By Harold Pease, Ph. D.
A Kennedy Secret Service agent, Paul Landis, now 88 but then 28, breaks his silence after 60 years. He was there “riding the rear of the right running board on a black Cadillac convertible… situated just behind the limousine carrying the president of the United States and his wife, as well as the governor of Texas and his wife.” He was about 15 feet behind John F. Kennedy when the struck president fell on November 22, 1963, situated to witness everything, but the Warren Commission only interviewed one of the eight agents in the follow-up car, not him.
It was a serious mistake. Landis reports, “I saw a flash of white as the right side of President Kennedy’s head exploded in a pink spray of blood, flesh, and brain matter. I automatically ducked, not wanting to get splattered as we drove through it.” This shot came from the front.
After the shooting Landis “saw two bullet fragments in the presidential limo (he picked up the larger) in the blood next to Mrs. Kennedy (as agents finally convinced her to let go of the head of the ‘lifeless’ president)…. After she stood up, ‘I looked again at the seat and saw a bullet on top of the tufted black leather cushioning behind where she had been sitting. It was resting in a seam where the tufted leather padding ended against the car’s metal body.’ It was ‘approximately two inches long and in almost perfect condition.” Not wanting it lost and believing it to be an important part of the crime scene, “he slipped it into his right suit coat pocket.” At Parkland Memorial Hospital, he “placed the bullet on the blanket near the president’s left shoe” knowing that it was evidence that belonged to him in the event that had just occurred.
Why was this oversight so important? It counters the Warren Commission Report of a single gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the “single-bullet theory” sometimes called the “magic bullet” reportedly “responsible for seven entry/exit wounds in both the president and the governor, causing all of Governor John Connally’s wounds and the non-fatal wounds to Kennedy, while escaping virtually unscathed.” Somebody moved the unscathed bullet left next to Kennedy’s left foot by Landis in trauma room #1 to Connally’s stretcher in trauma room #2 at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the Commission may have “assumed it had exited his body during efforts to save his life,” not Kennedy’s. Landis admits this “is the story I kept buried—even from myself—for more that fifty years.” Nightmares of the assassination drove him out of the service the next year and haunted him the remainder. He did not speak openly of his agent service till 2013. His book could be considered a death bed confession (“The Review,” by William P. Hoar of The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After 60 years, by Paul Landis, Chicago Review Press, 2023, See New American, Nov. 27, 2023, pp. 41-43).
This column limits itself to recent Kennedy Assassination information. LibertyUnderFire has published on previous news breaks on this subject; reviewing them might be helpful as a prelude to this column; see “The Kennedy Assassination’s withheld files,” November 22, 2013, “Rethinking the Kennedy Assassination,” November 21, 2014; “We don’t have to wait for CIA documents on Kennedy Assassination,” November 3, 2017; and “Trump Too Delays JFK Assassination Files! Why?,” June 15, 2018.
Trump is the only president that released some of this suppressed information to the public. In October 2017 he “released 2,800 documents, with redaction, relating to the JFK assassination.” Opposition was too great to release more or even to release what he did, unredacted. “Under the direction of then CIA Director Mike Pompeo, [he] decided to withhold the remaining documentation” (“The Deep State & The Kennedy Assassination,” by Andrew Muller, New American, JFK Special Report, November 27, 2023, p. 19). The CIA, created under Harry S. Truman, has always been waist deep in the Deep State and their likely involvement has been noted from the assassination on. So who controls them? After the assassination, only the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Today probably only the Deep State.
When Roger Stone, a Trump adviser, asked why he did not release the full documentation Trump answered according to Stone, “I can’t tell you. It’s so horrible you wouldn’t believe it. Someday you’ll find out.” Obviously President Trump knew. He promises to release all records unredacted after his reelection in 2024.
As we have previously published, Lyndon Johnson benefitted most from the demise of his predecessor. He created and selected the participants of the Warren Commission to investigate the crime, and gave it direction to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. Is he the reason this information is “so horrible you wouldn’t believe it?”
What is mostly new on Johnson as a possible accomplice, other than what LibertyUnderFire has previously published, is that Johnson “ordered the presidential limousine in which Kennedy was riding shipped to Detroit—within 72 hours of the assassination—where the body was replaced and the interior refurbished. This is curious both for evidentiary and historical reasons. Johnson even ordered the suit worn by Texas Governor John Connally—who was also shot, though not fatally, alongside JFK—cleaned and pressed before it was presented to the Warren Commission. He also issued an executive order locking a massive amount of evidence and documents away in the National Archives until 2039” (“Who Killed Kennedy,” by Steve Byas, JFK Assassination & The Deep State, New American, November 27, 2023, p. 26).
So what about this story is so horrible that the door on it could not be opened until 2039, —a full lifetime 76 years later? What is certain is that the Deep State, referred to then as the invisible or shadow government, which included the CIA was most responsible. Somebody did not want accountability until they were long dead—Johnson? Only the government had the power to suppress this information and did. The government then and for sometime thereafter was the Democrat Party and Republican presidents were complacent thereafter too, until Trump.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org Column # 742
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