After four years with President Johnson, protecting Spiro Agnew was a welcome change of pace. From the moment we met and had a chance to talk, we got along immediately, and unlike my inauspicious beginning with Johnson at the LBJ Ranch, I got the feeling Mr. Agnew was pleased to have me in charge of his detail. As I explained our procedures, he was very attentive and interested, and it was obvious the members of the Elect Detail who had been with him for the past few months had done an excellent job.
I had received everything asked for when accepting the position as SAIC of VPPD, and even though the changeover happened just ten days before the Inauguration, it went very smoothly. I chose my leadership team—John Simpson, Sam Sulliman, and Win Lawson—and we kept many of the same agents who had been on the VPPD Elect Detail as well as adding most of the agents who had been on the small detail protecting Vice President Humphrey, so we had an experienced team that jelled well from the beginning.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Spiro Theodore Agnew was of Greek descent and had an affable personality. Like Johnson, he was tall—standing about six feet two inches—and at fifty years of age he was quite energetic and athletic, preferring to take the stairs instead of an elevator whenever possible, which I considered good not only for him but for me and the other agents as well.
When Nixon chose him to be his running mate in August 1968, Agnew was relatively unknown to most Americans. Before taking on my assignment, I got a background file on him and learned that he had graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the Baltimore School of Law, and after being drafted into the Army served as an officer in World War II and the Korean War. He’d only gotten into politics in 1962, when he was elected Baltimore county executive; four years after that he was elected governor of Maryland.
In the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968, Agnew had invited black civic and religious leaders to a meeting in Baltimore to discuss the riots and civil rights in general. The meeting failed, however, as Agnew could not withhold his contempt for the more militant leaders, calling them, in the first official style of name-calling for which he would soon become infamous, “circuit-riding, Hanoi-visiting, caterwauling, riot-inciting, burn-America-down type of leaders.” Not surprisingly, the group walked out on him. Liberal critics felt Agnew had alienated the African American community that had turned out for him at the voting booths just two years before, but there were many who agreed with his opinion that too many pardons and concessions had been made to looters and arsonists during the riots. This news-making event brought Governor Agnew to the attention of the leadership in the Republican Party—especially Richard Nixon. Subsequently Agnew was selected as the running mate on the Republican presidential ticket in the fall of 1968, just two years after becoming governor.
During the campaign, Agnew came across as a stern disciplinarian father figure, a law-and-order type, but he also had a cringing habit of putting his foot in his mouth. The opposition and the press jumped on him for insensitive comments like “If you’ve seen one city slum, you’ve seen them all”; calling Polish Americans “Polacks”; and even referring to one Asian reporter as “a fat Jap.” His gaffes were fodder for comedians, and the word “bumbling” often preceded his name in newspaper articles.
Agnew and his wife, Judy, had four children—two of whom were still living at home—and until January 7, they’d been living in the governor’s residence in Annapolis, Maryland. The U.S. government did not provide a residence for the vice president—a practice I objected to, because the Secret Service had to secure each new vice president’s residence at a significant cost—so when the Agnews came to Washington, they had to find a place to live. They ended up moving into a nine-room suite in the apartment section of the Sheraton Park Hotel in northwest Washington, and although the Sheraton Park was well accustomed to high-profile residents—Presidents Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover, Vice President Johnson, and Chief Justice Earl Warren had all lived there at one time or another—it was still a challenge to secure the portion of the hotel in which the Agnews were residing.
In the days leading up to the Inauguration, antiwar demonstrators were organizing to create disruptions, which gave us some cause for concern. On Sunday, January 19, a group of about five thousand marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in a “counterinaugural parade” wearing Nixon masks, holding up effigies, and carrying signs that labeled Nixon a criminal, just as we were bringing Vice President–elect Agnew to a reception in his honor at the History and Technology Museum. We got him in without incident, but a group of the protestors swarmed around the entrance jeering and throwing stones, bottles, and firecrackers as people arrived for the function. Fortunately, the mounted police were able to move the group away before anyone got hurt, but when the guests had to traipse through the grass to a different entrance, one woman snapped to a reporter, “The hippies have the sidewalk and the establishment has to walk in the mud.”
THE SECURITY FOR Richard Nixon’s Inauguration had been in the planning for months, but even with tens of thousands of law enforcement officers on the ground, undercover in the crowd, and observing from the air, those of us immediately surrounding the president and vice president knew anything could happen at any moment. In our job, every day was game day, but this—this was the Super Bowl, the final game of the World Cup, and the deciding inning of the World Series all wrapped into one.
The morning of January 20, 1969, we picked up Mr. and Mrs. Agnew at the Sheraton and drove them to the White House to join President and Mrs. Johnson, Vice President and Mrs. Humphrey, and President-elect Nixon and his wife, Pat, for coffee in the Red Room before going on to the U.S. Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony.
It was cold—not quite freezing, but almost—and dark gray clouds covered the sky, threatening rain. Still, hundreds of thousands of people had come to witness the pageantry and history of the transition of power from one president to the next. The trip from the White House to the Capitol was uneventful, and everything was moving smoothly and on schedule as the pomp and circumstance was about to begin.
Rows of tiered seats had been set up on the inauguration platform, on the east side of the Capitol behind the podium where Richard M. Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew would take the oaths of office. Each seat was numbered and assigned by long-standing tradition to members of the House and Senate, state govenors, the cabinet, special invited guests, and family members of the outgoing and incoming president and vice president. Several minutes before the ceremony was to begin, I walked out to the platform and down the steps to my assigned seat, five rows behind the podium on the center aisle, while Rufus Youngblood and SAIC Bob Taylor took their seats directly in front of me in the third and fourth rows. From this vantage point we had a clear view of the hundreds of thousands of people on the ground below, and would be within a step or two of our protectees, while several other agents were standing at strategic posts on the platform—all of us on high alert and ready to react in a heartbeat.
As the band struck up ruffles and flourishes and “Hail to the Chief,” President Johnson made his way down the stairs to the front row—it was the last time he would hear these strains in his honor—followed shortly by Vice President Humphrey, and then Vice President–elect Agnew and President-elect Nixon, and the ceremony began. The moment Richard M. Nixon finished the oath of office—with his left hand on two leather-bound family Bibles, and his right hand up by his ear—uttering the words “so help me God,” the transfer of power was complete.
As President Nixon stood at the podium and spoke to the crowd—and to the millions watching on television around the world—I must admit I did not pay much attention to what was being said, for my mind was focusing on the people, my eyes constantly scanning from back to front, from one side to the other, looking at hands and faces and body language for anyone who looked out of place, or who made a sudden unusual movement.
When the speech was over, there was a lunch in the Capitol, and then it was time for the parade.
Leading the Inaugural Parade was the brand-new fully armored presidential limousine, SS-800-X, with President and Mrs. Nixon riding in the backseat, waving from behind the bulletproof windows. Six agents surrounded the vehicle—four walking alongside and two standing on the rear footsteps—while two follow-up cars manned with more than a dozen more agents trailed a few feet behind.
I had a clear view of the president’s vehicle from my position in the right front seat of the next vehicle in the parade—the limousine containing Vice President and Mrs. Agnew. As fate would have it, this was the same Lincoln limousine used in Dallas on November 22, 1963, but now renovated and armored, top enclosed, and painted black rather than midnight-blue—the same car I had walked alongside four years earlier during President Johnson’s Inaugural Parade.
Three notable dates in history—two Inaugurations and one assassination—with three different presidents, and there I was, a part of each one, all in that same car: SS-100-X.
Thousands upon thousands of people lined the wide avenue between the Capitol and the presidential residence at number 1600, and for the most part it was a friendly, exuberant crowd, kept well under control by the unprecedented show of police and military security forces. As the motorcade started, I requested the driver of our car to leave a wider than usual gap between us and the cars ahead so that the president’s vehicle would stand out more prominently, as well as to provide us more room to maneuver should the need arise.
Police from the District’s Special Operations stood shoulder to shoulder, their backs to the motorcade, with billy clubs firmly in their hands at certain points along the route where protestors had gathered. All of a sudden there was a commotion in the crowd on the right-hand side of the street, and I saw some objects hurled toward the president’s vehicle.
“Close the distance to Halfback,” I instructed the driver. There was nowhere else for us to go, and I wanted to shorten the gap so we were a unified, compact group.
Up ahead there was a big sign in the crowd that said BILLIONAIRES PROFIT OFF G.I. BLOOD! and as we came near it, a beer can and a couple of rocks flew toward our car. The driver accelerated slightly, forcing the agents alongside into a run in order to stay in position, while the two agents on the back of the car grabbed for handholds to keep from falling into the street.
In the side-view mirror, I could see Agent Win Lawson struggling to maintain his balance while ducking from the incoming missiles as the car lurched forward. All of the agents maintained composure, as they’d been trained to, bravely guarding the occupants inside even as objects continued to be hurled.
The protestors were mostly concentrated in that one area, and once we moved past them, the people were again friendly and cheering. As we neared the glassed-in viewing stand in front of the White House from where the Nixons and Agnews would watch the rest of the parade, President and Mrs. Nixon suddenly emerged through the opening in the roof of the car. The crowd erupted into a thunderous cheer as their new president stood, waved, and then raised both arms up, filling himself with the adoration. I tensed, my eyes scanning the crowd while keeping him firmly in my sight, willing him to get back in the damn car.
I didn’t know if he had done this spontaneously or if he’d asked the agents if it would be okay and they felt comfortable enough with the crowd and the security at this point to allow him, but in either case, his actions showed me that this president—like all the others I’d seen thus far—had an ego that needed to be stroked so badly that the man was willing to take calculated risks—risks that might cost him his life.
An armored limousine with bulletproof glass surrounded by Secret Service agents willing to risk their own lives becomes useless when the protectee stands up, exposing his head and body above the car roof. Fortunately, it worked out all right this time, and we got everyone into the viewing stand to watch the rest of the parade.
Two and a half hours later, the parade over, it was time to change into black tie for the evening round of Inaugural Balls. Six of them. We had to be careful of our timing at the balls because the plan was for the president and vice president to attend each one at different times, meeting at the last one for a grand joint appearance.
The top bands of the country performed at the various balls—Lionel Hampton, Sammy Kaye, Lester Lanin, Meyer Davis, Guy Lombardo, and Duke Ellington—but the ballrooms were so jammed with people dressed in tuxedos and sparkly full-length evening gowns that it was difficult to move, much less dance. Still, Vice President and Mrs. Agnew were enjoying the festive mood, greeting old friends and donors who had helped bring them to this point as we made the rounds. It was early on the morning of January 21 when we finally tucked them into their Sheraton Park Hotel suite, while President and Mrs. Nixon went to their new home, the White House.
TRADITIONALLY, THE VICE president had offices in the U.S. Capitol and the Executive Office Building (EOB), located next to the White House, and that is where Mr. Agnew spent most of his time. My office, and the rest of my staff, was now in the EOB as well, and while I missed being in the center of the main activity, I quickly realized that the VPPD was going to be a lot less stressful than my previous jobs had been.
The vice president is automatically a member of the National Security Council, and also serves as president of the U.S. Senate, for which he is called on to vote only in the event of a Senate deadlock. Agnew took the job of presiding officer at the Senate quite seriously, and, lacking previous congressional experience, he studied with the Senate parliamentarian to make sure he knew the correct procedures. For the first few weeks of the Nixon administration, Agnew presided over the Senate almost every day it was in session—something that had not been the standard practice of preceding vice presidents—and it annoyed some of the senators—even those in his own party, because the Senate is a “closed club” and Agnew was an outsider. Over time he got the message and began to spend less and less time on the Hill.
In the first few months of his presidency, President Nixon focused on international issues and made a highly publicized trip to Europe to meet with his counterparts in Brussels, London, West Berlin, and Rome, as well as a stop in Vatican City to meet with the pope. Meanwhile, Vice President Agnew’s schedule was filled with trips to New York City; Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio; and Stuart, Florida, where he spoke to groups like the Women’s National Republican Club and the Conference of Mayors, and handed out the winner’s trophy at the Bob Hope Desert Classic golf tournament in Palm Springs.
President Nixon traveled on USAF 26000—the aircraft used by both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and on which I had traveled the world—but shortly after he took office, Nixon requested the interior be completely refurbished. Whereas President Johnson had established an open floor plan during his administration, President Nixon had the interior gutted and reconfigured into compartments. The largest section of the aircraft was a two-room suite for use by the president, his family, and invitees. The first room was a lounge area with a desk, easy chairs, and a sofa; and the second room—which Nixon used most frequently—had a desk, two single beds, and a couple of chairs. Directly behind the presidential suite was an area set up as work quarters for his staff, with desks and typewriters. There was a small compartment for the Secret Service in the front of the plane, while seating for additional staff, guests, and the media was aft of the presidential compartment. The new configuration gave President Nixon the privacy he desired.
Meanwhile, the dedicated aircraft the Air Force provided for the vice president’s domestic travels was a Lockheed JetStar—known as Air Force Two as soon as the vice president was aboard. Much smaller and far less plush than the Boeing 707s in use by the president, the JetStar had a limited range, but it was fast and small enough to land on most runways, which made it ideal for short trips. Knowing we always had a plane available made life a lot easier for all of us.
From the first trip I went on with Agnew, I realized traveling with him was going to be an entirely different experience than I had been used to with Johnson. As soon as we were airborne and had leveled off, the vice president stood up, holding a deck of cards, and said, “Clint, do you play pinochle?”
“No, Mr. Vice President—sorry, I’ve never played pinochle before.”
“How about gin rummy?”
I shook my head. “No. I guess I never had much time to play cards.”
“Well, come on and I’ll show you. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together. Might as well have some fun along the way.”
So that became the routine. Once airborne, the vice president would engage me or his doctor, Bill Voss, in a game of cards to pass the time, and then, just prior to landing, if he were scheduled to make a speech upon arrival, Agnew would go over the speech and make any notes or changes.
When we were in Washington, if the opportunity presented itself, the vice president would request we drive him to Little Italy in Baltimore for dinner at Sabatino’s—his favorite restaurant. He loved this traditional, family-owned Italian restaurant, where he knew the owners would keep his visit quiet, so he could meet with friends and associates away from the glare of lights and cameras. We would take him in the back door and up some stairs to a private dining area. The privacy gave him the opportunity to really enjoy himself and relax.
On one occasion, as I was checking the restaurant before Agnew came in, I encountered Frank Sinatra.
“Good evening, Mr. Sinatra,” I said. “I’m Clint Hill from the Secret Service. I used to talk with you by phone during the Kennedy administration.”
He looked at me with a glimmer of recognition and then broke into a smile and said, “Yes, of course. Clint, great to see you. I wondered whatever happened to you.”
“I’m still around. Doing the best I can,” I said.
“Keep it up,” he said with a nod. “You’re one of the best.”
It was certainly a nice compliment coming from one of America’s favorite entertainers.
THE AGNEW FAMILY also enjoyed going to Ocean City, Maryland, where they would stay with their longtime friends Mr. and Mrs. Harry Dundore, and Agnew could play golf with friends and enjoy a sense of anonymity. I quickly learned that golfing was one of Vice President Agnew’s favorite activities, and once again I found myself spending lots of time on the world’s most picturesque golf courses—never playing, only observing—reminiscent of my days on President Eisenhower’s detail.
On March 2, 1969, President Nixon was returning to Washington after his eight-day trip to Europe, and an official arrival ceremony had been planned at Andrews Air Force Base, with Vice President Agnew heading the welcoming delegation. The president wasn’t scheduled to land until just before ten in the evening, and I thought it was strange that the White House had organized all this fuss when it would be well after dark. I could not recall Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson ever having such a formal arrival ceremony in the United States at night. On top of the late hour, the weather was miserable. It had been blustery all day, with periods of sleeting rain as temperatures hovered around the freezing point, and after sunset it just got colder.
Everyone was bundled up in coats and scarves, trying to stay warm and dry, while the military troops were all lined up in formation awaiting the president’s arrival. People cheered as Air Force One landed—it is a spectacular sight—and as soon as it came to a stop, the steps were moved to the doorway, and President Nixon emerged to more cheers and the band playing ruffles and flourishes, and “Hail to the Chief”.
Vice President Agnew was waiting to greet President Nixon at the foot of the stairs, and after walking through a short reception line, Nixon and Agnew walked together to inspect the troops. I was following Agnew, a few paces behind, when all of a sudden, as he turned at the end of the row, his feet hit a spot of ice and down he went—face-first. I jumped toward him, trying to avoid slipping myself.
“Mr. Vice President, are you okay?”
He moved to sit up, and I saw that his face was covered in blood.
His nose was badly cut and scraped, but his pride was hurt more than anything else. I helped him get up and called for the doctor. Dr. Voss wiped the cut with antiseptic, but the only first-aid material he had was a bandage about four inches square. After the large white bandage was applied to the vice president’s nose, Agnew looked like a penguin with the bandage as his beak. The press had a field day with it, and although Nixon still made the headlines, Agnew’s stumble and the photo of him with that bloody bandage on his nose stole some of the president’s thunder.
Shortly after the 1969 Inauguration, Nixon decided that instead of going to church, he would hold nonsectarian Sunday services in the White House. Whenever a president attends church, he argued, it is extremely disruptive to the congregation with all the media attention and security precautions that must be taken. Raised a Quaker, Nixon was deeply religious, and he used the services to encourage Americans to attend church and to remind members of his own administration that “we feel God’s presence here, and that we seek his guidance here.” He would invite cabinet members, Supreme Court justices, Diplomatic Corps members, congressmen, business leaders, military officials, ambassadors, and friends—sometimes having as many as three hundred in attendance. A wide variety of clergy from different faiths would conduct the services—people like Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, and Terence Cardinal Cooke—and getting an invitation to a White House Sunday service soon became something of a status symbol. There was some complaining about the White House being used as a church, but most Americans praised the services, asserting that they testified to Nixon’s faith. We in the Secret Service were pleased that the president and his family didn’t need to leave the safe confines of the White House.
ON FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 1969, we were informed that seventy-eight-year-old former president General Dwight D. Eisenhower had died at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Although his death did not come as a shock, considering his age and history of heart problems—the first heart attack in 1955 in Denver, and four more in a five-month period in 1968—still, a sense of loss and mourning swept across America. I was saddened to learn that this great American, the military hero who became president and became one of America’s greatest ambassadors, had succumbed to his failing heart. He had suffered so much with heart disease, and it had finally taken him. I had such fond memories of my time with President Eisenhower: seeing how beloved he was and how graciously he accepted the applause and accolades of his adoring fans as we traveled around the world; observing him playing golf, shooting quail, and fishing for trout, and how much enjoyment those activities brought him. I had such a personal connection, having been in the Secret Service office in Denver where Mrs. Eisenhower’s mother lived and where the Eisenhowers spent a great deal of time. I recalled those many nights I spent at the Doud residence, reading from President Eisenhower’s vast collection of Western novels to pass the time. I respected him, as did all the agents, and we tried to make his time as president safe and secure, enabling him to do his job. I had the satisfaction of knowing we accomplished that for him and the Office of the President.
President and Mrs. Nixon went to Walter Reed immediately after receiving word of his death to visit Mrs. Eisenhower, and preparations for the state funeral got under way. It would be another major security undertaking for the Secret Service, because President Nixon, Vice President Agnew, former President Johnson, and Mamie Eisenhower would all be participating. It was an even larger problem for the U.S. State Department Diplomatic Security unit, whose responsibility at that time was the protection of foreign heads of state. Many were coming to pay their respects to this international hero.
President Eisenhower’s body was taken to the Gawler funeral home and, on Saturday, March 29, to the Washington National Cathedral for a brief prayer service in the Bethlehem Chapel, attended by family and close friends. I was there with Vice President Agnew and watched solemnly as Mamie Doud Eisenhower—Ike’s wife for fifty-two years—led the tight-knit Eisenhower family into the chapel. Upon conclusion of the private prayer service, the public was then admitted to pass by the flag-draped casket at a rate of approximately one thousand per hour. The following day the body was taken in a procession to the Capitol to lie in state.
All of this ceremony brought back the still vivid memories of those four days in November 1963, just five years earlier: the funeral procession with the president’s casket on a horse-drawn gun caisson; a riderless horse with boots in the stirrups, reversed; the slow cadence of the marching military band. And there I was, once again, standing in the Rotunda with the President of the United States, the vice president, and members of Congress with the flag-draped casket of a former president in the center of the room directly under the Capitol dome. “Hail to the Chief” played at a very slow tempo, the military honor guard, the eulogies—all reminiscent of President Kennedy’s funeral.
IN 1961, PRESIDENT Kennedy had initiated legislation that gave the Vice President of the United States the role of chairing the National Aeronautics and Space Council (NASC). Lyndon Johnson—vice president at the time—had been deeply involved with the space program during his time in the Senate, so it seemed appropriate, while also giving the space program the high-level attention Kennedy thought it should have. When Johnson was president, I accompanied him to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, where we got briefings and demonstrations with some of the astronauts training for the missions, and saw the Apollo space suit the astronauts would wear.
Now Vice President Agnew had the role of chairing the NASC, and lucky for me, it just happened to be during what was one of the most exciting times in those early days of space exploration.
The first launch I attended with Vice President Agnew was Apollo 9 in early March 1969. It was the first test of a crewed lunar module orbiting the Earth, and as we watched the fiery rocket launch from the control center at Cape Kennedy, it was both breathtaking and nerve-racking. Just two years earlier, in January 1967, I had attended the funerals of two of the three astronauts who had been killed when fire swept through the command module on the launchpad during a preflight test. Launching a manned spaceship was anything but routine.
The Apollo 9 mission was successful, and all three men returned safely. Two months later, we were back at Cape Kennedy for the launch of Apollo 10. This would be the dress rehearsal for the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.
Vice President Agnew had been invited to have dinner with the astronauts—Tom Stafford, Eugene Cernan, and John Young—in the astronauts’ quarters the night before the launch, and our advance agent, Johnny Guy, had arranged for me to be a guest as well. I was one of a very small number of people in attendance, and it was an honor I will never forget.
The Apollo 10 mission was successful, and the Apollo 11 launch was scheduled for July 16 that same year. Several weeks prior to the launch, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin invited President Nixon to dine with them the night before the launch, just as Vice President Agnew had with the Apollo 10 crew, and President Nixon happily accepted. Shortly thereafter, word leaked to the press that one of the NASA physicians was extremely upset by President Nixon’s plans to have dinner with the astronauts the night before this critical mission because he might be carrying germs that could affect their health during the flight. There was a lot of discussion, and in the end President Nixon decided to cancel his attendance at the dinner because, if there were any medical issues, he sure as hell didn’t want to be blamed for them. Instead, he telephoned them as they were having dinner and sent a telegram that said:
An estimated one million people had gathered in the Cape Kennedy area to view the launch, and the rest of the world would be watching on live television. Once again, I was with Vice President Agnew, and this time we watched from an outdoor viewing area that was set up for five hundred special guests that included heads of state from around the world. Former President Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, had come to view the launch, along with President Johnson’s press secretary, Tom Johnson. We all sat together in the bleachers, squinting into the morning sun as the powerful Saturn V rocket blasted off in fiery brilliance with the three astronauts inside the Apollo 11 module at its tip. The ground shook with the thunderous roar of the liftoff as the world held its collective breath. It was spectacular. Even though I was there on duty, I was thrilled to be present—another historic occasion I was privileged to witness.
Four days later, the entire world watched together, through the magic of television and the remarkable advances made as a result of the space program, as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon and uttered those humble yet profound words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
From the Oval Office, President Nixon spoke to the astronauts 250,000 miles away by telephone.
“I can’t tell you how proud we all are of what you have done for every American. This has to be the proudest day of our lives. . . . For one priceless moment in the history of man, all of the people on this earth are truly one.”
After speaking to the astronauts, President Nixon called President Johnson at the LBJ Ranch and reportedly said, “I thought we ought to share this great moment.”
I couldn’t help but think how elated President Kennedy would have been to see this day. Eight years earlier, just four months into his presidency, Kennedy had stood before a joint session of Congress, and in a stirring speech filled with passion and substance requested an enormous increase in funding for the space program.
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” he said. “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”
There had been much skepticism and criticism—how could we put so many resources into the unknown when millions of Americans were living in poverty? Yet his vision inspired an entire industry as scientists, engineers, test pilots, medical researchers, and businesspeople embraced the challenge to beat the Soviets to the moon.
I had to believe that President Kennedy was right there with Neil Armstrong as he stepped onto the surface of the moon, and he was proud. We had made it to the moon. Now, we had to return the men safely back to earth.
President Nixon had planned an international trip to the Pacific and Southeast Asia, which he and his staff managed to coordinate with the return of the Apollo 11 astronauts. After first stopping in San Francisco—during which he and his wife, Pat, made a spur-of-the-moment decision to ride a slow-moving cable car up and down the steep city streets—Nixon flew on Air Force One to Johnston Island in the mid-Pacific, which put him in position to helicopter to the USS Arlington, a communications cruiser. From there he took another helicopter flight to the USS Hornet, which was the recovery ship for the astronauts. President Nixon watched as the module splashed down into the ocean at 6:50 a.m. on July 24, and when the capsule was brought aboard the Hornet, Nixon had the opportunity to speak to Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins as he peered through a sealed glass window into their isolated protective chamber.
“Boy, what a moment! Great! Great!” he exclaimed. “This is the greatest week in the history of the world since Creation.”
President Nixon had wanted to do something dramatic in conjunction with the moon landing, but it was not without criticism. The telephone call from the Oval Office—which was broadcast on live television—was an unexpected technical issue the astronauts had to deal with in the midst of worries about fuel and oxygen, and space officials later admitted they would have preferred not to have had this additional problem.
The New York Times bitterly criticized Nixon’s attempts to “cash in” on the moon landing and wrote in an editorial that it was only an “accident of the calendar” that put President Nixon in position to view the realization of the efforts of his two predecessors—Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
“President Nixon has had the least responsibility for the massive program,” the Times said, and his “attempt to share the stage with the three brave men of Apollo 11 when they attain the moon appears to us rather unseemly.”
AFTER MEETING THE astronauts, Nixon embarked on his trip to Asia, stopping first in Guam, where he held an informal press conference. There had been speculation that the president would likely make a surprise visit to Vietnam, although it was not on the schedule, and Nixon addressed that by saying, “There are no changes in the schedule to announce. I have no present plans to go to Vietnam.”
When a reporter asked about the future of the United States and its military relationships in Asia, Nixon answered, “I believe that the time has come when the United States, in our relations with all of our Asian friends, be quite emphatic on two points: One, that we will keep our treaty commitments—our treaty commitments, for example, with Thailand under SEATO; but, two, that as far as the problems of internal security are concerned, as far as the problems of military defense, except for the threat of a major power involving nuclear weapons, that the United States is going to encourage and has a right to expect that this problem will be increasingly handled by, and the responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves.”
This was the crux of the message he was going to give to the leaders of the countries he visited on this trip: We, the United States, will support you, but you must fight your own battles in protecting your homeland. No more Vietnams. This would become the basis of the “Nixon Doctrine.”
The next day, having been joined by Mrs. Nixon in Guam, the president flew on to Manila, the first stop on this multination tour. The armored presidential limousine SS-800-X had been flown to Manila and was being used for the arrival motorcade. Enthusiastic crowds lined the parade route, waving American flags. The reception was so warm and friendly that Nixon requested the sliding section of the roof be opened.
During the motorcade, about half a million people viewed the president as he stood and waved, exposed from the chest to the top of his head, along the five-mile motorcade route to the Malacañang Palace, as the agents jogged anxiously alongside.
The next day, it was reported that several hours before Nixon arrived, a man was killed in a gun battle with police near the Intercontinental Hotel, where Nixon was scheduled to speak. A homemade .22-caliber pistol, a smoke grenade, and a rough pencil sketch of the ground floor of the hotel were found on the body of the man. There was no concrete evidence of an assassination plot, but police said “you could surmise that.”
Meanwhile I was in Seattle with Vice President Agnew, who was attending the Western Governors’ Conference and voicing Nixon’s position on the Vietnam War. When I saw the photo of Nixon standing out of the car and read about the scene in the newspapers, all I could do was shake my head.
PRESIDENT NIXON FLEW from Manila to Jakarta, Indonesia, where he met a smaller-than-expected but enthusiastic crowd upon arrival and had a meeting with President Suharto to emphasize the Nixon Doctrine. From there he flew to Bangkok.
This was the jumping-off point to go to South Vietnam. On July 30, 1969, Nixon made an unannounced visit to Tan Son Nhut Air Base and helicoptered to the Independence Palace in Saigon to confer with President Nguyen Van Thieu about the new U.S. policy and the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. The visit lasted five and a half hours.
After short stops in New Delhi and Lahore, India, Air Force One landed in Bucharest, Romania. It was the first time a U.S. president had ever made a state visit to a Communist capital, and the stakes were high. Nixon was hoping the visit would lead to East-West breakthroughs without provoking the Soviet Union.
Romania’s president Nicolae Ceauşescu had invited President Nixon, and the government had assured a large turnout by letting workers cut short their Saturday half day of labor. Close to a million people lined the twelve-mile parade route, cheering, waving Romanian and American flags, and shouting “Hoo-rah! Nix-on, Nix-on!”
The two presidents rode in the host country limousine—an open-top Mercedes convertible—waving back to the thunderous crowd nearly the entire way. It was the largest, most exuberant reception he received on the entire trip, and by the end of the twenty-seven-hour visit, he and Ceauşescu were arm in arm.
Nixon’s trip concluded with a stop in Great Britain to meet with Prime Minister Harold Wilson before returning to Andrews Air Force Base late on Sunday night, August 3, where once again I was there with Vice President Agnew for the formal arrival ceremony in, as luck would have it, a torrential downpour.
Throughout the president’s trip, I devoured the news reports and watched the television coverage with mixed feelings. In the seven months I had been with Vice President Agnew, we had developed a very good relationship. He was extremely respectful to our team of agents, and he trusted us to the point that if we made a recommendation or told him not to do something, he complied without question. President Nixon, on the other hand, was much more distrustful of the agents, and clearly he was taking risks that flew in the face of Secret Service recommendations.
Still, even with the stress and anxiety that came with being on the president’s detail, I couldn’t help but be jealous of the guys who were there. That’s where the action was, and that’s where I wanted to be.
SPIRO AGNEW, HAVING been born and raised in Baltimore, was a huge fan of the Baltimore Colts football team. As we were heading into the fall of 1969, Vice President Agnew’s assistant Art Sohmer and his advance man J. Roy Goodearle came to me one day and asked if I had any concerns about taking the vice president to a professional football game.
“I don’t see any problem with that,” I said. “As long as we have plenty of time to advance the situation. We’ll just make sure we have agents strategically placed.”
With my nod of approval that it wouldn’t be a security problem, they sat down with Agnew, and as they went through the hundreds of events for which he had received invitations to speak, any event in a locale that happened to coincide with the Colts’ schedule got priority.
We watched the Los Angeles Rams beat the Colts in Baltimore, and the next week we saw another crushing loss to the Minnesota Vikings in Minneapolis. But as the season went on, Don Shula’s team gained momentum. And so it was that I happened to see thirty-six-year-old Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas set a National Football League record with sixteen straight pass completions in a victory over the New Orleans Saints at Tulane Stadium—in a game that, by chance, was the same weekend the vice president had agreed to speak at a Republican fund-raiser in New Orleans.
As we were flying to New Orleans, playing a game of cards, Agnew asked me, “Clint, have you ever been to Brennan’s?”
“Brennan’s?” I asked. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
“Oh my God,” he said with a look of astonishment. “The best shrimp creole you have ever eaten in your entire life.”
I accompanied Vice President Agnew to Brennan’s restaurant in New Orleans, where they knew what he wanted when he walked in the door—a double order of shrimp creole. That’s where Spiro Agnew introduced me to Cajun food, and I’ve loved it ever since.
IT WAS AROUND this time that Vice President Agnew started garnering a lot of attention for his rather unique choices of words during some of his speeches—speeches he was urged to make on behalf of the administration so President Nixon could remain above the fray. Spiro Agnew was a good speaker, and along with the talents of speechwriters William Safire, Pat Buchanan, and Cynthia Rosenwald, he came up with some memorable lines that really caught people’s attention as he went on the offensive against Nixon’s detractors. It all started that weekend in New Orleans.
Anti–Vietnam War sentiment had continued to escalate, and on October 15, on college campuses and city streets across the nation, one million Americans—most of them students and people in their twenties—staged the largest protest against the war to date, calling it Moratorium Day. More than 20,000 marchers descended on New York’s Bryant Park; 15,000 in Philadelphia; 10,000 in Minneapolis; 15,000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and over 20,000 in Washington, D.C.
Agnew was disgusted by the demonstrators. In his speech at the fundraiser in New Orleans, he said, “Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated. The student now goes to college to proclaim rather than to learn. The lessons of the past are ignored and obliterated in a contemporary antagonism known as ‘The Generation Gap.’ A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”
On November 3, President Nixon addressed the nation in a live television broadcast in which he explained, in basic terms, the complexities of the Vietnam War he had inherited and his plan for peace. He gave a name to those who were not speaking out against the war—“the great silent majority” and asked for their support. In the hours and days following the speech, telegrams and letters of support poured into the White House by the tens of thousands. The response from the public was overwhelmingly positive. But the television news networks and newspaper editorials were lukewarm at best. The speechwriters went to work.
On November 13, in a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, Vice President Agnew castigated the national news media and challenged people to stand up to the powerful news outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times.
“In the United States today,” he said, “we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club—the hopeless, hysterical, hypochondriacs of history.”
After that speech, Agnew began to develop something of a cultlike following, and the media had a field day. People could hardly wait to hear what was going to come out of his mouth next. No longer did anyone ask “Spiro who?”
IN THE LATE fall of 1969, I was consulted about the vice president making a trip to the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, with stops in Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, Nepal, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and a return stop again in Hawaii. We decided a pre-advance trip needed to be done, so a team was put together with me representing the Secret Service, along with a representative each from the military aide’s office, WHCA, the vice president’s staff, and press advance. The State Department would be represented in each location by the ambassador.
We departed Andrews Air Force Base on an Air Force 707 and stopped at each location except Vietnam. That part of the trip was kept secret for security reasons. It was a quick, exhausting survey trip, but we had few difficulties. When we returned to the United States we submitted our report and recommendations. Our biggest concerns were, not surprisingly, the anti-American factions against the U.S. role in Vietnam, but we believed we could provide adequate security for the vice president.
As a result of the pre-survey, the official trip was sanctioned, so my staff and I put together the necessary advance teams, and they were dispatched immediately. The twenty-six-day trip would begin the day after Christmas 1969 and would encompass 37,000 miles to eleven countries plus Guam and Hawaii, returning to Washington on January 19, 1970.
It would be my third time visiting the region during the Vietnam War, and I knew anti-American sentiment had only grown more fervent. Fortunately, because of my demand for more agents on the Vice President’s Detail, we had a terrific team already in place that worked extremely well together, and most important, we had a very good relationship with Vice President Agnew. I had confidence that we could keep Agnew safe, but I also knew that we couldn’t possibly predict what might happen. One thing I didn’t anticipate was having my name appear on the front page of the newspapers again, with the words “bomb” and “assassination” in the headlines.