The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After Sixty Years (Hardcover)
Dallas, Texas. November 22, 1963. Shots ring out at Dealey Plaza. The president is struck in the head by a rifle bullet. Confusion reigns.
Special Agent Paul Landis is in the follow-up car directly behind JFK’s and is at the president’s limo as soon as it stops at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He is inside Trauma Room #1, where the president is pronounced dead. He is on Air Force One with the president’s casket on the flight back to Washington, DC; an eyewitness to Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office.
What he saw is indelibly imprinted upon his psyche. He writes and files his report. And yet . . . Agent Landis is never called to testify to the Warren Commission. The one person who could have supplied key answers is never asked questions.
By mid-1964, the nightmares from Dallas remain, and he resigns. It isn’t until the fiftieth anniversary that he begins to talk about it, and he reads his first books on the assassination.
Landis learns about the raging conspiracy theories—and realizes where they all go wrong.
Special Agent Paul Landis is in the follow-up car directly behind JFK’s and is at the president’s limo as soon as it stops at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He is inside Trauma Room #1, where the president is pronounced dead. He is on Air Force One with the president’s casket on the flight back to Washington, DC; an eyewitness to Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office.
What he saw is indelibly imprinted upon his psyche. He writes and files his report. And yet . . . Agent Landis is never called to testify to the Warren Commission. The one person who could have supplied key answers is never asked questions.
By mid-1964, the nightmares from Dallas remain, and he resigns. It isn’t until the fiftieth anniversary that he begins to talk about it, and he reads his first books on the assassination.
Landis learns about the raging conspiracy theories—and realizes where they all go wrong.
Paul Landis was a twenty-eight-year-old Secret Service agent in President Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963. Though he was a witness to the events that day, he was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, and has kept his recollections private until now, including details surrounding a key piece of evidence.
“If you think there’s nothing left to be said about the Kennedy assassination, think again: former Secret Service agent Paul Landis’s gripping, second-by-second eyewitness account is an indispensable addition to the canon. A fascinating peek behind the curtain of the Kennedy White House and the Secret Service, The Final Witness will surely stand as the final revealed inside account of Camelot and the tragic events in Dallas six decades ago.” —Matthew Algeo, author of All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia
“This book has enormous charm. Special Agent Landis, a young man in his twenties, had a front-row seat to Camelot, guarding First Lady Jackie Kennedy and her two sweet children. He was with Mrs. Kennedy at every major turn: the loss of her child Patrick, the trip to Greece to cruise with Onassis on his superyacht. And then he stepped into “a living nightmare.” Dallas. A close, first-hand witness who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission. His stunning revelation in this book will cause a major re-examination of every assassination theory. It is historical dynamite.” —James Robenalt, presidential historian and author of January 1973
“The Final Witness realistically and movingly transports the reader back to the halcyon days of the Kennedy’s presidency and the inevitable tragic events that followed as seen through the eyes of a passionate young Secret Service agent participating in his first presidential motorcade.” —Holly Witchey, author of The Autobiography of Jeptha Homer Wade
“In The Final Witness, Paul Landis renders a riveting account of his life focused on his years in the US Secret Service. As an historian, I would consider The Final Witness to be a must-read book on the Kennedy presidency and late Eisenhower presidency, on Jacqueline Kennedy as both First Lady and widow, and above all on the Kennedy assassination and the fateful questions surrounding it. I could not put this book down and I plan to recommend it to friends and students. As a boy, I knew Paul Landis as a member of the Eisenhower detail and can attest that every detail of his account is both accurate and interesting. He was a terrific Secret Service agent and person, and his remarkable life story is historically important. I am glad and I am sure readers will be glad that he has taken the time out to tell it.” —David Eisenhower, author of Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945
“A jolting, painfully personal account of President Kennedy’s assassination from a previously overlooked eyewitness. Paul Landis’s book is certain to rock the world and force a reexamination of that tragic day in American history.” —Ken Gormley, president of Duquesne University and editor of The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History
"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...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 enduing mysteries." —New York Times
"Paul Landis was one of two Secret Service agents tasked with guarding first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on November 22, 1963—the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In a new book, The Final Witness, to be published in October, Landis claims to have seen something that afternoon that he had never publicly admitted before...His account also raises questions about whether there might have been a second gunman in Dallas that day." —Vanity Fair
“This book has enormous charm. Special Agent Landis, a young man in his twenties, had a front-row seat to Camelot, guarding First Lady Jackie Kennedy and her two sweet children. He was with Mrs. Kennedy at every major turn: the loss of her child Patrick, the trip to Greece to cruise with Onassis on his superyacht. And then he stepped into “a living nightmare.” Dallas. A close, first-hand witness who was never interviewed by the Warren Commission. His stunning revelation in this book will cause a major re-examination of every assassination theory. It is historical dynamite.” —James Robenalt, presidential historian and author of January 1973
“The Final Witness realistically and movingly transports the reader back to the halcyon days of the Kennedy’s presidency and the inevitable tragic events that followed as seen through the eyes of a passionate young Secret Service agent participating in his first presidential motorcade.” —Holly Witchey, author of The Autobiography of Jeptha Homer Wade
“In The Final Witness, Paul Landis renders a riveting account of his life focused on his years in the US Secret Service. As an historian, I would consider The Final Witness to be a must-read book on the Kennedy presidency and late Eisenhower presidency, on Jacqueline Kennedy as both First Lady and widow, and above all on the Kennedy assassination and the fateful questions surrounding it. I could not put this book down and I plan to recommend it to friends and students. As a boy, I knew Paul Landis as a member of the Eisenhower detail and can attest that every detail of his account is both accurate and interesting. He was a terrific Secret Service agent and person, and his remarkable life story is historically important. I am glad and I am sure readers will be glad that he has taken the time out to tell it.” —David Eisenhower, author of Eisenhower at War, 1943–1945
“A jolting, painfully personal account of President Kennedy’s assassination from a previously overlooked eyewitness. Paul Landis’s book is certain to rock the world and force a reexamination of that tragic day in American history.” —Ken Gormley, president of Duquesne University and editor of The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History
"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...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 enduing mysteries." —New York Times
"Paul Landis was one of two Secret Service agents tasked with guarding first lady Jacqueline Kennedy on November 22, 1963—the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In a new book, The Final Witness, to be published in October, Landis claims to have seen something that afternoon that he had never publicly admitted before...His account also raises questions about whether there might have been a second gunman in Dallas that day." —Vanity Fair