November 1975
“Can I take you back to November the twenty-second, 1963?”
It was a question I should have anticipated, but it caught me completely off guard. 60 Minutes reporter Mike Wallace was sitting across from me, one leg crossed over the other, relaxed, oblivious to the cameras and bright lights that surrounded us in a small ballroom at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C. Having recently retired as assistant director of the United States Secret Service, responsible for all protective activities, I had agreed to be interviewed about the history I had witnessed spanning five presidents, from Eisenhower to Ford.
Gwen was seated next to me on the sofa, nervously clutching her hands together. A couple of weeks earlier we had been in the same room, wearing the same clothes, and as the cameras rolled, Mike Wallace had asked me all kinds of questions about my career in the Secret Service, how our protective activities had evolved, and, not surprisingly, about the recent assassination attempts on President Gerald Ford. I thought the interview had gone pretty well. A few days later, however, Wallace called and said there had been some technical difficulties and they needed to reshoot some parts of the interview.
Mike told Gwen and me to wear the same clothes as before so they could splice parts of the two segments together without it being noticeable. That sounded reasonable to me, so I agreed. When we arrived at the Madison for the second taping, the same crew was there, set up exactly as they had been the last time, with one new addition. Don Hewitt, the show’s notoriously demanding executive producer, had come to oversee the interview. Perhaps there hadn’t been a technical problem. Perhaps Don Hewitt expected more than what I had delivered the last time.
Can I take you back to November the twenty-second, 1963?
Before I could respond, Mike Wallace rattled on. “You were on the fender of the Secret Service car, right behind President Kennedy’s car. At the first shot you ran forward and jumped on the back of the president’s car. In less than two seconds . . . pulling Mrs. Kennedy down into her seat, protecting her.”
The scene flashed through my mind just as it had, incessantly, for the past twelve years. I closed my eyes and sucked in my breath, trying to block the memories, but it was no use.
I tapped my cigarette into the ashtray in front of me, and without looking at Wallace brought the cigarette to my lips and inhaled. Smoke swirled around my head as I tried to avoid Mike’s gaze, unaware that the cameraman had zoomed in tight on my face, magnifying the anguish welling inside me.
“First of all, she was out of the trunk of that car,” Wallace continued.
No, that’s not accurate.
“She was out of the backseat of that car,” I blurted out, “not out of the trunk of that car.” As the words came out of my mouth, I could see her, vividly, as if it were happening right in front of me. That pink suit, splattered with the brains and blood of her husband, her eyes filled with terror.
Wallace cut in. “Well, she had climbed out of the back and she was on the way back, right?”
Nodding, my face contorted as I tried desperately to control the wave of emotions flooding my brain, I could barely form the words to answer him.
“And because of the fact,” I said, “that her husband’s—part of her husband’s head . . . had been . . . shot off . . . and had gone off into the street.”
Mike was incredulous. “She wasn’t trying to climb out of the car?”
I still couldn’t look at him. Shaking my head, I said, “She was simply trying to reach that head . . . part of that head.”
“To bring it back?” Wallace asked.
“That’s the only thing,” I said. My chest heaved, and tears began to well up in my eyes. I was struggling to hold myself together, but the emotions were taking over. No one had ever asked me about this before. No one had dared. And now here I was, on national television, on the verge of losing all self-control. It was mortifying.
“In the twelve years since that assassination,” Mike said, “undoubtedly you have thought and thought and thought again about it. And studied it. Do you have any reason to believe that there was more than one gun, more than one assassin?”
Still unable to look at Wallace or the camera, I merely shook my head. No.
“Was Lee Harvey Oswald alone, or were there others with him?” Mike asked, trying to provoke an answer from me.
“There were only three shots,” I said, shrugging. “And it was one gun. Three shots.”
“You’re satisfied Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone,” Wallace confirmed.
I lifted my head and turned to look directly at Mike to make sure there was no denying my conviction. “Completely,” I said. If there was one subject I had analyzed inside and out, it was the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“You’re satisfied,” Wallace repeated. He paused, and then asked the question that would finally break me.
“Was there any way, anything that the Secret Service or that Clint Hill could have done . . . to keep that from happening?”
I had asked myself the same question a million times. What could I have done differently? How did I let this happen? The smoke from my cigarette lingered, ghostlike, as those unforgettable seconds in Dallas replayed inside my mind. I couldn’t look at Mike, I couldn’t face the camera, but finally, I spoke.
“Clint Hill . . . yes.”
“Clint Hill, yes?” Mike asked, perplexed. “What do you mean?”
“If he had reacted about five tenths of a second faster, or maybe a second faster . . .” I said. Turning to face Mike, I added, “I wouldn’t be here today.”
“You mean you would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot?”
“The third shot. Yes, sir,” I said, pursing my lips.
“And that would have been all right with you?” Mike asked gently, almost as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying.
The emotions were overwhelming me. I swallowed hard as tears welled in my eyes. “That would have been . . . fine with me,” I said.
Mike’s eyes were tearing up now too. “But you couldn’t—you got there in less than two seconds, Clint. You couldn’t have gotten there. You don’t—surely you don’t—have a sense of guilt about that?”
“Yes, I certainly do,” I said, wincing. “I have a great deal of guilt about that.”
I paused, took a deep breath, and said, “Had I turned in a different direction, I’d have made it. It was my fault.”
My anguish had been buried inside for twelve years, and to admit my failure out loud, on national television, was my breaking point.
Mike could see that I was about to lose it completely. He tried valiantly to rescue me.
“No . . . No one has ever suggested that for an instant,” he blurted. “What you did was show great bravery and great presence of mind. . . . What was on the citation that was given you? For your work on November twenty-second, nineteen sixty-three—”
“I don’t care about that, Mike,” I interrupted.
But he continued on. “Extraordinary courage and heroic effort in the face of maximum danger . . .”
Shaking my head, desperately trying to blink back the tears that were filling my eyes, I said, “Mike, I don’t care about that. If I had reacted just a little bit quicker . . . and I could have, I guess.” Looking down, too humiliated to face the camera, I took a deep breath and said, “And I’ll live with that to my grave.”
At that point, Mike realized I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “Clint,” he said. “Let’s take a break. Stop the cameras.”
And they did. The cameras stopped, and Mike escorted me out to the hallway. Tears streamed down my face, and as I wiped them away with my hands, I apologized. I was beyond embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, Mike.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Clint, it’s okay. I can see that you’re struggling. I didn’t realize how deeply the events were still affecting you. But it’s understandable. It’s completely understandable.”
“The thing is, Mike,” I said as I pulled out my handkerchief, “I’ve never spoken about this to anyone. Not anyone. Not Gwen, not the other agents. You’re the first person I’ve ever discussed this with.”
Mike looked at me with utter disbelief. But it was the truth. Other than my testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964, I had never discussed the details of that horrific day, and the days that followed, with anyone. Now the emotions I had buried twelve years earlier had suddenly surfaced for the whole damn world to see on 60 Minutes.
It is still hard for me to watch that interview. It is not something I am proud of. I was ashamed that that’s how I would be remembered—as the crumbling shell of a man on 60 Minutes in an episode they called “Secret Service Agent #9.” I was forty-three years old when that interview aired on December 7, 1975, and the days would get worse before they got better.
In the months following the airing of the 60 Minutes episode, I spiraled into a depression that deepened as time went on. I cut off contact with friends and associates and spent the majority of my time in the basement of my home in Alexandria. I drank as a form of self-medication and smoked heavily. It wasn’t until 1982 when a doctor friend told me I would have to change the way I was living, or I would die. I decided I wanted to live and so I quit drinking and quit smoking. Gradually I improved, but it wasn’t easy and thoughts of the assassination were still prevalent in my mind.
In 1990, I decided to go back to Dallas. I went to Dealey Plaza, and walked the area where the Texas School Book Depository building still stood at the corner of Houston and Elm. For nearly two hours I walked outside, analyzing how everything transpired that awful November day in 1963.
A nonprofit museum dedicated to President Kennedy’s life and his death had opened on the sixth floor of the building. I stood at the window where Lee Harvey Oswald had fired those three shots and, in the end, I came away with the feeling that I had done everything I could on November 22, 1963, to protect President and Mrs. Kennedy. I wished I had returned to Dealey Plaza much sooner. I felt better, but instead of spending my retirement years traveling and enjoying life, I continued my reclusive existence, still mired in depression.
In 2009, Jerry Blaine, a friend and former Secret Service agent, was writing a book about the agents on the Kennedy Detail and asked if I would agree to be interviewed by the writer who was helping him. I reluctantly agreed, and so it was that in August 2009 I met Lisa McCubbin for two hours at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington.
She was primarily interested in my memories of the trip to Texas by President and Mrs. Kennedy in November 1963. I had a difficult time talking about the assassination, having not done so except to the Warren Commission in 1964 and briefly to Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes in 1975. As unbelievable as it sounds, in the forty-six years since the assassination, I had never discussed the subject with friends, family, or even fellow agents. It was just too painful.
At the end of the interview, I made one mistake. Lisa asked for my telephone number in the event she needed additional information, and I gave it to her. At first she would call with a question or two, and then, over the next several months the frequency and duration of the calls gradually increased. I began to realize that the more I talked with her about the assassination, the better I felt. She listened with compassion and I trusted her.
Shortly thereafter, I was approached to write a book myself about my relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy, and I agreed to do so with Lisa McCubbin as the coauthor. The result was Mrs. Kennedy and Me. The experience of writing and then speaking publicly about the subject was very cathartic and gave me the opportunity to reconnect with fellow agents and Secret Service headquarters staff. In 2013, we delved into the details of the assassination with Five Days in November, which was even more cathartic.
Today, my life is once again filled with friends and love. I am closer to my sons and grandchildren than ever before. It is wonderful to be alive again.
PEOPLE OFTEN ASK me, if I had it to do over again, would I become a Secret Service agent? Without hesitation, my answer is always the same. “I’d be working right now, if they’d let me. It was the best damn job in the world.”