Somebody needs to point out to the media before they destroy Paul Landis that there is CONFIRMATiON of his account from Parkland nurse Audrey Bell, who said in a video interview in 2013, still posted on YouTube, that when Kennedy was brought in on a stretcher, she noticed that “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, since that day.” Obviously, nurse Bell saw the bullet that Paul Landis had placed there.
Overlooked evidence of major significance—that has not received the proper study it deserves—is that multiple witnesses in Dealey Plaza, including trained Secret Services agents, described the final two shots as coming almost simultaneously. But curiously, we don’t see the reaction to that in the presidential limousine. After both the president and the governor have reacted to being wounded—clearly from two separate shots—several seconds elapse before a final volley hits Kennedy and his head explodes. The “double bang” witnesses reported hearing implies he was struck in the head by TWO bullets—being fired concurrently, and hence from a second shooter—not just one final shot. SS agent Roy Kellerman, sitting in the front passenger seat of the presidential limousine said “Let me give you an illustration. You have heard the sound of a plane breaking the sound barrier, bang, bang? That is it. It was like a double bang—bang, bang.” Asked if this sounded different from the first shot, he replied “Yes. Definitely. Very much so.” Agent Sam Kinney agreed that the final two shots “appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them.” Even Clint Hill--who has unfortunately become the prime defender of the Warren Report farce--said it was “like the sound of shooting a revolver into something hard...almost a double sound.” SS agent George Hickey said of the final two shots “there seemed to be practically no time element between them.” In summary, this view was shared by SS agents Kellerman, Greer, Hickey, Hill, Kinney, McIntyre, Taylor, Sorrels, and Youngblood; sheriff deputies Seymour Weitzman, Luke Mooney and Roger Craig; railroad workers S.M. Holland and Lee Bowers; TSBD employee Joe Milina; Sen. Ralph Yarborough; Robert Jackson, Arnold Rowland, Mary Ann Mitchell, Jean Hill and even Ladybird Johnson—to name just a few. But the SOUND has been ignored in an analysis of what happened.
I've listened to your podcasts discussing RFK Jr, and I find it interesting that many (if not all) of the people on the JFK Facts podcast DON'T believe in the JFK 'magic bullet' theory, but seem to believe wholeheartedly that RFK Jr's outspoken stance against the equally (if not more) outrageous 'magic covid shots theory' is a strike against him as a candidate!
I mean, if the powers that be will lie about the JFK assassination, why wouldn't they do it again, and again, and again, and again....
I would think the people of JFK Facts would want the truth, and nothing but the truth, across the board!
The relevant declassified government files, available via hot-link in our essay, show that the first 4 people in #399's chain of pssessession were interviewed about #399 in 1964. D. Tomlinson, O.P. Wright, SS Special Agent, Richard Jensen, and the chief of the Secret Service, James Rowley. They all reported that #399 did not resemble the bullet they had on 11.22.
Wright gave Tink a bullet that he said did resemble the 11/22 bullet, one very unllike #399:
However, the FBI's letterhead memo of 7.7.64 to the Warren Commission (CE#2011) reported that Darrel Tomlinson and O. P. Wright were shown #399 and both said it resembled the bullet they originally found. There's good reason to doubt this claim.
The FBI Agent who was named in CE 2011 as having gotten that admission from Tomlinson and Wright, Bardwell Odum, adamantly denied that he had ever even interviewed them, to say nothing of claims they told there was a bullet resemblance. His denial is supported by the fact that there are no "302" files in the FBI's records that document he inteviewed Tomlinson or Wright.
The only original official record about what Tomlinson and Wright said is a 6/20/64 :"field office" memo from the FBI's Dallas office. It says that neither Tomlinson nor Wright can identify #399 as the bullet they saw on 11.22. The two page FBI memo is available in Figure 6:
But when the FBI wrote the Warren Commission on 7/7/64 (CE #2011), they reported that Tomlinson and Wright told Speical Agent Odum that bullet "C-1", (which was what #399 was originally logged in as) "appears to be the same one," and "looks like the slug" found on 11/22/63. Not likely true.
Tink and I sat in Bardwell Odum's living room in Dallas in the early 1990s and showed him #2011 that said he'd gotten that admission from Tomlinson and Wright. He scoffed. He told us he'd never interviewed either Tomlinson or Wright. But that if he had, he'd surely have submitted a report (a "302").
The evidence suggests Odum told us the truth.
Tink and I reached out to both the FBI and ARRB for any records of Odum's alleged interview They scoured the files and found that there are none. (Copies of the letters attesting to that are reproduced in our essay.)
Other than in the dubious CE#2011. Odum's name is otherwise nowhere associated with "C-1" or CE #399. My guess is that the Bureau pulled Odum's story out of its large closet of whole cloth. And Odum isn't the only FBI agent to say the Bureau falsified his claims, James Hosty did, too. But that's another story.
Re Landis, only God knows where his bullet came from, or where it ended up.
This clearly fits with the autopsy report of the shallow back wound with no exit pathway when a metal probe was inserted. This would indicate a separate bullet wound caused JFK’s throat wound, and another bullet causing Connolly’s wounds. Add the JFK head shot, and the missed shot and you have minimum 5 shots, which destroys the Warren Commission theory. Landis’s account rings true to me. Multiple shooters from different directions. It also clarifies the autopsy results.
Yes, this NYT article is a welcome change in their reporting, but it underemphasizes the fragility of the official story. The “magic bullet” theory was a last-minute move to make the number of wounds match the already predetermined maximum number of bullets that could have been fired by a lone gunman; any change of this official mapping of wounds to bullets causes the lone gunman explanation to collapse, pointing to the presence of at least two shooters.
During the initial investigation (such as it was), firearms experts had already stated that the gun allegedly used by Oswald could only have been loaded and fired at most three times in the elapsed time derived from the Zapruder film. The FBI originally assigned the following roles to the bullets: bullet 1 caused Kennedy’s back wound; bullet 2 caused Connally’s wounds; and bullet 3 caused Kennedy’s fatal head wound. However, a fourth wound then came to the Warren Commission’s attention: that of spectator James Tague, whose face was scratched by a fragment of concrete chipped off by a bullet striking the sidewalk. The Commission couldn’t allow four bullets in their scenario, because that would prove the presence of a second shooter. So instead they reassigned bullet 2 as having missed the Presidential limousine, struck the pavement, and wounded Tague. They then made bullet 1 the “magic bullet” that wounded both Kennedy and Connally. The NYT article doesn’t even mention Tague or how his wounding necessitated a “magic bullet” to make the lone gunman theory hold together.
If Mr. Landis’ recollection is correct, this means that Kennedy and Connally were struck by separate bullets, bringing the bullet count up to at least four, not three - and bringing the number of assassins up from one to at least two.
At least five shots, not three. That’s how completely a Secret Service agent’s new testimony upends the story of the JFK assassination. To understand why, it is important to remember that the controversy over how Kennedy was killed likely would never have come about if Abraham Zapruder had not filmed the assassination with his home movie camera. Zapruder’s 18 seconds of video established a timeline for the assassination: from first shot to last just a little more than six seconds. One shot, the final one, hit Kennedy in the head and instantly killed him. One shot missed the limousine and nicked a curb just beyond, sending shards of concrete into the face of bystander James Tague. That one man could have fired three shots in six seconds from a cheap WWII-era rifle was already implausible, but three was certainly the maximum allowable. But how to account for all of the rest of Kennedy’s and Texas Governor John Connally’s wounds with just one bullet? During the autopsy, doctors found a bullet entrance wound in JFK's back for which no bullet had been recovered. The next day, they learned from the doctors who treated JFK at Dallas' Parkland Hospital that a tracheotomy incision had been made at the site of what they believed was an entrance wound in his throat. Connally had multiple wounds from a bullet that entered his back, exited his chest, broke several bones in his wrist and ultimately embedded itself in his thigh. The only way the Warren Commission could make all of this work was to insist that one bullet entered JFK’s back, exited his throat, caused all of Connally’s wounds, then was found later on Connally’s stretcher at the Parkland ER. Yes, the so-called “magic” bullet, because after doing all of this damage, it emerged nearly intact and undamaged. But if Paul Landis is telling the truth, he recovered the bullet not from Connally’s stretcher but from a fold in the upholstery of the back seat where Kennedy had been sitting. He says he then placed the bullet on Kennedy’s stretcher inside the hospital and thought no more about it for decades afterwards. Traumatized by seeing the barbaric, broad-daylight assassination of a man whose family he had protected for three years, Landis just wanted to move on and never considered the importance of his actions until the last few years, when he finally read the 1966 book “Six Seconds in Dallas” and realized the tight timeline dictated by the Zapruder film. (Landis, by the way, was never interviewed by the FBI or the Warren Commission, despite the fact that he was a mere 15 feet away from JFK when the assassination occurred.) So: one bullet in JFK’s head. One bullet that missed. One bullet in JFK’s back. One bullet that entered his throat (which couldn’t have come from Oswald who was above and in back of the JFK limousine the whole time). At least one bullet that hit Connally. That’s five shots from at least two different directions.
The headlines should be about what the Parkland doctors observed about JFK's wounds, particularly the wound in the back of JFK's head and the throat wound. This is trivial in comparison.
This is a remarkable piece of evidence. (Yes, the recollections of eyewitnesses are evidence, whenever they are offered).
As someone who has studied the facts of this case for 57 years - even longer than Mr. Morley - this account from Paul Landis fills in the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle after all this time. And difficult puzzles usually require a lot of time.
In my opinion, the prosecution briefs of Bugliosi and Posner always had two strong evidenciary supports: where are the bullets and were they fired from the Manlischer Carcano rifle.
We know from the FBI ballistics experts that two fragments - a nose and a base- were fired from that rifle and were found in the limo. We know that CE 399 (the magic bullet) was also fired from that rifle.
We also know that a third round missed like a bad field goal and struck the curb near the underpass, causing a piece of concrete to strike witness James Tague. That round was never recovered.
Now we know that Mr. Landis retrieved CE 399 from the back seat of the limo ad placed it on JFK's stretcher, where it was observed by an ER nurse.
We have accounted for (1) the shallow wound in JFK's back, which did not penetrate more than a few inches (CE 399): (2) the bullet which struck Gov. Connally and caused 7 wounds (the nose and base found in the car) ; and (3) the rogue bullet which injured James Tague.
The fourth bullet which struck JFK at Z 313 was NOT a copper jacketed round, but a frangible bullet, which disintegrated on impact and left a microscopic trail of fine fragments seen on head X-rays. It entered the head above the right temple and caused the fatal wound at Z313. Dr. Humes excized the wound in the temple, according to his partner, Dr. Boswell, before the autopsy.
We now have one more bullet and one more round to account for. According to Josiah Thompson. a second head wound occurred at Z331, when another bullet struck the head from the rear. There is an obvious change to the head at that frame. That bullet was recovered by Navy Corpsmen under the command of Dr. James Young, and was brought from the Executive Office Building on the night of 11/2/63 and brought to the autopsy suite. The prosectors and Rep. Gerald Ford denied receiving it.
There you have it: two rounds from the Manlischer Carcano, causing JFK's back wound and Connally;s wounds; two other rounds from the rear, prsumambly causing Tague's wound and the second head wound at Z331; and a frangible round from a tangential position on the knoll, causing the fatal wound at Z313. All wounds and all bullets accounted for.
Regarding the neck wound, it obviously did not come from CE 399. Nor did it come from a frontal shot, as (1) there was no damage to the cervical spine, and (2) there was nowhere for such a bullet to exit. It was most likely a piece of shrapnel from one of the many limo strikes.
Now we know the "how." Hopefully Jeff can resolve the "who" and "why."
Don’t get too excited yet. The Times is only going as far as it feels it must. That’s not to say that this (forced) acknowledgement of Landis’ information is not new for the Times or is not a welcome development due primarily to this substack and decades of public rejection of the Warren Commission. But the agenda is still transparent in this article to attempt, to the extent that the paper can get away with it, to continue to deny the validity of any skepticism about the official story. This can be seen in the article pointing up supposedly sophisticated, new-fangled alleged ballistics experts using the “latest methods” reprising the defense of the magic bullet.
I remain perplexed (or maybe just amused) that the Zapruder film has not been regarded as definitive proof that the fatal shot came from the front. Many commenters on the NYT article claim otherwise about what that film manifestly shows with the most preposterous, convoluted interpretations of the movement of Kennedy’s head on the impact of that shot, and other baroque “forensic analysis” supposedly showing something completely opposite to what one may see with one’s own eyes. This is gaslighting 101. Can someone please explain why this film has not gotten more play as conclusive proof of this obvious fact?
Something I note when reading this article is NY Times reporter Baker's statement that "memories are tricky even for those sincerely certain of their recollections". These words in an of themselves show why Establishment journalists act so dismissively when it comes to reporting new revelations of the JFK case.
If anything comes out that genuinely threatens the official story, some form of obfuscation is added in order to confuse the reader and cast doubt in their minds. And here we have a classic example on display. Mr. Baker did not have to make this statement, but he nevertheless did. Had he not done so, this story would have never been made public.
On Sunday when the story broke about Paul Landis finding the pristine bullet in the BACK of the presidential limo where JFK sat, Drudge Report -- the #1 news aggregator -- made it the top banner headline in big black letters. Today, the story has totally vanished from his site! It is not even listed in small type anywhere on the page. Who got to Drudge? The other major aggregator, HuffPost, has never even carried the story. This kind of news suppression associated with the Kennedy assassination is appalling and puzzling. Who leaned on Drudge, the supposedly fearless reporter?
There's one problem with this: what then do we now make of the wound in the front of Kennedy's throat? Yes, the Dallas doctors (Perry and Carrico) describe the wound as small (3x5mm) and having bruising - normally characteristic of entrance wounds. But if back wound was indeed shallow and the throat wound was an entrance wound, what happened to that bullet? X-rays show no bullets in Kennedy's throat/upper back and there was no damage to the spine. So where did it go?
The Dallas doctors gave a press conference shortly after Kennedy was pronounced dead and they described the two wounds they saw at that time: the throat wound (which appeared to be an entrance wound) and the wound in Kennedy's head. At that time, they speculated that perhaps the bullet that hit Kennedy in the throat hit a bone and ricocheted out the top/back of his head. They said this, of course, BEFORE the Zapruder film was seen (or even known to exist).
Anyone who has studied the Z-film closely knows this speculation by the Dallas doctors is NOT depicted.
I understand why we are all excited about Landis' claim. But it's not good enough to simply say the single-bullet theory now cannot be true without some explanation for what happened to the bullet that hit Kennedy in the throat. IMO.
Agreed it is a huge step for the NYT in its JFKA coverage which should also influence other major media outlets.
For me, this is just another point of potential evidence against the SBT, including Connally’s testimony like Jeff says as well supportive comments from his wife and Clint Hill, not to mention the Z film itself. I think Russell and 3 other WC members questioned it as well.
And as the Vanity Fair article points out, this supports the autopsy where the back wound was shallow and they could not find a path through the body.
Glad the Times is now open to publishing the hard questions.
Absolutely a major step forward in destroying the single bullet theory. Also wonderful news of mainstream media covering this and raising the issues. Jeff and others need to leverage the coverage as much as possible.
Secret Service Agent Says the 'Magic Bullet' Wasn't Magic
Somebody needs to point out to the media before they destroy Paul Landis that there is CONFIRMATiON of his account from Parkland nurse Audrey Bell, who said in a video interview in 2013, still posted on YouTube, that when Kennedy was brought in on a stretcher, she noticed that “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, since that day.” Obviously, nurse Bell saw the bullet that Paul Landis had placed there.
Here is a link to her comments:
https://youtu.be/36qUVsgCIpc?si=LWXlkTgEELmz1ANX
Overlooked evidence of major significance—that has not received the proper study it deserves—is that multiple witnesses in Dealey Plaza, including trained Secret Services agents, described the final two shots as coming almost simultaneously. But curiously, we don’t see the reaction to that in the presidential limousine. After both the president and the governor have reacted to being wounded—clearly from two separate shots—several seconds elapse before a final volley hits Kennedy and his head explodes. The “double bang” witnesses reported hearing implies he was struck in the head by TWO bullets—being fired concurrently, and hence from a second shooter—not just one final shot. SS agent Roy Kellerman, sitting in the front passenger seat of the presidential limousine said “Let me give you an illustration. You have heard the sound of a plane breaking the sound barrier, bang, bang? That is it. It was like a double bang—bang, bang.” Asked if this sounded different from the first shot, he replied “Yes. Definitely. Very much so.” Agent Sam Kinney agreed that the final two shots “appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them.” Even Clint Hill--who has unfortunately become the prime defender of the Warren Report farce--said it was “like the sound of shooting a revolver into something hard...almost a double sound.” SS agent George Hickey said of the final two shots “there seemed to be practically no time element between them.” In summary, this view was shared by SS agents Kellerman, Greer, Hickey, Hill, Kinney, McIntyre, Taylor, Sorrels, and Youngblood; sheriff deputies Seymour Weitzman, Luke Mooney and Roger Craig; railroad workers S.M. Holland and Lee Bowers; TSBD employee Joe Milina; Sen. Ralph Yarborough; Robert Jackson, Arnold Rowland, Mary Ann Mitchell, Jean Hill and even Ladybird Johnson—to name just a few. But the SOUND has been ignored in an analysis of what happened.
I've listened to your podcasts discussing RFK Jr, and I find it interesting that many (if not all) of the people on the JFK Facts podcast DON'T believe in the JFK 'magic bullet' theory, but seem to believe wholeheartedly that RFK Jr's outspoken stance against the equally (if not more) outrageous 'magic covid shots theory' is a strike against him as a candidate!
I mean, if the powers that be will lie about the JFK assassination, why wouldn't they do it again, and again, and again, and again....
I would think the people of JFK Facts would want the truth, and nothing but the truth, across the board!
Though perhaps a little too "inside baseball," it may be worth reading the essay Tink Thompson and I wrote many years ago, especially since Landis was apparently moved to tell his story after reading "Six Seconds in Dallas." : https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm
The Magic Bullet: Even More Magical Than We Knew?
Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompson
The relevant declassified government files, available via hot-link in our essay, show that the first 4 people in #399's chain of pssessession were interviewed about #399 in 1964. D. Tomlinson, O.P. Wright, SS Special Agent, Richard Jensen, and the chief of the Secret Service, James Rowley. They all reported that #399 did not resemble the bullet they had on 11.22.
Wright gave Tink a bullet that he said did resemble the 11/22 bullet, one very unllike #399:
However, the FBI's letterhead memo of 7.7.64 to the Warren Commission (CE#2011) reported that Darrel Tomlinson and O. P. Wright were shown #399 and both said it resembled the bullet they originally found. There's good reason to doubt this claim.
The FBI Agent who was named in CE 2011 as having gotten that admission from Tomlinson and Wright, Bardwell Odum, adamantly denied that he had ever even interviewed them, to say nothing of claims they told there was a bullet resemblance. His denial is supported by the fact that there are no "302" files in the FBI's records that document he inteviewed Tomlinson or Wright.
The only original official record about what Tomlinson and Wright said is a 6/20/64 :"field office" memo from the FBI's Dallas office. It says that neither Tomlinson nor Wright can identify #399 as the bullet they saw on 11.22. The two page FBI memo is available in Figure 6:
https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/images/Slide5-1.GIF
https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/images/Slide5-2.GIF
But when the FBI wrote the Warren Commission on 7/7/64 (CE #2011), they reported that Tomlinson and Wright told Speical Agent Odum that bullet "C-1", (which was what #399 was originally logged in as) "appears to be the same one," and "looks like the slug" found on 11/22/63. Not likely true.
Tink and I sat in Bardwell Odum's living room in Dallas in the early 1990s and showed him #2011 that said he'd gotten that admission from Tomlinson and Wright. He scoffed. He told us he'd never interviewed either Tomlinson or Wright. But that if he had, he'd surely have submitted a report (a "302").
The evidence suggests Odum told us the truth.
Tink and I reached out to both the FBI and ARRB for any records of Odum's alleged interview They scoured the files and found that there are none. (Copies of the letters attesting to that are reproduced in our essay.)
Other than in the dubious CE#2011. Odum's name is otherwise nowhere associated with "C-1" or CE #399. My guess is that the Bureau pulled Odum's story out of its large closet of whole cloth. And Odum isn't the only FBI agent to say the Bureau falsified his claims, James Hosty did, too. But that's another story.
Re Landis, only God knows where his bullet came from, or where it ended up.
Gary
This clearly fits with the autopsy report of the shallow back wound with no exit pathway when a metal probe was inserted. This would indicate a separate bullet wound caused JFK’s throat wound, and another bullet causing Connolly’s wounds. Add the JFK head shot, and the missed shot and you have minimum 5 shots, which destroys the Warren Commission theory. Landis’s account rings true to me. Multiple shooters from different directions. It also clarifies the autopsy results.
Yes, this NYT article is a welcome change in their reporting, but it underemphasizes the fragility of the official story. The “magic bullet” theory was a last-minute move to make the number of wounds match the already predetermined maximum number of bullets that could have been fired by a lone gunman; any change of this official mapping of wounds to bullets causes the lone gunman explanation to collapse, pointing to the presence of at least two shooters.
During the initial investigation (such as it was), firearms experts had already stated that the gun allegedly used by Oswald could only have been loaded and fired at most three times in the elapsed time derived from the Zapruder film. The FBI originally assigned the following roles to the bullets: bullet 1 caused Kennedy’s back wound; bullet 2 caused Connally’s wounds; and bullet 3 caused Kennedy’s fatal head wound. However, a fourth wound then came to the Warren Commission’s attention: that of spectator James Tague, whose face was scratched by a fragment of concrete chipped off by a bullet striking the sidewalk. The Commission couldn’t allow four bullets in their scenario, because that would prove the presence of a second shooter. So instead they reassigned bullet 2 as having missed the Presidential limousine, struck the pavement, and wounded Tague. They then made bullet 1 the “magic bullet” that wounded both Kennedy and Connally. The NYT article doesn’t even mention Tague or how his wounding necessitated a “magic bullet” to make the lone gunman theory hold together.
If Mr. Landis’ recollection is correct, this means that Kennedy and Connally were struck by separate bullets, bringing the bullet count up to at least four, not three - and bringing the number of assassins up from one to at least two.
When the matter is settled I think Jefferson Morley should get a Pulitzer Prize.
At least five shots, not three. That’s how completely a Secret Service agent’s new testimony upends the story of the JFK assassination. To understand why, it is important to remember that the controversy over how Kennedy was killed likely would never have come about if Abraham Zapruder had not filmed the assassination with his home movie camera. Zapruder’s 18 seconds of video established a timeline for the assassination: from first shot to last just a little more than six seconds. One shot, the final one, hit Kennedy in the head and instantly killed him. One shot missed the limousine and nicked a curb just beyond, sending shards of concrete into the face of bystander James Tague. That one man could have fired three shots in six seconds from a cheap WWII-era rifle was already implausible, but three was certainly the maximum allowable. But how to account for all of the rest of Kennedy’s and Texas Governor John Connally’s wounds with just one bullet? During the autopsy, doctors found a bullet entrance wound in JFK's back for which no bullet had been recovered. The next day, they learned from the doctors who treated JFK at Dallas' Parkland Hospital that a tracheotomy incision had been made at the site of what they believed was an entrance wound in his throat. Connally had multiple wounds from a bullet that entered his back, exited his chest, broke several bones in his wrist and ultimately embedded itself in his thigh. The only way the Warren Commission could make all of this work was to insist that one bullet entered JFK’s back, exited his throat, caused all of Connally’s wounds, then was found later on Connally’s stretcher at the Parkland ER. Yes, the so-called “magic” bullet, because after doing all of this damage, it emerged nearly intact and undamaged. But if Paul Landis is telling the truth, he recovered the bullet not from Connally’s stretcher but from a fold in the upholstery of the back seat where Kennedy had been sitting. He says he then placed the bullet on Kennedy’s stretcher inside the hospital and thought no more about it for decades afterwards. Traumatized by seeing the barbaric, broad-daylight assassination of a man whose family he had protected for three years, Landis just wanted to move on and never considered the importance of his actions until the last few years, when he finally read the 1966 book “Six Seconds in Dallas” and realized the tight timeline dictated by the Zapruder film. (Landis, by the way, was never interviewed by the FBI or the Warren Commission, despite the fact that he was a mere 15 feet away from JFK when the assassination occurred.) So: one bullet in JFK’s head. One bullet that missed. One bullet in JFK’s back. One bullet that entered his throat (which couldn’t have come from Oswald who was above and in back of the JFK limousine the whole time). At least one bullet that hit Connally. That’s five shots from at least two different directions.
The headlines should be about what the Parkland doctors observed about JFK's wounds, particularly the wound in the back of JFK's head and the throat wound. This is trivial in comparison.
This is a remarkable piece of evidence. (Yes, the recollections of eyewitnesses are evidence, whenever they are offered).
As someone who has studied the facts of this case for 57 years - even longer than Mr. Morley - this account from Paul Landis fills in the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle after all this time. And difficult puzzles usually require a lot of time.
In my opinion, the prosecution briefs of Bugliosi and Posner always had two strong evidenciary supports: where are the bullets and were they fired from the Manlischer Carcano rifle.
We know from the FBI ballistics experts that two fragments - a nose and a base- were fired from that rifle and were found in the limo. We know that CE 399 (the magic bullet) was also fired from that rifle.
We also know that a third round missed like a bad field goal and struck the curb near the underpass, causing a piece of concrete to strike witness James Tague. That round was never recovered.
Now we know that Mr. Landis retrieved CE 399 from the back seat of the limo ad placed it on JFK's stretcher, where it was observed by an ER nurse.
We have accounted for (1) the shallow wound in JFK's back, which did not penetrate more than a few inches (CE 399): (2) the bullet which struck Gov. Connally and caused 7 wounds (the nose and base found in the car) ; and (3) the rogue bullet which injured James Tague.
The fourth bullet which struck JFK at Z 313 was NOT a copper jacketed round, but a frangible bullet, which disintegrated on impact and left a microscopic trail of fine fragments seen on head X-rays. It entered the head above the right temple and caused the fatal wound at Z313. Dr. Humes excized the wound in the temple, according to his partner, Dr. Boswell, before the autopsy.
We now have one more bullet and one more round to account for. According to Josiah Thompson. a second head wound occurred at Z331, when another bullet struck the head from the rear. There is an obvious change to the head at that frame. That bullet was recovered by Navy Corpsmen under the command of Dr. James Young, and was brought from the Executive Office Building on the night of 11/2/63 and brought to the autopsy suite. The prosectors and Rep. Gerald Ford denied receiving it.
There you have it: two rounds from the Manlischer Carcano, causing JFK's back wound and Connally;s wounds; two other rounds from the rear, prsumambly causing Tague's wound and the second head wound at Z331; and a frangible round from a tangential position on the knoll, causing the fatal wound at Z313. All wounds and all bullets accounted for.
Regarding the neck wound, it obviously did not come from CE 399. Nor did it come from a frontal shot, as (1) there was no damage to the cervical spine, and (2) there was nowhere for such a bullet to exit. It was most likely a piece of shrapnel from one of the many limo strikes.
Now we know the "how." Hopefully Jeff can resolve the "who" and "why."
Don’t get too excited yet. The Times is only going as far as it feels it must. That’s not to say that this (forced) acknowledgement of Landis’ information is not new for the Times or is not a welcome development due primarily to this substack and decades of public rejection of the Warren Commission. But the agenda is still transparent in this article to attempt, to the extent that the paper can get away with it, to continue to deny the validity of any skepticism about the official story. This can be seen in the article pointing up supposedly sophisticated, new-fangled alleged ballistics experts using the “latest methods” reprising the defense of the magic bullet.
I remain perplexed (or maybe just amused) that the Zapruder film has not been regarded as definitive proof that the fatal shot came from the front. Many commenters on the NYT article claim otherwise about what that film manifestly shows with the most preposterous, convoluted interpretations of the movement of Kennedy’s head on the impact of that shot, and other baroque “forensic analysis” supposedly showing something completely opposite to what one may see with one’s own eyes. This is gaslighting 101. Can someone please explain why this film has not gotten more play as conclusive proof of this obvious fact?
Something I note when reading this article is NY Times reporter Baker's statement that "memories are tricky even for those sincerely certain of their recollections". These words in an of themselves show why Establishment journalists act so dismissively when it comes to reporting new revelations of the JFK case.
If anything comes out that genuinely threatens the official story, some form of obfuscation is added in order to confuse the reader and cast doubt in their minds. And here we have a classic example on display. Mr. Baker did not have to make this statement, but he nevertheless did. Had he not done so, this story would have never been made public.
On Sunday when the story broke about Paul Landis finding the pristine bullet in the BACK of the presidential limo where JFK sat, Drudge Report -- the #1 news aggregator -- made it the top banner headline in big black letters. Today, the story has totally vanished from his site! It is not even listed in small type anywhere on the page. Who got to Drudge? The other major aggregator, HuffPost, has never even carried the story. This kind of news suppression associated with the Kennedy assassination is appalling and puzzling. Who leaned on Drudge, the supposedly fearless reporter?
There's one problem with this: what then do we now make of the wound in the front of Kennedy's throat? Yes, the Dallas doctors (Perry and Carrico) describe the wound as small (3x5mm) and having bruising - normally characteristic of entrance wounds. But if back wound was indeed shallow and the throat wound was an entrance wound, what happened to that bullet? X-rays show no bullets in Kennedy's throat/upper back and there was no damage to the spine. So where did it go?
The Dallas doctors gave a press conference shortly after Kennedy was pronounced dead and they described the two wounds they saw at that time: the throat wound (which appeared to be an entrance wound) and the wound in Kennedy's head. At that time, they speculated that perhaps the bullet that hit Kennedy in the throat hit a bone and ricocheted out the top/back of his head. They said this, of course, BEFORE the Zapruder film was seen (or even known to exist).
Anyone who has studied the Z-film closely knows this speculation by the Dallas doctors is NOT depicted.
I understand why we are all excited about Landis' claim. But it's not good enough to simply say the single-bullet theory now cannot be true without some explanation for what happened to the bullet that hit Kennedy in the throat. IMO.
Agreed it is a huge step for the NYT in its JFKA coverage which should also influence other major media outlets.
For me, this is just another point of potential evidence against the SBT, including Connally’s testimony like Jeff says as well supportive comments from his wife and Clint Hill, not to mention the Z film itself. I think Russell and 3 other WC members questioned it as well.
And as the Vanity Fair article points out, this supports the autopsy where the back wound was shallow and they could not find a path through the body.
Glad the Times is now open to publishing the hard questions.
Absolutely a major step forward in destroying the single bullet theory. Also wonderful news of mainstream media covering this and raising the issues. Jeff and others need to leverage the coverage as much as possible.