by Jerry Parr
Marina later told investigators that Oswald had bragged to her that he was the shooter who had tried to kill General Walker. Like many assassins, Oswald did not discriminate left wing from right wing. He was a killer, looking for a victim—and personal fame.
When the FBI brought Marina to Washington to be questioned by the Warren Commission investigators, she would not talk to the police or the FBI. But we had a Secret Service agent who spoke Russian. My job had been to keep her alive and to help win her trust of the Secret Service so that when the agent arrived, she would talk to him. I did . . . and she did.
Shortly after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas—maybe one or two days later—a movie of the actual killing appeared on TV news stations. Secret Service agents, young and old, have committed those scenes to heart.
The gentleman who took the film was Abraham Zapruder.[18] Here’s how it goes: Zapruder is standing on the grassy knoll high ground as the motorcade moves toward the underpass at a slow rate of speed, from left to right on the screen. As the film begins, President Kennedy and Jackie are in the backseat of the presidential limousine, code-named “100X.” Texas governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie, are in the jump seat. Agent Roy Kellerman (deputy chief of the White House detail) is in front, and Agent Bill Greer is driving.
Suddenly President Kennedy jerks both fists to his throat as Jackie responds to the sound of the gun behind them. Then the president’s head explodes, spewing his skull, hair, blood, and brains into the air in a pinkish gray mist that drifts to the rear. The president falls forward into Jackie’s lap.
In the meantime Agent Clint Hill from the follow-up car sprints to the rear of 100X, trying desperately to get to the left running board and handhold on the side behind the first lady. As Clint takes his closest step to the car, he misses, then hurls himself once more, gaining access with a good grip on the hold. He stops Jackie, who is now on the trunk of 100X, trying to retrieve pieces of her husband’s skull and hair. Clint pushes her back to her seat and sees the president with a palm-size cavity just above his right ear.
Clint is now seen covering both Jackie and the dying president with his own body. Mr. Zapruder stops his camera as the motorcade disappears in the underpass.
For me personally, and for every agent in the Secret Service, the horror of this scene remains vivid. The president’s exploding head became an iconic memory embedded deep in my psyche, waiting, waiting for that terrible moment agents pray never comes to them.
Jack Kennedy kept his rendezvous with Death on November 22, 1963. Like all other agents in the Service on that day, I prayed to do everything in my power to see that no one I protected would keep that rendezvous on my watch.
CHAPTER 4
VIETNAM: GOING FROM BAD TO WORSE
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
VERNON SANDERS LAW
[19]1964–1967
As we circled the Washington Monument, my eyes were wide open. Lights illuminated the imposing Capitol dome on one end of the National Mall and the Jefferson Memorial on the other. From this suspended viewpoint, I could take in the grand expanse of monuments and government buildings all at once. Beyond these facades, I thought, are the corridors of power. These were the buildings where our nation’s history was continuing to unfold. Though my family and I had recently moved to Nashville on January 28, 1964, I flew to the LBJ ranch for a few days and then to Washington to fill in temporarily on the presidential detail. Trying to absorb the panorama through the chopper window, I wondered, Is this really me? Can I really be going to the White House—to guard a president?
Climbing out of the helicopter, my colleague Sam Sulliman and I went straight to the White House, where I was going to stand post with the four o’clock to midnight shift. I’d never been to the White House. I looked up at the looming, two-story columns, feeling smaller than usual. Trying not to look like a rube, I copied Sam: I greeted uniformed White House Police Force officers at outside entrances, showed my commission book, and walked right in.
Agents in the White House were responsible for two inside posts: one in the hallway leading to the Cabinet Room and one by the door to the Oval Office. A third post was outside, by the door to the Rose Garden. To keep everyone alert, we “pushed” (rotated posts) every thirty minutes. Each post had a letter and number. Sam said, “Stand here—at E-6.” I was alone and trying to get my bearings. Then I realized E-6 was the president’s door to the Oval Office. I felt really important . . . for about a minute.
Suddenly the door opened, and President Lyndon Johnson towered over me—all six foot four inches of him. Sounding annoyed, he demanded, “Come in here and help me turn these lights off!” It was now early February. Though he’d been president for more than two months, Johnson had spent the Christmas holidays at the ranch and was slowly transitioning from his vice presidential office at the Old Executive Office Building. He still didn’t know how to turn off the lights.
I took a couple of steps into the Oval Office. I would later have time to notice the details of that room. The red carpet and floor-to-ceiling blue-trimmed white drapes were literally brand new, chosen by Jacqueline Kennedy and installed while she and her husband were in Dallas. President Kennedy never saw anything but the drawings. President Johnson left them unchanged.
But that afternoon I had a job to do for the new president, and unfortunately I had no idea how to do it. Where would the light switch be? I thought, scanning the room fruitlessly. Embarrassed, I confessed, “Mr. President, I’m at a loss. I don’t know where the switches are.”
He called me an obscene name. In utter disgust, he spat out, “Secret Service don’t know nothing, and some of them never will know nothing!” And he stomped out.
I was supposed to follow him. Shaken, I found some other agents, and we followed him back into the mansion. I told Sam Sulliman about the encounter, and he said, “Oh, don’t worry about that, he does that all the time.” Later I learned I was lucky he didn’t fire me. He habitually fired agents. But not even the president can fire a civil service employee without cause. The fired agents were back the next day, and he’d say, “Didn’t I fire you?” They’d say, “Yes, sir.” He’d curse and mutter “Secret Service” under his breath. President Johnson never knew our names. He and his detail understood (and tolerated) each other well. Nobody took it personally. We’d share Johnson stories and laugh it off.
I returned to Nashville on February 19 less starry eyed and a little more seasoned. In Nashville I was getting accustomed to my new duties tracking down check forgers and adjusting again to the Southern culture. Not long after my return, I tracked down a check forger I’d been hunting for months and found him in a dentist’s chair. Flashing my credentials at the suspect, I said, “Sir, I’m Jerry Parr, US Secret Service.” I showed him the evidence. “Did you forge this check?”
He said, “Yes, sir.” (Note: this was in the pre–Miranda warning days.)
The dentist yelled, “What are you doing? You can’t just barge into my office like this! Get out of here!”
Ignoring him, I told the suspect, “You’re under arrest. I’ll wait for you in the hall.” When he came out, I cuffed him and took him away.
The furious dentist called my boss, Paul Doster, to complain. When I got back to the office, Doster spoke to me like a patient teacher of a young child. “Jerry . . . Son . . . This is not New York. This is Tennessee. We’re a little more polite here. Next time stay in the waiting room and let the dentist finish—and then arrest the s.o.b.!”
In May 1964 Lyndon Johnson came to Knoxville to make a campaign speech. It’s hard to believe now, but the Presidential Protective Division (PPD) had sent only one agent, Ron Pontius, to do the protective survey, which agents called “advances.” The field offices provided support. So Doster sent Bill Hudson and me to Knoxville to help Pontius. I’d never done any kind of advance before, and I didn’t know where to start.
Pontius didn’t lik
e to waste words. Here’s how he instructed me to cover the speech site, a cavernous hall big enough to hold fifteen thousand people: “Secure it. Do a report.” That was it.
Then he took Hudson, also a rookie, over to the University of Tennessee and said the same thing. He told us, “I’ll come in ahead of the president, but you’ll tell me where the posts should be and how many agents and police officers we’ll need to cover them.”
So my first advance wasn’t the first lady or one of the president’s children. It was a presidential advance . . . in this huge place, all by myself! And that’s where I came up with the notion that an agent has to think like an assassin.
Walking all over the auditorium, I inspected every place the president was going to stand and work and sit and do his thing. And I thought about how many ways a killer could take him out. Then I tried to think of ways to neutralize them all.
It took me all day, and I wrote it all down. I probably overcovered it. The detail didn’t have enough agents—even with local cops—to cover my plan. But despite only partial implementation of my plan, Johnson came and left alive, and Hudson and I could breathe again. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Service was seriously considering me for a spot on a protective detail. I had passed the first test.
Right after that I spent a month in Washington at my second Secret Service school. Carolyn and the kids came along at our own expense, but I was so exhausted by the rigorous training, I wasn’t very good company. We practiced swimming rescues in the dark. (Scenario: downed helicopter upside down in the water. Practice getting the passenger-protectee out alive.) I learned to cover and evacuate a president under attack. (Don’t look for the assailant. Don’t shoot back. Shield the principal with your own body, and get him or her out of there. Agents and police on the outer perimeter will take care of the assassin.) The trainer would shout, “Cover! Cover!” until it became automatic. We practiced shooting in the field with pop-up targets, learning when to shoot and when to hold our fire. (Some pop-ups would be children or priests.) We learned “Ten Minute Medicine”: how to stop a bleeding wound, how to keep a heart attack victim alive for ten minutes—enough time to get medical help.
I hoped I’d never need to put this training into practice, but if that time came, I prayed I’d be able to perform.
Nineteen sixty-four was an election year. Johnson’s running mate was Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey of Minnesota. Republican candidates were Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona and Representative William Miller from New York. In those days there were no candidate details; only President Johnson had protection. But for the first time, the new vice president would get protection. In November, I was again called out of Nashville—this time to Minneapolis to wait with Humphrey for the election results. If Johnson won, I would become part of Humphrey’s brand-new vice president–elect detail.
As the results rolled in showing that the Johnson-Humphrey ticket had won, red, white, and blue balloons floated to the ceiling. Corks popped. Cheers resounded with each positive announcement. Campaign workers threw confetti and danced with joy, ecstatic. Everyone was giving me high fives, as if I were part of the team. I liked it. And I learned something: politicians live and breathe politics. They attach to friendly faces. It’s easy to get caught up in the giddiness of the moment. Be careful, I told myself. This isn’t about you.
Getting sucked into politics is not healthy for an agent’s career, for the person being protected, or for the country. If an agent is looking adoringly at the principal, he or she is not looking at the crowd where an assassin may be lurking. I used to say that if an agent’s eyes start to glaze over when he or she hears “Hail to the Chief,” it’s time for a transfer.
Agents have to understand that our job is to protect the office of the president, regardless of who holds it. Whether we like the person is irrelevant. We’re there to protect the constitutional right of Americans to choose who will govern them. We can’t allow a bullet to cancel the vote of millions of people. If an agent doesn’t get that, he or she should not do protection.
It takes some maturity for agents not to let the activity around them go to their heads. Young people are especially vulnerable. George Reedy, President Johnson’s press secretary, once said nobody under forty should work at the White House.[20]
On December 2, 1964, Carolyn and I packed our things again—now we actually had furniture—and moved from Nashville to Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington. My official start date on the Vice Presidential Protective Division (VPPD) detail was December 6, 1964.
Glenn Weaver became Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) of the VPPD, and Walt Coughlin was his deputy. They came from the White House to run the permanent detail, and I was flattered that they wanted me to join it. I’d been in the Service for two years. Honored and excited to be on my first protective detail, I could not have foreseen that the Humphrey years, 1964–1968, would be the most challenging of my Secret Service career.
Today a spacious, elegant Victorian home serves as the official vice-presidential residence.[21] Located on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory, where 34th Street dead-ends at Massachusetts Avenue, it housed admirals from 1893, when it was built, until 1974. Beautiful and expansive, the grounds afford space for a helicopter to land and take off safely.
But Humphrey never lived there. Neither did vice presidents Agnew or Rockefeller. As had previous vice presidents, they lived in their own local homes, which were hard to adequately secure and afforded no space for official entertaining. In 1974 Congress recognized that an official vice-presidential residence was needed. In 1977, Walter Mondale was the first vice president to occupy the house; all subsequent vice presidents have followed suit.
We initially set up our command post in the basement of Humphrey’s very ordinary, two-story suburban home on a small lot at Coquelin Terrace, a quiet, tree-lined street in Chevy Chase, Maryland, five or six miles north of the White House. Outdoors, an agent sat inside a car parked in an open carport, from which he saw clearly anything that moved out front or on the right side. The other post, a glass-enclosed cubicle the size of a phone booth, guarded the rear and left sides. Mercifully it was heated, sheltering us from the cold wind and rain of winter. We kept this arrangement until the Humphreys moved to a high-rise condo on the Potomac River a couple of years later.
As a rookie on protection, I rotated shifts every two weeks: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m. to midnight, or midnight to 8:00 a.m. Shifts were often extended to ten or twelve hours—or worse—depending on the vice president’s activity. Shift work challenges agents physically and mentally, especially at night. While sitting was permitted, we had to stand if the public was around. Agents could see each other, a critical element in staving off lonesomeness and inattention. Still, midnights at the residence were the pits. Boredom was the enemy. We were all drilled, “You must not sleep! Dozing will get you thirty days ‘on the beach’—or fired.” We had a supervisor who was always trying to catch someone asleep. One morning at about two o’clock, in total darkness, he crept up on the booth, hoping to surprise another rookie agent. Then the boss heard the unmistakable sound of a shell being cranked into the chamber of a shotgun—which was pointing right at him. He gave up that game. And we all gave the new guy two thumbs-up.
At times, in the dark of night-morning, my mind would drift toward home. I imagined my little girls asleep in their canopy beds. Picturing Carolyn’s face, I wished I were beside her, especially at the end of a twelve-hour day. As at the White House, we pushed posts every thirty minutes to stay grounded. But what really kept me awake and sharp was the image of JFK’s head being blown apart.
We were all still vibrating from Kennedy’s death, and remembering that some crazy might want to kill the vice president helped me keep my edge.
We also stood post at Humphrey’s home in Waverly, Minnesota, where he retreated once or twice a month and on every holiday. I used to joke that I spent so much time in Minnesota I could have voted there.
A brown, four-bedroom rambler standing on seven or eight acres near the shore of Lake Waverly, Humphrey’s house was surrounded by tall firs and other evergreens. Maple, walnut, and oak trees flamed into color in early autumn, and the air smelled fresh and piney. Beautiful in summer, the lake was clear, dark, and deep; in winter it turned to ice. The family’s boats were tied to a dock; a boathouse with windows doubled as a post. But I wasn’t there to enjoy the beauty. I was looking for danger. I never wanted to forget that.
The command post was a converted house trailer parked near the front gate. Besides a coffeepot, it contained chairs where agents could rest a few minutes, a table and a manual typewriter for daily reports, and a small refrigerator for food we’d brought from our hotel in Minneapolis or picked up en route. We drove the forty miles back and forth from the Sheraton Ritz to Waverly in a leased Ford station wagon.
Also in the trailer were telephones and a radio system with handheld P33s with antennas for use on post and in a boat in case we had to call for emergency help. We kept arctic gear there, extra shotguns . . . and gas masks. We were prepared for anything.
Standing post outdoors in the Minnesota winter was brutal, but I thrived on the challenge. Better prepared than most, I knew what to expect from my time in the Air Force. On the base in Finland, Minnesota, where I had guarded radar sites in 1951, the temperature once plummeted to minus fifty-eight degrees. Guys spit to watch their saliva freeze before it hit the wall. I found Anchorage to be warmer—only minus twenty-six there! Though I had grown up in a tropical climate, neither hurricanes nor thunderstorms nor cold frightened me. I had relished working on power lines in the teeth of threatening weather, and for some reason known only to God, I was at my best when nature showed its might.