by Hill, Clint
President Johnson took swift action, and on November 29, 1963, one week after the assassination, he created the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy and appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren the chairman. The commission consisted of two U.S. senators—Richard Russell, a Democrat from Georgia, and John Cooper, a Republican from Kentucky; two U.S. congressmen—Hale Boggs, a Democrat from Louisiana, and Gerald Ford, a Republican from Michigan; the former director of the CIA, Allen Dulles; and John J. McCloy, former president of the World Bank. The commission was supported by a staff that included J. Lee Rankin as general counsel, a number of assistants counsel, and other staff members. All of the men were highly respected, and Johnson purposely chose the politically diverse group to avoid any appearance of bias. The goal was simply to seek the truth and to report the findings and conclusion to President Johnson, the American people, and to the world.
When I returned to the White House on the morning of November 23, I had gone to my office and written down everything I could remember about what had happened. Whenever there was any kind of incident, we were always required to write a report. I knew even before the Warren Commission, as it came to be known, was organized that the loss of the president—still as unimaginable as it was—would require an intensive investigation, and I knew that the sooner I recorded my recollections, the more accurate they would be.
On November 29, Chief Rowley requested all of us who had been in Dallas to provide him with a typewritten, signed statement of what we had witnessed. None of us talked to each other. We all wrote exactly what we had seen and heard and remembered.
I wrote the report from my notes, typing five and a half pages, single-spaced, ending at the time we arrived at the White House at 4:24 a.m. when the casket was placed in the East Room. At the bottom, I signed my name, Clinton J. Hill, and beneath it typed: Special Agent, U.S. Secret Service.
In the following months, the Warren Commission began conducting personal interviews, and I was summoned to appear before the commission on March 9, 1964. I knew it was something that needed to be done, but I was not looking forward to talking about what had happened. I hadn’t discussed the assassination with anyone—not Gwen, not the other agents, not Mrs. Kennedy. Speaking to the Warren Commission would be the first time.
Assistant counsel Arlen Specter asked the majority of the questions, while members of the commission listened, took notes, and interjected when they required more information. Specter began with questions about my age, education, previous employment, and entry into the Secret Service. Then he went straight to the trip to Texas.
“Did you have any special duty assigned to you at that time?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. I was responsible for the protection of Mrs. Kennedy.”
“And, in a general way, what does that sort of assignment involve?”
“I tried to remain as close to her at all times as possible, and in this particular trip that meant being with the president, because all of their doings on this trip were together rather than separate. I would go over her schedule to make sure she knows what she is expected to do; discuss it with her; remain in her general area all the time; protect her from any danger.”
Specter then asked me to describe what the president and Mrs. Kennedy did upon their arrival in Dallas. I didn’t get very far before Specter interrupted and began asking specific questions, one right after the other. As soon as I’d answer, he’d fire off the next round. “What size was the crowd? What time did the motorcade depart? How many cars in the motorcade? What speed were you going?”
Finally, he asked me to describe what happened when we turned onto Elm Street.
I took a deep breath. “Well, as we came out of the curve and began to straighten up, I was viewing the people scattered throughout the entire park. And I heard a noise from my right rear, which to me seemed to be a firecracker. I immediately looked to my right and, in so doing, my eyes had to cross the presidential limousine, and I saw President Kennedy grab at himself and lurch forward and to the left.”
It was the first time I’d said these words out loud. It was awful. I could see it all happening right before my eyes. Oh God. Something is wrong. I have to get there. Someone is shooting at the president.
I must have paused as the images and thoughts swirled in my head, because Mr. Specter said, “Why don’t you just proceed, in narrative form, to tell us.”
Before I could answer, Representative Boggs interjected, “This was the first shot?”
“This is the first sound that I heard. Yes, sir,” I said. “I jumped from the car, realizing that something was wrong, ran to the presidential limousine. Just about as I reached it, there was another sound, which was different than the first sound. I think I described it in my statement as though someone was shooting a revolver into a hard object—it seemed to have some type of an echo.”
That sound. Oh, that awful sound.
“I put my right foot, I believe it was, on the left rear step of the automobile, and I had ahold of the handgrip with my hand, when the car lurched forward. I lost my footing and I had to run about three or four more steps before I could get back up in the car.”
And then Mrs. Kennedy . . . oh God, what is she doing?
“Between the time I originally grabbed the handhold and until I was up on the car, Mrs. Kennedy—the second noise that I heard had . . .”
I closed my eyes, hoping the image would go away, but I kept talking anyway.
“. . . had removed a portion of the president’s head. And he had slumped noticeably to his left. Mrs. Kennedy had jumped up from the seat and was, it appeared to me, reaching for something coming off the right rear bumper of the car, the right rear tail, when she noticed that I was trying to climb on the car. She turned toward me, and I grabbed her and put her back in the seat, crawled up on top of the backseat and lay there.”
In fact, even though there was a still photo and two separate amateur films taken of Mrs. Kennedy climbing onto the trunk just as I had described, I would later read that she told the commission she had no recollection of doing that. None whatsoever. She was in shock. Who wouldn’t be?
No one expected there to be gunfire. Hearing the sudden loud noise and in the same instant seeing her husband’s body jerk forward as his hands raised to his throat, Mrs. Kennedy instinctively turned toward him. Trying to determine what was wrong, she leaned toward him, placed her hands on his left arm, and turned to look into his face, so close that her head was nearly touching his. Another loud crack, and suddenly, blood, brain, and bone fragments exploded out of her husband’s head, before her very eyes. A few inches to the left, and it would have been her head instead of his.
Mr. Specter continued with his questions, and I answered each one as best as I could, all the while trying to maintain my composure. Finally, it was over; there were no more questions, and I was able to go home.
MAY 29, 1964, would have been President Kennedy’s forty-seventh birthday. That morning I accompanied Mrs. Kennedy, John, Caroline, and Robert Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, to Mass at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic cathedral, and then we went to Arlington.
In the six months since President Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, more than three million visitors had passed by his grave, turning it into the number one tourist destination in Washington, surpassing the White House and the Lincoln Memorial. A permanent gravestone was still being designed, so in the meantime all that marked the final resting place of the thirty-fifth president was the eternal flame, centered on a twenty-by-thirty-foot square of grass, surrounded by a low white picket fence.
I had requested the cemetery officials rope off the area for the short time we would be there, to give the family some privacy from the gawkers, but there was no way to keep the public away completely. Sniffles and sobs emanated from the bystanders as the widow, dressed completely in black, and her young children, in matching ivory coats, walked solemnly toward the grave and then knelt to pray.
; On June 12, 1964, Paul Landis handed in his resignation. He had given himself six months to see if he felt better, but being with Mrs. Kennedy and the children every day was too difficult. I was disappointed he was leaving; we had been through so much together that we were like brothers. It would be hard to find someone else with whom I could work so seamlessly under these fragile circumstances.
It was around the time Paul left that Mrs. Kennedy decided to move to New York City. The tour buses had not stopped, and she just didn’t feel comfortable in Washington’s political bubble without her husband. She had always loved New York, and she hoped that amid the crowds she might be able to come and go without anyone noticing.
I was with her as she searched for a suitable place, and she finally settled on a large apartment that occupied the entire fifteenth floor at 1040 Fifth Avenue. It was close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, just a few blocks from Stephen and Jean Kennedy Smith’s residence, and within walking distance of the Carlyle Hotel. Once she moved, I too relocated to New York, where I lived in a small room at the Carlyle. It didn’t make sense to uproot Gwen and the boys because Mrs. Kennedy was frequently traveling—and besides, there was no way we could afford to live in the vicinity. The move was difficult for everybody—Mrs. Kennedy, Caroline, John, the agents, and the staff. Everything was different. Routines changed; the familiar surroundings of Washington were exchanged for the hustling, unfamiliar streets of New York; temporary agents came and went as needed to fill the shifts. There was a trip to Italy, a rental house on Long Island, and occasional trips to Boston, where plans were begun for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library—always something in the works to keep our minds distracted and focused on the future rather than the past. It was the only way we managed to get up each day.
THE 1964 DEMOCRATIC National Convention was being held in Atlantic City at the end of August, and a tribute to President Kennedy was planned for the last night of the convention. I was not involved in the politics, but it was clear that President Johnson and his staff were concerned about the effect Robert Kennedy might have on the nomination proceedings. Even though President Johnson was very popular, the political power of the brother of the assassinated president couldn’t be underestimated.
Mrs. Kennedy was reticent about being involved in the convention, but she felt obliged to do something, and in the end she agreed to attend a reception for all the delegates who had supported her husband in 1960. We departed almost immediately after the reception was over, flying on the Caroline, the Kennedy family’s private plane, to Newport, and then continuing on to Mrs. Kennedy’s mother’s Hammersmith Farm residence by car.
That evening, when Robert Kennedy stepped to the podium on the stage at the Democratic National Convention to introduce A Thousand Days, the film honoring his brother, the huge auditorium erupted into a roaring ovation. Kennedy, who was now a candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York, tried to begin his speech seven times, but he no more than opened his mouth and the roar swelled even louder. The applause went on for seventeen minutes.
ON SEPTEMBER 24, 1964, the Warren Commission presented its 888-page report to President Johnson. The exhaustive investigation included testimony and questioning from more than five hundred witnesses, the details of which would be published in twenty-six volumes. When the documents were released to the public several days later, the highlights were revealed in bold headlines: “Report Blames Oswald Alone in Death of JFK.”
The Warren Commission jointly and unanimously concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter, and the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. This conclusion was based on many facts, including: the Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5mm Italian rifle from which the shots were fired was owned by and in the possession of Oswald. Oswald carried this rifle into the Book Depository building on the morning of November 22, 1963. Oswald, at the time of the assassination, was present at the window from which the shots were fired. Additionally, based on testimony from experts and their analysis of films of the assassination, the commission concluded that a rifleman of Lee Harvey Oswald’s capabilities could have fired the shots from the rifle used in the assassination within the elapsed time of the shooting. In addition, seven months earlier, Oswald had attempted to kill Major General Edwin A. Walker in Dallas, thereby demonstrating his disposition to take a human life.
When it came to the motive for the assassination, the commission admitted it could not make any definitive determination, but clues could be found in Oswald’s family history; his lack of education; his deep-rooted resentment of authority; his inability to enter into meaningful relationships with people; and his avowed commitment to Marxism and Communism, along with an overtly expressed antagonism toward the United States. The twenty-four-year-old man had failed at nearly everything he had ever attempted throughout his short life, yet he yearned to “be somebody”—someone who would be remembered in history.
Regarding the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby on November 24, 1963, the commission blamed lapses by the Dallas Police Department, yet found no evidence that Oswald or Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign.
As I read through the newspaper accounts, there was some comfort in knowing they had determined that Oswald had acted alone. I was glad to know that speculations of conspiracies were unfounded. But most important to me were the commission’s statements regarding the Secret Service.
The commission recognized the various challenges faced by the Secret Service in performing its duties and boldly stated that “consistent with their high responsibilities, presidents can never be protected from every potential threat. The Secret Service’s difficulty in meeting its protective responsibility varies with the activities and the nature of the occupant of the Office of President and his willingness to conform to plans for his safety.”
In large part, the commission praised the Secret Service, and the particular agents on the trip, for well-conceived advance preparations that were ably executed according to standard operating procedures. But, clearly, improvements needed to be made.
The Protective Research Section was found to be inadequate in that it lacked sufficient trained personnel, and the current system of index-card tracking needed to be updated with “mechanical and technical assistance.” When it came to threat suspects, there was insufficient liaison and coordination of information between the Secret Service and other federal agencies. The FBI had been tracking Lee Harvey Oswald because of his relations with the Soviet Union and affinity for Communism, but because he had never made a specific threat against, or shown any interest in, the president, the FBI had no reason to share his identity with the Secret Service. We didn’t know he existed, let alone that he worked at the Texas School Book Depository, which happened to be directly on the route of the presidential motorcade in Dallas. And, while it was not a matter of practice to investigate and check every building along a motorcade route, this was something that needed to be changed.
There was the issue of the presidential vehicle itself, which was neither bulletproof nor bullet resistant, and the fact that the access to the president by the agent riding in the right front seat of the car was interfered with by a metal bar some fifteen inches above the back of the front seat, as well as by passengers in the jump seats.
It was noted that the Secret Service did not have sufficient personnel or adequate facilities at the time of the assassination and would need increased resources—resources that Congress would have to approve—to achieve what was being recommended. “Within these limitations,” the report stated, “the Commission finds that the agents most immediately responsible for the president’s safety reacted promptly at the time the shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository Building.” Specifically, the report stated, “at the time of the shots in Dallas, Agent Clinton J. Hill leaped to the president’s rescue as quickly as humanly possible.”
I was satisfied wi
th the commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone, and to this day, I believe that to be the case—there has never been any factual evidence to prove otherwise. The one conclusion with which I disagree is the “Magic Bullet Theory”—the notion that the first shot which passed through President Kennedy’s neck then entered Governor Connally’s body. Governor and Mrs. Connally and I were all of the same opinion—having been up-close witnesses—that the governor’s wounds were caused by the second shot, the one that did not hit President Kennedy.
But almost immediately there were cries of foul play and accusations of a cover-up. There were indeed discrepancies in the investigation, but the majority of them were due to inconsistent recollections that came out in the chaos of the minutes and hours following the tragedy. No two people will react to a tragedy of such magnitude in the same way, or remember the events exactly the same. Just as Mrs. Kennedy had no recollection of climbing onto the trunk of the car, in spite of the undeniable photographic evidence. But despite the lack of concrete evidence of a conspiracy, people did not want to believe that one person—an insignificant loner—could have the power to take the life of our beloved president.
For those of us on the White House Detail, the report didn’t change anything. President Kennedy was dead. We had failed. I had failed. And I would have to live with that for the rest of my life.
NOT LONG AFTER the release of the Warren Report, I was notified that immediately following the presidential election in November I would be transferred to a new assignment. I was not given any indication where I might be sent, but I assumed it would be a field office somewhere far from Washington, where I’d return to doing investigations.
I didn’t have much interaction with the agents on the White House Detail anymore, but I would read in the newspaper that President Johnson was traveling here and there as the campaign heated up, and I knew the guys had their hands full. One day, I got word that President Johnson was coming to New York City and wanted to stop by 1040 Fifth Avenue to pay his respects to Mrs. Kennedy.