Former Secret Service agent reflects on JFK’s death after Trump assassination attempt

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

On Nov. 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.

“Up until the Kennedy assassination, all assassination attempts had been close in and that was our main concern at that point, Oswald with a high powered rifle kind of changed all that,” the now 88-year-old told FOX 8 during an interview 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 push that out of my mind. When I went back to write my book, it was really hard to go back there,” he said.

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

“I was just thinking how fortunate he was that the sniper missed,” he said.

Paul Landis says, at times, the attempted assassination took him back to that terrible day in Dallas and his immediate reaction on Saturday was that the Secret Service agents assigned to protect Trump had done their jobs.

“I was impressed with the way the agents were able to react and how they handled themselves and what they did. I mean, that’s the same thing we were trained to do 60 years ago,” he said.

We then asked Landis about eyewitness accounts about how the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to climb on top of a building just 130 yards away from the stage, a local police officer climbed up to the roof and retreated when Crooks pointed his rifle toward him.

“Somebody was there doing their duty. You had lots of spectators that seemed to see this person. I don’t know where, maybe there was a breakdown in communication there,” Landis said.

Landis says much has changed in Secret Service work between 1963 and today.

Among the differences, modern surveillance technology and advancements in high powered weapons, but he says one thing that has not changed is the reliance on state and local law enforcement to help provide protection.

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

When asked about criticism now being directed at Secret Service after the attempted assassination of Trump and the murder of an innocent spectator, Landis says he has seen it before.

“The Secret Service always seems to be getting the blame for doing something wrong or not enough and I don’t really feel that’s being fair to the agents that are dedicated to their job there,” he said.

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