by Hill, Clint
I was the new man on the job, so I worked with another agent for the first week to make sure I was completely aware of my assignments. The first step was to learn the layout of the White House and the Executive Office Building, both of which seemed like mazes to me at first, but would eventually become as familiar as my own home. Next was to be able to identify every person who had authorized access to the White House complex. There is an army of people who keep the White House running, and it was critical to be able to recognize the cooks and dishwashers as well as the housekeepers, florists, and maintenance staff. On top of all those faces, I had to learn all the cabinet and congressional members, and be able to address them by name. It was also helpful to know their state and party affiliation. Finally, there was the White House press corps. Members of the press had access to the West Wing press room and the West Wing lobby but had to be escorted anywhere else. It was a lot to take in all at once, but I felt deeply privileged to have this responsibility.
My first week on the job on the White House Detail was a real eye-opener into President Eisenhower’s leadership style and how he dealt with the vast demands of the office. A typical day for President Eisenhower began with his prompt arrival in the Oval Office at 8:00 a.m. Usually his first meeting was with his staff secretary, Brigadier General Andrew J. Goodpaster, and the president’s thirty-seven-year-old son, Major John Eisenhower, who worked directly for Goodpaster.
After the initial morning briefing, President Eisenhower would have one nonstop appointment after another until lunchtime. Having been a career military officer, President Eisenhower was cognizant of the clock and was adamant about staying on schedule. He was not inclined to chitchat or small talk, instead preferring to get right down to business with whomever he was meeting, and at times it seemed like the Oval Office had a revolving door, he was able to fit so many meetings into a short amount of time. The same thing was true for meetings or events outside the White House; whether it was a speech to congressional members or a ribbon-cutting ceremony, he got the job done in the time allotted, and then it was on to the next thing. What was interesting to me was to see how much the president was able to accomplish each day, yet still manage to play golf on an almost daily basis.
After the morning’s meetings had concluded, usually by 12:30, he would leave the West Wing and return to the mansion for lunch, which was served promptly at 1:00 p.m. On Monday, my first day at the White House, shortly before 2:00 p.m., we drove him to the exclusive, all-male Burning Tree Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. He played eighteen holes of golf with friends and returned to the White House around six o’clock. Wednesday, same schedule, different golf partners. Friday, same thing, until about three o’clock when a sudden rainstorm forced the halt of the game after five holes, and when it was determined that the rain was going to continue for quite some time, the president returned to the White House. No further appointments had been scheduled, so he spent the rest of the rainy afternoon in the movie theater watching a Western.
Tuesday and Thursday had similar nonstop activity until lunchtime, along with some scattered appointments in the afternoon. Still, he managed to fit in some golf practice on the South Grounds of the White House. After changing into his golf cleats in the Oval Office, he walked out the east door—leaving spike holes in the wooden floor that would remain there for years—to the three-thousand-square-foot putting green he had arranged to have installed about fifty yards outside the Oval Office. For about an hour, he alternated between putting and driving, using the White House lawn as his own private golf course.
It was a great treat for tourists walking along the south fence to see the President of the United States whacking golf balls across the lawn, while his personal valet, Sergeant John Moaney, ran back and forth retrieving them. The first time I saw Moaney fetching the golf balls, I felt sorry for him, because it seemed like a humiliating chore. However, I soon realized that no one was more devoted to President Eisenhower than his valet, who had been with him since the war, when Moaney was assigned to the general’s personal staff. They had a great relationship, and it seemed like Moaney enjoyed participating in the most relaxing part of his boss’s day.
The president’s job does not stop on the weekends—it is round-the-clock, seven days a week. The same goes for the Secret Service. By the end of my first week, I was beginning to feel more comfortable with the protective procedures, and with President Eisenhower himself. He could be very intense, but was also quick to laugh. When it came to the agents who were around him constantly, he pretty much treated us like his troops. There were only two agents he called by name—his driver, Dick Flohr, and the Special Agent in Charge, Jim Rowley. He had no interest in learning (or need to learn) any of the rest of our names. If he needed something, he’d look at you and call out, “Hey, agent!” It was our job to protect the man, not become his personal friends.
During my second week on the White House Detail, I went on my first trip with President Eisenhower. On Thursday, November 12, we left the White House at 10:30 a.m. and flew to Augusta, Georgia, aboard the presidential aircraft, a Lockheed VC-121E Super Constellation named Columbine III. Three hours later, the president was teeing off the first hole at the Augusta National Golf Club.
Founded in 1933, Augusta National Golf Club is a private and very exclusive club that you have to be invited to join, and up until 2012, only men were allowed. The meticulously manicured eighteen-hole course is considered one of the most beautiful in the world, with over one hundred acres of flawless grass fairways dotted with white sand bunkers and lined by 150-year-old pine trees and countless flowering shrubs and trees. Each spring when the flowers are at their peak the best golfers in the world are invited to Augusta National to compete for the green jacket given to the winner of the Masters, one of golf’s most prestigious tournaments.
There were no permanent residences along the golf course, but ten cabins had been built for the use of members, including one specifically built in 1953 for President Eisenhower. The Eisenhower Cabin was not at all rustic, as the name implies, but was an elegant four-bedroom, two-story home with a spacious front porch near the No. 10 tee, and because the Secret Service had been involved in the design of the cabin, it included special communications equipment and facilities in the basement for use by the on-duty agents when Ike was in residence.
President Eisenhower loved to play Augusta because it offered so many challenges. One in particular was a large loblolly pine standing along the 17th fairway that had become Ike’s nemesis on the course. The president hit that same tree so regularly that each time he approached the 17th hole, he’d become agitated. He’d watch the flight of the ball, wincing and willing it to avoid the tree, but so often you’d hear a crack as it smacked the bark, and then immediately a burst of profanity from the president as he stormed toward his archenemy. The tree had become so problematic to him that he even lobbied the club to have it cut down. The proposal was denied, however, and instead the tree became known as the “Eisenhower Tree,” much to the president’s dismay.
One of the most fun things about protecting President Eisenhower on his golf outings was being around the high-profile people with whom he played—people like Cliff Roberts, a co-founder of Augusta National; Bill Robinson, chairman of the board of Coca-Cola; and the most interesting to me, Arnold Palmer.
When Palmer drove from the tee, the ball would rise and remain about three feet off the ground for about two hundred yards and then zoom upward, coming to rest near or on the green. He was amazing.
After nine holes, the group would take a break for beverages, and if Cliff Roberts was in the group, he would say, “Drinks all around . . . except for the Secret Service!” The joke got tiresome for us, but we’d smile and find our way to the water cooler at the end of the round.
I had very little experience playing golf myself—just a few times hitting balls with some borrowed clubs on the rough, prairie-grass-covered public course near Underwood, North Dakota—but over the next ye
ar on President Eisenhower’s detail I would spend so much time on the Augusta National and Burning Tree courses that I could anticipate which club the president would use on every hole, and where he was most likely to slice a shot into the woods. That first trip I took to Augusta in November 1959, President Eisenhower played eighteen holes of golf every day for twelve days straight. It turned out to be a pretty good indication of how much time I’d be spending on golf courses for the duration of Ike’s term.
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The Eleven-Nation Tour
In late 1959, the most pressing issues on the international front were the recent takeover of Cuba by the Communist Fidel Castro and the conflict between the Western allies and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev about the future of Berlin. That first week I was at the White House, I was informed that President Eisenhower and his staff were planning a trip in December, built around a meeting in Paris between the Big Four Western allies—the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the United States. It was an ambitious and historic journey that would encompass three continents, eleven countries, and over 22,000 miles in nineteen days. Three Boeing 707 jets had recently been acquired for the presidential fleet—the first jets available to any president—and clearly Eisenhower was determined to make good use of them.
On the evening of December 3, 1959, President Eisenhower appeared live on national television from the White House, less than an hour prior to our departure. Bidding farewell to the American people, he outlined the nature of the trip while stressing the unbreakable connection between economic stability at home and the maintenance of peace through strength around the globe. With his wire-rimmed glasses dangling casually from his right hand, the president looked straight into the camera, knowing that every American who had their television on was watching him.
“Good evening, fellow Americans,” he began.
Dressed in a three-piece suit with a crisp white shirt and tie, he looked every bit the country’s chief executive officer, confident and in control. He placed the glasses on his face and continued, with the soothing voice of a wise and comforting grandfather.
“I leave in just a few minutes on a three-week journey halfway around the world.” Glancing intermittently at the notes on the podium in front of him, he explained to the American people the purpose for his journey to Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iran, Greece, Tunisia, France, Spain, and Morocco.
“During this mission of peace and goodwill, I hope to promote a better understanding of America and to learn more of our friends abroad. In every country, I hope to make widely known America’s deepest desire—a world in which all nations may prosper in freedom, justice, and peace, unmolested and unafraid. We have heard much of the phrase ‘Peace and Friendship.’ This phrase, in expressing the aspirations of America, is not complete. We should say instead, ‘Peace and friendship in freedom.’ This, I think, is America’s real message to the world.”
It was his mission to use his last year in office to improve America’s image by convincing people around the globe that the United States was sincerely searching for a world peace formula, with no ulterior motives or aggressive designs.
For me, accompanying President Eisenhower on this international trip was beyond my wildest dreams. Other than a brief one-day visit to Canada during my temporary White House Detail assignment, I had never been anywhere outside the United States and here I was, about to embark on a historic trip visiting countries and cities I had only read about in books. In preparation, I’d been given a myriad of shots and inoculations to meet the health regulations of every country we would visit, courtesy of the White House physician’s office, and was issued a diplomatic passport. Notable by its green cover embossed with gold, indicating I was an official representative of the United States government, the passport included my photograph and identification, followed by dozens of blank pages that would soon be filled with entry and exit stamps from countries all over the world.
We had four airplanes in the entourage—the presidential plane with tail number 86970, which became “Air Force One” when the president was aboard; the backup plane with tail number 86971; and two press planes—one provided by Pan American World Airways and one by Trans World Airlines. At 8:15 p.m., the caravan of aircraft departed Andrews Air Force Base, and after a brief refueling stop in Goose Bay, Labrador, at 1:00 a.m., we flew directly to Rome, Italy.
ROME
It was raining heavily as we were attempting to land at Ciampino Airport around noon, local time. The city was filled with banners and signs greeting the American president, and despite the rain there were large, welcoming crowds at the airport and all along the motorcade route.
It worked out that my shift was on midnight rotation for the first portion of the trip, so we were immediately taken to the hotel to rest, while the day shift accompanied President Eisenhower in the motorcade through the city to an official lunch with President Giovanni Gronchi. Most of us had slept on the flight, and since our shift duty didn’t begin until midnight, we realized we had the opportunity to sightsee for a few hours. So we dropped off our bags at the hotel and headed to the U.S. Embassy, where we exchanged our dollars for Italian lira.
The embassy staff wanted to do everything they could to help us, and when they offered to provide cars with drivers to show us around Rome, we readily accepted. We drove all around the city, stopping at the major tourist sights—the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Forum—and ended up at the Colosseum, where we had a private guided tour. I had never seen structures so old or walked on streets made of cobblestone. I was struck by the blending of the modern and the ancient, to see motorbikes whizzing around contemporary office buildings standing next to two-thousand-year-old marble structures and ruins. It was a whirlwind tour, with just enough time to get a taste of Rome and to buy a few postcards before returning to the hotel to get some sleep before our shift.
President Eisenhower was staying at the four-hundred-year-old Palazzo del Quirinale, the official residence of the president of Italy, for his two nights in Rome, accompanied by his son, Major John Eisenhower, and John’s wife, Barbara. Mrs. Eisenhower had elected not to come on the trip, largely, I suspected, because of her aversion to flying. A black-tie dinner and reception for nearly three thousand was held in honor of President Eisenhower at the palace that first night, and after a long day, he retired for the evening to his palatial apartment suite at around 10:30.
I quickly realized that being on the midnight shift in Rome was like drawing the lucky straw. Our duty entailed standing post while the president slept in an exceptionally secure environment, while the agents on the other two shifts were having to work twelve to fourteen hours a day covering the president’s activities in this unfamiliar locale. Protecting the president in a foreign country was very different from protecting him on our own soil. Not only did very few people speak English, but also we were guests of the people of Italy and had to make sure there was a cooperative effort on the part of the Italian authorities that blended with our protective operation.
The rain continued through the night, and it was still coming down when we were relieved by the day shift. While the other shift agents covered President Eisenhower as he visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and attended meetings with various Italian leaders, we on the midnight shift, once again, were able to play tourist. The president was scheduled to have an audience with His Holiness Pope John XXIII at the Vatican the following day, and as we were trying to decide where to go sightseeing, the agent who had conducted the advance with the Vatican piped up and asked if any of us would be interested in a tour there.
A few phone calls were made, and the next thing I knew we were being introduced to members of the Swiss Guard, our counterparts to the pope. Public access was limited as a result of the tight security around President Eisenhower’s visit, so we were able to experience St. Peter’s Basilica, the great halls of the Vatican Museum, and the glory of the Sistine Chapel almost completely by ourselve
s. The pièce de résistance was a tour of the back rooms of the Vatican Treasury, an area not available to the general public, which housed the priceless jewels, ornaments, and gold accumulated by the Catholic Church over the centuries.
Meanwhile, despite the inclement weather, President Eisenhower was drawing huge crowds, with Rome’s streets lined with people huddled under drenched umbrellas, waving and cheering wherever he went. At one point as the presidential motorcade drove by, two hundred young student priests from a Catholic seminary broke into a chant of “We like Ike!” His visit was impacting the people of Italy exactly as he had hoped. One Italian journalist stated just how much this country thought of the American president in a local newspaper report: “He represents a moral conscience, a spiritual force. The world must be inspired by his goodwill mission.”
By Sunday morning the rain had passed, and the sun shone brightly against a blue sky for President Eisenhower’s last day in Rome. The clear weather brought out thousands more spectators than had been seen the previous two days, and gave President Eisenhower the opportunity to ride in an open car as he drove from the Quirinale to the Vatican. An Italian motorcycle escort paved the way for the president’s convertible, and as the motorcade entered St. Peter’s Square, the enormous crowd erupted into cheers, prompting the president to stand up and wave his hat in appreciation. Immediately following the services, President Eisenhower was escorted to the papal apartment on the second floor of the Vatican, where he had an audience with Pope John XXIII. The twenty-six-minute meeting was hailed as a coming together of two scions of peace, and capped off what was by all accounts a very successful visit.