Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey With Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford

by Hill, Clint

  THE LBJ RANCH was the place where President Johnson went to unwind, to relax from the stresses of the office, and he loved his ranch so much, and was so proud of it, that he wanted to share it with everyone. Visitors were constantly coming and going—friends, family, select members of the press, cabinet members, staff, and even heads of state from all over the world.

  When the visitors arrived, which was usually by fixed wing aircraft or helicopter, they invariably were given a tour of the ranch with LBJ as the tour guide, driving his Lincoln convertible or an old fire truck he kept on the premises. It didn’t matter the status of the guest—everyone was treated pretty much the same and given the tour whether they wanted it or not. The agents had another convertible and a station wagon we used as follow-up cars on the ranch, which took a real beating driving at high rates of speed trying to keep up with the president on the rutted dirt roads. The president would take off, never in the same direction twice, suddenly careening across a pasture when he spotted one of his prize bulls.

  “Just look at the size of the balls on that bull!” he’d exclaim with delight. It didn’t matter who was in the car—if there were women present or not—and I often wondered if he was truly reveling with pride, or if he merely loved to see the shocked look on his guests’ faces. While we were stopped, he’d pick up the radio and holler, “Need a little help up here, boys!”

  That was the signal that it was refreshment time. In the morning it was Fresca; in the afternoon, Scotch. Cutty Sark and soda. There was more than one occasion when I mixed the president a drink myself—and learned the hard way that you always, always used a fresh bottle of soda, because he could tell the difference—but we tried as often as possible to have an Air Force steward with us for just that reason. Our job was to protect the man, not be his bartender, but if you refused, you were guaranteed a reassignment off the detail the very next day.

  President Johnson had his own radio system and frequency, which he used to continuously stay in touch with the ranch foreman, other employees, and friends who owned nearby ranches. We monitored the frequency in an attempt to stay abreast of the situation, but you could never predict where he would go or what he’d do next. The Hill Country of Texas was his backyard playground, and while he knew every inch of it, along with everyone who lived there, we did not. There were a number of ranches the president visited frequently, and sometimes we would get to a neighboring ranch by car only to find out he had changed his mind and wanted to go to a different ranch in the opposite direction, by helicopter. We’d have to hightail it to the new destination to get there before the helicopter arrived. He was constantly changing his plans at the last minute, which resulted in enormous, and frustrating, logistics problems.

  The various ranches were separated with barbed wire fencing and gates across the dirt roads to control the livestock, and whenever we’d come upon a closed gate, it was expected that one of the agents would jump out and open the gate to allow the cars to proceed, and then close it after all the vehicles had passed.

  Along with the herds of cattle, the ranch was heavily populated with white-tailed deer, and one of the president’s favorite activities was to take his guests deer hunting. If the president were taking someone hunting, he wanted to make sure they were successful, so he’d have the ranch hands, specifically foreman Dale Malechek, keep him informed of where the deer were located. He also knew, having lived there for years, where the deer were likely to be at any time of the day. This was one activity that got him up and out early in the morning, and he got a real kick out of seeing his guests shoot their own deer.

  I had grown up deer hunting as well, so this was nothing new to me, but in my home state of North Dakota we did things a little differently. We didn’t drive around in cars seeking the deer. We traipsed through woods or lay in a deer stand up in a tree waiting for the deer to come within range. LBJ’s method was a considerably different approach to the sport.

  There were all kinds of creatures that roamed the ranch—armadillos, wild turkeys, skunks, foxes, raccoons—but by far the ones that were the biggest source of anxiety were the peacocks. The guys had warned me about the peacocks, but I really couldn’t believe that such beautiful birds could be as much of a nuisance as they said they were. I was wrong.

  Someone had given President Johnson a few peacocks, and now there were at least a dozen of the large birds wandering freely around the ranch. They seemed to particularly like the area along the river near the main house, and I must say they were a magnificent sight when they spread their iridescent tail feathers into an enormous fan. Despite their size, they built nests high up in the trees, and at night, camouflaged by the leaves and branches of the lush live oaks, this created some terrifying moments for those of us on the midnight shift rotating posts around the house. If you happened to walk too close to one of the nesting trees, you’d suddenly see the giant bird flapping its wings as it wailed a blood-curdling screech that echoed across the lawn. And as if that wasn’t enough to scare the living daylights out of you, the next thing you’d hear was the booming voice of the president, yelling through his open bedroom window, irate as hell that he’d been woken up in the middle of the night.

  “Will you shut those damn birds up!”

  Much as we would have liked to shut them up for good with one clean shot, we resorted to tossing small rocks at them. The idea was to scare them, not necessarily injure, and sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

  The Johnsons also owned a home on Granite Shoals Lake, which was about an hour’s drive from the ranch, but just fifteen or twenty minutes by helicopter. It wasn’t unusual for the president to be entertaining guests and suddenly decide it was a great day to be out on the lake, and invariably he wanted to fly. There wasn’t much room in the U.S. Army Huey, so one agent would climb aboard with the president and his entourage, while the remainder of the shift would speed away in vehicles, attempting to get there in time to meet the chopper. Half the time, though, the president would change his mind midflight and decide to make a stop at a friend’s ranch in the opposite direction. We’d have to scramble to figure out how to get from where we were to the new destination and race to get there before the president landed.

  The president had a motorboat he liked to drive around the lake, so the Navy bought some high-speed Donzis to keep up with President Johnson on the lake in Texas. The first time I went out there, I was surprised to see a familiar face handling the boats. My old friend Jim Bartlett—the U.S. Navy man who had taught me how to water-ski in Hyannis Port and had voluntarily moved my family to our new apartment the week after the assassination—was now in charge of the boats here in Texas. It was great to see him, and whenever we were out on the boats, it brought back memories of the good times we had had at the Cape.

  ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, I left the Commodore Perry Hotel in Austin and drove with my shift out to the LBJ Ranch as usual, not even thinking about the fact that it was Thanksgiving Day. President and Mrs. Johnson spent the day visiting friends—flying by helicopter to the Moursund Ranch for a late lunch, and then on to the Wesley West Ranch, where they spent the afternoon hunting and riding—before returning to the LBJ Ranch to entertain a houseful of guests for a late Thanksgiving dinner. Usually we were able to get something to eat from a restaurant in Stonewall, near the LBJ Ranch, but on this day, no such luck. Everything was closed. It was a bleak and miserable day without food, but at least we learned a lesson that we had to be self-sustaining on holidays at the ranch.

  On November 29, President Johnson returned to Washington, and my first trip to the LBJ Ranch was over. It had been an interesting and enlightening introduction to my new boss.

  I WAS RELIEVED to be back in Washington, able to sleep in my own bed and to have a ten-minute commute, at least for the next three weeks. This was also my first opportunity to observe how President Johnson operated in the White House—which, not surprisingly, was vastly different from either Eisenhower or Kennedy.

  President Joh
nson spent most mornings making and receiving telephone calls from the second-floor residence. Various staff members would arrive at the White House for a meeting, only to be summoned upstairs to the president’s bedroom, where he was likely still in his pajamas. Unless there was a morning function at which his presence was required, he usually didn’t go to the Oval Office until at least 11:00 a.m. Another major difference I noticed in this president’s routine was his eating habits. It was almost always breakfast in bed, or at least in the bedroom; lunch was a maybe because he sometimes just kept on going; and dinner was usually very late. Often he would work late into the evening and then eat. By late, I mean sometime around ten o’clock or later. Knowing this was not conducive to good health, Mrs. Johnson tried her best to get him on a regular schedule, to no avail.

  Unlike his predecessors, LBJ did not have a regular exercise routine. No afternoon golf like President Eisenhower or daily swims like President Kennedy. When he was at the ranch, he did use the outdoor swimming pool rather frequently, but it was more to cool off and relax than to exercise. And while he might not have been particularly active physically, his mind was in constant motion—listening, absorbing, thinking, plotting, planning, directing—from the moment he awoke to the moment he fell asleep. His workdays were long, and it wasn’t unusual for him to call a senator or congressman at eleven o’clock in the evening—irrespective of any time zone difference, so that it might be two or three hours later on the recipient’s end—after which he’d be so wound up, he’d call for one of the Navy medical corpsmen to give him a “rub”—his term for a massage.

  PRESIDENT AND MRS. Johnson planned to spend Christmas and New Year’s at the ranch, but with the end of the year fast approaching, there was still plenty of unfinished national business. No problem. LBJ simply moved his office from the banks of the Potomac to the banks of the Pedernales, bringing his cabinet along with him.

  Three days before Christmas, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and all the members of the Joint Chiefs flew to the ranch to finalize the 1965 defense budget and to discuss urgent matters concerning the escalating war in Vietnam. President Johnson held court in his living room as his secretarial staff took notes and kept the coffee cups filled. It was a beautiful sunny day—warm for December—so after lunch, President Johnson suggested they continue their discussion outside. He called for someone to bring out some chairs, while the Joint Chiefs gathered up their briefcases and file folders.

  LBJ, dressed in his ranch clothes, slumped down comfortably into one of the webbed folding chairs like this was a perfectly normal setting to decide critical issues affecting the American people and the world, while Chairman General Earle Wheeler; U.S. Army General Harold Johnson, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral David McDonald, and General Curtis LeMay—all in full military dress—looked decidedly out of place, huddled around the splintered picnic table in the flimsy chairs, holding down stacks of classified information so the pages didn’t scatter in the breeze.

  By Christmas Eve, the official guests had come and gone, leaving just the family, a few staff members, and the Secret Service. Then on Christmas Day, the press descended on the ranch to photograph the first family and to follow them to church services in Fredericksburg. After the photos at the house were finished, President Johnson walked out the back door with Mrs. Johnson, Luci, and Lynda.

  “Goin’ to church, boys!” he hollered as he plunked down into the driver’s seat of his white Lincoln convertible. Now, the road to Fredericksburg was a well-traveled highway, and our preference, and strong recommendation to the president, was for an agent to drive him and his family in one of our cars, with a Secret Service follow-up car trailing behind, but the president would have none of it.

  “That is ridiculous,” he said. “I’m driving my own damn car to church, and you boys can follow me.”

  During the course of the next four years, I would spend countless weeks at the LBJ Ranch, including every Thanksgiving and Christmas, and no matter how much turmoil the world might be in, President Johnson always insisted on driving himself to church.

  21

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  Inauguration 1965

  Having won the 1964 election against Republican candidate Barry Goldwater with 61.1 percent of the popular vote, Lyndon Johnson finally felt validated. He hadn’t just inherited the presidency; now he had earned it. It was the largest popular referendum since 1820, and in fact no president since Johnson has won with a larger majority. Not only had he nurtured America through the dark aftermath of the assassination of JFK, but he had moved forward like a steam train, passing numerous bills to protect the environment and improve everyday life for all Americans, most notably using his unrivaled knowledge of the democratic system and powers of persuasion to pass the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964. And now he had four more years ahead of him to make even bigger changes.

  Although Lyndon Johnson was the third president I had served, this would be my first time participating in a Presidential Inauguration and I felt privileged to be a part of it. Coming on the heels of the assassination, however, the 1965 Inauguration was the single biggest security challenge the Secret Service had ever faced, and planning had been under way for months. The two-mile stretch between the Capitol and the White House was checked and rechecked multiple times, with every building on Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues inspected and every window along the route ordered to be closed. Manhole covers were sealed, agents would be flying in helicopters overhead, and for the first time a three-sided barrier of bulletproof glass was installed around the podium where Johnson and his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, would take their oaths.

  There was an inch of snow on the ground the morning of January 20, under cloudy skies with temperatures in the 30s, but despite the frigid air, 1.2 million people had come to witness the historic event—the largest crowd ever for an Inauguration.

  At 12:03 p.m. President Lyndon Baines Johnson stood in front of the podium on the East Portico of the Capitol, with Mrs. Johnson close by his side, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and, to the best of his abilities, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me, God.

  The audience in the Capitol plaza rose to its feet, clapping in the cold, and as I scanned the crowd, I couldn’t help but think what a starkly different scene it was from the last time I had heard Lyndon Johnson utter those same words, in the sweltering cabin of Air Force One, with Mrs. Kennedy still in a state of shock, still covered in her husband’s blood, standing nobly by his side. So help me, God.

  After a twenty-two-minute Inaugural Address, there was a luncheon in the Capitol, followed by the Inaugural Parade. Four years earlier, President and Mrs. Kennedy had ridden the entire length of the parade in an open-top car as a million spectators waved and cheered. Now, for the first time in America’s history, the president was relegated to riding in an enclosed vehicle, and although it may be hard to believe, the car in which President Johnson rode through the streets of Washington, D.C., on January 20, 1965, was the same car in which his predecessor had been assassinated.

  After being transported from Dallas back to Washington in a C-130, guarded continuously by Secret Service agents, SS-100-X had been scrupulously inspected for evidence and then sent back to the Hess & Eisenhardt facility in Cincinnati to be refurbished. Because the Secret Service had a lack of vehicles, and because it would have taken two or three years to design and build a brand-new car—at a much higher cost—the decision was made to take what we had and improve it. A nonremovable roof made of bulletproof glass was installed, along with titanium plating in the trunk and around the backseat area; the floor was reconstructed of steel to withstand a grenade attack; and all the windows were replaced with thick bulletproof glass. The additional weight required a new and more powerful engine, and an additional air-conditioning unit was installed to compensate for the greenhouse effect of all the thick glass. Finally, at President Johnson’s r
equest, the exterior paint color was changed from midnight-blue to black. The refurbished car had been put back into use in May 1964, but because I had been with Mrs. Kennedy up until November, this Inaugural Parade was the first time I had worked a motorcade with the car since that day in Dallas.

  The sun had broken through the clouds as the procession began shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon, with a phalanx of police motorcycles leading the way from the Capitol down Pennsylvania Avenue. President Johnson waved and smiled at the cheering crowd from behind the bulletproof window in the rear seat of the shiny black Lincoln limousine.

  Overshadowing the president, however, was the intimidating entourage of Secret Service agents—some armed with assault rifles—strategically positioned like a small militia around and behind the presidential vehicle. Agent Bill Greer was driving, with Special Agent in Charge Rufus Youngblood in the front passenger seat, while six agents conspicuously surrounded the car. Two agents stood like hawks on the platform on the back, two others walked in line with the front bumper, another agent walked on the right rear side next to President Johnson, and then there was me. By sheer coincidence or cruel irony, I had been assigned to the left rear of the car, next to the first lady.