JFK's Secret Service agent still doesn't know if there was "something I could have done" to protect president
The Secret Service agent who jumped onto President John F. Kennedy's car after he was shot in 1963 has just two words that he wants people to remember: "I tried."
Clint Hill's 1975 interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace helped the former agent come to terms with the assassination of JFK, he told "60 Minutes: A Second Look" host and CBS News correspondent Seth Doane. Wallace was the first person Hill spoke with in detail publicly about the horrific events of Nov. 22, 1963.
Images from that day show Hill climbing atop the presidential limousine to protect first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Hill blamed himself for JFK's death at the time of his interview with Wallace, saying that if only he'd reacted "five-tenths of a second faster," the president would be alive.
Doane asked if Hill, now 92, still blames himself.
"Well, maybe there was something I could have done," Hill said. "I don't know anymore."
Hill on working to come to terms with the Kennedy assassination
Hill was 43 and recently retired when he did his 1975 interview with Wallace. Twenty years after that, Wallace wrote to Hill and asked for another interview. Hill wrote a letter back to Wallace.
"My interview with you on 60 Minutes in 1975 turned into much more of an emotional experience than I thought possible," Hill wrote at the time. "It did turn out to be a cathartic experience for me and helped me release feelings that had been pent up for a long time."
Hill told Doane that he thinks if it hadn't been for his interview with Wallace, he "would have just lingered in a horrible situation and never come out of it, probably."
To this day, Hill said he still hasn't completely forgiven himself.
"My dad drilled into me that when you're given an assignment to do, you do it 'till it's fully finished," Hill told Doane. "I had an assignment to keep the president and Mrs. Kennedy alive. I only kept one of them alive. One died on my watch."
Hill gets hundreds of letters after 60 Minutes interview
Hundreds of viewers sent in mail after Hill's interview with 60 Minutes. Those letters were passed on to Hill. Until five years ago, he didn't remember those letters. But when he was preparing to sell his home in 2019, Hill's wife, Lisa McCubbin Hill, said they should short through old belongings.
They found a battered black trunk in the garage with 17 years of presidential knick-knacks, a stack of framed photos, and hundreds of letters. The couple brought around 25 of the letters along with them when they moved to California. There was one in particular that Hill wanted to read to "60 Minutes: A Second Look."
"It is a day I shall never forget, nor shall I forget the people so deeply involved in the events of that day. And as I watched you on 60 Minutes, I wanted to reach out and wrap you in my arms to offer some comfort," Hill read from the letter. "But no one who suffered that tremendous loss that day can even feel comfort, and I know you feel that."
"It offered me, like she said, I wish she could wrap her arms around me and get my thoughts to go away about that day," he said. "And I do, too. They never will."
Never been broadcast: What "no other reporter would have asked" Hill
The new episode of "60 Minutes: A Second Look" included audio from Hill's interview with Wallace that had never before been broadcast. While the "Secret Service Agent #9" broadcast in 1975 lasted just 16 minutes, 60 Minutes podcast producer Julie Holstein worked with CBS News archivists to find hours of film recorded during the production of the story.
Holstein found a recording of Wallace asking Hill a question that she says "no other reporter would have asked" Hill in 1975.
"What do you do about, about some of the private occasions when they want nobody else to know what's going on? If they're, whether it's in the White House or whether it's in a hotel out of town, or ... and you know, you know what I'm talking about and you know who I'm talking about," Wallace said in recordings from the archives.
Gwen Hill, Clint Hill's first wife, who died in 2021, can be heard clearing her throat. Clint Hill wiggles around. His mic scratched his chest.
"Nobody knows about those occasions," Hill said in the 1975 recording.
Wallace pressed Hill: "You do. How do you manage it?"
Hill responded with a laugh: "Very carefully."
