Clint Hill

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 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.… (mehr)

Clint Hill spans a term of service to the Secret Service covering either directly the presidents or those close to him including a vice-president. This is his story and it gives an insight into the behind the scenes activity and maneuvering that not only puts their life on the line daily but protects that which is so vital to this country's governing; of course the president. Hill gives an inkling of the personalities of the men he covered and does let on to some degree his personal feelings toward them. A few things that surfaced consistently was how reckless some of those he guarded were in putting themselves in the potential of harms way not thinking much about the vulnerability of the situations. The other thing that really stuck out was how much time these men spend away from their families, especially traveling throughout the world and at private residences. It made me wonder why they would be married, and the strain it would put on it. But it is the price they are willing to accept in service to their protectees and the country.… (mehr)