Magic bullets, questions about shooters, and a supposed plot by the Soviet Union. The world may never know everything that really happened on November 22, 1963, but new details have come to light in the years since.
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00:00Magic bullets, questions about shooters, and a supposed plot by the Soviet Union.
00:05The world may never know everything that really happened on November 22, 1963,
00:09but new details have come to light in the years since.
00:13Sixty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a Secret Service agent who was
00:18feet away from the president when he was shot, cast fresh doubt on the accepted story. In his
00:222023 book, The Final Witness, Paul Landis said he was the one who placed the mysterious bullet
00:27on the stretcher that held the president, which was officially reported as being found on Governor
00:32John Connolly's gurney. The notion that the round came from Connolly supports the
00:36magic bullet theory that claims a single shot hit both JFK and Connolly. But Landis said he
00:41found the projectile on the top of the limo's rear seat, behind where JFK was sitting,
00:46on a ledge where the cushion met the metal of the car. In his book, he writes,
00:50Instead of reaching down and replacing the bullet where I had found it,
00:53like I had done with the bullet fragment, I slipped it into my right suit coat pocket.
00:57People were starting to converge towards the car. I thought a souvenir hunter,
01:03somebody might see that.
01:05He planned to later give the bullet to Roy Kellerman,
01:07assistant special agent in charge of the Kennedy detail, but that didn't happen.
01:11Once at Parkland Hospital, Landis recounted being whisked into the facility along with
01:15the hospital staff and Secret Service agents. He ended up in the room with Kennedy on his gurney,
01:19until the doctor in charge yelled for everyone to leave so the medical team could work.
01:24People were pushing and shoving, and I just got shoved right up against the examination table.
01:30Landis recalled,
01:32People were starting to leave the room. I had to make another split-second decision.
01:36That's when he says he placed the bullets on the stretcher. If true, this would cast out
01:40on the magic bullet theory and support the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone.
01:45Landis did wait 60 years to tell the story, and he did so via a book. But Landis admits
01:50that he suffered from post-traumatic stress after the incident and buried all his thoughts
01:53of the day, including his actions.
01:56Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby just two days after his arrest.
02:01The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone,
02:03but plenty of conspiracy theories suggest he had help.
02:07Did you kill the president?
02:08No, I've not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet.
02:12In October 2017, declassified FBI files revealed that the bureau thought it important that the
02:17public believe Oswald was the only shooter. In a memo issued on November 24, 1963, the day Oswald
02:24died, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover stonewalled,
02:27There's nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.
02:30Documents declassified in 1994 reveal that Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach
02:36supported the single-gunman theory in a memo to the White House written one day after Oswald's
02:40death, reading,
02:41The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that he had no Confederates who
02:46were still at large, and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.
02:50Evidence also suggests the Warren Commission was likely influenced by top-level government
02:55forces to conclude Oswald acted alone, before it even began its investigation.
02:59President Lyndon B. Johnson, who took office after JFK died, called Georgia Senator Richard
03:04Russell, Jr. on November 29 to inform him he would serve on the Warren Commission and stress
03:08the importance of making clear Oswald — who had stated he was a communist and defected to the
03:13Soviet Union in 1959 — came back to America and then joined a pro-Cuba communist group in
03:18New Orleans, had no ties to the Soviets or their Cuban allies.
03:22Please disperse. Nothing to see here, please.
03:28In the 2023 documentary, JFK, What the Doctor Saw, Dr. Robert McClellan, who worked to save
03:34John F. Kennedy's life, made a chilling claim. According to him, Dr. Malcolm Perry initially
03:39said in a press conference that JFK's throat wound appeared to be an entrance wound,
03:43which could suggest a second gunman firing from the front, with Lee Harvey Oswald firing from the
03:48rear. McClellan recalled,
03:50When he left the room, someone came up to him who Dr. Perry thought maybe was a
03:53Secret Service man who delivered a chilling message.
03:57You must never, ever say that that was an entrance wound again if you know what's good for you.
04:03McClellan died in 2019 at the age of 89, but he remained steadfast in his conclusion that
04:09there was likely more than one shooter involved in the assassination. He believed that the shot
04:13that killed Kennedy came from the infamous Grassy Knoll, where some witnesses claim to have seen
04:17a second shooter. In an odd little twist, upon hearing about the Oswald shooting,
04:21McClellan rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
04:25In Operation Dragon, inside the Kremlin's secret war on America,
04:28ex-CIA chief R. James Woolsey and Lieutenant General Yomihay Pachepa,
04:33a former acting chief of communist Romania's secret police who defected to the U.S.,
04:38claim that Oswald was a KGB associate who was ordered by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to
04:43assassinate Kennedy. Woolsey and Pachepa said Khrushchev called off the plan,
04:46but that Oswald went ahead with it. They claim that Oswald was recruited in 1957 while serving
04:52as a U.S. Marine in Japan's Atsugi Naval Air Facility, two years before he defected
04:56to the Soviet Union, then assigned to the plot to kill Kennedy in 1962.
05:01The pair point to the 26-volume Warren Commission reports, which they say offers
05:04the evidence in the form of KGB patterns and codes, writing,
05:08"...decoded, these pieces of evidence prove that John F. Kennedy's assassin,
05:12Lee Harvey Oswald, had a clandestine meeting in Mexico City with his Soviet case officer,
05:16Comrade Kostin, who's been identified by the CIA as belonging to the KGB's 13th
05:21Department for Assassinations Abroad."
05:24"...and sometimes, conspiracy theories turn out to be true."
05:27What isn't well-known today is that, in the 1960s, Mexico City was a bit of a spy central,
05:32a launching ground and meeting place for counterintelligence throughout the Americas.
05:36Oswald being in such a place should have raised eyebrows, for sure,
05:39but it seems that nothing came of it until after JFK's assassination.
05:44Anyone who's seen footage of the JFK assassination probably remembers Clint Hill,
05:48the Secret Service agent who climbed onto the back of the vehicle immediately after.
05:52We had no threats, no information that would lead us to believe that it was going to be a major
05:56problem."
05:56Hill was assigned to Jackie, not the president. Yet it seemed like he was the only agent who took
06:01action. In his 2022 book, My Travels with Mrs. Kennedy, he revealed how the resulting PTSD once
06:07caused him to attempt to end his life. It was the night of December 29, 1963, just over a month after
06:14JFK was killed. Hill was assigned to head Jackie Kennedy's detail in Palm Beach, Florida, where she
06:19and her children were to visit extended family. The events of November 22 were, as always,
06:24running through his head. Hill was drinking at a bar, then left and headed toward the ocean,
06:28entering the water fully clothed, where he considered drowning himself.
06:32I was the only agent who was in a position to do anything that day.
06:36Speaking to NPR's Radio Diaries in November 2023, Hill shared his feelings of guilt over
06:41the assassination, for which he blamed himself. After the incident, he went into a deep depression
06:46at his Virginia home. Hill recalled,
06:48"...I lived on two packs of cigarettes a day and a bottle of scotch. That's how I slept."
06:53Now, he counsels people suffering from PTSD, stressing the importance of talking to others.
06:57As he told NPR,
06:59"...The more they talk about it, the better they're going to feel."
07:02If you or someone you know needs help with mental health,
07:05please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741,
07:10call the National Alliance on Mental Illness Helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI,
07:156264, or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.