by Hill, Clint
We were notified by the president’s staff that the president had a speaking engagement in Los Angeles, and would then be heading to Palm Springs, where he would spend a few days of golf and relaxation. The president would stay at La Quinta Country Club at the residence of George Allen—a longtime friend who also owned a neighboring farm in Gettysburg—and play golf at his favorite course in the area, the Eldorado Country Club.
The first step of the advance assignment was to check with the Protective Research Section (PRS) of the Secret Service to see if there were any threats or cases of protective interest in the Palm Springs area. Whenever a threat was made against the president—whether it was a written letter, a phone call, someone attempting to jump the White House fence, or information gathered from an informant—a case file was created and a thorough investigation was done on the individual. Each case was analyzed and then ranked according to the seriousness of the threat. Some people had grievances against the government in general and their threats would reemerge each time there was a new president, so once a case was filed, it remained open until the death of the individual.
Located in the Executive Office Building, the PRS office was our central intelligence center, and at that time, before we had computerized databases, the voluminous amount of information was kept in large metal filing cabinets, organized by case number. Additionally, there were rows of smaller cabinets that contained thousands of three-by-five cards on which threats were indexed both alphabetically and geographically.
The three-by-five cards had photos of the individual on the front and summaries of their threat history, last known location, and current status typed on the back. We carried a stack of the most serious threat cases with us at all times, using them like flash cards to memorize the faces of the individuals who were most likely to harm the president. Although there were thousands of people on our watch list, those who gave us the greatest concern were the ones we didn’t know—the lone individuals or conspiratorial groups who had not yet surfaced and could show up anytime, anywhere.
Agent Henderson and I flew to Palm Springs and were met by an agent from our Los Angeles office, in whose jurisdiction Palm Springs was located. We relied heavily on the agents in the local field offices for a number of reasons, not the least of which was their knowledge of the locale and emergency medical personnel. They knew where the best hospitals were, who the best doctors and surgeons in the area were, and how to get hold of them on a moment’s notice. This was always a concern whenever President Eisenhower traveled because of his history of heart attacks. But just as important were the agents’ relationships with the local officials, fire departments, and law enforcement agencies, which had developed through Secret Service investigations of financial crimes.
The relationships the field agents made in the local communities were important extensions of their investigative responsibility. The investigations had them working side by side with local officials, and the better their relationships with the locals, the more cooperation we received when we came into the area with a protectee. Because we as an agency lacked sufficient resources to do the job on our own, we depended heavily on local support and assistance.
Harvey Henderson was a good ol’ Southern boy whom the other agents had dubbed the “Birmingham Baron.” He was a colorful character who seemed to have been plucked right off the pages of Gone With the Wind, complete with a syrupy drawl, but Agent Henderson had been on the detail for a number of years and had a reputation for conducting thorough advances, so I felt I was in good hands.
The president’s four-night stay in Palm Springs required a great deal of preparation and manpower to ensure his security. We went directly to the Eldorado Country Club, checked in to our rooms, and met with club management to inform them of the president’s upcoming visit.
“This must be kept strictly confidential,” Agent Henderson told the manager. “Tell only those you need to tell for the comfort and security of the president during his stay here.”
Next, we made appointments with the Office of the City Manager and the chiefs of the police and fire departments to ensure their cooperation and assistance with the president’s visit. We were asking them to take personnel off regular duties to help us secure buildings and routes of travel, and any overtime or extra resources came out of their budget. It was like inviting yourself to a stranger’s home and expecting them to drop everything and cater to your every desire, no matter how big or small. Fortunately, because of the trust and respect the local Secret Service agents had earned, our hosts were eager and willing to help us every step of the way.
The list of preparations seemed endless, but Henderson showed me how to systematically go through the schedule and make the necessary arrangements. We checked out the local medical facilities; arranged with the White House Army Signal Agency (WHASA), commonly referred to as “Wasa,” to provide adequate, appropriate communications for the president, staff, and the Secret Service while in the Palm Springs area; checked with the Air Force to determine exactly where Air Force One would be parked at the Palm Springs airport and verified it with the airport authorities; examined the helicopter landing site at La Quinta to ensure it was adequate and safe and made arrangements for fire department coverage; arranged for vehicles from the local Ford Motor Company dealership for the presidential party, the other agents, and ourselves; mapped out the routes from one site to the next; and, finally, arranged accommodations for the agents and staff accompanying the president.
Because this was a private visit, there were no big arrival or departure ceremonies, but still, every detail had to be in place. Agent Henderson was at La Quinta with George Allen to meet the president when he arrived by helicopter promptly at 10:30 a.m., and after dropping off bags at the residence, the president was ready to hit the golf course at Eldorado. Ike played eighteen holes each day and attended lunches and dinners with friends, but had no formal public appearances. Everything went smoothly, but it wasn’t until the president boarded Air Force One in Palm Springs on Monday, February 1, that I breathed a sigh of relief. It appeared to have been an enjoyable, relaxing time for the president, with no unexpected incidents, and was important on-the-job training for me.
PRESIDENTIAL ACTIVITIES AT the White House continued at the same fast, controlled pace—appointments in and out, one after the other. Never really a lapse in activity, but everything well managed with military precision. There were frequent weekend trips to Gettysburg, during which the president spent time with his son John, daughter-in-law Barbara, and the grandchildren, who lived on an adjacent farm. A group of agents was permanently assigned to Gettysburg for the protection of the grandchildren, and they had made friends with the proprietor of a nearby motel who gave them a great deal on rates, which he passed on to the rest of us when we were in town with the president. The motel seemed to have been there since the Civil War, and while it had running water, there were the bare minimum of conveniences. The rickety beds squeaked with any little movement, the walls were thin, and you could literally see outside through the cracks in the siding. With no insulation, it was miserable during the month of August when temperatures reached 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity, and in the winter, when the wind blew through the cracks, you felt like you were going to freeze to death. The best thing about the motel was that it made every other place we stayed seem posh.
SHORTLY AFTER I returned from Palm Springs, I received a letter with the presidential seal on the envelope. Inside was a formal invitation.
I am informed that
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Dwight D. Eisenhower
has invited
Clinton Hill
to accompany him on his flight to
Cape Canaveral
on
February 10, 1960
in the Presidential jet aircraft
departing from
Andrews Air Force Base
The President, by custom, is the last member of the official party to board
his airplane before take-off, and the first to leave after landing. Consequently, it will be greatly appreciated if you will be in your seat, number 8B, as marked in the diagram by 8:00 a.m. After landing, please remain seated until the President has departed from the aircraft.
Members of the crew will be at your service, and invite you to make your desires known to them.
I hope you will enjoy your jet flight.
If additional information regarding this flight is desired, I shall be glad to be of service. My office number is National 8-1414, extension 318 or 319.
COLONEL WILLIAM G. DRAPER, USAF
Aircraft Commander
On the back of the invitation was a diagram of the interior of the aircraft with seat 8B circled.
I boarded the aircraft promptly with the other agents on my shift and found aisle seat 8B in the rear of the plane. The jet had two rows of seats immediately behind the crew; the presidential stateroom took up a large portion of the middle of the aircraft, and then there were seven rows of seats in the rear, with two seats on each side of the aisle.
Secret Service agents filled a third of the seats, and the rest were occupied by presidential staff and military advisors.
It was a short two-hour flight from Andrews Air Force Base to the Cape Canaveral landing strip, during which the agents were briefed on the schedule. Shortly after touchdown, President Eisenhower received a one-hour classified briefing on defense missile activity, and then everyone in the presidential party donned white hard hats to tour the launching complexes. As we moved with the president, we got an education in the capabilities of the various missiles—the Titan and Atlas intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Polaris submarine missile, and the Thor space rocket. The massive size of the missiles was staggering, and the warheads on these rockets were over one hundred times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Nagasaki in 1945. President Eisenhower listened intently to the engineer’s briefing, and you couldn’t help but realize the extraordinary burden the president felt, knowing that the decision to use these devastating weapons would be his alone. The capability for destruction was almost incomprehensible, and just being in the presence of these weapons made me understand even more fully why President Eisenhower was so intent on using the strength of his reputation during his last year in office to promote peace through freedom. We were on the ground for just three hours, then got back on Air Force One. As we flew back to Washington, everyone was silent, seemingly in contemplation of what we had just experienced.
There was an ongoing debate between the Republicans and the Democrats about our defense policies and how much money should be spent on programs like those at Cape Canaveral, and it was important to President Eisenhower to see things for himself so he could make a strong case one way or another. But one thing I observed about President Eisenhower and his dealing with political matters was that when he had an off-the-record, closed-door meeting about Top Secret national security matters, he would frequently invite representatives of both political parties. He brought them together to discuss both sides of an issue in an attempt to reach an agreeable compromise that was in the best interest of the country, not just a partisan position. It made sense, and it made me admire him as a leader.
WE HAD BEEN alerted that the president was going to make a trip to South America beginning in late February 1960. The 15,500-mile journey would take us from Puerto Rico to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Advance teams were dispatched, appropriate immunizations were administered, and file folders filled with briefing materials were distributed to everyone on the trip. Scientific analyses had been done on the drinking water in the cities we were to visit, and it was decided that it would be prudent to bring our own supply to minimize the chances of people in the presidential party becoming ill. Hundreds of cases of Poland Spring bottled water were added to the cargo list, and we were advised to use the bottled water for brushing our teeth as well as drinking. As it turned out, once again the scheduling of the trip put me in an enviable position. I would be on the midnight shift, which would give me an opportunity to see more than just airports, speech sites, and mass crowds.
We departed the morning of Monday, February 22, 1960, from Andrews Air Force Base and flew directly to Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico. Jets in those days didn’t have the fuel capacity or range that they do today, so it was always necessary to stop for refueling when we were traveling long distances. Ramey was a secure location for the president to stay overnight, and, perhaps more important, it had a well-maintained eighteen-hole golf course on the property with beautiful Caribbean views. By two o’clock, Ike was teeing off with press secretary James Hagerty and two Air Force colonels.
The next morning we flew to Brasília, a city that was literally being carved out of the jungle to become the new capital of Brazil. The official changeover of the capital from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília wasn’t to take place for two more months, and there was still considerable construction under way, with many buildings only half completed and roads still unpaved. It was raining when we arrived, yet along with Brazil’s president, Juscelino Kubitschek, there were about five thousand people who were waiting in the downpour at the airport to greet President Eisenhower.
After a very short welcoming ceremony, the two leaders got into the back of our Lincoln bubbletop convertible, which had been transported by cargo plane, and motorcaded from the airport to the center of the city. The steady rain, however, had turned the roads into muddy rivers, making it a real challenge for the drivers not to get stuck. The majority of the city’s population was construction workers—about 100,000 of them—and they had been given the day off in honor of President Eisenhower’s visit. Everywhere you looked there were bulldozers, graders, and dump trucks set amid walls of gravel and deep pits where foundations were being laid.
This was just a one-night stay, and after standing midnight shift at the palace, we accompanied President Eisenhower back to the airport first thing the next morning. The day shift took over aboard Air Force One, and those of us on the midnight shift flew on the backup plane to our next stop, Rio de Janeiro.
The sun was shining brightly and it was a balmy 82 degrees when we touched down at Galeão Airport at around ten o’clock the morning of February 24. After the typical arrival ceremonies, the president boarded a motor launch and traveled by boat across Guanabara Bay to the Brazilian Navy Ministry. Meanwhile, those of us on the midnight shift went straight to our hotel near the U.S. Embassy. Our hotel happened to be very close to the famed Copacabana Beach, so as soon as we checked in, Agent Larry Short and I changed into shorts and short-sleeved shirts, grabbed a couple of towels from the hotel bathroom, and headed to the beach. It was just a few days before the start of Mardi Gras, and the beach was packed with tourists and locals, scantily clad in their beachwear. We found a spot to lay down our towels and took off our shirts to join the sun worshippers and soak up the Brazilian sun.
“Here’s to the midnight shift!” Larry said with a grin.
“Yeah, we sure got the luck of the draw on this one,” I said.
We later learned that while we were reveling in our good fortune of being on the midnight shift, the agents on the day shift were dealing with crowds that rivaled those we’d seen in New Delhi as President Eisenhower and President Kubitschek rode in a motorcade through downtown Rio. The streets were so full of people that the motorcade had to slow to a crawl, with the agents walking alongside the car almost the entire way.
Back at Copacabana Beach, Larry Short and I had promptly fallen asleep facedown on our towels in the sand. We’d been there for at least a couple of hours, and poor Larry, with his fair complexion and light reddish hair, was burned from head to toe. Even though I’m 50 percent Norwegian, the other 50 percent, whatever it is, saved me, and my skin was lightly bronzed, not burned at all. That evening, I felt so sorry for Larry. His back, arms, and legs were covered with blisters, and he was in such pain that he had a hard time getting dressed. You could tell he was damned unco
mfortable standing post all night in his suit and tie, yet he never uttered a word of complaint.
The next morning we were headed to Buenos Aires. Overnight, while we were rotating posts around the palace, we received news that five separate bombs had just exploded in Buenos Aires in what appeared to be an anti-American manifestation. Juan Perón had recently been deposed as dictator, but he still had a lot of sympathizers who did not back the new Argentine president, Arturo Frondizi. A few weeks earlier, when the president of Mexico was visiting, protestors had thrown rocks at Frondizi and his guest as they motorcaded from the airport into downtown. Knowing that the same situation could occur during President Eisenhower’s visit, the advance agents worked with Argentine law enforcement to drastically tighten security for our arrival, and instead of the standard motorcade parade, President Eisenhower flew by helicopter directly from the airport to the U.S. Embassy residence, where he would be staying.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Eisenhower supporters, undeterred by the bomb blasts on the other side of the city, had gathered along the route President Eisenhower would take later that afternoon to give a speech. By the time President Eisenhower departed the embassy residence, somewhere between 750,000 and one million people were in the streets and waiting in the plaza adjacent to Casa Rosada, where the government offices were located. It was the largest reception yet on this South American tour. Special Agent in Charge Jim Rowley rode in a half-standing position in the front passenger seat of the Lincoln bubbletop 4-B, all senses alert for any indication of trouble, while President Eisenhower stood tall, directly behind him, one hand on Rowley’s shoulder and waving to the exuberant crowd with his other hand. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Eisenhower, waving American flags and throwing flowers and confetti into the open car, with just a few protestors here and there.