Another Magical JFK Assassination Pseudo-Debate and Limited Hangout

Edward curtin

Much has been made of the September 9, 2023 simultaneous reports in The New York Times and Vanity Fair of the claims of a former Secret Service agent, Paul Landis, who was part of the security detail in Dallas, Texas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.  Like so many reports by such media that have covered up the truth of the assassination for sixty years, this one about “the magic bullet” is also a red herring.

It encourages pseudo-debates and confusion and is a rather dumb “limited hangout,” which is a strategy used by intelligence agencies to dangle some truth in order to divert attention from core facts of a case they are desperate to conceal. With these particular articles, they are willing to suggest that maybe the Warren Commission’s magic bullet claim is possibly incorrect. This is because so many people have long come to realize that that part of the propaganda story is absurd, so the coverup artists are willing to suggest it might be wrong in order to continue debating meaningless matters based on false premises in order to solidify their core lies.

Despite responses to these two stories about Landis that credit them for “finally” showing that the “magic bullet” claim of the Warren Commission is now dead, it would be more accurate to say they have revived debate about it in order to sneakily hide the fundamental fact about the assassination: that the CIA assassinated JFK.

We can expect many more such red herrings in the next two months leading up to the sixtieth anniversary of the assassination.

They are what one of the earliest critics of The Warren Commission, Vincent Salandria, a brilliant Philadelphia lawyer, called “a false mystery.”  He said:

After more than a half century, the historical truth of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been finally established beyond rational dispute. The Kennedy assassination is a false mystery. It was conceived by the conspirators to be a false mystery which was designed to cause interminable debate. The purpose of the protracted debate was to obscure what was quite clearly and plainly a coup d’état. Simply stated, President Kennedy was assassinated by our US national security state in order to abort his efforts to bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion.

That the corporate mainstream should trumpet these reports as important is to be expected, but that they are also so greeted by some people who should know better is sad.  For there is no mystery about the assassination of President Kennedy; he was assassinated by the CIA and the evidence for this fact has long been available. And the Warren Commission’s claim that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the so-called “magic bullet” – Commission Exhibit 399 – that entered JFK’s back and exited his neck and then went into the back of Gov. John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat, zigzagging in multiple directions, causing him five wounds and then emerging in pristine condition, has always been risible.

Only fools or those ignorant of the details have ever believed it, but desperate conspirators led by the late Arlen Specter, the future Senator, did desperate things for The Warren Commission in order to pin the rap on the patsy Oswald and cover-up for the killers.

I could spend many words explaining the details of the government conspiracy to assassinate JFK, why they did it, and have been covering it up ever since.  But I have done this elsewhere.  If you wish to learn the truth from credible sources, I would highly recommend that you watch the long version of Oliver Stone’s documentary JFK Revisited; Through the Looking Glass and then closely read the transcripts and interviews in James DiEugenio’s crucial compendium of transcripts and interviews for the film.  You will immediately realize that these recent revelations are a continuation of the coverup.

This should be immediately intuited by the titles of the two pieces.  The New York Times’ article, written by its chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, who previously worked for the Washington Post for twenty years, including four years as its Moscow bureau chief, is entitled JFK Assassination Witness Breaks His Silence and Raises New Questions. (The Times and Washington Post have long been the CIA’s mouthpieces.) The Vanity Fair article is written by James Robenalt, a colleague of John Dean of Watergate infamy, and is entitled A New JFK  Assassination Revelation Could Upend the Long-Held “Lone Gunman” Theory.

For anyone with a soupçon of linguistic analytical skill and a rudimentary knowledge of the JFK assassination, those titles immediately induce skepticism.  “New questions”?  Don’t we already have the answers we need.  “Could Upend the Long-Held ‘Lone Gunman’ Theory”?  So we must keep debating and researching the obvious.  Why?  To protect the CIA.

Both articles go on to expound on how the sympathetically described poor conscience-stricken old guy Landis’s claim that he found the so-called pristine magic bullet on the top back of the car seat where JFK was sitting and placed it on Kennedy’s stretcher in Parkland Hospital without telling anyone for all these decades is an earth shattering revelation.  And as they do so, they make sure to slip in a series of falsehoods to reinforce the essence of the government’s case.

If anyone is interested in the facts concerning the physical evidence, all one need do is read Vincent Salandria’s analysis here.  Once you have, you will realize the hullabaloo about Landis is a pseudo-debate.

These articles about Landis reinforce what Dr. Martin Schotz describes in his book History Will Not Absolve Us, and what he said in a talk twenty-five years ago.  He made a distinction between the waters of knowledge and the waters of uncertainty.  In the case of the JFK assassination, the public is allowed to think anything they want, but they are not allowed to know the truth, although since the Warren Commission was released it was evident that “no honest person could ever accept the single bullet theory.”  And he then added this about pseudo-debates:

And to mention just one false premise of the Landis saga (beside the one that there is uncertainty to be resolved; and there are many others, but one will suffice, since I don’t want to enter into a pseudo-debate), it is that the so-called magic bullet in evidence – CE 399 – the one discussed in these articles, is not even the one said to be found somewhere in Parkland Hospital, and the chain of custody for that bullet – or some bullet – is broken in many places (see James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass ).

Phantom bullets and plenty of magic go into the creation and destruction of this tall tale told to camouflage the CIA’s guilt in its killing of President Kennedy.  If you believe in magic and mystery, The New York Times’ Peter Baker has these words for you, if you can understand them:

Mr. Landis’s account, included in a forthcoming memoir, would rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way. It may not mean any more than that. But it could also encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries.

Yes, those four English lads said it in 1967: “The magical mystery tour is hoping to take you away” into an enduring mystery, even though the case was solved long ago.

Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.