The "Magic Bullet Theory" Takes Another Hit

If you’re a Baby Boomer, as am I, you remember where you were on Nov. 22, 1963 and you probably have heard of “the magic bullet theory.”

This week, 60 years later, we have new evidence that this scenario concocted by the Warren Commission to explain the murder of President John F. Kennedy is bonkers.

Paul Landis, who was a Secret Service agent riding in the motorcade directly behind Kennedy’s limousine when the shots were fired, and who saw Kennedy’s head explode when the fatal bullet struck, has finally come forward to tell his story.

First, a refresher. Here’s “the magic bullet theory,” put together by the Warren Commission, which was eager to assure the traumatized American public that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman: one of the bullets fired at the limousine passed through Kennedy, then entered Texas Gov. John Connally Jr.’s shoulder, struck his rib, exited under his right nipple, continued through his right wrist and into his left thigh!

If you can believe that cockamamie story, you also have to somehow explain how that amazing projectile ended up nearly pristine, losing only one or two grains of its 160 or 161 grains of weight.

As the New York Times noted in its story this week on Landis, the commission’s investigators made their conclusion partly because the bullet was found on the stretcher believed to have held Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital during the doctors’ successful effort to save his life.

But now here comes Landis to tell us that in fact he found that bullet — in the limousine, lodged in the back of the seat behind where Kennedy was sitting.

Landis says he grabbed it to thwart souvenir hunters. Then he went into the hospital and placed the bullet on Kennedy’s stretcher. He believes the two stretchers were later pushed together and the bullet was shaken from one to the other.

Landis explains he knew it was an important piece of evidence and he didn’t want it to get lost. He admits it would have been smarter if he had given the bullet to one of his supervisors at the hospital but the scene was chaotic and he was in shock over what he had witnessed.

Landis also acknowledges that parts of what he’s now saying contradict the official statements he made in the days after the assassination. At that time he said he heard just two shots; now he says there were three. In 1963 he did not say he had found the bullet in the limousine. In addition, he said he didn’t go into the trauma room where the president lay. He now explains these discrepancies by saying he was in shock and had barely slept for five days. Understandable!

Landis was so shaken by the assassination that he left the Secret Service about six months later. He never read the Warren Commission’s report nor the many books about what happened that day in Dallas. He kept quiet because, he says, “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.”

Big mistake! A terrible error in judgment. But you have to sympathize with his trauma. And you have to scold the Warren Commission staff for not bothering to interview Landis, who was such a key witness. “Nobody really asked me.”

Now, at 88, Landis is telling his story. He agreed to speak with the Times’ Peter Baker in conjunction with the publication Oct. 10 of Landis’ book, “The Final Witness.”

Why is Landis’ contradiction of “the magic bullet theory” so important? James Robenalt, who has extensively researched the assassination and according to the Times “helped Mr. Landis process his memories,” says if Landis’ account is true it points to a second shooter. If Connally was in fact hit by a separate bullet, it almost certainly was not fired by Oswald because he could not have reloaded that fast.

I have been fascinated by this assassination for decades. I was in 8th grade the day it happened and naturally assumed the Warren Commission got it right: Oswald acted alone. My view was profoundly and suddenly altered circa 1976 when author and JFK assassination expert Mark Lane (“Rush to Judgment”) came to the Yale Law School and showed the Zapruder film — the home movie of the assassination captured by Abraham Zapruder. After watching that frame by frame and hearing Lane’s analysis, I could no longer believe there was just one gunman.

A year or two afterward I made it to Dallas and walked all around Dealey Plaza, studying the angles and sight lines. I stood behind the picket fence beyond the grassy knoll and realized a second gunman would have had a clear shot at Kennedy as the limousine approached. This would explain why Kennedy’s head snapped violently backward as the fatal bullet struck. Note: Oswald was firing from behind the limousine. Conspiracy theorists have long believed the second gunman or gunmen were stationed behind that fence and could have easily fled without being seen.

And about 15 years ago, when I was with my elder daughter Natalie in Dallas for a soccer tournament, I said: “Natalie, get in the car. We’re going to Dealey Plaza!”

By that time a museum had been created at the Texas School Book Depository building where, the Warren Commission told us, Oswald fired all of the shots. We were able to go up to the sixth floor corner window where Oswald had been stationed. Natalie looked out onto the plaza and, realizing how far away the motorcade had been and how little time Oswald would have had, concluded: “No way he pulled off all those shots!”

Right on, Nat!

But now what? Where do we go from here?

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