kennedy’s death?
A fact often forgotten: Lee Harvey Oswald was never convicted in a court by a jury of his peers. At best, Oswald is the alleged assassin of JFK. When dragged in front of the media, he cried, “I’m just a patsy!” He never got the chance to explain or defend himself. Two days after the assassination, Oswald was gunned down in police custody by a mob-connected nightclub owner named Jack Ruby.
Now, former Secret Service agent Paul Landis is finally sharing his experience. He insists he found the “magic bullet” in a manner that demonstrates it was no such thing. If true, the entire official story of the JFK assassination falls apart. At least one other assassin was involved.
The “conspiracy theorists” were right.
The case of the murder of President John F. Kennedy must be re-opened.
As former New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, who had his life and career nearly ruined when he tried to take on the official story of the assassination, famously stated … and was memorialized in the Oliver Stone film JFK:
“Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”
Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream, chief barista for The Brew and co-author, with John Zmirak, of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration. You can follow him at @StreamingAl at GETTR, Gab, Parler, and now at TRUTH Social.