by Hill, Clint
Bob Newbrand continued on the detail protecting Ted Kennedy until it was disbanded. We never saw any indication that any information the administration was seeking was passed to the White House by this agent. He finished his protective assignment and returned to his field office, maintaining the Secret Service pledge to be worthy of trust and confidence.
WHEN I WAS selected to be assistant director, I needed to choose a deputy. I needed someone I could trust, someone who had the best interests of the Secret Service at heart, someone willing to put in the long, tedious hours required. One agent had always been there when help was needed—my old pal Paul Rundle. During the summer of 1962, when I was the only agent with Mrs. Kennedy, he had stepped in and assisted, working overtime just to help me. And then, that awful morning, knowing I had been to hell and back, Rundle was waiting there on the steps of the North Portico when we brought President Kennedy’s body back to the White House. I would never forget him asking, “Clint, is there anything I can do?”
Now Rundle was the SAIC in Denver, Colorado, and while I knew he and Peggy were happy there, I hoped I could convince him to return to Washington. I picked up the phone and dialed his number.
“Paul, it’s Clint. How are things going?”
“C.J.! How the hell are you?”
“I’m doing fine, Paul, and you? How are Peggy and the kids?”
He gave me some line about how tough it was out in the field. The perfect opening.
“Well, that’s why I’m calling. Just want to make your life a bit easier. Would you be willing to move back to D.C. and fill the Deputy Assistant Director of Protective Forces job? I could really use your help.”
He knew as well as I did that this would not, as I had facetiously said, be an easier job. Especially in an election year. It was likely he’d be away from his family for weeks, if not months, at a time. It was, however, a nice promotion.
“Gee, Clint,” he said. “I don’t know. We love it back home here in Colorado. I don’t know if I want to leave just now, but I tell you what. Let me think about it, talk to Peggy, and I’ll call you back.”
“Of course, Paul. See what Peggy says.” And then, I added once again, “I sure could use your help.”
We hung up, and I anxiously awaited his call. A few hours later, he called back.
“Clint,” he said. “Peggy says she is willing to make the move, so count me in.”
I was so relieved. I really did need help. I wasn’t coping well, and I needed someone who had my back. “Thanks, Paul. I am really looking forward to having you join me at headquarters.”
The first job I had for Paul was to head up the security arrangements for both the 1972 Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Initially the Republicans had selected San Diego for their convention site, partially because it was close to San Clemente, Nixon’s Western White House. Meanwhile, the Democrats selected Miami Beach. Then a problem developed with San Diego. A newspaper report claimed that a large corporate donation to help fund the convention in San Diego was linked to political favors from the Nixon administration, and three months before the convention, after months of planning, the Republicans switched the site to Miami Beach.
This last-minute change actually made it easier for us in the Secret Service: both conventions in the same city, using the same facility, just at different times. The Democrats would go first, from July 10 to 13, followed by the Republicans, from August 21 to 23. We didn’t know for sure what to expect. Would there be riots like at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968? Would the antiwar protestors show up for the Republicans? Or the Democrats? Intelligence was working overtime to get as much information as possible, but it was difficult to predict what might happen.
BY MID-JUNE, WE seemed to have things pretty well under control after the chaos following the Wallace shooting and the additional protective assignments that had been thrust upon us. We had more candidates to protect than truly needed it, but someone else made that decision, not us. We simply had to ensure the implementation of securing all of them.
In the early morning hours of June 17, I was asleep in my bedroom in Alexandria when the White House phone next to my bed started ringing.
I picked up the receiver, and the voice on the other end said, “Mr. Hill?”
“Yes, this is Clint Hill.”
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” said the agent on duty, “but a situation has developed we thought you should be aware of.”
“Okay, what is it?”
“The D.C. police have arrested five men for breaking into Democratic chairman Larry O’Brien’s office.”
“Okay. Good. Glad they got them. What does this have to do with the Secret Service?”
“Well,” he responded, “one of them had some identification on him that indicates he is affiliated with the Nixon reelection committee.”
“Do you have the names of the men?”
“Yes, sir. The names are Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis, and James W. McCord.”
I didn’t recognize any of the names, but I said, “Okay, let me see what I can find out. Thanks for letting me know.”
I got out of bed, lit a cigarette—that was always the first thing I did when I got up in the morning—and then walked into the kitchen, wondering if I should call anyone at this hour. The sun wasn’t up yet, so I decided to wait for a while and then call Pat Boggs. He had a close relationship with White House staff members and would know if the burglary or any of the men involved should be cause for concern.
When I got him on the line, he answered in a grumpy voice, “Boggs.”
“Pat, it’s Clint.”
“What’s happening?” he asked, knowing I wouldn’t call at that hour if it wasn’t something important.
“I received a call from the duty agent a short while ago. There has been a break-in and attempted burglary of Larry O’Brien’s office at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate. Five men have been arrested.”
“What has that got to do with us?” he asked.
“I have the names of the five men and I don’t recognize any of them, but one of them was apparently carrying a Committee to Re-Elect the President ID on him.”
I read him the names, and as soon as I said the last one, James W. McCord, Boggs erupted with a flurry of obscenities.
Jim McCord happened to be the security director for the Committee to Re-Elect the President—commonly referred to as CREEP. He was former CIA and FBI, and was presently running his own private security firm. That rang a bell, and then I remembered that I had been introduced to McCord one time by Al Wong, our technical security Agent in Charge. As far as I was concerned, I had passed off the information to the appropriate person, and I couldn’t see how the incident would relate to my department, or me, at all.
I turned out to be wrong.
MY FOCUS RETURNED to the conventions. The Miami Beach police force at that time had only about twenty-five officers, but the chief, Rocky Pomerance, was affable and cooperative, as were the other agencies in the area. Rundle and the SAIC in Miami coordinated a formidable force between the Miami Beach police, the Miami police, the Dade County Sheriff, the Florida State Police, and the Florida National Guard to ensure that we had adequate law enforcement should any unforeseen situations arise at either of the conventions.
First up was the Democratic National Convention. It was a typical madhouse, as thousands of banner-waving, crazy-hat-wearing people from all over the country filled the Miami Beach Convention Center. There was minimal disruption by antiwar protestors, and the end result was that Senator George McGovern of South Dakota was selected as the presidential nominee, with Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his vice-presidential running mate.
Within a few weeks, however, it was revealed that Eagleton had had a number of psychiatric episodes and treatments, and McGovern wanted him off the ticket. Eagleton withdrew, and the McGovern people selected Sargent Shriver—Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s husband. This
meant another adjustment for the Secret Service as we pulled our detail off Eagleton and assigned a new one to Shriver.
I had some concerns about what might happen at the Republican convention, so I decided to go down there ahead of time and see how things were shaping up. I wanted to see firsthand how well we had planned for all the contingencies. When I was down there, I found a good deal on a short-term rental apartment, so I flew Gwen and the boys down so they could have a mini-vacation on the beach while I was working. I remained at the hotel and convention site nearly the entire time, but managed to get away one night to go out for a nice steak dinner with the whole family.
The Republicans had more demonstrators to contend with than the Democrats, but fortunately there were just some minor skirmishes. The various protestors tried to disrupt the events, and while it was much less contentious than the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, they were ultimately unsuccessful, thanks to the precautions set up by Rundle and his team. The ticket of Nixon-Agnew prevailed, and we in the Secret Service were relieved that the national conventions were finally over, leaving the number of candidates we had to protect down to a manageable four. Only about twelve more weeks before the 1972 political season would be behind us.
AS PRESIDENT NIXON and Vice President Agnew campaigned around the United States, demonstrations against the Vietnam War continued unabated, despite the fact that the number of troops we had in Southeast Asia had diminished dramatically. In the past two years, as a result of the Nixon Doctrine, troop levels were reduced from 334,600 in 1970 to 156,800 in 1971, and at the time of the election there were just 24,200 troops in Vietnam. The withdrawal corresponded with an increase in U.S. air strikes against the North Vietnamese, and this progress was clearly resonating with the voters.
On November 7, 1972, the American people voted overwhelmingly in favor of Nixon and Agnew, giving the Republicans nearly 61 percent of the popular vote, with less than 38 percent going to McGovern and Shriver. It was an extremely large margin of victory, with the Democrats winning just one state—Massachusetts—and the District of Columbia.
At that moment, it was utterly inconceivable what was about to unfold.
35
* * *
A White House in Turmoil
Two reporters from the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, had been following the developments from the Watergate break-in, and their stories indicated that there might be some association between some members of the White House staff and the men being indicted. The question of large sums of money being paid to people to remain quiet was also being raised. In addition to the five men caught in Larry O’Brien’s office, two others had been arrested—G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt. I still didn’t have a firm grasp on how this was going to play out. All I knew was that we, the Secret Service, had no part in it.
In December 1972, we were notified by the SAIC of the Truman Protective Division that eighty-eight-year-old former President Harry S. Truman, who had been suffering from ill health for some time, had been hospitalized near his home in Independence, Missouri. Director Rowley was the SAIC of the White House Detail during the Truman administration and had been quite close to both President and Mrs. Truman, so I notified him immediately.
The morning of Tuesday, December 26, 1972, we got word that President Truman had died. The Truman family wanted the funeral services to take place in Independence and to be subdued and kept rather private. Truman had been known as a plain speaker, and a state funeral was not his style.
In 1948, when Truman ran against Republican Tom Dewey, a campaign supporter shouted out at a rally, “Give ’em hell, Harry!” To which Truman replied, “I don’t give them hell, I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s hell.” He was also known to have said “The buck stops here” and “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
President Nixon flew to Missouri on December 28, and after placing a wreath at the casket of former President Truman, he paid his respects to Mrs. Truman, daughter Margaret and her husband, Clifton Daniel, and their children.
It was around this time that Vice President Agnew, after living in a hotel for four years, bought a new home in Kenwood, Maryland. This meant we would have to secure that residence—which required a great deal of money that had not been budgeted for that fiscal year. I still thought the government would be better off purchasing a nice home on a nice piece of property in the Washington area that could serve as the permanent residence for the Vice President of the United States. As it was, we had to do a survey and provide an estimate of everything that needed to be done to make this new residence meet our security standards.
THE JANUARY 20, 1973, Inauguration was fast approaching, and the Presidential Protective Division and the Vice Presidential Protective Division had their advance personnel working with the Inaugural committee and its staff. One advantage the Secret Service has is that every four years this event is pretty much a reproduction of what transpired four years prior. There are not many changes in schedule or activity, and in the case of an incumbent president taking the oath again, everything is much simpler, with no transition necessary. One unique feature at this Inauguration, however, was that because it had been less than thirty days since the death of President Truman, the flag at the top of the Capitol was still flying at half-staff.
On January 19, the night before the Inauguration, President Nixon and his family attended a concert at the Kennedy Center; then, on January 20, there was the usual swearing-in at the Capitol; a luncheon; an Inaugural Parade; and Inaugural Balls—five of them—that evening. In my position as the AD, I stayed in the Secret Service command center so I could oversee all the operations and make adjustments if needed.
Once again antiwar demonstrators posed a problem. Even though much had been done to withdraw from Vietnam and it was a steady work in progress, the antiwar crowd never seemed satisfied and wouldn’t be until all the troops were withdrawn, all bombing stopped, and hostilities ceased. About sixty thousand protestors were kept well away from the parade route, but a small group managed to get close, and when President and Mrs. Nixon rode by, standing halfway out the roof of the limousine, the protestors hurled oranges and apples and other debris at them. Fortunately, none of the fruit met its mark.
TWO DAYS AFTER the Inauguration, the SAIC of the Johnson Protective Detail called and advised me that former President Johnson had died at his home on the LBJ Ranch in Texas of an apparent heart attack. I knew he had been having some health difficulties and he wasn’t taking good care of himself, but I was still shocked and saddened by the news. He was just sixty-four years old.
There was a public viewing at the LBJ Library in Austin on January 23 and 24, and then President Johnson’s body was flown to Andrews Air Force Base aboard USAF 26000, the same plane on which he had taken the oath of office in 1963 and subsequently in which he traveled the world. A motorcade brought the body to Constitution Avenue, south of the White House, and there it was transferred to a horse-drawn caisson for the slow march to the Capitol.
The president’s body lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda overnight as thousands came to pay their respects. At the formal funeral services in National City Christian Church in Washington the next day, I stood in the back and looked around the room, seeing many familiar faces—people whom President Johnson would have been humbled to know had come to pay their respects: Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower, Robert McNamara, numerous civil rights leaders, members of Congress and Supreme Court justices, and so many others who had served loyally with him. President and Mrs. Nixon and the Agnews sat in the front row on one side, while Mrs. Johnson, Luci, Lynda, their husbands, and five-and-a-half-year-old Lyn Nugent—the little boy who brought so much joy to President Johnson during some of his darkest days—sat across the aisle.
I flew with the family aboard Air Force 26000 to take the body back to Texas, where LBJ was placed in his final resting place, in the family cemetery at his beloved LBJ Ranch. Following the interment, M
rs. Johnson had a reception in the house, and I was pleased to be able to express my condolences to her personally, as well as on behalf of the entire U.S. Secret Service.
I had intended to return to Washington by commercial aircraft later that night or early the next morning. When I was at the ranch, however, I happened to be talking with the crew of the JetStar assigned to the vice president and learned that they had flown some officials to Bergstrom Air Force Base from Washington, and were returning to Washington with no passengers aboard.
The pilot said, “Why don’t you ride back with us, Clint?”
I gladly accepted. Then a strange thing happened. Jack Valenti, who had been LBJ’s assistant at the White House and was at that time president of the Motion Picture Association of America, approached me.
“Clint,” he said, “I’m trying to find a ride back to Washington. I had hoped to be able to fly back on the big jet, but I was told that the only way they could accommodate me would be on the JetStar.”
And then humbly he added, “And they said that you needed to provide authorization for me to accompany you, since you are the highest-ranking U.S. government official and you have control of the aircraft.”
It was indeed an ironic situation. Jack Valenti, once one of the most influential men at the hand of the President of the United States, was now in the position of needing a favor from me. It turned out that one of President Johnson’s devoted secretaries, Juanita Roberts, also needed a ride, so we flew back to Andrews Air Force Base that evening, just the three of us and the crew aboard the JetStar. It was a quiet, comfortable flight.
In a sad coincidence, President Nixon announced that an agreement had been reached for a cease-fire in Vietnam the night after Johnson died. Two months later, the last U.S. combat troops would leave South Vietnam and the remaining American prisoners of war would be freed, thus ending our direct intervention in the conflict, and the man who would have felt the impact of it deepest of all had not lived to see it come to pass.