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

by Hill, Clint

  Meanwhile, the crowd on Fourteenth Street was growing larger, and the rage was intensifying. We started getting reports of storefront windows being broken and looting taking place, and of police on the street being stoned by angry mobs. Officers around the nation’s capital were preparing for the worst—donning riot helmets, gas masks, and carrying tear gas canisters and billy clubs.

  Shortly before eleven o’clock, two vehicles were torched at a Chevrolet dealership, and then more fires were set off in Columbia Heights, and now throngs of people were moving south on Fourteenth Street toward the White House.

  We in the Secret Service were monitoring the situation closely, not only out of concern for President Johnson’s safety but also how the spreading violence might affect our other protectees, who were scattered around the country. Plans for Dr. King’s funeral in Atlanta were already under way, and a memorial service was scheduled for the following day at Washington National Cathedral. We had grave concerns about President Johnson attending either one, but he was adamant that he needed to be at the memorial service here in Washington.

  It was after midnight when I finally went home to get some rest, but many staff members remained in the White House overnight.

  When I became SAIC, a dedicated phone line with direct access to the White House had been installed in my home. Sometime around two or three o’clock in the morning the White House phone on the nightstand beside my bed rang, waking me out of a deep sleep. I reached for the receiver, put it to my ear, and groggily answered, “Clint Hill.”

  “Clint!” It was President Johnson. He had never called me at home before. “You know we’re going to the memorial service for Dr. King at the National Cathedral tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, listen,” he said. “I want to make sure you have the car get me as close to the door as they possibly can. And I want you to be right next to me the whole time.”

  “Yes, sir. Everything will be taken care of.”

  “I want you to be as close to me as white on rice!”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. President,” I reiterated. “I will stay as close as possible to you at all times.”

  “All right, then; see you in the morning,” he said as the line went dead.

  I tried to get back to sleep, but my mind was restless. It was obvious the president was deeply concerned for his own safety, and frankly, so was I.

  WHEN I ARRIVED at the White House at 6:30 a.m., the city of Washington was smoldering from the overnight fires, and there were already signs that more violence and civil unrest were on the way. President Johnson had called for an urgent meeting with congressional leaders as well as black community leaders in the White House immediately before the memorial service, and then shortly before noon we proceeded by motorcade to National Cathedral.

  We had secured the three-and-a-half-mile route with the help of D.C. Metropolitan Police, and had agents positioned in and around the church. The most precarious points were the moments moving President Johnson out of, and then back into, the limousine. I rode in the right front seat, and as soon as we pulled up to the front of the cathedral I got out and quickly scanned the surroundings to make sure the other agents were in position. I opened the rear door, and as President Johnson emerged from the backseat I was on high alert, my adrenaline flowing, ready to push him back into the car at the merest sign of anything unusual. We moved quickly into the church, and I remained, as promised, always within arm’s reach.

  Thousands of mourners packed the gothic basilica where the previous Sunday Rev. Martin Luther King had preached his last sermon, and after the solemn one-hour service it was time to get back into the car. The detail agents moved in a diamond formation as we filed out of the church with several members of the clergy, while I continued to stay directly behind the president until he was safely back in the armored limousine. We got back to the White House without incident, but by this time rioting was spreading throughout Washington, as well as other cities across America.

  One of the individuals fanning the flame of violence was Stokely Carmichael, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At a news conference, his voice was calm and calculated as he warned “white America” what to expect.

  “When white America killed Dr. King, she declared war on us,” he said. “There will be no crying; there will be no funerals. The rebellions that have been occurring around the cities of this country is just light stuff to what is about to happen.”

  He promised retaliation and warned that “the execution of those deaths will not be in the courtroom—they are going to be in the streets of the United States of America. There no longer needs to be intellectual discussion.” Later, he stood in front of a large crowd and urged every black man to “go home and get your guns.”

  The response was immediate, and within hours hundreds of stores in downtown Washington had been looted and set on fire. With the situation quickly spiraling out of control, President Johnson federalized the D.C. National Guard, called in additional military units to support the 2,800 officers of the Metropolitan Police Department, and brought troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to Andrews Air Force Base to stand by in case they were needed.

  Shortly after one o’clock, the president appeared on live television and radio appealing for peace. From the Fish Room, he once again expressed his shock and sorrow at the loss of Dr. King, and designated Sunday, April 7, as a day of national mourning.

  “My heart went out to his people—especially the young Americans who, I know, must wonder if they are to be denied a fullness of life because of the color of their skin.” He said he remained convinced that the dream of Martin Luther King had not died with him, and he was consulting with Negro leaders to ensure the dream lived on.

  “Men who are white, men who are black,” he said, “must and will join together now as never in the past to let all the forces of division know that America shall not be ruled by the bullet but only by the ballot of free and just men.”

  Washington’s mayor declared a thirteen-hour curfew within the District from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. as five thousand soldiers poured into the streets with bayonets and battle gear. This sudden and overwhelming show of force prompted stores and offices to close, and by three o’clock in the afternoon there was citywide gridlock as panicked commuters tried to get out of the downtown area. Fires were consuming entire blocks of Fourteenth Street, Seventh Street, and H Street, but as firefighters attempted to douse the flames, they were being pelted by rock-throwing protestors.

  In less than twenty-four hours our nation’s capital had turned into a war zone, and similar scenes were playing out in Chicago, Boston, Memphis, Nashville, and Detroit. So many military personnel were brought to D.C. that we were housing some of them in the hallways of the Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House.

  As civil rights leaders and emergency management advisors flowed into and out of the West Wing, I remained in the Secret Service command center at the White House to keep abreast of the situation. Washington Field Office agents were spread out across the city, feeding information back to us and the Intelligence Division.

  Every hour there was some new, more disturbing development, and as darkness fell, I realized there was no way I could leave the White House. I called Gwen and told her to monitor the news and stay inside with the boys. Hopefully I’d be home by Saturday.

  FOR THE NEXT two days, violence raged across America. The air was heavy with smoke, and the smell of tear gas was prevalent as military units patrolled the streets. Fearful storeowners kept shops and restaurants closed; the Cherry Blossom Festival was canceled; and the opening game of major league baseball, which was to have been held in Washington, was postponed. The troop level was over eleven thousand in the District, while six thousand National Guardsmen had been mobilized in Baltimore and another five thousand federal troops sent to Chicago, where nine people had been killed as a result of the rioting. If I wasn’t right in the middle of it, I never would h
ave believed this was happening in the United States of America.

  The morning of Sunday, April 7, newspaper headlines screamed the dire situation across the country:

  NEGRO RIOTERS RAVAGE CITIES

  11,600 TROOPS PATROL D.C.

  “CRISIS” WRACKS BALTIMORE

  With the rioting still not under control, President Johnson had canceled his trip to Hawaii, but the issues in Vietnam couldn’t be set aside, so General Westmoreland flew to Washington instead, and spent much of Sunday morning briefing the president. Johnson had not left the White House since attending the memorial service the day after King’s assassination—largely on our advice—but having declared this the official day of mourning, he decided he wanted to go to church with his daughter Luci and her husband, Pat Nugent. With very little notice, we quickly scrambled an advance crew of agents to secure St. Dominic’s Catholic Church prior to his arrival. Not only was it a day of mourning for King but it was also Palm Sunday, so the church was packed.

  We got the president situated in a pew near the front, which is where he always liked to be, but throughout the service I was concerned about people crowding him when it was time to leave. When the last hymn was over, I whispered, “Let’s move now, Mr. President.”

  In a moving show of respect and understanding, the entire congregation remained seated as the president, Luci, and Pat walked down the aisle and out of the church. Nothing was said, but you could feel the empathy from the people as they looked at the president with warm smiles and nods of solemn encouragement.

  On the way back to the White House, President Johnson told me he wanted to take advantage of General Westmoreland’s helicopter departure that afternoon to view the damage from the riots. He wanted to see for himself exactly which sections of the city were affected, and the extent of the destruction. So after a press conference at the White House, we flew to Andrews Air Force Base, dropped off General Westmoreland and his aides, and then took off for an aerial tour.

  As we flew three hundred feet above Washington, in the restricted area known as P-56, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. President Johnson had his face pressed to the window, and as we circled around the city he simply shook his head with despair. It looked like we were flying over a war zone.

  Spattered throughout the city, whole blocks had been burned to the ground. Charred remains of stores and offices still smoldered, the smoke wafting from the rubble like a filthy cigarette that had been tossed carelessly on the ground beneath the gleaming white monuments of our nation’s capital in indignant disrespect. It was utterly demoralizing. What was happening to our country?

  Forty miles northeast, the city of Baltimore was also having serious arson and looting problems. The governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew, had activated the Maryland National Guard in support of the Baltimore police, but it was not enough to quell the violence, and he requested federal troops.

  Meanwhile, Martin Luther King’s funeral was scheduled for Tuesday, April 9, in Atlanta. President Johnson wanted to go—he felt he needed to be there. FBI director Hoover urged him not to attend, and when President Johnson sought advice from Rufus Youngblood, Lem Johns, and me, we all told him the same thing. The situation was too volatile, emotions were still raw, and the crowd mentality that was sweeping through the black community made for extremely unpredictable circumstances. Finally, realizing that the country could not withstand an attempted assassination of the president at this time, Johnson heeded our advice.

  “All right, fine,” he conceded. “Humphrey can go.”

  Vice President Humphrey was now running for president. We in the Secret Service didn’t like this idea either, but the agents on the VP Detail flew into action, and, working with local law enforcement and the FBI, managed to get Humphrey in and out with no incidents.

  With the intervention of military troops, order was finally restored, but the devastation was extensive. In Washington, D.C., alone, more than 1,200 buildings had been destroyed. Hundreds of businesses had no choice but to close, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs—all in mainly black areas. For President Johnson, after his relentless support of Martin Luther King and the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, seeing the black community torching their own livelihoods and sending portions of cities into economic devastation from which they would not recover for decades was almost more than he could fathom.

  He responded by working harder than ever. The trip to Hawaii was rescheduled for the following week—a whirlwind trip that included talks with President Park Chung-hee of South Korea over the still unresolved Pueblo situation, a meeting with former president General Eisenhower, and then a few days at the LBJ Ranch to recuperate. The weeks and days ahead were filled with nonstop activity: Democratic Party fund-raisers; dropping by a party honoring the speaker of the House of Representatives for ten minutes; on to a party given by a leading congressman and his wife and staying for thirty minutes; returning to the White House for dinner with Mrs. Johnson, often not until 9:30 p.m. or later, taking and making phone calls all the while. The middle-of-the-night phone calls from the president to the Situation Room continued as well, so that the president was often getting just two or three hours of sleep a night. It was not a sustainable regimen, and those closest to the president were deeply concerned about his health and well-being.

  OCCASIONALLY PRESIDENT AND Mrs. Johnson entertained on the Sequoia, the presidential yacht on which Mrs. Kennedy had thrown the raucous party on President Kennedy’s forty-sixth birthday. One Sunday afternoon at the end of May, it was a beautiful, warm spring day in Washington, and the president decided it would be a nice evening for a dinner cruise. He made a bunch of calls, rounding up fourteen guests to join him and Mrs. Johnson on the Sequoia. With very little notice, the White House kitchen had to prepare a full dinner for sixteen and transport it to the yacht.

  We arrived at the pier at around five o’clock, and once everyone was aboard, we set off for a leisurely cruise down the Potomac. I was standing on the outer deck as cocktails and appetizers were being served when I overheard one of the president’s aides tell him that Prime Minister John Gorton of Australia had arrived, as expected, at Andrews Air Force Base, and he and his party were being transported to Blair House.

  “Well, let’s invite them to join us,” the president said. “The more the merrier.”

  Are you kidding me?

  Of course the prime minister accepted the invitation, along with the rest of his party, and suddenly the leisurely cruise turned into an all-hands-on-deck operation as I scrambled to make arrangements for the Australians to board the yacht mid-cruise, while the kitchen staff was left to deal with the problem of ten additional people for dinner.

  Using the yacht’s radio—this was long before cell phones—we arranged to have the Australians board a presidential helicopter on the Ellipse and be flown to the Hunting Towers apartment complex near the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. This little jaunt required the Ellipse to be secured for the helicopter to land, and the fire department to be there in the event of fire; vehicles had to be arranged to bring the party from the landing point to a nearby marina; and then one of the Secret Service boats would bring them to the Sequoia.

  At 7:45 p.m., the ten Australians boarded the Sequoia, dinner was served at 8:10, and by 9:45 we were back at Pier 1 where we had started. I have no idea how the Navy stewards managed to serve twenty-six people for dinner when they had prepared for sixteen, but somehow they made it look effortless, and everyone had a wonderful time.

  President Johnson had invited Prime Minister Gorton to visit the LBJ Ranch, so several days later we were back in Texas. At some time in late 1967 or early 1968, a couple named Ernest and Teet Hobbs had opened a motel on the outskirts of Johnson City, and what a difference that made for the agents. The entire motel consisted of ten basic rooms adjacent to the Hobbses’ living quarters, which meant most of the agents had to sleep two to a room, but the best part about the Hobbs Motel was that it didn
’t require an hour-and-a-half commute back to Austin at the end of an exhausting day’s work.

  President and Mrs. Johnson stayed at the ranch for the next several days, with houseguests coming and going, touring the ranches, and looking for deer. When storms broke out one day, the president turned to me and asked, “Is it sunny over at the lake?”

  I checked, and the weather was indeed clear and sunny, so we left immediately by helicopter for the lake. There was no such thing as sitting still or remaining inactive for President Johnson.

  On June 3, after a long day of visiting the neighboring ranches, we departed Texas at 9:40 in the evening and headed back to Washington, arriving at Andrews Air Force Base shortly after one o’clock in the morning. It was nearly two by the time I got home to bed—just enough time for about four hours of sleep. As it turned out, that would be the most sleep I’d get for several more days to come. Tragedy was about to strike again.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 4, was a typically long and busy day that began with an 8:20 a.m. departure from the White House to Glassboro, New Jersey, where President Johnson made a commencement address. The enthusiasm of the crowd and his reaction to it made it feel like a campaign rally, despite the fact that he was not running for office. When we returned to the White House at around eleven, the South Grounds were prepared for a noontime military arrival ceremony for the president of Costa Rica, so the helicopter landed on the Ellipse.

  A large crowd had gathered outside the White House fence to watch the arrival ceremony, and when the presidential helicopter landed right in front of them, the people started cheering and clapping. We had cars positioned to take the president immediately to the South Grounds, but when President Johnson stepped out of the chopper and heard the people cheering and calling his name, it was like the force of a magnet pulling him toward the adoration, and instead of getting into the waiting limousine, he walked straight into the crowd.