Former Secret Service agent Clint Hill, best known for his actions during President John F. Kennedy’s assassination while driving through Dealy Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963, died Friday in California at the age of 87.
Hill was 31 years old when he was part of the Secret Service detail protecting President Kennedy as shots rang out and the President was assassinated. Hill became known as the agent who leapt onto the Presidential Lincoln as First Lady Jackie Kennedy reached onto the trunk for something later revealed to be part of Kennedy’s skull.
Hill was the last surviving person who was inside the presidential limousine that day.
The Lyndon Johnson administration convened the Warren Commission, headed by the then-Chief Justice Earl Warren, to determine whether there had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The Commission determined that a lone left-wing gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had killed the President. Since then, many Americans have come to believe a wider conspiracy was at work to kill Kennedy, recent polls show 57% of Americans believe in a conspiracy. For his part, Hill generally refrained from commenting on any personal view of who killed Kennedy other than the official story that it was Oswald acting alone.
Hill later said about the Kennedy assassination, “I have a great deal of guilt.”
Hill is reportedly the one who had to tell Kennedy’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy who was then the Attorney General, that his brother was dead. Hill related in a 2013 CBS interview that he didn’t feel it was his place to tell him that he was dead, so when asked how bad the situation was, Hill responded “it is as bad as it can get” to which Robert Kennedy hung up the phone. Hill was also the one to find and obtain a casket for Kennedy’s body, as well as accompanying the casket onto Air Force One and to the autopsy.
Asked in an interview by CBS’s Mike Wallace if anything could have been different that would have saved Kennedy’s life, Hill said that if he had reacted just slightly quicker to the initial sounds of gunshots, he could have traded his life for the President’s. Asked whether he would have been willing to trade his life for the man he was protecting, Hill responded to Wallace saying “That would have been fine with me.”
Hill’s career spanned decades during which he helped safeguard five presidents. But his actions in 1963 overshadowed the rest of his life.
At one point a month after the assassination Hill admitted in his 2022 memoir “My Travels With Mrs. Kennedy”, and in later interviews that he had taken steps to end his own life as he dealt with the grief and guilt over failing to protect Kennedy. Hill developed a relationship with television host Mike Rowe who interviewed him about his Post Traumatic Stress, grief, and guilt over the assassination.
Rowe posted a moving tribute to Clint Hill on Facebook here. Rowe had previously interviewed Hill as well.
“Of all the great things for which this man will be remembered, nothing, in my opinion, will top the courage he exhibited when he changed his mind sixty years later and decided to talk publicly about the moment he tried to take his own life,” Rowe wrote. He noted that by sharing his story, Hill helped many others overcome similar struggles.
After the assassination Hill was selected to provide security to former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, with whom he had a close relationship.
The character of Clint Hill was also featured in 1993’s “In the Line of Fire” with Clint Eastwood playing the part of an aging Secret Service agent very closely based on Hill’s life and career. The movie positively portrayed the Secret Service two years after Oliver Stone’s movie about the Kennedy assassination, “JFK,” largely put the Agents’ and government’s actions that day, in wide disrepute.
Hill retired at the age of 43 having served five Presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford.
Later controversies emerged over almost every detail from that day in Dallas. Detractors refer to these as ‘conspiracy theories’ but polls consistently show that most Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone as the lone gunman, the central conclusion of the Warren Commission. Even the validity of the Zapruder film itself, considered the documentary evidence of the assassination, has been brought into question considering the film was locked up for many years and inconsistencies in the film make it appear staged.
Analyses have shown that the most likely bullet trajectory for the fatal shot came from in front of Kennedy, not behind where Oswald would have been shooting from.
A year and a half ago, an admission from 88 year old Hill Secret Service colleague Paul Landis completely upended the ‘magic bullet theory’ as Landis admitted planting the bullet on the Kennedy stretcher at the hospital. President Kennedy’s nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared ‘the magic bullet theory dead’ as a result of the admission.
New footage from the assassination emerged as recently as last September.
Hill was born in Larimore, North Dakota, on Jan. 4, 1932. He was placed for adoption with a North Dakota farming family. He was a 1954 graduate of Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Drafted into the Army, he served as a counterintelligence officer. Married to Gwendolyn Brown, the couple had two sons. He remarried to Lisa McCubbin, who was a co-author on his later books.
Hill’s family confirmed his passing and described him as a dedicated public servant whose calm professionalism under fire helped shape the security protocols that protect U.S. presidents today. Hill is survived by his spouse, as well as his sons from his first marriage, Chris Hill and Corey Hill, along with two stepsons, Connor McCubbin and Cooper McCubbin and five grandchildren.
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