by Hill, Clint
That evening, December 18, 1959, President Eisenhower arrived in Paris at 10:30 p.m. after a nine-hour train trip from Toulon.
The purpose of this visit was a summit of the leaders of the four largest Western countries—Charles de Gaulle, Eisenhower, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Britain, and West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer—and was dubbed the Four Power Conference. The goal was to outline a plan for a future East-West summit with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and to come up with a solid allied Western front on nuclear disarmament, unifying Germany, and the status of West Berlin, which was isolated far inside Communist East Germany.
To have the four most important people in the free world together in one place required careful choreography between the various security groups. The biggest problems I had during this visit to France were my inability to speak French and the inability of most French security officials to speak English. Relying on hand gestures to communicate became a necessity as we worked together on security matters.
The Secret Service had flown one of our own cars—a large, heavy convertible with a distinctive glass-domed roof—to transport the president in Paris. This vehicle, which we called “4-B,” was a Lincoln sedan originally built in 1950 for President Harry S. Truman, but the see-through roof was actually President Eisenhower’s idea. Apparently, Ike was riding in the convertible on the way back to Washington from Richmond, Virginia, in May 1954, and it started raining. The agents put the canvas roof on the car to keep the president from getting soaked, but by doing this the hundreds of spectators along the route couldn’t see him. This really bothered Ike, who liked seeing the crowds, but more important, wanted them to have the opportunity to see him—especially during the presidential campaign. He suggested the car should have a glass roof for inclement weather, and the idea was turned over to the Ford Motor Company engineering group. The “all weather” top, made of four clear Plexiglas sections that fit together with aluminum bars, and which could be stored conveniently in the trunk, was delivered three months later. Additionally, a light was installed behind the center armrest so the president could be seen more clearly at night. The Secret Service had had little to do with the design, and nothing on the car was bulletproof. Indeed, President Eisenhower preferred to use the car as an open convertible whenever possible so he could stand up and be even more visible to people viewing the motorcade. Ike used the car extensively during the 1956 presidential campaign and during the 1957 Inaugural Parade, during which he stood in the open car the entire route through downtown Washington.
Here in Paris there were no grand parades or motorcades organized to generate crowds, but the eyes of the world were on the leaders’ every move as they met Saturday at the Élysée Palace, de Gaulle’s residence, and on Sunday at the Château de Rambouillet, thirty miles outside the city.
For me, it was a fascinating learning experience to see how heads of state and governments worked together for the betterment of all their people. I was pleased to see the respect each had for one another, knowing they all had different philosophies, but also realizing that if these men did not work together toward a common goal, the result could be the end of humanity as we knew it. They all bore heavy burdens, and took them seriously. In the end, each of the four Western leaders sent letters to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev inviting him to the first of a series of summit meetings to “consider international questions of mutual concern.”
When President Eisenhower departed Paris the afternoon of Monday, December 21, on Air Force One, it was clear that the long days of negotiation had been arduous, but nevertheless he was pleased that they’d been able to move forward on talks with the Soviets. We still had two more stops on his peace and friendship tour, so there was no time for any of us to rest. Next stop: Madrid, Spain.
MADRID
The two-hour flight from Paris to Madrid gave me the chance to study the protective survey report for Madrid and prepare myself mentally for what challenges lay ahead. We would be landing at Torrejón Air Base and were expecting huge crowds along the motorcade route into Madrid, because this was the first time an American president had ever visited Spain, and it was not without controversy.
His Excellency Francisco Franco Bahamonde—commonly referred to as Generalissimo Franco—had been ruling by dictatorship since 1939 and was a pariah throughout Europe, for, although Spain was officially neutral in World War II, Franco did not hide his support for Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. During his tenure, thousands of political opponents had been suppressed or killed. Because of its strategic location in defense against the Soviet Union, however, the United States had brokered a deal that allowed us to build three air bases and a naval base on Spanish soil in return for financial aid to Franco’s regime. When word leaked of Eisenhower’s planned tour through Asia and Europe, which originally did not include a stop in Spain, Franco took it as an insult and threatened that the future of the U.S. bases could be in jeopardy. Subsequently, the president decided to add the one-day stop in Madrid to the schedule, which, to many, appeared to be a U.S. stamp of approval on Franco’s politics.
It was 4:30 in the afternoon when we landed, and there to greet President Eisenhower was the usual reception committee, headed by Generalissimo Franco himself, in full military dress. Our Secret Service car 4-B had been flown to Madrid, and although it was quite cold, with a brisk wind blowing, only the rear portion of the bubble top was in place, allowing the middle section to remain open so the two leaders could stand and wave to the crowds if they desired. The purpose of the motorcade was, after all, to allow the people of Madrid to see President Eisenhower, and in return the city had made every effort to impress. Huge canvas photos of Eisenhower were draped from arches and buildings; on the side of the tallest building in the city, lights ten stories high spelled out IKE; and a plaza had even been renamed Plaza del Presidente Eisenhower.
As we made our way into the city, the crowds grew larger and larger—police estimated one and a half million spectators in this city of two million—and despite the raw wind, President Eisenhower stood the entire way, his arms outstretched, his face beaming at the jubilant reception. People were hanging out windows and lined up on rooftops and balconies, waving white handkerchiefs like they were cheering on a matador in a bullring and chanting “Ee-kay! Ee-kay!”—their way of saying Ike. It was wild.
A cordon of soldiers dressed in ankle-length wool topcoats, many of them armed with submachine guns, kept the exuberant crowds in order, but still the adrenaline was running high for those of us in the follow-up car, scanning the masses of people, searching for any sign of antagonism or that lone individual who just didn’t fit.
After an hour and forty-five minutes, we finally reached the Moncloa Palace, where President Eisenhower would stay the night. We got him secured in his suite and took our posts outside the doors. He had just a couple of hours to rest and get changed for the formal state dinner in his honor.
I had learned that the Europeans eat dinner much later than we Americans do, but here in Spain, dinner often didn’t start until ten o’clock. The dinner for President Eisenhower was scheduled to begin at nine at another palace, the Oriente, about three miles away, so we had one shift of agents move ahead to the Oriente while one shift stayed with the president.
The Oriente Palace contains the largest square footage within its walls of any palace in Europe. With 870 windows, 240 balconies, and 44 staircases in its 1,450,000-square-foot floor area, it was immense—and impossible for us to secure on our own. We had to rely on the Spanish security forces to secure the outer perimeter, while we stationed agents only in the areas where the president would be.
It wasn’t until after eleven o’clock that we finally got President Eisenhower tucked into his suite back at the Moncloa Palace, and those of us who had been on duty all day were relieved by the midnight shift.
Morning came early, as the schedule called for another rigorous day.
CASABLANCA
Every country we visited on t
his trip had been an eye-opening experience for me, but our seven hours on the ground in Morocco were certainly the wildest and most exotic.
It was 11:20 a.m. when we touched down at Nouasseur Air Base, a U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command base outside Casablanca, and waiting to greet President Eisenhower was Morocco’s King Mohammed V. The king wore a peaked cap and was dressed in a long, hooded, brown wool cloak, known as a burnoose, and if I hadn’t been briefed, I never would have picked him out as the king, simply judging by his attire. The two leaders greeted each other warmly, and after a brief formal reception, Eisenhower and King Mohammed got into the back of a white Lincoln convertible for the motorcade into downtown Casablanca.
As we exited the air base, it felt like we were driving through a movie set for the Arabian Nights. The streets were lined with people of all ages, dressed in traditional Moroccan attire—women in long robes and headscarves of all colors, with white kerchiefs veiled across their faces, wailing with a shrill noise that sounded like “luh-luh-luh-luh-luh,” while scraggly-bearded men, also in long robes, each with a dagger at his waist, cheered and waved. But most striking of all were the Berber tribesmen—hundreds of them—who had ridden from their villages on horseback and were galloping along the roadside, firing rifles into the air as they lined up in formation to welcome the American president.
Watching from the follow-up car as President Eisenhower stood in the open car directly in front of us, waving and holding his arms out in appreciation, I was about as tense as I had ever been. The crowd was jubilant and welcoming, but with all those rifles firing into the air, I couldn’t help but imagine how quickly the situation could turn to disaster if one man decided to turn his gun on the president. It would be so easy, and there would be nothing we could do to stop it.
The motorcade stopped at the Town Hall where President Eisenhower was presented with dates and milk, followed by a luncheon at the palace and a private meeting between the leaders and their staffs. It was estimated that at least 500,000 Moroccans had come out to welcome Ike in a demonstration that surpassed anything I’d ever witnessed in my life. All the agents breathed a sigh of relief when we finally got the president back on Air Force One without incident.
Shortly after six in the evening, we were airborne, and after a brief refueling stop in Gander, Newfoundland, we touched down at Andrews Air Force Base at 11:30 p.m. on December 22, 1959. We had traveled 22,000 miles in nineteen days and visited eleven nations, and the president had appeared before millions upon millions of people who embraced him as a “prince of peace.” Everyone who had been on the trip, from the staff to the press to the agents, was worn ragged, and while we were all happy to be back on American soil, there was no denying that President Eisenhower’s effort had not only increased his personal popularity but also had raised the image of the United States in the eyes of all those we encountered. Diplomatically, he had strengthened relations with a number of countries, and there were high hopes that the East-West summit meeting in Paris scheduled for the spring could move the world closer to peace.
For me, personally, it had been an amazing adventure. To think that that was my first trip outside the United States. I was filled with pride and love for my country, and enormously humbled to be a Special Agent in the U.S. Secret Service. How did this kid from North Dakota get so lucky?
It was wonderful to see Gwen and Chris, to sleep in my own bed, and to be home in time for Christmas. I was eager to tell Gwen about everything I’d seen, but at the same time I realized that no matter how vividly I described what I had experienced, there was no way she could understand what it had really been like. I was cautious about what I shared with her—not for worry of divulging anything secret—but because the last thing I wanted was for her to get the impression that I’d been on a glamorous European holiday while she was at home taking care of all the household chores and parenting our son all on her own. So, in a way that was typical of my staunch Norwegian upbringing, I said very little.
Fortunately, Paul Rundle’s wife, Peggy, had introduced Gwen to the other White House Detail wives, and the women got together regularly for bridge games and lunches at one another’s apartments. Like the men on the detail, our wives developed a camaraderie because they were all in the same situation. With husbands gone for weeks at a time, they relied on one another for emotional support as well as sharing supermarket coupons, reciprocal babysitting, and casserole recipes.
I was back on duty at the White House the next day, and four days later, on Sunday, December 27, I was on a plane headed for Augusta, Georgia, where the president and Mrs. Eisenhower would spend the rest of the holidays. New Year’s Eve 1959 was a quiet night at Augusta National, and for the agents it was a relief not to be going somewhere, fighting a crowd. We appreciated the lack of excitement.
On January 4, as I walked along the serene golf course carrying a bag with two old golf clubs and a .30-caliber carbine—a world away from the Berber tribesmen, the elephant-dung fires in India, and the Four Power meeting in Paris—I thought back on all I had experienced in the past year and realized I had become an eyewitness to history in the making. It was my twenty-eighth birthday, and little did I know, the history had only just begun.
4
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The South American Tour
On January 5, 1960, President Eisenhower played one last round of golf at Augusta, and then we flew back to Washington. Congress was about to reconvene, and it was time for the annual State of the Union address.
All of us on the detail had well-tanned faces, having spent so many hours on the golf course in the mild Georgia weather, and that didn’t go over too well with our wives, who had spent New Year’s without husbands in frigid Washington temperatures. Additionally, we had just learned that President Eisenhower was so pleased with the results of the eleven-nation tour that plans were already under way for a similar trip to South America at the end of February.
President Eisenhower had spent a great deal of time working on his State of the Union speech to the American people. It was important for him to lay out the problems that faced the United States in no uncertain terms, but also to stress that he would not slow down in his quest for global peace and protection of the free world.
“Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 86th Congress,” he began. “Seven years ago I entered my present office with one long-held resolve overriding all others. I was then, and remain now, determined that the United States shall become an ever more potent resource for the cause of peace—realizing that peace cannot be for ourselves alone, but for peoples everywhere.
“First, I point out that for us, annual self-examination is made a definite necessity by the fact that we now live in a divided world of uneasy equilibrium, with our side committed to its own protection and against aggression by the other. With both sides of this divided world in possession of unbelievably destructive weapons, mankind approaches a state where mutual annihilation becomes a possibility. No other fact of today’s world equals this in importance—it colors everything we say, plan, and do.”
It was true. The fear of nuclear war was ever present, hovering like fog in every American’s mind, and Eisenhower realized that maintaining our military strength was imperative to sustaining freedom in pursuit of world peace.
“America possesses an enormous defense power,” he said, with the tone of the general who knew its capabilities. “It is my studied conviction that no nation will ever risk general war against us unless we should be so foolish as to neglect the defense forces we now so powerfully support. It is world-wide knowledge that any nation which might be tempted today to attack the United States, even though our country might sustain great losses, would itself promptly suffer a terrible destruction. But I once again assure all peoples and all nations that the United States, except in defense, will never turn loose this destructive power.”
Along with our military defenses, it was critical, President Eisenhower said, to offer aid to emerging nations whose ver
y survival depended on foreign assistance, and which at this moment were being courted by both the Western allies and the Soviets.
“If we grasp this opportunity to build an age of productive partnership with less fortunate nations and those that have already achieved a high state of economic advancement, we will make brighter the outlook for a world order based upon security, freedom, and peace. Otherwise, the outlook could be dark indeed.”
He touched on his support of investing in space exploration and also urged the Democratic-controlled Congress to take under serious consideration his recommended legislation regarding civil rights. In closing, President Eisenhower referred to his eleven-nation tour.
“On my recent visit to distant lands I found one statesman after another eager to tell me of the elements of their government that had been borrowed from our American Constitution, and from the indestructible ideas set forth in our Declaration of Independence.
“By our every action we must strive to make ourselves worthy of this trust, ever mindful that an accumulation of seemingly minor encroachments upon freedom gradually could break down the entire fabric of a free society.”
The speech was 100 percent Dwight D. Eisenhower, spoken from the heart and from the wisdom of an Army general who had experienced the horrors of war and whose supreme goal was not politics or power but peace and freedom.
IN LATE JANUARY, I was given my first advance security assignment outside Washington, under the tutorial of a more senior agent named Harvey Henderson. If there was one thing I had learned on Eisenhower’s eleven-nation tour, it was how critically important the advance security preparations were. It was up to the advance agents to research and anticipate any possible security concerns, as well as to arrange all logistics in cooperation with the president’s political and personal agenda.
