Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After 60 Years

A former Secret Service agent recalls the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and makes startling claims about the number of shots fired in this knotty debut memoir. Landis recounts his stint in the Secret Service from 1959 to 1964, much of it spent guarding Jacqueline Kennedy (a warmhearted but tragic presence in the book) and her children, Caroline and John-John. Landis’s winsome portrait of the First Family takes on a gripping, visceral immediacy when he narrates his experiences in Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade on the day of the assassination and makes a paradigm-shifting assertion about the “magic bullet,” credited by the Warren Commission with having caused several wounds to both Kennedy and Texas governor John Connally after it was discovered near Connally’s hospital gurney. However, Landis claims he found the bullet on Kennedy’s car seat, pocketed it, and placed it on Kennedy’s gurney or exam table (the book is not clear on which), a scenario that suggests it could not have subsequently wounded Connally (who was sitting in the front seat at the time of the shooting) and lends credence to theories about a second shooter. There are some tough to square aspects of Landis’s account: he did not log the bullet into evidence, mention it in his report, or tell anyone about it for decades. The recreation of the fatal day is vivid, but Landis’s claims require further investigation. (Oct.)