It depends on the narrative

      Press coverage of the claims of former Secret Service agent Paul Landis is an example of how the media, well shoot the public too, forms narratives in its head and fits news items into that narrative.  In this case, the so-called single bullet theory is that narrative, but it could just as easily have been the "grassy knoll theory" on any of a dozen others. The essence of Landis's claim is that he found a bullet, presumably a spent one, in the seat where Kennedy had been shot in the presidential limousine. He then placed it on the stretcher with Kennedy before he was wheeled into the hospital.

      But because the narrative of Murder, Inc. is about the failures of American intelligence agencies, I fit the incident into that.  The CIA was trying to kill Castro, a fact it hid from the Warren Commission.  The FBI was derelict in arresting Oswald even though he had threated to blow up the FBI office in Dallas. The FBI in Dallas covered that up, and Hoover hid the fact he censured multiple FBI agents for failures. 

     And what about the vaunted Secret Service? It is well to remember that the agents in Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas had been up drinking until the wee hours of the morning of November 22, 1963.  They had worked long into the night of November 21 and gone without food. Most went to the Press Club in Fort Worth to get something to eat, but its food service had stopped for the day. They had some drinks there and then wandered down the street to the Cellar.  There are various accounts of what they did.  CBS reporter Bob Schieffer was there.  This is from the Dallas News.  The Warren Commission took testimony and affidavits from the Secret Service about the incident. The Service attempted to gloss over the matter by saying the agents were told they could get something to eat at the Cellar.  It was described as a beatnik coffee house that didn't serve alcohol.  But a Google search will turn up other reports that the waitresses wore only underwear, and Schieffer said liquor was available to "friends." Landis signed an affidavit for the Warren Commission saying he had two "Salty Dicks" whatever those were.

      Landis's current claim raises further questions about the Secret Service's professionalism. The Secret Service is part of the Treasury Department.  In addition to executive protection, it performs law enforcement duties in cases such as counterfeiting. So in theory at least, Landis was a law enforcement officer.  He was an eyewitness to murder; he found a bullet that must have been used in the crime; and, what does he do?  He removes it from the scene and puts it on a stretcher for the doctors to find.  He doesn't secure it.  He doesn't turn it over to the police. He doesn't even tell his superiors. To make matters worse, Landis was standing on the running board of the car behind the presidential limousine and said he only heard two shots, not the three the Warren Commission said were fired.  But if the bullet Landis allegedly found isn't the so-called magic bullet, there must have been four shots.  

      This new revelation fits much better into the narrative of widespread failure across the security agencies of the United States with respect to the assassination and a failure by the Warren Commission to get at some basic facts. I can't find any commission testimony from Landis.  Imagine how different the Warren Report might have been, and how different our mental narrative of the assassination would be, if Landis had been called as a witness in 1964 and testified to finding what could only have been a fourth bullet. Of course, maybe that was not his memory then.

The single bullet theory v. Secret Service agent Paul Landis's new claim

      Paul Landis, a Secret Service agent with the President in Dallas, is making news with the claim that he found a spent bullet in the backseat of Kennedy's car at Parkland Hospital.  He picked up the bullet and left it on Kennedy's stretcher in the hospital thinking it would be found. Speculation immediately started that this disproves the single-bullet theory (that a single bullet entered the back of Kennedy's neck, exited the front of his throat, hit Governor John Connally of Texas, who was on a jump seat in front of Kennedy, in his back, exited his chest, and lodged in his forearm. This bullet was found on Connally's stretcher at the hospital. It was assumed the bullet fell out of Connally's arm when he was taken off the stretcher.

    Precisely how Landis's recollection disproves the single-bullet theory isn't clear.  Landis is 85 years old, and his coming forward with this claim after so many investigations and so many years seems unusual. Besides, no bullet was found on Kennedy's stretcher. But giving Landis the benefit of the doubt, his claim is easily reconcilable with the Warren Report. Beginning on Page 52, of the Report, the commission detailed what happened once the presidential limousine arrived at the hospital.  Kennedy was taken out of the car first. Connally, who was cradled in the arms of his wife, seated in the jump seat in front of Jackie Kennedy, stood up so the Secret Service could remove Kennedy from the car.  Only then did he realize how seriously he himself had been injured. If there were a bullet lodged in his forearm, it might have fallen out in the back seat of the car at this time. Maybe this was the bullet Landis found, and maybe instead of leaving it on Kennedy's stretcher, he put it on Connally's.  Kennedy was immediately taken into surgery.  Unless Landis were among those helping remove Kennedy from the limo, there was no way for him to put it on the stretcher.  The bullet was found on Connally's stretcher after he had been taken off and put on the operating table.

      It is worth noting what the Warren Commission said about what happened when the presidential limo arrived at the hospital.  This is from Exhibit 1026, Volume XVIII, p. 811

The lighter side of redactions

      In 1963, the CIA wanted to bug a safehouse in the Maryland suburbs that it was renting.  Several Cuban exiles were coming to Washington to meet with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and the CIA would put them up in the house. Without apparently being asked by Kennedy, the CIA decided to wire the house and eavesdrop on the exiles' conversations. Perhaps it felt it would curry favor with Kennedy if it could tell him the exiles' plans and reactions to their meetings with him. The wiring would cost a rather considerable amount in 1963, $2,800.  The CIA cleared it with the owner.  He was an audiophile and seemed to like the idea.  But in the 2023 releases, the CIA still redacted the address of the house from the document.   There is obviously no threat to national security in releasing the address -- unless of course the CIA has been using this house for the past 60 years. But one can't help but imagine how pleased the current owner would be if, when guests came over, he could say:  "You know this was a CIA safehouse in 1963. It spent $2,800 wiring it to eavesdrop on some Cuban exiles."  Who knows, maybe a few wires can still be found in the attic. He would have one heck of a story, and it might add $2,800 to the value of his house even without the wires.

     Of course, the redaction is rather silly. I turned to the Internet and within two minutes not only found the address, but also a picture of the house and a biography of the former owner. 

Jim Garrison and the CIA's games with the ARRB and Warren Commission

     I would be just about the last person to give any credit to the claim and prosecution by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison that the CIA was behind President Kennedy's murder.  But he may have had a point about the CIA's presence in New Orleans when Lee Harvey Oswald lived there.

     This comes from the CIA's apparently playing games with the Warren Commission in not telling it that the CIA had a sizable presence in New Orleans.  The CIA played games with the Assassination Records Review Board by redacting information from a document that a lawyer in Washington gave the House Assassinations Committee. The JFK Act did not give the CIA authority to make such a redaction. The fact that a redaction was made suggests the information was true. 

      The redacted information was that CIA had 50 employees in its New Orleans office in what was then called the "Masonic Temple" building, only blocks from where Oswald handed our pro-Cuba leaflets and got into a fight with anti-Castro groups. This doesn't suggest a CIA connection with Oswald, but the CIA was playing games with the Warren Commission.  It may have had more employees in New Orleans than the FBI did and, therefore, had a greater ability to investigate Oswald's fight with the anti-Castro Cubans than the FBI did. In the very least, it was incumbent on the CIA in 1964 to tell the Warren Commission of its capabilities in New Orleans, yet there is absolutely no evidence it did.

      All this comes from a memorandum written by Washington lawyer and assassination buff, Bernard Fensterwald, of a 1975 conversation he had with George Gaudet, who claimed to have worked for the CIA.  Most of the claims seem exaggerated or unfounded.  In fact, it could be said that all of those claims are unfounded, except that some agency, presumably the CIA,  redacted two of them when the document was first released. These two facts, in the third and fourth paragraphs on the second page of the memorandum, were that the CIA had 50 employees in New Orleans and that its offices were in the Masonic Temple building.  We know this because these redactions were removed in the Archives' 2023 release of the same document.

     The Masonic Temple building was at 333 St. Charles Street.  Oswald handed out literature in August 1963 on Canal Street a few blocks away.  He was arrested there after getting into a fight with anti-Castro Cubans.

     The bottom line is that the CIA played games with two government agencies. First, it hid from the Warren Commission the fact that Oswald's confrontation with anti-Castro Cubans happened only a few blocks away from its New Orleans office with 50 employees. Had the commission known, it might have asked if any of the employees witnessed the fight or Oswald's actions. It also might have asked the CIA to investigate. Second, the CIA played games with the ARRB by redacting information from a document that it didn't originate.  Nothing in the JFK Act permitted that.