Former Secret Service agent reflects on John F. Kennedy’s death after Trump’s assassination

SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio (WJW) – In 1963, Paul Landis of Shaker Heights was a Secret Service agent assigned to protect First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

On November 22 of that year, Landis was standing on the running board of the car behind President John F. Kennedy and his wife in Dallas when the president was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald.

“Until Kennedy’s assassination, all assassination attempts had been imminent and that was our biggest concern at the time. Oswald with his high-powered rifle somehow changed all that,” the 88-year-old said in an interview with FOX 8 on Monday.

Landis wrote a book in 2023 called “The Final Witness: A Kennedy Secret Service Agent Breaks His Silence After 60 years.”

“It took me a long time to get that out of my mind. When I started writing my book again, it was really hard to go back to it,” he said.

Landis closely followed breaking news from Pennsylvania on Saturday about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

“I just thought how lucky he was that the sniper missed,” he said.

Paul Landis says the assassination attempt reminded him at times of that terrible day in Dallas, and his immediate reaction on Saturday was that the Secret Service agents who were supposed to protect Trump had done their job.

“I was impressed by the agents’ responsiveness, their behavior and their actions. I mean, this is the same thing we learned 60 years ago,” he said.

We then asked Landis for eyewitness accounts of how the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, managed to climb to the top of a building just 400 feet from the stage. A local police officer climbed to the roof and backed away when Crooks pointed his rifle at him.

“Someone was there doing their duty. There were many bystanders who seemed to have seen this person. I don’t know where, maybe there was a miscommunication,” Landis said.

Landis says that a lot has changed in the work of the secret service between 1963 and today.

The differences include modern surveillance technologies and advances in high-powered weapons. What hasn’t changed, however, is the reliance on state and local law enforcement to provide protection, he says.

“You don’t have enough staff to cover everything and you’re relying on local agencies, but you’re also invading their territory. This is a very delicate diplomatic situation,” he said.

When asked about the criticism currently directed against the Secret Service following the attempted assassination of Trump and the murder of an innocent bystander, Landis says he has experienced this before.

“The Secret Service always seems to get blamed for doing something wrong or not doing enough, and I don’t think that’s fair to the agents who dedicate themselves to their jobs,” he said.