The Secret Service today has stiff entrance requirements and consistent and rigorous training, and in order to even be considered for the White House Detail—presently called the Presidential Protective Division (PPD)—you will have to have been an agent for five to nine years, depending on the needs of the organization. When I joined the Secret Service, every new agent was sent to Washington during the first year on the job for thirty days’ temporary duty on the White House Detail to determine if you were the type of agent the Secret Service wanted assigned to the White House on a permanent basis. I had been on the job in Denver for about six months when my evaluation period came around.
It was the summer of 1959, and hotter than hell. Compared to the dry, crisp air of Colorado, the Washington humidity was smothering, and from the moment I stepped off the airplane at National Airport, I was in a constant state of sticky perspiration.
The Treasury Department had negotiated cheap rates for agents to stay at a boardinghouse about two blocks from the White House, run by a woman everyone called “Ma Bouma.” While Ma kept the rooms clean, it was no-frills and there was no air-conditioning—but all I could think about was that I was being given the chance of a lifetime.
I had been instructed to report to the Northwest Gate of the White House and present my credentials.
“Good morning,” I said as I handed the uniformed guard my blue leather commission book, trying to sound as if walking up to the White House and expecting to be let in was perfectly natural. A wave of apprehension washed over me as he scrutinized the photo, looked at me, looked back at the photo, and then began flipping through some papers.
Finally, he handed my commission book back to me and said, “Good morning, Agent Hill. You can go in through the West Wing door. Mr. Rowley is expecting you.”
As I entered the White House for the first time, my anxieties dissipated, and all I could feel was an overwhelming sense of pride. Portraits of past presidents lined the walls, gazing down on the people who were bustling around with urgency and purpose, seemingly oblivious to the history surrounding them. As I was escorted to Mr. Rowley’s office, I tried to take it all in, making mental observations of every detail so the next time I saw my mother I could tell her what it was like to be inside the White House.
Fifty-year-old James J. Rowley was the Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail and, having been in the position since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, was highly respected by all the agents. Rowley’s office, which he shared with his administrative assistant, Walter Blaschak, was just inside the West Wing lobby. Crammed into the small, windowless office were two desks facing each other in the middle of the room, while a couple of metal filing cabinets and a well-worn couch were squeezed against one wall. Standing ominously on the opposite wall was a large gun case stacked with .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns, 12-gauge shotguns, and .30-caliber carbines.
Mr. Rowley stood up from his desk as I entered the office and greeted me warmly with a smile and a firm handshake.
“Welcome to the White House, Clint,” he said. “I understand you’ve been doing good work out there in Denver.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
Mr. Rowley had an affable personality with an easy smile belied by steely eyes that could size you up in an instant, without revealing what he was thinking. The son of Irish Catholic immigrants, he had a toughness that came from being raised in the Bronx during the Depression and having to support his family after his father was killed in a job-related accident with the city of New York highway department. There was a no-nonsense air about him, and I liked him immediately.
Mr. Rowley explained that I would be assigned to a shift, and over the course of the next thirty days I would always be with an agent on that shift to witness firsthand how the detail operated. He handed me a black notebook that had metal pins holding it together so pages could easily be added or removed and said, “Here’s the White House Detail manual. This should answer a lot of your questions, but certainly don’t hesitate to ask anyone if there’s anything you don’t understand. We have no room for error or miscommunication.”
Printed in silver on the cover of the manual was a Secret Service star, and beneath it: WHITE HOUSE DETAIL. In the lower right hand corner was the number 9. Mr. Rowley explained that there were a set number of copies of the manual and each one was assigned to a specific agent. Inside was detailed information about the automobiles and aircraft we used; people to be notified when the president left the White House; the protocol for arrivals and departures both domestically and internationally; the formation of motorcades for various situations; and a litany of other details that only the agents protecting the president were to know. Under no circumstances was the manual to be shared with anyone outside the detail.
By the time I left his office, the enormity of the responsibility I was about to undertake had begun to set in, and I hoped I could prove to be worthy of the trust being placed in me.
EVERY ONE OF the next thirty days was exhilarating and exhausting. There was so much information to take in, and all my training was on the job.
In that month on temporary duty, I worked midnight shifts in the pitch-black darkness at Eisenhower’s Gettysburg farm and at Camp David, the nearby presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains; traveled to New York City as part of the White House Detail protecting President Eisenhower as he toured the Soviet Exhibition of Science, Technology, and Culture; traveled to Canada and helped secure the area for President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth to participate in the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway; stood post at designated points within the White House; helped man the Secret Service follow-up car in fast-paced, police-escorted motorcades through downtown Washington; and posed as a golfer along the fairway at Burning Tree Country Club, carrying a golf bag filled with a couple of beat-up old clubs and a carbine rifle. It was an interesting and educational experience, and I enjoyed every aspect of it.
I would learn later that it was not only the top-level supervisors who would determine whether I qualified to be on the White House Detail, but that the agents on my shift, my peers, would weigh in as well. At the end of the thirty days, the shift would take a vote, and I would be either in or out. It wasn’t up to the president or his staff or even the chief of the Secret Service. The guys who mattered were your immediate supervisors and the agents you worked with day in and day out, and they had to be certain you were a team player—reliable, trustworthy, and willing to work in the worst of circumstances without complaint. When the thirty days were up, I returned to Denver knowing I’d done my best, but not knowing if it was good enough.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. Just a few weeks later, I got notification that I was being transferred from Denver to the White House Detail, effective November 1, 1959. I was bursting with pride to know that I had been accepted, but it was daunting to think of the responsibility I was about to face—the responsibility to protect the President of the United States, at all costs. To put his life before mine or anyone else’s, for the good of the country.
The first order of business, however, was to find a place for Gwen, Chris, and me to live in the Washington area. My friend and fellow agent Paul Rundle had been transferred from the Denver office to the White House Detail a few months earlier, so I called him for advice.
“Don’t worry, Clint,” Paul said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Before we even left Denver, Paul and his wife, Peggy, found us a semidetached two-bedroom home for rent at 3704 South 3rd Street in Arlington, Virginia, which was within our budget and was an easy seven-mile commute to the White House. When we arrived with all our belongings, the Rundles had already stocked the house with food and the necessary staples, and they helped us unpack and get settled. I was grateful to Paul for making that part of the transition so easy, and when I thanked him, he said, “You’re on the detail now, Clint. We take care of each other. It’s what we do.”
PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. Eisenhower was sixty-nine years old when I started on his protective detail. Even though he had suffered from some major health issues in the nearly seven years since he had first taken the oath of office, outwardly he appeared fit and competent, with no indication of slowing down.
I was immediately placed on one of the three shifts of agents who provide security for the president twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. He is never left alone. The day shift covered 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., the evening shift 4:00 p.m. to midnight, and the midnight shift ran from midnight to 8:00 a.m. Each shift had only nine men, and with some agents on regular days off or handling advances for an upcoming presidential trip or off-site, that meant there might be only five or six agents around the president at any given time. Depending on the president’s schedule, your shift might start early or get extended because there was always a team that went ahead of the president to provide protection for arrivals, departures, and on-site posts. Rarely did you have an eight-hour day, and then every two weeks the teams rotated shifts, which meant that just as your body was getting used to a sleep pattern, you’d start a new one.
I was the new man on the job, so I worked with another agent for the first week to make sure I was completely aware of my assignments. The first step was to learn the layout of the White House and the Executive Office Building, both of which seemed like mazes to me at first, but would eventually become as familiar as my own home. Next was to be able to identify every person who had authorized access to the White House complex. There is an army of people who keep the White House running, and it was critical to be able to recognize the cooks and dishwashers as well as the housekeepers, florists, and maintenance staff. On top of all those faces, I had to learn all the cabinet and congressional members, and be able to address them by name. It was also helpful to know their state and party affiliation. Finally, there was the White House press corps. Members of the press had access to the West Wing press room and the West Wing lobby but had to be escorted anywhere else. It was a lot to take in all at once, but I felt deeply privileged to have this responsibility.
My first week on the job on the White House Detail was a real eye-opener into President Eisenhower’s leadership style and how he dealt with the vast demands of the office. A typical day for President Eisenhower began with his prompt arrival in the Oval Office at 8:00 a.m. Usually his first meeting was with his staff secretary, Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster, and the president’s thirty-seven-year-old son, Major John Eisenhower, who worked directly for Goodpaster.
After the initial morning briefing, President Eisenhower would have one nonstop appointment after another until lunchtime. Having been a career military officer, President Eisenhower was cognizant of the clock and was adamant about staying on schedule. He was not inclined to chitchat or small talk, instead preferring to get right down to business with whomever he was meeting, and at times it seemed like the Oval Office had a revolving door, he was able to fit so many meetings into a short amount of time. The same thing was true for meetings or events outside the White House; whether it was a speech to congressional members or a ribbon-cutting ceremony, he got the job done in the time allotted, and then it was on to the next thing. What was interesting to me was to see how much the president was able to accomplish each day, yet still manage to play golf on an almost daily basis.
After the morning’s meetings had concluded, usually by 12:30, he would leave the West Wing and return to the mansion for lunch, which was served promptly at 1:00 p.m. On Monday, my first day at the White House, shortly before 2:00 p.m., we drove him to the exclusive, all-male Burning Tree Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. He played eighteen holes of golf with friends and returned to the White House around six o’clock. Wednesday, same schedule, different golf partners. Friday, same thing, until about three o’clock when a sudden rainstorm forced the halt of the game after five holes, and when it was determined that the rain was going to continue for quite some time, the president returned to the White House. No further appointments had been scheduled, so he spent the rest of the rainy afternoon in the movie theater watching a Western.
Tuesday and Thursday had similar nonstop activity until lunchtime, along with some scattered appointments in the afternoon. Still, he managed to fit in some golf practice on the South Grounds of the White House. After changing into his golf cleats in the Oval Office, he walked out the east door—leaving spike holes in the wooden floor that would remain there for years—to the three-thousand-square-foot putting green he had arranged to have installed about fifty yards outside the Oval Office. For about an hour, he alternated between putting and driving, using the White House lawn as his own private golf course.
It was a great treat for tourists walking along the south fence to see the President of the United States whacking golf balls across the lawn, while his personal valet, Sergeant John Moaney, ran back and forth retrieving them. The first time I saw Moaney fetching the golf balls, I felt sorry for him, because it seemed like a humiliating chore. However, I soon realized that no one was more devoted to President Eisenhower than his valet, who had been with him since the war, when Moaney was assigned to the general’s personal staff. They had a great relationship, and it seemed like Moaney enjoyed participating in the most relaxing part of his boss’s day.
The president’s job does not stop on the weekends—it is round-the-clock, seven days a week. The same goes for the Secret Service. By the end of my first week, I was beginning to feel more comfortable with the protective procedures, and with President Eisenhower himself. He could be very intense, but was also quick to laugh. When it came to the agents who were around him constantly, he pretty much treated us like his troops. There were only two agents he called by name—his driver, Dick Flohr, and the Special Agent in Charge, Jim Rowley. He had no interest in learning (or need to learn) any of the rest of our names. If he needed something, he’d look at you and call out, “Hey, agent!” It was our job to protect the man, not become his personal friends.
During my second week on the White House Detail, I went on my first trip with President Eisenhower. On Thursday, November 12, we left the White House at 10:30 a.m. and flew to Augusta, Georgia, aboard the presidential aircraft, a Lockheed VC-121E Super Constellation named Columbine III. Three hours later, the president was teeing off the first hole at the Augusta National Golf Club.
Founded in 1933, Augusta National Golf Club is a private and very exclusive club that you have to be invited to join, and up until 2012, only men were allowed. The meticulously manicured eighteen-hole course is considered one of the most beautiful in the world, with over one hundred acres of flawless grass fairways dotted with white sand bunkers and lined by 150-year-old pine trees and countless flowering shrubs and trees. Each spring when the flowers are at their peak the best golfers in the world are invited to Augusta National to compete for the green jacket given to the winner of the Masters, one of golf’s most prestigious tournaments.
There were no permanent residences along the golf course, but ten cabins had been built for the use of members, including one specifically built in 1953 for President Eisenhower. The Eisenhower Cabin was not at all rustic, as the name implies, but was an elegant four-bedroom, two-story home with a spacious front porch near the No. 10 tee, and because the Secret Service had been involved in the design of the cabin, it included special communications equipment and facilities in the basement for use by the on-duty agents when Ike was in residence.
President Eisenhower loved to play Augusta because it offered so many challenges. One in particular was a large loblolly pine standing along the 17th fairway that had become Ike’s nemesis on the course. The president hit that same tree so regularly that each time he approached the 17th hole, he’d become agitated. He’d watch the flight of the ball, wincing and willing it to avoid the tree, but so often you’d hear a crack as it smacked the bark, and then immediately a burst of profanity from the president as he stormed toward his archenemy. The tree had become so problematic to him that he even lobbied the club to have it cut down. The proposal was denied, however, and instead the tree became known as the “Eisenhower Tree,” much to the president’s dismay.
One of the most fun things about protecting President Eisenhower on his golf outings was being around the high-profile people with whom he played—people like Cliff Roberts, a co-founder of Augusta National; Bill Robinson, chairman of the board of Coca-Cola; and the most interesting to me, Arnold Palmer.
When Palmer drove from the tee, the ball would rise and remain about three feet off the ground for about two hundred yards and then zoom upward, coming to rest near or on the green. He was amazing.
After nine holes, the group would take a break for beverages, and if Cliff Roberts was in the group, he would say, “Drinks all around . . . except for the Secret Service!” The joke got tiresome for us, but we’d smile and find our way to the water cooler at the end of the round.
I had very little experience playing golf myself—just a few times hitting balls with some borrowed clubs on the rough, prairie-grass-covered public course near Underwood, North Dakota—but over the next year on President Eisenhower’s detail I would spend so much time on the Augusta National and Burning Tree courses that I could anticipate which club the president would use on every hole, and where he was most likely to slice a shot into the woods. That first trip I took to Augusta in November 1959, President Eisenhower played eighteen holes of golf every day for twelve days straight. It turned out to be a pretty good indication of how much time I’d be spending on golf courses for the duration of Ike’s term.