At 12:03 p.m. on August 9, 1974, Gerald R. Ford was sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger as the thirty-eighth President of the United States in the East Room of the White House. Standing there in the same room where President Kennedy’s body had lain in repose, now crowded with television cameras, members of Congress, staff, and Ford’s wife, children, and friends, I was witness to yet another unprecedented event in our nation’s history.
After taking the oath of office, President Ford stepped up to the podium. “The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every president under the Constitution. But I assume the presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.”
He proceeded with what he said was not an inaugural speech, but “straight talk among friends.”
“I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers.”
It was a heartfelt speech lasting less than ten minutes, and at times President Ford choked back tears. “As I begin this very difficult job,” he said, “I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it.”
Toward the end of his remarks, he looked up from his notes and said with confidence and defiance, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws, not of men.”
Just as I had witnessed Lyndon B. Johnson taking the oath of office after another national nightmare in the small, crowded cabin of Air Force One less than twelve years earlier, this transition seemed surreal. But it was, as Gerald Ford noted, a testament to our Constitution that the transfer of power could occur peacefully and seamlessly. Men may die or fail, but our country would survive.
TRADITIONALLY, THERE WAS a swift transition between administrations, and on the same day that one presidential family moved out of the White House, the next one moved in. But because of the unexpected nature of this transition, President and Mrs. Ford gave the Nixons plenty of time to move out, and the Fords ended up spending the first ten nights of his presidency at their home in Alexandria. The agents on the detail said President Ford would come out the front door in the morning, still in his pajamas, and pick up the newspaper before heading back in to prepare his own breakfast of orange juice and an English muffin. And that was indicative of the character of Gerald Ford.
He had been in Congress for a long time and was highly respected. He hadn’t campaigned to be president, and I’m not sure he ever envisioned himself as president. But there he was.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Gerald Rudolph Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in a close-knit family. A gifted athlete, he played football for the University of Michigan and was voted the Wolverines’ most valuable player in 1934. Upon graduation, Ford was offered professional football contracts from both the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but he opted instead to pursue a law degree at Yale University, where he graduated in the top 25 percent of his class.
He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, was elected to Congress in 1948, and eventually became the minority leader of the House of Representatives during the Johnson administration.
The feedback I got from the agents on the Ford Detail was that Ford was a great guy—humble, respectful, and kind. He loved to play golf and was an avid downhill skier—the Ford family typically spent holidays skiing in Colorado—so we had to make sure we had agents who could keep up with the new president on the ski slopes.
On August 19, President Ford had a scheduled speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ annual convention in Chicago. As this would be his first trip outside Washington as president, and his first trip aboard Air Force One, I decided to accompany the PPD to observe the agents in a real-life situation on the road. I was pleased to see the good working relationship the agents had with the Ford staff, and I returned to Washington knowing the detail was doing an excellent job.
That same day, President Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller, the sixty-six-year-old former governor of New York, to be vice president, but he still needed to be confirmed by Congress. In the interim, we had to provide protection for the person next in the line of succession to the president, Carl Albert, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
On the morning of Sunday, September 8, one month after Ford had taken the Oath of Office, I was at home when I got a call informing me that the president was about to appear on television from the Oval Office. I was as surprised as the rest of the nation when he announced that he was granting “a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in . . .”
The presidential pardon meant that the judicial system now had no choice but to withdraw from any possible criminal legal action against Nixon.
President Ford’s reasoning was that a trial would reopen the wounds that were already in the process of healing and would cause “prolonged and divisive debate” while exposing Nixon to “further punishment and degradation” after he had already paid the high price of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.
Reaction was swift and severe on both sides. Some agreed that it was the right thing to do in order to close the door on Watergate, while others called it an abuse of presidential power and an insult to the American people. One thing was for sure: Ford’s honeymoon period had come to an end, and from that point on, he would be the target of outrage and protests—an additional challenge for the agents on his protective detail.
Meanwhile, we still didn’t have a vice president. The largest controversy during the congressional hearings was Rockefeller’s wealth. That caused the hearings to go on for four months. He offered to establish a blind trust but Congress chose not to push the issue and didn’t require that be done. Finally in December a vote was taken, and Rockefeller was confirmed.
The residence that had been the home of the Chief of Naval Operations at the Naval Observatory off Massachusetts Avenue in northwest Washington was finally finished being renovated and was now the official residence of the Vice President of the United States. It was music to my ears, a dream come true. No more extra costs for a temporary VP residence. The Rockefellers, however, owned a large estate on Foxhall Road in northwest Washington, and they chose this to be their official residence. They ended up using the new official vice president’s residence merely for social events. My dream bubble burst—proving yet again that no matter how much you plan, you must always be willing to adjust for unforeseen obstacles and politicians with their own resources, ideas, and agendas.
ON CHRISTMAS NIGHT, in the early morning hours of December 26, 1974, I was once again awakened by the sound of the White House phone ringing next to my bed. A man had crashed his car through the Northwest Gate of the White House, had driven up the driveway almost to the North Portico, and then stopped the car, got out, and stood wearing what appeared to be explosives attached to his outer garments. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and stood with his arms outstretched, with what appeared to be a detonator in one hand. He just stood there, making no attempt to enter the mansion.
I hurriedly drove from my home to the White House to see for myself what was going on. By the time I arrived, Metropolitan Police and Fire Department personnel had responded and were standing by. Chief Earl Drescher of the Executive Protective Service began to talk with the man and eventually convinced him to surrender. The man, twenty-five-year-old Marshall Hill Fields of Silver Spring, Maryland, was taken into custody and then to St. Elizabeths mental hospital for observation. There were no injuries, just a piece of rusted metal gate lying on the White House lawn. Fortunately, President and Mrs. Ford were in Vail, Colorado, for the holidays.
Now, we had been asking for a sturdier, more secure gate for years, but our budget proposals were always denied. Guess what? After this incident, the gate was replaced with a very heavy, hydraulic-operated gate—exactly like the kind we had requested.
PRESIDENT FORD TRAVELED to five different countries in his first five months as president: Mexico, France, Korea, the USSR, and Japan. This was the first visit to Japan by a U.S. president and was made possible due to an enormous security operation by the Japanese authorities in cooperation with the U.S. Secret Service. During these travels outside the United States, there was no sitting vice president. Although confirmed by both the House and the Senate as required by the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Nelson Rockefeller was not sworn in until December 19, 1974. We were then able to discontinue protection for Speaker Albert.
In January 1973, President Nixon had announced that an accord had been reached that would end the Vietnam War and “bring peace with honor.” Our combat troops had come home, but several thousand civilian U.S. Department of Defense employees had remained in Saigon. The North and South resumed fighting later that year, and in the spring of 1975 the North Vietnamese were advancing toward Saigon.
An evacuation plan was set in motion, but on April 30, when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, more than 1,200 Americans still remained. They were airlifted to ships offshore—along with thousands of South Vietnamese desperate to escape the Communist takeover—in a frantic and dangerous helicopter operation. The attempts by the United States to assist South Vietnam over the past fifteen years in defense of its territory had failed.
The statistics were staggering. America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict spanned five presidents—Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives; over 300,000 were wounded; and 75,000 returned severely disabled.
BY THIS TIME, my physical health had begun to deteriorate considerably. I spent more time going to and from doctors than on the job. I was fast using up the sick leave I had accrued over the years, and I began to delegate more and more responsibility to my deputy, Paul Rundle. Somehow, I was managing to hold it together at work, although, looking back, I’m sure people around me were well aware that the demons were slowly taking over. Paul Rundle was my saving grace—he was, and is, the epitome of a true friend.
In early 1975, I went to Bethesda Naval Hospital to undergo my annual physical exam. One of the examining physicians was Navy Captain Bill Voss, who had been on the medical staff at the White House and served as Vice President Agnew’s physician. We had become good friends during all those flights playing cards aboard Air Force Two. As luck would have it, Dr. Voss had been reassigned to Bethesda.
Upon conclusion of my physical, Dr. Voss came to me with a very sad look on his face.
“Clint,” he said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. You did not pass your physical. You are no longer qualified to be an agent.”
I was shocked. I could not believe what he had just said.
“What is wrong?” I asked.
“Clint, it’s a multitude of things. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the only way for you to get better is to leave the Secret Service and get away from the stress you have been under.”
I left Bethesda in a depressed state and drove to my home in Virginia. Over the next few months I continued to see my private doctors, but I knew the decision had been made. On July 31, 1975, I retired from the Secret Service. I was forty-three years old, but I felt much older. Having grown up around farms and cattle, I felt like I was being put out to pasture, no longer a productive member of the herd.
I cleaned out my office and said good-bye to my longtime administrative assistant, Eileen Walsh. Two Secret Service special officers helped me carry my things to the trunk of what used to be my official Secret Service car. They took me to my home, helped to carry all the files into the house, said good-bye, and returned the car to Secret Service headquarters. Two days later, WHCA arrived and disconnected the direct telephone line from my home to the White House switchboard. And that’s when it hit me hard. My career had ended, and I was thrust into a state of extreme depression.
I had to get out of there or I knew it would not end well.
The only place I had to go to was North Dakota. Even after all this time in Washington, North Dakota was still home. That’s where my roots were.
Two days later, I flew to Grand Forks. My sister, Janice, and her husband, Oben Gunderson, owned a farm forty miles from there, near McCanna, and they let me stay for a while. I’d get up at sunrise and head into the field, all alone, and for the next twelve hours I’d pick rocks off the summer fallow, preparing the land for seeding. By the end of the day, every muscle in my body ached. But when I was out there in the field, with the wind blowing, it was as if I were sweating out twelve years of grief, remorse, and guilt—feelings I had buried deep within my soul.
Every day I’d come back to the house at sunset, caked with dirt and sweat, covered in the dust of the land, nearly unrecognizable, and Janice would greet me at the door and laugh.
“The only way I know it’s you is by the whites of your eyes,” she’d say. Her laugh was my connection to my past, and her hugs were what kept me in one piece.
Even as I struggled to deal with the anger and guilt I’d locked away for so long, it felt good to work the land, to be with my sister, far away from Washington and politicians. There was a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day, and I realized how much a part of me that land was. I had been around the world multiple times and met more kings and queens and princes and presidents than I could remember, but nowhere did I feel more at home than on a farm in North Dakota.
On the afternoon of September 5, 1975, I returned to the house, and when Janice greeted me at the door, she had a worried look on her face.
“Clinton, you better come in here. There was just a report on television. Somebody tried to assassinate President Ford.”
The details from the TV reporters were limited, as usual—we never told the press everything—but early reports said that Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a twenty-seven-year-old follower of murderer Charles Manson, had tried to assassinate President Ford with a .45-caliber automatic as he shook hands with spectators near the state capitol in Sacramento, California. Agent Larry Buendorf had seen the gun and quickly jammed his hand onto it and threw the woman to the ground before the pistol could fire, while the other agents rushed President Ford away from danger.
Good work. Those were my guys. Were my guys. I was proud of them, yet I couldn’t stand not knowing what had happened. I had always been in the middle of the action and now I was on the outside, looking in. I had been away long enough and it had been so good for me, but I needed to return to my home in Virginia. I had a wife and two sons to support.
I flew back to Washington on September 19, and three days later there was another assassination attempt on President Ford—also by a woman. As President Ford exited the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at the president from forty feet away. Just as the gun went off, a bystander managed to grab Moore’s arm, and the shot missed. The agents flung the president into the waiting limousine and sped away, just as they’d been trained to do.
Shortly after I returned to Washington, the Secret Service held a retirement party for me at the Washington Hilton. I had no idea what to expect, and wasn’t even sure I wanted to go, but Paul Rundle and his wife, Peggy, picked up Gwen and me at our home, and we all headed to the party.
When I walked into the ballroom, I was stunned. There had to be at least two hundred people standing there, and when they saw me, they all started clapping. All the SAICs in the Secret Service from offices across the country were in Washington for a conference and had come to the party, and as I looked around the room, I saw so many faces of people I never dreamed would show up to a retirement party in my honor.
Seventy-nine-year-old former first lady Mamie Eisenhower had been driven down from Gettysburg by her Secret Service detail; former Vice President Hubert Humphrey was there; former Vice President and Mrs. Spiro Agnew; a few members of the press corps who had become friends; and even Senator Ted Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy. One by one the guests came up to wish me well and to express their gratitude for my service.
Paul Landis and his wife came in from Cleveland, Ohio, to surprise me. I hadn’t seen Paul since he left the Secret Service in 1964. It was a wonderful evening, and at the end of the night I was presented with a huge book filled with personal notes from everyone who was there. To top it off, a presidential suite had been arranged for Gwen and me to stay overnight.
When I returned to my home the next morning, it really hit me. The party had been terrific, but it was a final reminder that I was no longer an agent in the U.S. Secret Service.