by Hill, Clint
I was stunned and didn’t know quite what to say. Finally, I said, “Thank you, Mr. Director.”
As I walked out of Rowley’s office, I wondered what they had in mind in terms of my career. Before becoming the deputy assistant director, I had attended a four-week executive seminar in Kings Point, New York, and there wasn’t much further I could go in the Secret Service. It had been ten years since I entered that same office, back when U. E. Baughman was the chief, fearful of being fired, only to be given the assignment to protect Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy. The world had changed completely, and so had I.
ON DECEMBER 21, 1970, I was sitting in my office when my secretary, Eileen Walsh, came to the door.
“Mr. Hill,” she said. “You won’t believe the information I just received.”
“What’s that?”
Eileen started laughing. “Elvis Presley just showed up at the Northwest Gate, unannounced, requesting to meet with the president.”
“You gotta be kidding me. Was it really him?”
“Apparently so. He dropped off a six-page, handwritten letter complete with all his contact information while he’s here in Washington.”
Sure enough, it was the real Elvis. His letter, written on American Airlines stationery—back when they used to hand out things like that in First Class—read as follows:
Dear Mr. President
First I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and I admire you and have Great Respect for your office. I talked to Vice President Agnew in Palm Springs 3 weeks ago and expressed my concern for our country. The Drug Culture, the Hippie Elements, the SDS, the Black Panthers, etc do not consider me as their enemy or as they call it, the Establishment. I call it America and I love it. Sir, I can and will be of any service that I can to help the country out. I have no concern or motive other than helping the country out. So I wish not to be given a title or an appointed position, I can and will do more good if I were made a Federal Agent at Large, and I will help best by doing it my way through my communications with people of all ages. First and foremost I am an entertainer, but all I need is the Federal Credentials. I am on the plane with Sen. George Murphy and we have been discussing the problems that our country is faced with. So I am staying at the Washington hotel Room 505-506-507. I have 2 men who work with me by the name of Jerry Schilling and Sonny West. I am registered under the name of Jon Burrows. I will be here for as long as it takes to get the credentials of a Federal Agent. I have done an in depth study of Drug Abuse and Communist Brainwashing Techniques and I am right in the middle of the whole thing. Where I can and will do the most good I am glad to help just so long as it is kept very Private. You can have your staff or whomever call me anytime today tonight or tomorrow. I was nominated this coming year as one of America’s Ten Most Outstanding Young Men. That will be in January 18 in My Home Town of Memphis, Tenn. I am sending you the short autobiography about myself so you can better understand this approach. I would love to meet you just to say hello if you’re not to busy.
Respectfully,
Elvis Presley
P.S. I believe that you Sir were one of the Top Ten Outstanding Men of America also.
The White House Police took the letter to presidential assistant Egil “Bud” Krogh, and after some back-and-forth with Haldeman, a meeting for 12:30 p.m. that same day was arranged. The thirty-five-year-old entertainer showed up in a purple velvet suit and presented President Nixon with a World War II Colt .45 pistol encased in a wooden chest, as well as some autographed photos of himself, while the president’s staff arranged to give Elvis an Honorary Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Agent badge, and that seemed to satisfy him.
As 1970 ended, I wondered what the next year would bring. I had just settled into my job as deputy assistant director, and now I would be gone for two months while attending the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia. I was concerned about being out of the loop for that length of time.
A lot could happen in eight short weeks.
33
* * *
1971
The Federal Executive Institute (FEI) had been established in 1968 during the Johnson administration in an effort to provide leadership and managerial training to the top executives in the federal government. The campus was very close to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and although it was just a two-and-a-half-hour drive from downtown Washington, the beautiful retreat set amid the rolling hills of Albemarle County was a world away from the political bubble.
I reported to the FEI on Sunday, January 3, 1971, with about thirty other attendees from various federal agencies. We were housed, ate, slept, and socialized within the confines of the institute, listening to lectures and seminars on a wide variety of topics, following up with discussions in which we described our organizations and the specific challenges we encountered. It was interesting, but I missed the camaraderie of my fellow agents, and being so far removed from the day-to-day activity of the White House made me uneasy. Back then there was no Internet, no cell phones, and I knew that the little information I gathered from the newspapers was never the whole story. I was glad when the training was finished, and as soon as I received my certificate of completion on Friday, February 26, I headed straight to my office in Washington, eager to find out what had happened while I was away at school.
The new armored limo program was in process, with some haggling over the roof of the vehicle. The president’s office wanted a hole in the roof so the president could stand and be seen, similar to the one in the 1968 model. We were against it, but in the end the White House staff prevailed, and a sliding panel became part of the roof configuration. It certainly was not in the best interests of security.
During my private conversations with fellow headquarters personnel, the most interesting information I learned was that a taping system had been installed in various locations, at the president’s request, to capture conversations. Previous administrations had also taped conversations and telephone calls, but what was surprising was how elaborate this system was, and especially the fact that most of it was voice activated. That was new. I was one of very few people who knew about the taping system, and, as with all types of similar privileged information, it was kept very private, limited to people on a need-to-know basis only.
I also learned that while I was away at the FEI, Jacqueline Kennedy—now referred to as Mrs. Onassis—Caroline, and John had attended a private dinner with President and Mrs. Nixon in the upstairs residence of the White House on February 3. Artist Aaron Shikler had completed a full-length portrait of Mrs. Kennedy, and the Nixons had invited Mrs. Kennedy and the children to see the painting as soon as it was hung in the White House, before it was made available for public viewing.
While I was away, a transition in the secretary of the treasury had also occurred. Back in December, President Nixon had announced that David Kennedy would be resigning the post and John B. Connally, former governor of Texas and a Democrat, would be taking over in February. At that time, the Secret Service was a part of the U.S. Treasury Department, so this put Governor Connally—who had been wounded while riding in the motorcade with President Kennedy on November 22, 1963—in the position of approving the budgets for the Secret Service.
WHEN I RETURNED to work at Secret Service headquarters on Monday morning, March 1, I was told by my supervisor, Assistant Director Lilburn E. “Pat” Boggs, not to get too comfortable, because we were leaving for New York City. President Georges Pompidou of France was visiting the United States, and while in Chicago the previous day, ten thousand pro-Israel demonstrators had shown up to speak out against France’s policies in the Middle East. Mrs. Pompidou had been spat upon, and President Pompidou had threatened to cut his trip short due to the inhospitable environment.
President Nixon was thoroughly embarrassed by the way Pompidou had been treated in Chicago, so he ordered the Secret Service to get to New York—Pompidou’s next stop—immediately to evaluate the security arrangements provided by the
Department of State. Assistant Director Boggs, Assistant Director of Investigations Burrill Peterson, and I flew to New York and observed the operation around President Pompidou. It was our opinion that the protective coverage provided for the president of France—and presumably it was the same for all visiting heads of state—was ineffective and needed to be strengthened.
The aftermath of the incident led Congress to authorize the U.S. Secret Service to take over responsibility for the protection of visiting heads of state and other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States, as well as being required to protect representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad at the president’s direction. All of a sudden our protective responsibility had increased dramatically, without an increase in budget or manpower. We were told simply to absorb the new responsibilities.
That same morning, March 1, I learned that an explosive device had been detonated at 12:30 a.m. on the ground floor of the Capitol on the Senate side. No injuries had occurred, but walls on the west front appeared to have cracked.
President Nixon, who had flown to Des Moines, Iowa, to address the state legislature, called the bombing “totally deplorable—it was a shocking act of violence which will outrage all Americans.”
But later, when asked again about the bombing, he had changed his tune. “We get these warnings all the time,” he said. “Tourists going through the White House could drop a bomb in a receptacle and the place would blow, but those are the risks you take to have an open society. The important thing is that these great buildings not be closed to the public.”
Once again, the politician’s perspective was far different than those of us in law enforcement. While we appreciate and understand the necessity and need to keep public buildings open and accessible, we want access controlled and the safety of those utilizing the buildings assured.
Nixon’s four-and-a-half-hour visit to Des Moines was marred somewhat by about two thousand demonstrators protesting a wide variety of causes. Hard-hat construction workers worrying about an attempt to cut their wages; members of the National Farmers Organization with signs that read WE WANT PRICES—NOT PROMISES; and some obscenity-chanting youths opposed to the Vietnam War throwing rocks and snowballs. It didn’t seem to bother the president, and when confronted by reporters, he said, “The snowballs were fun.”
These demonstrations, although small, were just an indication that no matter where in the United States President Nixon traveled, he was going to find antiadministration and antiwar protestors. One of the rallying cries of the protestors was “Old enough to fight. Old enough to vote.” At the time, the voting age was twenty-one, and students especially were outraged that they were “adult enough” to be sent off to war at the age of eighteen, yet they didn’t have the right to vote. This reasoning influenced the members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as governors and state legislators around the country, to adopt a proposal to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen for both federal and state elections. The proposal was ratified in record time and became the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution on July 1, 1971.
Since taking office in 1969, President Nixon had reduced the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam to about 330,000—down from more than 500,000 at the time of his Inauguration—in the process of fulfilling his plan to reduce the number to zero. Still, the antiwar demonstrators persisted.
A coalition of antiwar, civil rights, and welfare organizations formed an alliance to demonstrate in Washington, D.C., in late April, with civil disobedience gradually escalating to a climax on May 5 with a nationwide moratorium against the war. The protestors intended to shut down Washington by blocking bridges and surrounding government agency buildings so no business could be conducted, and in preparation the federal government organized Task Force Potomac—ten thousand federal troops ready to be deployed as needed.
The demonstrators managed to litter bridges with debris, nails, tacks, and garbage to hinder vehicular traffic, but they were unsuccessful in shutting down the city.
Backed by the troops, the District police and U.S. Park Police arrested nearly nine thousand demonstrators, who were taken to a football practice field, confined to the outdoors, and processed in the courts by one of eight judges presiding around the clock.
Fortunately, President Nixon didn’t try to leave the White House complex for any middle-of-the-night discussions with protestors, and we were pleased with the way the situation was handled.
THE NATIONAL SECURITY advisor to President Nixon at this time was Dr. Henry A. Kissinger. Originally from Germany, Kissinger spoke with a heavy accent and was thought of as a brilliant diplomat. He was deeply involved in all negotiations regarding the Vietnam War, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) talks, opening the diplomatic door to China, and improved relations with the Soviet Union, as well as other national security matters. He traveled extensively in this capacity, and because he was receiving increasing numbers of threats on his life, President Nixon decided to request that the Secret Service provide Kissinger with protection.
This now came under my jurisdiction, so we formed a small detail that accompanied Kissinger everywhere he went. It was a manpower drain for us, but we had to abide by the president’s request. Because of Kissinger’s strong personality, it was important to assign the right agents to him, and we chose Jack Ready—who I knew to be steady, diligent, and experienced—as the detail leader. Agent Ready had been on the follow-up car in Dallas when President Kennedy was assassinated, and although we had never talked about it, I knew it was always in the back of his mind—just like it was in mine—and he would do anything in his power to keep from losing another protectee.
In early July 1971, Ready came to my office and said, “Clint, I need to talk to you.”
“Sure, Jack,” I said. “Come on in and have a seat.”
As he sat down across the desk from me, I could see he was really struggling with something. “I’ve got a real problem,” he said.
“What is it, Jack? You can tell me anything, you know that.” I couldn’t imagine what could be bothering him to this extent. He was the kind of guy I never had to worry about because he was self-motivated and didn’t miss even the slightest detail.
“Well,” he started, “I’m filling out my expense voucher, and there are some expenditures that I don’t quite know how to handle.”
“What do you mean, Jack? You’ve filled out thousands of expense reports.”
“Yes, but we did something no one knows about, and they want it to be very secret.”
“For God’s sake, Jack, what did you do?”
“We flew from Peshawar, Pakistan, to Beijing, China, and spent a few days there, with Kissinger conferring with the leaders of the Chinese government.”
This was a surprise to me, but the mission was so secret even the State Department had been kept in the dark. It was the first I knew about the administration’s intention to open up diplomatic ties with China, which would eventually lead to President Nixon’s historic visit to the country the following year.
“Just give me a list of what you spent and I’ll get payment arranged,” I told Jack. “No one needs to know where you went.”
IN 1970, WE had begun to select personnel and plan for the 1972 presidential election campaign. In the aftermath of Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, we were now obligated by law to protect candidates for president. The law stated that the Secret Service had to protect major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election. After consulting with an advisory committee, the secretary of the treasury would make the determination as to which candidates were considered “major.” The Secret Service has no role in determining who is considered a major candidate.
By 1971, the selection process and training for the 1972 presidential campaign had accelerated. This protective responsibility involves every person within the Secret Service, whether they are on a speci
fic detail, in a field office, or at headquarters. When it begins, it is a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation. Presidential campaigns unfortunately require agents to be away from their families for extensive periods of time. In addition to making sure our own people were properly trained and equipped to do the job, we had to bring in agents from other federal investigative agencies to bolster our forces, and provide training for them as well.
Over the previous year, the women who had been made officers in the Executive Protective Service had worked hard and had proven themselves. They’d been trained in hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, first aid, human relations, communications, and search and seizure. On December 15, 1971, five female members of the uniformed EPS—all of them between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-seven—took the oath and were sworn in as Special Agents of the U.S. Secret Service. The female agents would receive the same pay as the men, and would be required to do the same jobs the male agents did. They were a tough bunch of women—five of them among the more than 1,100 men in the Secret Service at that time—and I was delighted to see this addition to the agent corps, knowing the value they would add.
IN 1971, DEPUTY Director Rufus Youngblood decided to retire, and my immediate supervisor, Assistant Director Pat Boggs, was promoted to the deputy director position. Secretary of the Treasury John Connally and Secret Service Director James Rowley decided to promote me to assistant director of the Presidential Protective Division. I was honored, humbled, and nervous about my being able to handle this new responsibility. The activity of all protective forces would now rest on my shoulders. The mere thought of it was daunting, but I vowed to do my best.
What most people didn’t know was that I had been having a difficult time concentrating on the job since being moved to headquarters. At some point after President Kennedy’s assassination, the Secret Service had begun using the Zapruder film in training classes for new agents. This amateur color movie, taken by Abraham Zapruder in Dealey Plaza, captured the moment President Kennedy was killed, and when run in real time shows how quickly everything happened. After I was promoted from the detail and moved to headquarters, every so often I would be asked to attend these training sessions. It was surreal for me to see myself on the film, to see the horror from a different perspective. And they’d play the film over and over, sometimes in slow motion, so I had to relive it over and over and over. It was excruciating.
