Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir, Clint Hil [large ebook reader TXT] 📗

photographer claimed I told him he was under arrest, that simply wasn’t true. The furor died down after a couple of days and was never mentioned again.

IT WAS AROUND this time that I felt I had finally found the right person to be my assistant—Paul “Debut” Landis from the Kiddie Detail. During our three weeks in Italy, I had had the chance to evaluate how he worked in a foreign environment and because Caroline was with us so much, I got to see how he and Mrs. Kennedy interacted as well.

Nobody ever explained to me why Agent Jeffries was removed from Mrs. Kennedy’s detail, but I had a sense that personality conflict had something to do with it, and I wanted to make sure that I chose someone in whom Mrs. Kennedy had confidence. Even though he was the youngest agent on the detail, Paul was extremely conscientious, easily able to adapt to changing situations—a necessity if you were going to be protecting Mrs. Kennedy—and, perhaps just as important, we worked well together as a team. He happily accepted the position and it was like a breath of fresh air to have someone working with me after having only temporary assistance for the previous seven months. We brought in an agent named Tom Wells from the Miami office to replace Paul on the Kiddie Detail, and once we were back at full strength—two agents with Mrs. Kennedy and three with the children—I had a renewed sense of confidence in our ability to do the job properly and effectively.

ON MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, Prime Minister Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria came to the White House and was given an official arrival ceremony on the south grounds, complete with military review and herald trumpets. Mrs. Kennedy was not scheduled to participate, but she wanted John to witness the ceremony, and all the pageantry, with his father performing his duties as the President of the United States—and she wanted to do so in a very low-key, unobtrusive way. John, now nearly two years old, was fascinated by the military. He loved the uniforms, the marching, and the weapons. So Mrs. Kennedy called Miss Shaw and asked her to bring John down to the area of the Rose Garden near the president’s office.

“Come, John,” she said as she lifted him up into her arms. “Let’s go watch the ceremony. You can see all the military men in their uniforms.”

John’s eyes were wide as he saw the procession gathering, the row of colorful flags representing the various military units, and the two countries. I walked alongside Mrs. Kennedy as she carried him to a spot just behind a hedge. She was holding him up high enough so he could see, while keeping the two of them somewhat hidden from plain view, and John was filled with questions.

Mrs. Kennedy, John, and Clint Hill watch ceremony from behind bushes

“What’s that? Why are they doing that? What are all those flags? Put me down.”

Mrs. Kennedy set him down and squatted next to him. When she couldn’t answer the questions, she turned to me and said, “Mr. Hill surely knows, don’t you Mr. Hill?”

So I squatted down and tried to explain to young John what all the pageantry was about.

Mrs. Kennedy understood that their time in the White House was a privilege, and even though John and Caroline were so young, she made every effort to include them in these types of historic events so they would have a better understanding of what their father did.

ALSO AT THIS time, President Kennedy’s father came for a rare visit to the White House. Mrs. Kennedy had arranged for him to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom and had set aside most of Tuesday, October 16, to spend with him, so I had anticipated a quiet day in which I could catch up on things in my office, a small corner of the Map Room on the ground floor of the White House, directly across from the elevator that went to the residence. On the morning of October 16, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy showed up before the president had come down from the residence. A Secret Service agent escorted Bundy to the elevator and up he went.

Later, I would learn the reason for Bundy’s unusual early morning visit to the president’s bedroom: A U-2 spy plane had taken aerial photographs of Cuba’s military bases, which showed that nuclear missiles were installed on launchpads. The intermediate-range missiles were being brought to Cuba on Soviet ships, and now there was photographic evidence that Khrushchev’s claim of only having defensive weapons was nothing less than a lie. The Soviets had just turned up the heat in the Cold War, eighty miles from the coast of Florida, and the ramifications were terrifying.

The Secret Service had well-established plans to protect the president, his family, and key members of the government in the event of an emergency or a major catastrophe. Whether we would go to the bomb shelter on-site at the White House or relocate to an undisclosed site outside the metropolitan area would be determined by the threat and the actual situation. This was not something I had ever discussed with Mrs. Kennedy, however. I decided I needed to have a frank talk with her about our procedures, in case the unthinkable were to happen. When Mrs. Kennedy emerged from the private residence on Wednesday, October 17, I asked her to come into my office, and shut the door behind us.

“Mrs. Kennedy, I’m sure you are aware of the situation that has developed regarding the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the United States, right?”

“Yes, Mr. Hill. The president has discussed it with me.”

“Well, I know this is a terrible thing to have to talk about, but I think it’s important that I let you know what the Secret Service plans are in the event of an emergency.”

Standing there in front of me, she looked so beautiful—a young wife and mother with