Clint Hill (1932–2025)

Mr Hill, you keep breaking my heart! I loved Mrs Kennedy and Me, and of course I have read about the assassination many times before, not least in William Manchester's Death of a President, but hearing about those fateful, tragic five days in November 1963 from the agent assigned to protect Mrs Kennedy is somehow ten times more powerful.

Recounted in the present tense, so that the reader almost feels like they were right there with Clint Hill, flying from Washington to Texas and back again show more in the worst reversal of circumstance possible, we follow the President and First Lady, so happy together and full of life, on the motorcade tour through San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth and finally Dallas. Jack was keen to reach out to seemingly every one of the thousands of people who turned out in each city, much to the agents' concern, and Jackie followed where he lead, even though she didn't really like crowds or public speaking. The book is filled with photographs of the two of them beaming at each other and at the warm welcome they received throughout the tour, which makes what happened in Dallas all the more soul-destroying. When they finally appear on the steps of Air Force One at Love Field, I'm always left thinking, 'No, go back!'

Whether you believe, as Mr Hill staunchly insists, that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin, or that there was far more to the violent deaths of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and other key figures of the 1960s, only the hardest heart could read this personal and first hand account of the President's murder and funeral without tearing up.

Beautiful images, heartfelt words, a terrible loss. show less

If you remember where you were when President John Kennedy was assassinated, you know Clint Hill – you just didn’t know his name. Hill is the Secret Service agent, assigned to Jacqueline Kennedy’s detail, who threw himself over the trunk of the President’s limousine seconds after the fatal shots were fired, as the First Lady scrambled to get out of her seat. That iconic photograph has been reprinted thousands of times in the 60 years since that moment was frozen in time as well as in show more the memory of millions of people around the world.

Hill gives a chilling and thought-provoking reason for her almost-instinctive reaction in those first awful seconds. It’s just one of the many insightful details provided by a dedicated professional security man, who had been assigned to the First Family since President Kennedy’s election. In clear and straightforward narrative, Hill lists each step in the President and First Lady’s campaign and fence-mending trip to Texas, revealing the depth of detail and coordination these tours involve, and providing a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes organization and preparation for which the Secret Service is responsible.

There’s no foreshadowing here, no second-guessing, though most readers will know exactly where the narrative is going as the Dallas motorcade wends its way toward the end of its route. Hill shows no more than the usual paranoia – part of his job – as his charges ride, exposed, through massive crowds. And his narrative of what happens after that first shot is fired remains, at this remove, collected and unemotional, even as he undergoes the full range of shock, understanding that the President’s wounds are not survivable, anger at his own inability to have foreseen and prevented the attack, heartbreak at the personal loss, and awareness that his assignment is not over. He comprehends that his duty is still to protect Mrs. Kennedy, to preserve evidence for the inevitable investigation, and to do what he can to ensure a rational and appropriate transfer of power.

As the book’s title indicates, Hill follows the events through the chaotic and sorrowful days between the attack and the formal state funeral, supported by the detailed notes he habitually made about his on-duty activities. Less scholarly than journalistic, the book is copiously illustrated with photographs (including frames from the Zapruder film) in ways that reinforce the immediacy of the narrative. It is, at times, an emotionally difficult piece to get through.

But it is the Epilogue and the new Afterword of this 2023 reprint of the book (originally released at the time of the 50-year commemoration of the event) that makes it particularly valuable, not only as a unique first-person view, but as one man’s attempt to comprehend the longer-lasting heritage of those five days in November.

He writes that “I fear that once all of us who were witnesses to history are gone, the truth will be buried along with us,” and is particularly incensed about Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK, and its companion work, 2021’s JFK Revisited, which presents itself as a documentary even though, according to Hill, it consists solely of “more wild, unproven conspiracy theories featuring researchers, authors, and ‘experts’, none of who were in Dealey Plaza” when the shots were fired.

Hill says “…the persuasiveness of this particular film has convinced an entire generation that Oliver Stone’s fantasy is what actually happened,” and notes that Stone never once contacted any of the Secret Service agents on duty during that period.

If Hill makes any missteps in his evaluation of post-JFK America, it’s buying into the Camelot myth, calling “…the assassination of President Kennedy … the end of the age of innocence in America.” People, he writes, “… no longer believed they were being told the truth by politicians or the news media,” managing of course to ignore the reality that the politicians and the news media had in fact been massaging the truth for as long as either institution had existed.

Perhaps more accurately, he recalls that “it felt as if America were coming apart at the seams” after Kennedy’s death, opening up a decade that included escalation of the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

As an attempt to understand why the controversies and conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination continue to proliferate, it is less than comprehensive. But as an accurate, firsthand depiction of a seminal moment in American history, Hill’s book is an important contribution. show less

Clint Hill has written a fabulous memoir of his experiences as a Secret Service Agent serving five consecutive presidents from Eisenhower through Ford with Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon sandwiched in between. Originally wanting to be a high school coach and history teacher, he almost stumbled upon this job as an after thought but proved his competency and devotion and rose through the ranks and was even considered to head the entire agency before withdrawing his candidacy. He is also the agent show more shown in the very famous photograph taken during the Kennedy assassination shown jumping on the back of the limousine as Jackie Kennedy was crawling on the trunk, an incident which forever troubled him.

The insights given into the activities of the Service that this book provides is remarkable and the reader also develops a genuine empathy for Mr. Hill as he struggles with what was then undiagnosed PTSD. A deepening depression he ignores as long as he is busy at work, but once he is forced into retirement due to health concerns begins to surface in unfortunate ways. Yet a 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace opens the door to a much overdue recovery. It was especially poignant when he states that he felt guilty for not being fast enough to take that fatal third bullet. Wow.

I think this book would make an even greater impact to those readers, like myself, who are old enough to remember the events he describes and can therefore relate to them on a personal level. It did, indeed, bring back so many troubling memories. show less

The one issue I have with Kennedy biographies is that, no matter how well sourced they are, they are rarely written by anyone who was actually there at the time, and therefore might know what they are writing about. Authors can spin facts and figures, and even rumour and hearsay, to suit particular biases - the mud-slinging anti-Kennedy brigade, the defenders of Camelot, and the scrupulously neutral 'accountants' of history. I'm all for those who strive to be fair, but really, I prefer to show more throw my lot in with those who are trying to preserve the fairy tale. Kenny O'Donnell and Dave Powers' memoir of JFK, Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye, is one of my favourites, and now Clint Hill's account of his time with Mrs Kennedy in the White House is another. Hill may not have written his own story, but he was there, in the background, and actually present at the assassination too.

Clint Hill was the Secret Service agent who jumped onto the back of the President's car after the fatal bullet struck. He pushed Jackie back into her seat, and then shielded her with his body all the way to the hospital while she nursed her dying husband. Yet he was there through so many happier times too, the Secret Service shadow standing close to Mrs Kennedy in so many press photos. His simple yet heartfelt account, brought to life by Lisa McCubbin, of those three years in the White House really moved me, especially of course the final chapters. I couldn't stop reading, and I've ploughed through more than a few versions of the same era.

What I think I loved most, though, was how much Clint Hill obviously loved his job - and Jackie herself. His ghost writer may have been putting a deliberately romantic spin on Hill's words, but the story of a devoted bodyguard who falls in love with his beautiful, intelligent and charismatic charge would make an excellent film. Oh, wait ... Hill talks about Jackie's 'infectious laugh', reading her mood 'by her eyes', how she looked even more beautiful in riding gear and no make-up than 'in her fancy gown', and thinking to himself, 'You know what impresses me, Mrs Kennedy? You.' He also staunchly defends her against accusations that she was bothering with Onassis on his yacht ('She returned to her stateroom. Alone'.) All very, very sweet, and completely understandable. Jackie Kennedy was an amazing woman.

The chapter on the assassination and the aftermath had me in tears, of course. John Masefield's poem - 'so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands' - finished me off, but Clint Hill's personal devastation and his sorrow for Jackie really brought the shocking timeline of November 22, 1963, into sharp clarity.

Anybody seeking a heartfelt, if decidedly unbiased, recounting of the Kennedy administration - from someone who was there - should definitely start here. show less