Landis theorizes the bullet struck Kennedy in the back, popping back out before the president’s body was removed from the limousine.
Landis has been reluctant to speculate on the larger implications. He always believed Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. But now? “Now I begin to wonder,” he said.
I dunno. I’m most in favor of Oswald having acted alone, but aiming at Connally. And the guy is 88 years old. What do y’all think?
Don’t know one way or the other about the accuracy of the guy’s account, but I understand he has a book coming out so obviously he’s looking to sell a few copies.
Could the culprit have been an ex-Marine trained in using a rifle, with a military-style rifle that he calibrated, sitting in a room with boxes of books to use as a gun rest and an open window with a view of the parade? Or was that guy just a stooge taking the fall for some guy standing upright in plain sight with a handgun?
Perhaps, but I think it’s a matter of memory degradation. People really think they’re remembering things accurately, but it’s been shown beyond doubt that what we think are accurate memories are often degraded by time and wishful thinking.
His memory degraded about an illegal act he kept secret for the past 60 years? Maybe off his rocker, but sounds like he knows how to make money to get a new rocker.
I assume this secret service agent mentioned this bullet discovery during the massive investigation into the assassination of the man he was charged with protecting.
No?
I think we can safely assume there is nothing to this but trying to sell books.
He didn’t have to make it up – the idea that Kennedy was hit in the back by a bullet that didn’t penetrate very far and subsequently fell out has been circulating for a long time.
So even less reason to believe him. I remember how the bullet was found on the stretcher but I don’t recall an explanation for why that bullet didn’t penetrate very far. Was it supposed to be that it hit his back brace and nobody noticed? Doesn’t matter much, whenever the phrase ‘magic bullet’ comes up someone is trying cloud the facts.
He may be lonely, but he didn’t make this one up. I remember being presented with this “fact” by my CT teacher back in the 70s. (ninja’d):
I also remember the theory that one of the secret service agents riding on the back accidentally (really, it was an accident, not an “accident” ) shot Kennedy, and this is what has been covered up all these years. Maybe this dude was the shooter, and 60 years of guilt finally made him believe he didn’t do it.
I can’t argue with the with the last part of this.
But I’ve thought for many years that there would have undoubtedly been a fair amount of covering up stuff and people omitting details and/or putting a certain “nonobjective” spin on portions of the story while they’re answering investigators’ questions. It’s certainly well within the realm of possibility that people who were involved in security for the visit (at least some of them) would feel motivated to give the most blameless-to-themselves version of the story they could come up with. After all, this would have been the single most important event of their careers, and to be blunt about it, they failed. I don’t think it’s stretching things very far to imagine them thinking “The hammer’s going to come down on somebody. I need to make sure they don’t think there’s any reason to aim it at me.” Even if these security people don’t fear criminal charges, they might fear that the failure would screw up their career. “Promotion? For one of guys who let Kennedy get his head blown apart? Excuse me for a half hour while I have a hearty laugh.” I don’t claim to know how the promotion-giver would think, but if I imagine myself in the place of one of the question-answerers, I’m pretty sure it would be on my mind.
Sixty years later? Dude sees the end of his time on earth up there on the horizon. Now there’s nothing at stake for him. Why not come clean if he thinks he knows something?
And to be clear, I don’t want to suggest that any of this means that there was anyone other than Oswald shooting. Just people trying to cover their own asses in the aftermath and probably not being sure what they needed to do or to what lengths they needed to go to do the ass covering.
Supposedly, he put the bullet on the stretcher because he thought it important to keep it with the body, to ensure a thorough and accurate analysis of what transpired. Yet he didn’t think it important to tell anybody what he found, or even to memorialize it in some form of record, because apparently that isn’t important stuff.
I feel sorry for him concocting a story that paints him as so shoddy and unprofessional during his term of service.
Yes, I’m afraid his age makes his statement suspect but, just as importantly, is the amount of time that has gone by since the event, which is in the neighborhood of 60 years.
Yeah, that was my reaction when my friend was telling me about this. “So this guy is about 97 years old now? Did the retirement home recently show ‘In the Line of Fire’ for movie night?”
) shot Kennedy, and this is what has been covered up all these years. Maybe this dude was the shooter, and 60 years of guilt finally made him believe he didn’t do it.