How Many Secret Service Agents On Jfk Detail Still Alive
THEY were eight seconds that inverse the world - former marine Lee Harvey Oswald leaned out of the sixth-floor window and squeezed the trigger on his commodities-activity rifle iii times.
Every bit a bullet blasted through John F Kennedy'due south cervix, hero hush-hush service amanuensis Clint Hill was the first to react, leaping out of a following car and racing towards the presidential limousine.
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Without a thought for his own safety, Clint leaped on to the back of the accelerating car, trying to create a human shield to protect the president and his wife Jackie.
But he was seconds too late. Earlier Clint could scramble into position, another shot pierced President Kennedy's head, shattering his skull and showering blood and brain matter all over the motorcar.
In an exclusive interview with Lord's day Online on the 55th anniversary of the assassination today, Clint, 86, reveals how he volition never exist able to forget the shocking and gruesome image of the president'south terminal moments.
And, tragically, fifty-fifty now Clint still believes "he should accept been faster" - and blames himself for the president's death.
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No more encephalon affair left
"Ane matter that I've never been able to erase from my mind is being on the back of the car looking down at the president, who was lying with his confront in Mrs Kennedy's lap," Clint tells us.
"The correct side of his face is upwards and I can see that his optics are fixed. There's blood everywhere.
"I can see the gunshot wound. In the room that'due south in the skull I tin meet that there is no more brain matter left.
"That is something I could never, and have never been able to, erase from my mind."
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In the frantic defoliation and horror of the assassination, 1 matter that stands out is Clint'south courage under fire.
Heartbreaking footage from that day shows him hurling himself on the back of the presidential auto, with a terrified Jackie Kennedy reaching out to grab his manus.
"At the fourth dimension I never idea 'I might be killed' or 'I won't meet my kids over again'," Clint says.
"I didn't retrieve of that at all. That was the uttermost thing from my mind. My goal was to get there to class a cover for them so no more than harm could be done."
Past throwing himself in harm's manner, Clint earned an honour for bravery, but he personally felt nil but failure.
In fact, it would be decades earlier he would be able to talk about the events of Nov 22 1963 again, or come to the realisation at that place was zippo more he could have washed to salvage President Kennedy.
"I recall I should have been faster," he said. "My job was to protect them and I was unable to exercise that.
"If I had been slightly faster I may accept been able to forbid the president'southward fatal wound and that has bothered me ever since. It always volition - I'm sure."
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PTSD, nightmares and booze abuse
Clint'south grief would come later, but on the solar day of the shooting at that place was no time for emotion.
He was tasked with accompanying the president's body to Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, purchasing a catafalque to take the body dorsum to Washington DC and ensuring its safe transportation to the White Business firm.
Clint, who has written three books on his time in the Secret Service, was and so assigned to protect Jackie Kennedy, before existence moved to protect President Lyndon Johnson.
But information technology wasn't until subsequently his retirement from the secret service in 1975 that Clint realised the price his heroic efforts had taken on him.
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Soldiers in war zones rarely come so close to decease or run into such terrible wounds in the flesh, and so information technology'due south no surprise that even a hardened agent like Clint was deeply shaken.
Ravaged by PTSD, Clint suffered from terrible nightmares and spent half dozen years in seclusion.
He cut himself off from almost all friends and family and barely saw anyone other than his wife and two children from 1976 until 1982.
"I cocky medicated with alcohol during that period of time," Clint admits. "I just didn't care most annihilation and I didn't want to have whatsoever contact with anybody.
"Friends would come past and I wouldn't even acknowledge that they were there. I simply ignored everything."
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My kids grew up without a male parent
It wasn't until 1982 when Clint got his life back on track.
A dr. friend told him that he was certain to die early unless he made serious changes to his destructive lifestyle.
"I decided, yes, I wanted to live," Clint says. "I quit drinking, quit tobacco, started to work out a footling flake. And I began to gradually go better and better.
"And finally past 1990 I was able to get back to Dallas and walk the streets of Dealey Plaza up into the Texas School Book Depository and look up at the sixth floor window where Oswald shot from and then come abroad knowing that I had really done everything I could do that twenty-four hour period."
However, while Clint has finally reclaimed his life from that day in 1963, he admits that his dedication to his task took a heavy toll on his family.
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"I wasn't every bit close to my children as I should take been," he says. "They grew up pretty much without a father - their female parent raised them.
"I was gone 90 pct of the time. It'southward only in the concluding x or 15 years that my two sons and I are much closer than nosotros've always been, which is wonderful for me."
Despite Clint's horrific personal experiences, he thinks Hugger-mugger Service agents have a much more than difficult job in today'south political climate - and have to bargain with many more threats than he did.
He believes President Trump is a target for a potential attack - and his security team accept a greater challenges to deal with than in his day.
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"I call up it'due south much more difficult today," he said. "The challenges are much greater to protect the president, whoever it might exist.
"And the fact that President Trump does generate a great deal of animosity from various sections of society, information technology is something that is very concerning.
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"Obviously engineering has improved simply applied science can work against you besides as for you and that'southward ane of the bug. We live in an age now where things are managed by calculator, by the internet and social media.
"It is so widespread that if you desire to create a problem for somebody, you could send out a tweet or a text or you can generate a crowd in a thing of minutes and that never used to be the example.
"Organisations used to plan for weeks or months to go a group together to have a demonstration and at present y'all tin do that in 10 minutes."
Clint is the author of Five Days in November, Mrs Kennedy and Me and Five Presidents, which are bachelor on Amazon.
Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7790704/jfk-assassination-bodyguard-clint-hill/
Posted by: mackgresto1958.blogspot.com
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