The crises began almost as soon as the calendar turned.
“I report to you that our country is challenged at home and abroad,” President Johnson said in his opening State of the Union remarks to Congress on January 17, 1968. There was still no end in sight to the war in Vietnam, and in this election year he knew there was much he had to prove. Despite the fact that Americans were more prosperous than ever before, with higher paychecks and more families owning their own homes, “there is in the land,” he noted, “a certain restlessness, a questioning.”
Four days later, the North Vietnamese Army launched a withering rocket and mortar attack on Khe Sanh, a strategic Marine outpost just fourteen miles south of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam, and three days after that, one of our critical intelligence-gathering ships, the USS Pueblo, was seized by the North Koreans—the first time in more than one hundred years that an American naval vessel had been captured at sea. Then, in the predawn hours of January 31, during what was supposed to have been a multiday cease-fire in honor of Tet—the most important Vietnamese holiday, marking the Lunar New Year—the North Vietnamese conducted a coordinated surprise attack against military and civilian command and control centers in cities throughout South Vietnam, including a bold and blistering raid on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The numbers were staggering: over two hundred Americans dead, and nearly a thousand wounded, with more than two thousand civilian men, women, and children killed in Saigon alone. Yet General Westmoreland’s optimistic report back to Washington was that the Tet Offensive had been an “all-or-nothing, go-for-broke” proposition, in which the North Vietnamese had failed to take and hold any major installations and had suffered far greater losses than the allies.
Despite the sheer numbers of people killed, what had a far bigger impact on the public were the photographs and film footage by American journalists that made their way onto the front pages of newspapers and the television screens in every American living room. One photo, taken by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, showed the horrific image of a young North Vietnamese man, terror written all over his face, his hands tied behind his back, as South Vietnam’s national police chief fired a bullet, point-blank, into his head on a Saigon street, while children stood nearby.
BY THE BEGINNING of 1968, more than 11,000 Americans had been killed in Vietnam. United States troop strength had been building gradually since 1960, and although we now had nearly 500,000 members of the U.S. military in Vietnam, with the latest increase in attacks, General Westmoreland had requested reinforcements of 10,500 more men.
Ever since we returned from the around-the-world trip after Prime Minister Holt’s funeral, I had noticed that President Johnson was looking more and more haggard. Large bags under his eyes were becoming more pronounced, and although he was still packing far more into any given day than most, the strain of the job was becoming physically evident.
When I made mention of this to a member of the staff and to the White House physician, they both told me that the president was barely sleeping. He was phoning the Situation Room at all hours of the night to determine the situation in Vietnam and the status of the seized ship, the USS Pueblo, and its crew. Every call to the Situation Room was logged, and sure enough, when I checked the logbook, nearly every night, calls from the president’s bedroom came in just before he retired, usually around midnight or one o’clock, and then there’d be another call at two, three, or four. The international crises were consuming him.
On Saturday, February 17, when I reported to the White House, I was informed that the president intended to make a surprise visit to some of the troops headed into combat. That afternoon, we flew to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Pope Army Airfield, where a brigade of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division was getting ready to board a C-141 transport jet. I stood on one side of the doorway of the aircraft as President Johnson, on the other side, shook hands with each soldier as they boarded the plane. Equipped for combat, they carried field packs, canteens, sheath knives, and M-16 automatic rifles. It had to be frightening for these young men—many of them barely out of high school—to be sent off to a combat zone on the opposite side of the world, and for the president, I could see it was ripping him apart.
When all the men were on board, an officer gave the pilot the command to start the engines.
“Wait a minute,” President Johnson said. And then he turned to walk up the steps into the aircraft. Uh oh, I thought. What does he have in mind?
I followed him as he walked down the center aisle between the rows of helmeted troops, each lost in their own thoughts. President Johnson interrupted the silence.
“I hate to ask you men to go,” he said. “I wish I did not have to send you into battle in a far-off country.” His brow furrowed, and I knew he was speaking sincerely from the heart.
“Do your duty, as I know you will. I pray all of you will be back.”
When he said that, my own emotions almost got the best of me. For I knew, as he did, that within hours of being on the ground in Vietnam, a significant number of these young men would suffer life-altering injuries or be killed in action.
After stopping at a nearby hospital to visit a group of wounded soldiers, we got back on Air Force One for a five-hour-and-twenty-minute flight to El Toro Marine Air Station in Southern California. It was 8:41 in the evening when we touched down, and after a brief speech to the troops and civilian personnel who had gathered to greet him, President Johnson repeated the scene from earlier in the day, this time shaking the hands of the U.S. Marines boarding military transport planes headed straight to Vietnam. After watching the planes take off, we boarded helicopters and flew to the USS Constellation, an aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of California, where we would spend the night. The president held a press briefing aboard the aircraft carrier shortly before ten o’clock, and by the time he retired to his suite, it was well after eleven—2:00 a.m. by our East Coast body clocks. It was no wonder he looked fatigued.
The following morning President Johnson was up early, and made the request to have breakfast with a representative group of sailors on the ship. He asked each of them to stand up and give their name, rank, and hometown, and then started asking questions. “How is the morale on the ship?” he asked. “Is it higher at some times than others?”
The boys were hesitant at first, but then one piped up and said, “Yes, sir. It depends on the amount of mail we get from home, and what we read in the newspapers.”
“What do you mean, what you read in the newspapers?” President Johnson asked.
The young man said, “We read about the hippies and the flower children and all these people who are against the war. I don’t understand why we have to go to war and these peaceniks get away from the draft by rebelling and having demonstrations. It doesn’t seem right.”
The president nodded in understanding. “Son, there are dissenters in every war. But I am so proud of you boys, and the entire nation is proud of you. Nobody wants to go to war, and nobody wants to die. But people must, and I’m proud of the way you boys have met your responsibility. You are fighting for the right to allow people to dissent.”
He paused, and then looked around the table, taking a moment to look into each man’s eyes. “If you make it—and that’s what we want and pray for every day,” he said, “and if you don’t, then the good Lord knows that you went down swinging and fighting hard for your country. It’s boys like you that makes America a free country.”
In the newspapers the next day, President Johnson’s visits to the troops made the front page, but the brief articles were overshadowed by the headlines: “U.S. Air Base Under Heavy Rocket Fire; Reds Shell 30 Cities in New Viet Offensive.”
FEBRUARY 29, 1968, marked the last day of Robert McNamara’s tenure as secretary of defense. Having been appointed in 1961 by President Kennedy, McNamara had served seven years in the post, longer than any other defense secretary, and as he departed the office—to be replaced by Clark Clifford—President Johnson was to present him with the Distinguished Service Medal in a noontime ceremony at the Pentagon.
February had been unseasonably dry, but that morning the rain started early, and was pummeling down as we departed the White House in a small motorcade and drove directly into the Pentagon garage. Secretary McNamara was there to greet the president, and he led us to a bank of elevators.
Several members of the president’s staff had come along, so we all piled into one large elevator—thirteen of us, in elevator number 13—including one other agent and myself. An Army master sergeant assigned to operate the elevator pushed the button to take us to the appropriate floor, the doors closed, and the elevator began to ascend. The president was bantering with Secretary McNamara when all of a sudden the elevator stopped, but the doors didn’t open as they automatically would when we reached the intended floor.
Looking perplexed, the sergeant pushed a couple of buttons, but the doors remained closed, and the elevator wasn’t budging. Secretary McNamara took over, pushing button after button on the control panel, but still, nothing. We were stuck.
The sergeant got on the emergency phone and notified the operator of our problem, but there wasn’t much room to move, and with so many people in there it was quickly becoming hot and stuffy. We hadn’t built any extra time into the schedule, and as I looked at my watch I realized we were already late for the beginning of the ceremony.
Drops of perspiration were forming on President Johnson’s forehead, and he was clearly becoming irritated.
“What’s wrong with this thing?” he said with a scowl.
“Don’t ask me,” McNamara quipped. “I don’t work here anymore.”
The president was not amused, and as the air got stuffier, I too was becoming concerned. We attempted to pry the doors open from the inside, and got maybe an inch or so. One of the president’s assistants, Harry McPherson, was quite tall, and he managed to move a ceiling plate a few inches to create a small opening, but then the electricity cut off. Now we were in the dark.
The elevator had a capacity of fifteen, and we had just thirteen people, so weight should not have been a problem, but as the minutes ticked by, the situation was getting more and more tense, and I knew President Johnson’s patience was nearing its breaking point.
“Let me have your radio,” I said to the advance agent who was in the elevator with us. Other than the telephone inside the elevator, it was our only means of communication. I notified the agents posted outside the elevator of our predicament and requested they go to each floor and pry open the doors to try to locate us. It wasn’t long before they found us between floors. The distance from the elevator to the next floor of the building, however, was too high for anyone to climb, so a chair had to be lowered into the elevator. President Johnson stepped onto the seat of the chair, and with two people up above grabbing his arms and two in the elevator lifting from below, we finally got him out, and the rest of us followed. Needless to say, he was not in the best of moods as we walked to the ceremony site—fifteen minutes late—and the situation just seemed to go from bad to worse.
The Air Force flyby had been canceled because of the weather. As President Johnson stepped up to the podium, a staff member juggled an umbrella over his head trying to keep him dry, but as the president began to speak, the sound system malfunctioned, making his voice inaudible to the two thousand attendees standing miserably in the rain. Everyone, including me, was soaked and chilled to the bone. It was a complete and utter disaster, and while I’m sure President Johnson found someone to blame, luckily this time it wasn’t me.
Problems seemed to be mounting for President Johnson on all fronts. The war in Vietnam was going badly, there had been no resolution to the Pueblo seizure, a copper strike was looming, and the New Hampshire presidential primary was coming up on March 12. As sitting president, it was assumed Johnson would have no difficulty winning the Democratic primary, but with criticism of the war mounting and President Johnson’s popularity declining with each news broadcast, others in the Democratic Party saw a potential opening. Senator Eugene McCarthy, a Democrat from Wisconsin, decided to challenge President Johnson in the primaries with a fervent antiwar campaign.
Johnson prevailed in the New Hampshire primary, but his percentage margin of victory was in the single digits. He appeared vulnerable. The president, his family, friends, and staff, were all very upset. Four days later, Senator Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for president—something he had repeatedly said he would not do—stating, “I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course.”
On that same day, March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers claimed a big victory after an assault on the Vietcong in the seaside village of My Lai. In reality, the soldiers had killed an entire village of men, women, and children in what later became known as the My Lai Massacre. The horrific details of the incident did not become public knowledge, however, for over a year.
On March 31, President Johnson scheduled a nationally televised address to the American people to announce an immediate de-escalation of attacks on North Vietnam as the first step in moving “toward peace through negotiations.”
He had been working on the speech with his staff for days, and a final version had been distributed to the press shortly before he appeared on the air. I had gone home, and when the broadcast started I was sitting alone in my basement, where I had a small black-and-white television next to my desk. I was listening but not really watching the television screen as the president came to the end of his remarks. There was a pause, and then I heard President Johnson utter some words I never thought I would hear him say.
“I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
I was absolutely stunned. Did I hear him correctly? There had not been any indication I was aware of that he was going to do this. No indication whatsoever. The newscasters, all of them as shocked as I was, confirmed it: Johnson had taken himself out of the 1968 presidential election. Then, I thought, Is this just a ploy on his part to gain sympathy and gather momentum for a presidential draft? Was it being done simply to encourage the North Vietnamese to come to the bargaining table? How would this affect his activity and exposure over the next few months? How would it affect our security for the president? These and a million other questions ran through my mind. I didn’t have time to dwell on it because we were flying to Chicago early the next morning, where President Johnson was scheduled to speak to the National Association of Broadcasters.
The entire nation was shocked by President Johnson’s announcement, and that was all anyone was talking about. When I saw LBJ the next morning, however, he did not bring up the subject, and neither did I. It wasn’t my job to advise or offer my opinion on his political decisions—my only focus, as it always had been, was ensuring his personal safety.
In his speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, President Johnson made some points that I thought were very significant, and still do.
“Men and women of the airways fully—as much as men and women of public service—have a public trust, and if liberty is to survive and to succeed, that solemn trust must be faithfully kept. I do not want—and I don’t think you want—to wake up some morning and find America changed because we slept when we should have been awake, because we remained silent when we should have spoken up, because we went along with what was popular and fashionable and ‘in’ rather than what was necessary and what was right.
“Certainly, it is more dramatic to show policemen and rioters locked in combat than to show men trying to cooperate with one another. The face of hatred and of bigotry comes through much more clearly—no matter what its color. The face of tolerance, I seem to find, is rarely newsworthy.”
Indeed, President Johnson’s remarks are perhaps even more relevant in 2016 than they were in 1968, in this era of twenty-four-hour news cycles in which the news media’s repetitive broadcasting of “dramatic” incidents often provokes and incites violence. And yet at that time, President Johnson could have had no idea what was about to unfold.
SENATOR ROBERT F. Kennedy had sent a wire requesting a meeting with President Johnson, and the meeting was set for ten o’clock Wednesday morning, April 3, at the White House. This would be the first meeting between the two since Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy, and Kennedy had asked to bring his brother’s former speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, along. They wanted to keep the meeting quiet—no press—so to facilitate their movements within the White House complex, I arranged for them to park on the South Grounds, and then I met them at the South Portico.
“Hello, Clint,” Robert Kennedy said solemnly when he saw me.
“Good morning, Senator,” I said. “I’ll escort you to the Cabinet Room. The president is expecting you.”
The meeting lasted about an hour and a half, and while I didn’t know what was said, when they came out of the Cabinet Room, none of them appeared happy.
Kennedy and Sorensen were silent as I escorted them out through the Rose Garden to the area near the South Portico. When we arrived at their car, Senator Kennedy simply said, “Thanks, Clint.”
“My pleasure, Senator,” I replied. And with that, they exited the White House grounds.
Now that President Johnson had taken himself out of contention for the presidency, I realized that Robert F. Kennedy had a very good chance of becoming the next President of the United States. The first thought that entered my mind was—all those kids! Bobby and his wife, Ethel, had ten children, and we’d be responsible for protecting all of them. The election was still a long way off, though, and I’d seen enough politics to know anything could happen.
My immediate concern was preparing for a busy travel schedule beginning the next day with a trip to New York City for the ordination of Terence Cooke as archbishop of New York, followed by a Democratic congressional fund-raising dinner back in Washington that evening, an overnight flight to March Air Force Base, in California, so President Johnson could confer with General Eisenhower, and then on to Hawaii for meetings about Vietnam and the still unresolved USS Pueblo situation. There were still a great many details to iron out.
Thursday, April 4, began quietly, with the president making phone calls from his bedroom all morning, which gave me time to work on the logistics for the complex travel schedule ahead. When we departed for New York City at noon, I at least felt like I had a handle on the itinerary.
Everything went smoothly at the ordination at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and at 3:20 we were in the helicopter at Sheep Meadow in Central Park, ready to take off for Kennedy International Airport, where Air Force One was standing by to take us back to Washington, when the president decided that since he was in New York, he might like to have a meeting with Ambassador Arthur Goldberg at the United Nations. All plans were tossed out the window as we hastily arranged security for the spur-of-the-moment U.N. visit, which required an impromptu motorcade through the streets of one of the busiest cities in the world. It was 6:30 p.m. by the time we finally got back to the White House.
I was standing by in W-16, the Secret Service ready room on the ground floor directly below the Oval Office, waiting for President Johnson to give word that he was ready to leave for the fund-raising dinner, when a call came in from the Intelligence Office. One floor above, all hell was breaking loose. The press office had direct wire tickers from the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) that ran twenty-four hours a day, and at 7:24 p.m., Tom Johnson, a young White House press aide who would go on to run the Los Angeles Times and CNN, happened to be standing near the tickers when the bells started ringing like crazy. It wasn’t unusual for bells to sound when there was a bulletin, but this type of nonstop ringing was reserved for news of the highest urgency—a FLASH. Tom Johnson read the FLASH, ripped the copy from the ticker, and raced down the hall to the small office where the president’s secretaries, Juanita Roberts and Marie Fehmer, the official gatekeepers to the Oval Office, were still typing memos and correspondence.
“I have an urgent message for the president,” he said. The look on Tom’s face must have conveyed the seriousness of the situation, because, in a very unusual move, Marie waved him into the president’s office without question.
Johnson burst into the Oval Office, interrupting a meeting between President Johnson, former governor of Georgia Carl Sanders, and Robert Woodruff, the chairman of Coca-Cola. Handing the strip of wire paper to the president, Tom Johnson said, “Mr. President, Dr. King has been shot.”
President Johnson read the ticker tape, handed it to the other two men, and immediately got on the phone to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
Serious and methodical, President Johnson made one phone call after another, assembling those at the highest level of government in his office, asking questions and making decisions. Someone flipped on the televisions—the bank of TV sets along one wall of the Oval Office LBJ had had installed so he could watch all three networks simultaneously—as staff members scurried in and out, bringing new information and responding to the president’s requests.
First it was decided to cancel the president’s participation at the dinner, then to postpone the trip to California and Hawaii. At 8:20 p.m. press secretary George Christian got word from Hoover’s office that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had died.
There was concern that outrage over King’s death would trigger violence, and President Johnson realized, as the leader of the country, it was important for him to speak to the nation about the tragedy as soon as possible. People were already beginning to gather outside the Washington offices of King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference on Fourteenth Street, and while they were solemn and peaceful, that could change in an instant.
At nine o’clock, barely half an hour after Reverend King’s death, the press set up lights and cameras outside the West Wing, and President Johnson addressed the nation.
“America is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King,” he began. “I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence. I pray that his family can find comfort in the memory of all he tried to do for the land he loved so well. I have just conveyed the sympathy of Mrs. Johnson and myself to his widow, Mrs. King. I know that every American of goodwill joins me in mourning the death of this outstanding leader and in praying for peace and understanding throughout this land. We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. It is only by joining together and only by working together that we can continue to move toward equality and fulfillment of all our people. I hope that all Americans tonight will search their hearts as they ponder this most tragic incident.”
Meanwhile, the crowd on Fourteenth Street was growing larger, and the rage was intensifying. We started getting reports of storefront windows being broken and looting taking place, and of police on the street being stoned by angry mobs. Officers around the nation’s capital were preparing for the worst—donning riot helmets, gas masks, and carrying tear gas canisters and billy clubs.
Shortly before eleven o’clock, two vehicles were torched at a Chevrolet dealership, and then more fires were set off in Columbia Heights, and now throngs of people were moving south on Fourteenth Street toward the White House.
We in the Secret Service were monitoring the situation closely, not only out of concern for President Johnson’s safety but also how the spreading violence might affect our other protectees, who were scattered around the country. Plans for Dr. King’s funeral in Atlanta were already under way, and a memorial service was scheduled for the following day at Washington National Cathedral. We had grave concerns about President Johnson attending either one, but he was adamant that he needed to be at the memorial service here in Washington.
It was after midnight when I finally went home to get some rest, but many staff members remained in the White House overnight.
When I became SAIC, a dedicated phone line with direct access to the White House had been installed in my home. Sometime around two or three o’clock in the morning the White House phone on the nightstand beside my bed rang, waking me out of a deep sleep. I reached for the receiver, put it to my ear, and groggily answered, “Clint Hill.”
“Clint!” It was President Johnson. He had never called me at home before. “You know we’re going to the memorial service for Dr. King at the National Cathedral tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, listen,” he said. “I want to make sure you have the car get me as close to the door as they possibly can. And I want you to be right next to me the whole time.”
“Yes, sir. Everything will be taken care of.”
“I want you to be as close to me as white on rice!”
“Don’t worry, Mr. President,” I reiterated. “I will stay as close as possible to you at all times.”
“All right, then; see you in the morning,” he said as the line went dead.
I tried to get back to sleep, but my mind was restless. It was obvious the president was deeply concerned for his own safety, and frankly, so was I.
WHEN I ARRIVED at the White House at 6:30 a.m., the city of Washington was smoldering from the overnight fires, and there were already signs that more violence and civil unrest were on the way. President Johnson had called for an urgent meeting with congressional leaders as well as black community leaders in the White House immediately before the memorial service, and then shortly before noon we proceeded by motorcade to National Cathedral.
We had secured the three-and-a-half-mile route with the help of D.C. Metropolitan Police, and had agents positioned in and around the church. The most precarious points were the moments moving President Johnson out of, and then back into, the limousine. I rode in the right front seat, and as soon as we pulled up to the front of the cathedral I got out and quickly scanned the surroundings to make sure the other agents were in position. I opened the rear door, and as President Johnson emerged from the backseat I was on high alert, my adrenaline flowing, ready to push him back into the car at the merest sign of anything unusual. We moved quickly into the church, and I remained, as promised, always within arm’s reach.
Thousands of mourners packed the gothic basilica where the previous Sunday Rev. Martin Luther King had preached his last sermon, and after the solemn one-hour service it was time to get back into the car. The detail agents moved in a diamond formation as we filed out of the church with several members of the clergy, while I continued to stay directly behind the president until he was safely back in the armored limousine. We got back to the White House without incident, but by this time rioting was spreading throughout Washington, as well as other cities across America.
One of the individuals fanning the flame of violence was Stokely Carmichael, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At a news conference, his voice was calm and calculated as he warned “white America” what to expect.
“When white America killed Dr. King, she declared war on us,” he said. “There will be no crying; there will be no funerals. The rebellions that have been occurring around the cities of this country is just light stuff to what is about to happen.”
He promised retaliation and warned that “the execution of those deaths will not be in the courtroom—they are going to be in the streets of the United States of America. There no longer needs to be intellectual discussion.” Later, he stood in front of a large crowd and urged every black man to “go home and get your guns.”
The response was immediate, and within hours hundreds of stores in downtown Washington had been looted and set on fire. With the situation quickly spiraling out of control, President Johnson federalized the D.C. National Guard, called in additional military units to support the 2,800 officers of the Metropolitan Police Department, and brought troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to Andrews Air Force Base to stand by in case they were needed.
Shortly after one o’clock, the president appeared on live television and radio appealing for peace. From the Fish Room, he once again expressed his shock and sorrow at the loss of Dr. King, and designated Sunday, April 7, as a day of national mourning.
“My heart went out to his people—especially the young Americans who, I know, must wonder if they are to be denied a fullness of life because of the color of their skin.” He said he remained convinced that the dream of Martin Luther King had not died with him, and he was consulting with Negro leaders to ensure the dream lived on.
“Men who are white, men who are black,” he said, “must and will join together now as never in the past to let all the forces of division know that America shall not be ruled by the bullet but only by the ballot of free and just men.”
Washington’s mayor declared a thirteen-hour curfew within the District from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. as five thousand soldiers poured into the streets with bayonets and battle gear. This sudden and overwhelming show of force prompted stores and offices to close, and by three o’clock in the afternoon there was citywide gridlock as panicked commuters tried to get out of the downtown area. Fires were consuming entire blocks of Fourteenth Street, Seventh Street, and H Street, but as firefighters attempted to douse the flames, they were being pelted by rock-throwing protestors.
In less than twenty-four hours our nation’s capital had turned into a war zone, and similar scenes were playing out in Chicago, Boston, Memphis, Nashville, and Detroit. So many military personnel were brought to D.C. that we were housing some of them in the hallways of the Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House.
As civil rights leaders and emergency management advisors flowed into and out of the West Wing, I remained in the Secret Service command center at the White House to keep abreast of the situation. Washington Field Office agents were spread out across the city, feeding information back to us and the Intelligence Division.
Every hour there was some new, more disturbing development, and as darkness fell, I realized there was no way I could leave the White House. I called Gwen and told her to monitor the news and stay inside with the boys. Hopefully I’d be home by Saturday.
FOR THE NEXT two days, violence raged across America. The air was heavy with smoke, and the smell of tear gas was prevalent as military units patrolled the streets. Fearful storeowners kept shops and restaurants closed; the Cherry Blossom Festival was canceled; and the opening game of major league baseball, which was to have been held in Washington, was postponed. The troop level was over eleven thousand in the District, while six thousand National Guardsmen had been mobilized in Baltimore and another five thousand federal troops sent to Chicago, where nine people had been killed as a result of the rioting. If I wasn’t right in the middle of it, I never would have believed this was happening in the United States of America.
The morning of Sunday, April 7, newspaper headlines screamed the dire situation across the country:
With the rioting still not under control, President Johnson had canceled his trip to Hawaii, but the issues in Vietnam couldn’t be set aside, so General Westmoreland flew to Washington instead, and spent much of Sunday morning briefing the president. Johnson had not left the White House since attending the memorial service the day after King’s assassination—largely on our advice—but having declared this the official day of mourning, he decided he wanted to go to church with his daughter Luci and her husband, Pat Nugent. With very little notice, we quickly scrambled an advance crew of agents to secure St. Dominic’s Catholic Church prior to his arrival. Not only was it a day of mourning for King but it was also Palm Sunday, so the church was packed.
We got the president situated in a pew near the front, which is where he always liked to be, but throughout the service I was concerned about people crowding him when it was time to leave. When the last hymn was over, I whispered, “Let’s move now, Mr. President.”
In a moving show of respect and understanding, the entire congregation remained seated as the president, Luci, and Pat walked down the aisle and out of the church. Nothing was said, but you could feel the empathy from the people as they looked at the president with warm smiles and nods of solemn encouragement.
On the way back to the White House, President Johnson told me he wanted to take advantage of General Westmoreland’s helicopter departure that afternoon to view the damage from the riots. He wanted to see for himself exactly which sections of the city were affected, and the extent of the destruction. So after a press conference at the White House, we flew to Andrews Air Force Base, dropped off General Westmoreland and his aides, and then took off for an aerial tour.
As we flew three hundred feet above Washington, in the restricted area known as P-56, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. President Johnson had his face pressed to the window, and as we circled around the city he simply shook his head with despair. It looked like we were flying over a war zone.
Spattered throughout the city, whole blocks had been burned to the ground. Charred remains of stores and offices still smoldered, the smoke wafting from the rubble like a filthy cigarette that had been tossed carelessly on the ground beneath the gleaming white monuments of our nation’s capital in indignant disrespect. It was utterly demoralizing. What was happening to our country?
Forty miles northeast, the city of Baltimore was also having serious arson and looting problems. The governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, had activated the Maryland National Guard in support of the Baltimore police, but it was not enough to quell the violence, and he requested federal troops.
Meanwhile, Martin Luther King’s funeral was scheduled for Tuesday, April 9, in Atlanta. President Johnson wanted to go—he felt he needed to be there. FBI director Hoover urged him not to attend, and when President Johnson sought advice from Rufus Youngblood, Lem Johns, and me, we all told him the same thing. The situation was too volatile, emotions were still raw, and the crowd mentality that was sweeping through the black community made for extremely unpredictable circumstances. Finally, realizing that the country could not withstand an attempted assassination of the president at this time, Johnson heeded our advice.
“All right, fine,” he conceded. “Humphrey can go.”
Vice President Humphrey was now running for president. We in the Secret Service didn’t like this idea either, but the agents on the VP Detail flew into action, and, working with local law enforcement and the FBI, managed to get Humphrey in and out with no incidents.
With the intervention of military troops, order was finally restored, but the devastation was extensive. In Washington, D.C., alone, more than 1,200 buildings had been destroyed. Hundreds of businesses had no choice but to close, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs—all in mainly black areas. For President Johnson, after his relentless support of Martin Luther King and the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, seeing the black community torching their own livelihoods and sending portions of cities into economic devastation from which they would not recover for decades was almost more than he could fathom.
He responded by working harder than ever. The trip to Hawaii was rescheduled for the following week—a whirlwind trip that included talks with President Park Chung-hee of South Korea over the still unresolved Pueblo situation, a meeting with former president General Eisenhower, and then a few days at the LBJ Ranch to recuperate. The weeks and days ahead were filled with nonstop activity: Democratic Party fund-raisers; dropping by a party honoring the speaker of the House of Representatives for ten minutes; on to a party given by a leading congressman and his wife and staying for thirty minutes; returning to the White House for dinner with Mrs. Johnson, often not until 9:30 p.m. or later, taking and making phone calls all the while. The middle-of-the-night phone calls from the president to the Situation Room continued as well, so that the president was often getting just two or three hours of sleep a night. It was not a sustainable regimen, and those closest to the president were deeply concerned about his health and well-being.
OCCASIONALLY PRESIDENT AND Mrs. Johnson entertained on the Sequoia, the presidential yacht on which Mrs. Kennedy had thrown the raucous party on President Kennedy’s forty-sixth birthday. One Sunday afternoon at the end of May, it was a beautiful, warm spring day in Washington, and the president decided it would be a nice evening for a dinner cruise. He made a bunch of calls, rounding up fourteen guests to join him and Mrs. Johnson on the Sequoia. With very little notice, the White House kitchen had to prepare a full dinner for sixteen and transport it to the yacht.
We arrived at the pier at around five o’clock, and once everyone was aboard, we set off for a leisurely cruise down the Potomac. I was standing on the outer deck as cocktails and appetizers were being served when I overheard one of the president’s aides tell him that Prime Minister John Gorton of Australia had arrived, as expected, at Andrews Air Force Base, and he and his party were being transported to Blair House.
“Well, let’s invite them to join us,” the president said. “The more the merrier.”
Are you kidding me?
Of course the prime minister accepted the invitation, along with the rest of his party, and suddenly the leisurely cruise turned into an all-hands-on-deck operation as I scrambled to make arrangements for the Australians to board the yacht mid-cruise, while the kitchen staff was left to deal with the problem of ten additional people for dinner.
Using the yacht’s radio—this was long before cell phones—we arranged to have the Australians board a presidential helicopter on the Ellipse and be flown to the Hunting Towers apartment complex near the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. This little jaunt required the Ellipse to be secured for the helicopter to land, and the fire department to be there in the event of fire; vehicles had to be arranged to bring the party from the landing point to a nearby marina; and then one of the Secret Service boats would bring them to the Sequoia.
At 7:45 p.m., the ten Australians boarded the Sequoia, dinner was served at 8:10, and by 9:45 we were back at Pier 1 where we had started. I have no idea how the Navy stewards managed to serve twenty-six people for dinner when they had prepared for sixteen, but somehow they made it look effortless, and everyone had a wonderful time.
President Johnson had invited Prime Minister Gorton to visit the LBJ Ranch, so several days later we were back in Texas. At some time in late 1967 or early 1968, a couple named Ernest and Teet Hobbs had opened a motel on the outskirts of Johnson City, and what a difference that made for the agents. The entire motel consisted of ten basic rooms adjacent to the Hobbses’ living quarters, which meant most of the agents had to sleep two to a room, but the best part about the Hobbs Motel was that it didn’t require an hour-and-a-half commute back to Austin at the end of an exhausting day’s work.
President and Mrs. Johnson stayed at the ranch for the next several days, with houseguests coming and going, touring the ranches, and looking for deer. When storms broke out one day, the president turned to me and asked, “Is it sunny over at the lake?”
I checked, and the weather was indeed clear and sunny, so we left immediately by helicopter for the lake. There was no such thing as sitting still or remaining inactive for President Johnson.
On June 3, after a long day of visiting the neighboring ranches, we departed Texas at 9:40 in the evening and headed back to Washington, arriving at Andrews Air Force Base shortly after one o’clock in the morning. It was nearly two by the time I got home to bed—just enough time for about four hours of sleep. As it turned out, that would be the most sleep I’d get for several more days to come. Tragedy was about to strike again.
TUESDAY, JUNE 4, was a typically long and busy day that began with an 8:20 a.m. departure from the White House to Glassboro, New Jersey, where President Johnson made a commencement address. The enthusiasm of the crowd and his reaction to it made it feel like a campaign rally, despite the fact that he was not running for office. When we returned to the White House at around eleven, the South Grounds were prepared for a noontime military arrival ceremony for the president of Costa Rica, so the helicopter landed on the Ellipse.
A large crowd had gathered outside the White House fence to watch the arrival ceremony, and when the presidential helicopter landed right in front of them, the people started cheering and clapping. We had cars positioned to take the president immediately to the South Grounds, but when President Johnson stepped out of the chopper and heard the people cheering and calling his name, it was like the force of a magnet pulling him toward the adoration, and instead of getting into the waiting limousine, he walked straight into the crowd.
He was smiling as big as could be, shaking hands, and waving—acting very much like a presidential candidate. As the other agents and I formed a protective envelope and gradually got him through the Southwest Gate onto the White House grounds, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was having second thoughts about running. If there was one thing I had learned about Lyndon Baines Johnson, it was that anything was possible.
It was almost the end of the presidential primaries for 1968, and it so happened that voting was taking place that day in South Dakota, New Jersey, and California. Up until a few weeks earlier, most predictions had Kennedy winning all the primaries and thereby sewing up the Democratic nomination. But Senator Eugene McCarthy had taken Oregon and Vice President Humphrey had won Pennsylvania, and it appeared that Kennedy’s campaign might be in trouble unless he was able to win California.
When I went home that night after the state dinner, I turned on the television to get some election results. It appeared that Robert Kennedy was winning, and I retired for the night.
At 3:50 a.m. I was wakened by the ringing of the White House phone next to my bed.
“Clint Hill,” I answered.
The Secret Service agent on duty was on the other end of the line.
“Mr. Hill,” he said. “Senator Kennedy has just been shot in Los Angeles.”
Oh my God. I hung up the phone, jumped out of bed, and went down to my basement to turn on the TV. All three networks were broadcasting—something that, at that time, was highly unusual at this hour of the morning—and details about the shooting were still coming in. I was so stunned, I could hardly believe what was being said. Bobby Kennedy shot.
He had just finished making a victory speech in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel to an enthusiastic crowd of supporters and was exiting through the kitchen, thanking the kitchen staff, when a man approached and fired a gun at point-blank range. Bobby’s wife, Ethel, pregnant with their eleventh child, was by his side as he lay bleeding on the floor, while pandemonium broke amid calls for medical assistance.
My mind swirled with the memories of that dreadful day in Dallas, four and a half years earlier: bracing myself on the back of the car; President Kennedy’s bleeding head in his wife’s lap, his eyes fixed. At that time I knew almost immediately there was no hope for him, and now, I prayed that Bobby Kennedy’s wounds would not be fatal. I knew the horror Ethel was experiencing, and how this would bring the memories right back for Jacqueline Kennedy. It was almost beyond belief that this had happened again to the same family. It felt like our country was unraveling at the seams.
I knew Senator Kennedy had a former FBI agent working with him handling security, but it was a pretty loose operation. One man, no matter how good he is, without additional help, cannot really be effective. At that time the Secret Service did not protect presidential candidates, but I was certain that was about to change. The thought of such a massive operation, to be undertaken instantly, without adequate preparation, gave me a cold sweat. There was no going back to sleep, so I shaved, showered, made myself a little breakfast, and headed for the White House.
As I walked down the West Drive toward the entrance to the West Wing, I had a million thoughts running through my head. Personally, I was shocked and saddened for the Kennedy family. From a professional standpoint, I realized the security ballgame had changed, and the Secret Service would be at the forefront of that change.
By the time I arrived at my office, President Johnson already had the wheels in motion. He had telephoned Director Rowley as soon as he’d learned of the shooting and requested Secret Service personnel be assigned to all the candidates immediately. Within hours, Rufus Youngblood was in the president’s office briefing him on all the assignments. Hubert Humphrey currently had Secret Service protection as vice president, and agents had already been dispatched to protect the other candidates—Nelson Rockefeller, Harold Stassen, Richard Nixon, Eugene McCarthy, and George Wallace. A short time later Ronald Reagan was added to the list. Youngblood made sure I was kept in the loop on all the activity, because this sudden increase in the number of protectees resulted in a manpower drain on the entire organization—manpower that we relied on whenever we took the president on any movement outside the White House perimeter.
At the same time, we were trying to get as much information as possible on the shooter, a twenty-four-year-old recent immigrant from Jordan named Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, who had been wrestled to the ground by witnesses and was now in police custody.
Was he in our files? The answer came back no. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan seemed to have emerged out of nowhere, and now the life of yet another national figure—another Kennedy—hung in the balance. Sirhan had fired eight shots in a matter of seconds, and along with Senator Kennedy, six bystanders were wounded.
President Johnson spent the day on the phone, receiving updates on Robert Kennedy’s condition and making calls to members of Congress prodding them to act swiftly on new legislation authorizing the Secret Service to protect presidential and vice presidential candidates. I remained at the White House all day and into the night, making sure we had every possible thing covered.
At 8:50 p.m., we got a call from our Los Angeles office with information that Robert Kennedy’s heart was getting weaker, and a doctor who was only to be called if the situation became very critical had arrived at the hospital. Five minutes later, our L.A. office reported that all members of the family had been asked to gather at the hospital. It seemed it was just a matter of time.
At 1:25 a.m.—now the morning of June 6—I was in the command center when President Johnson called from the residential quarters. He wanted to make sure we were fully staffed and were receiving the latest intelligence information.
“I need you to stay on top of this, Clint,” he said. “And keep me advised of any late developments.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” I said.
“I’m going to eat dinner and then go to bed. Let me know if anything new develops.”
I hadn’t eaten dinner myself, and since there wasn’t much more I could do at that point, I decided it was best for me to go home and get some rest. Despite how exhausted and mentally drained I was, I had trouble sleeping, wondering how Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, Caroline, and John were coping.
At 5:00 a.m. the White House phone rang. “Sir,” the on-duty agent said. “We have just received word that Robert Kennedy has died.”
We had been receiving updates on his condition throughout the previous day, so while the news did not come as a surprise, to hear it said aloud still tied my stomach in knots.
“Has the president been informed?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Rostow delivered the news just before I called you.”
“Thank you. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
THE FLAG OVER the White House was already at half-staff when I arrived. President Johnson had directed that American flags on all U.S. government and military installations at home and abroad be lowered until after Robert Kennedy’s burial on Saturday. Sunday, he proclaimed, would be a national day of mourning.
A somber mood enveloped the White House as the press and staff began arriving. No one said much. We were all in a state of disbelief.
One of President Johnson’s first calls was to Senator Ted Kennedy, who was in Los Angeles at the hospital where his brother had just died. The president expressed his condolences and offered the Kennedy family anything they needed—planes, vehicles, no request was too big or too small. Despite the long-standing hostility between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy, the two staffs worked together to assist the grieving Kennedy family in every possible way.
JetStars, Secret Service agents, and government vehicles and drivers were made available for the Kennedy family members spread around the country. The president had offered to send one of the presidential jets to Los Angeles to fly the family and the body of Robert F. Kennedy back to New York City, where funeral services would be held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and the family gratefully accepted.
A few hours later, we got word that Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy, Caroline, and John would be on board the aircraft with the casket, and Mrs. Kennedy had requested that it not be the same plane that was used for President Kennedy. When I heard that, a wave of vivid memories crashed into my mind—calling the funeral home in Dallas to order the casket for President Kennedy; signing for it; squatting in the back of the hearse with Dr. Burkley and Mrs. Kennedy on the silent ride back to Love Field; struggling with the other agents to lift the heavy casket up the stairs to the door of Air Force One; and then the breaking point, when we realized the door of the presidential plane was not wide enough.
Oh God. I immediately got on the phone to Rufus Youngblood, who was working with Tom Johnson on the president’s staff to make all the arrangements.
“Ruf,” I said. “The casket. If they want it to go topside, they have to make sure it’s narrow enough to fit through the door of the aircraft. Remember . . .”
“Thanks, Clint,” Rufus said. “I’ll get the measurements of the doorway and let them know as soon as possible.”
WITHIN HOURS OF President Johnson’s request the previous day for legislation authorizing Secret Service protection for major candidates, both Houses of Congress passed a joint resolution doing just what the president had proposed, and at 6:30 on the evening of June 6—less than forty-eight hours after Senator Kennedy had been shot—I was among those present with Director Rowley, Deputy Director Youngblood, and other Secret Service officials as President Johnson signed the resolution into law.
President Johnson realized that in the midst of this national anguish, he had a window of opportunity, which he used to persuade Congress to take action on a many-faceted crime-control bill that included a ban on mail-order sales of handguns—a bill he had been unsuccessful in getting passed due to powerful opposition. Once again, it was Lyndon B. Johnson at his best—making swift decisions in the midst of a crisis, and then, because of his long-standing relationships with members on both sides of the congressional aisle and his unmatched knowledge of the political process, new legislation got passed.
But with two assassinations of national figures in two months, just four years after the assassination of our president, the bigger question on all Americans’ minds was: What is happening to our country? And where do we go from here? It felt like hatred and violence had taken the helm, thrusting our civilized society into a downward spiral. Hoping to find answers and lasting remedies, President Johnson quickly formed a committee to look into the “Cause and Prevention of Violence and Assassination.”
SENATOR KENNEDY’S BODY lay in state at St. Patrick’s Cathedral all day Friday, June 7, as people came from all over the country to pay their respects. The Requiem Mass was scheduled for the following day, June 8, at ten in the morning, after which the body of Robert Francis Kennedy would be taken by train to Washington for burial at Arlington National Cemetery.
The president had decided to take a JetStar to New York instead of the presidential jet, and because of its limited capacity, Deputy Director Rufus Youngblood accompanied the president while I flew ahead with a group of agents to be on the ground for the president’s arrival.
As our motorcade proceeded slowly through the streets of Manhattan, the scene was eerily reminiscent of November 25, 1963. Thousands of people lining the city streets, somber, silent, weeping.
I had been concerned about seeing Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy at the funeral—what would I say? How would she react to seeing me? It turned out that with Youngblood there, he accompanied the president inside the cathedral while I stayed outside, supervising the agents on the perimeter, and while I saw Mrs. Kennedy from a distance, there was no opportunity for us to speak to each other.
As soon as the funeral service concluded, we flew back to Washington and carried on with normal business, while the Kennedy family traveled by train from New York’s Penn Station through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. An estimated two million people lined the tracks—they were black, white, young, old, rich, and poor, their faces hollow with shock and sorrow for the family that had endured so much tragedy—and you could see the desperation in their eyes, wondering, as nearly every American was: Why?
The funeral services were scheduled to take place in the late afternoon, but the train trip took more than four hours longer than had been anticipated and didn’t arrive at Washington’s Union Station until after nine that evening. We brought President Johnson to the train station so that he and Mrs. Johnson, along with Vice President and Mrs. Humphrey, were there to greet the Kennedy family as they arrived.
I was standing immediately next to President Johnson as the narrow, flag-draped casket was moved from the train to the hearse. As President Johnson spoke briefly to Ethel, Teddy, and Robert Kennedy Jr., I saw Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy emerge from the train with John and Caroline. Our eyes met, and she walked toward me.
“Hello, Mr. Hill,” she said. “How have you been?”
She was wearing a black dress—was it the same one she had worn for her husband’s funeral?—with a black veil that covered her hair and hung down softly against the sides of her face. And her eyes—oh, her eyes. They revealed the depth of her grief—unbearable grief. And yet she had the grace to inquire How have you been?
“Hello, Mrs. Kennedy,” I said. “I am so very sorry for your loss.”
She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, and when they opened, glistening with pain, she replied, simply, “Thank you.”
At that point, the president was moving toward the waiting limousine. Much as I would have liked to talk to her longer, to find out how she and the children were doing, I needed to move with the president.
“It was nice to see you, Mrs. Kennedy,” I said as I tried to muster the semblance of a smile, and then I turned and walked away.
I rode in the front seat of the presidential limousine—we were the fifteenth car in the motorcade procession—and as we slowly made our way down Constitution Avenue, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of loss. Darkness had long since fallen, and the monuments—the sparkling white marble tributes to past presidents—were lit up against the rainy black sky. As the motorcade turned in front of the majestic memorial to Abraham Lincoln—another leader slain by an assassin—and headed onto Memorial Bridge where, up ahead, the eternal flame at President Kennedy’s gravesite flickered on the hillside, my heart was heavy with grief, but also deep concern. Our leaders were being gunned down. Every day we were informed of new threats against President Johnson, and the anger directed against him on college campuses across the nation had become explosive. I shuddered at the thought of what another assassination would do to our country. We simply couldn’t let it happen. I couldn’t let it happen.
The other agents and I walked with President and Mrs. Johnson as they joined the Kennedy family around the gravesite where forty-two-year-old Robert Kennedy would be laid to rest, a stone’s throw from where his brother had been buried four and a half years earlier. As the solemn ceremony proceeded, I stood several paces behind President Johnson, surrounded by Kennedys and Shrivers and Smiths—and it was hard to remember the times before the world changed, before our innocence was shattered. My heart ached for Ethel and her children, for Mrs. Kennedy, Caroline, and John standing with them in sad solidarity, and it was all I could do to focus on surveying the crowd, keeping my mind on the reason I was there.
But when Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s older children took their younger siblings by the hands and solemnly knelt to kiss the flag-draped casket of their father, the memories came rushing back—Mrs. Kennedy and Caroline in the rotunda, the heart-wrenching sight of John’s three-year-old salute, Robert Kennedy holding the hand of his brother’s widow at the lighting of the eternal flame—and I was thankful for the darkness and the misty rain gliding down my cheeks.
President and Mrs. Johnson knelt and prayed with the Kennedy family, and when the services were over, we moved them away from the crowd and promptly departed the cemetery. As it turned out, my brief encounter with Mrs. Kennedy at the train station in the shadow of Robert Kennedy’s casket would be our last meeting. I would never see or speak with Jacqueline Kennedy again.