I just learned that Clint Hill died ten days ago. Hill was a Secret Service agent from 1958 to 1975 and is best remembered for being on the protection detail for President John F. Kennedy on the day he was assassinated.
Upon hearing the shots, Hill got out of the car behind Kennedy’s, raced forward, and dove onto the President’s vehicle, shielding him and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy as the vehicle raced to Parkland Hospital. Although he stayed with the Secret Service for several years afterwards, Hill always felt a deep guilt for not acting sooner and taking the bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald.
I discussed how he overcame his massive grief and remorse when Hill joined me on May 14, 2016, to promote his book, “Five Presidents,” in which he recounted his career helping to protect Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. Among the other topics we covered:
- The day Elvis Presley showed up at the White House to request a meeting with President Richard Nixon;
- Nixon’s weird early-morning trip to the Lincoln Memorial during a massive anti-war protest;
- The challenge of protecting LBJ in 1968 after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy;
- How Hill dealt with a group of students who staged a sit-in inside the White House in 1964.
Listen to our conversation here.
