The tv is on twitter and facebook and we want to hear from you. Tweeters or paste a comment on our facebook page. [inaudible conversation] hello and welcome to the 21st annual texas book festival. Thank you for coming out today in support of our author, the festival and celebrating great literature. As you may know, the texas book festival is a Nonprofit Organization that works yearround to strengthen literacy in texas by awarding library grants and with reading rock Stars Program sending nationally recognized authors and illustrators into title i schools and donating books to those students. By being here today and buying books to you are funding these important initiatives. Thank you. Now may i ask you all to please silence your cell phone. Clinton hill and i will be signing the books. The books are available in the sale ten and we will be signing in the main author ten. , clint, before we begin, did you want to Say Something clint. Hello austin. [applause] it is great to be here where i have spent a great deal of time. A great deal of time with lbj. We will tell you, we will give you a glimpse into our book, five president s, as much as wep can in about 35 minutes and then we will open it to questions and answers for the left portion. First i have to figure out how to make this thing work clint hill was born in 1932, the middle of the great depression, and his mother realized she couldnt care for him so she had him baptized and dropped him off at the north dakota childrensmt home in fargo north dakota. Fortunately, when he was about three months old, he was adopted by a wonderful family, chris and jenny hill and their daughter janice. Nn he grew up in this home in washburn north dakota, population 912. Ll growing up in that tiny town in north dakota, did you always want to be a secret Service Agent or how did that come about . No, not at all. My intention when he when i went to college was to become a history teacher and coach athletics, but the korean war interceded and i had to go into the military. I went through basic training for the u. S. Army and they selected me out and sent me toli the Army Intelligence center where they trained me to be a special agent in counter intelligence. I did that the United States government for a number of years and when it was time to get out, i looked around to find what i wanted to do the rest my life, and i wanted to continue that same type of activity. Ly i found the secret service was an extremely small organization. It had a great history of investigations, so i applied. Unfortunately there were only 269 agents in the entire organization at that time, worldwide. It was almost impossible to gets in unless somebody died or retired. In my case, the gentleman retired and i got his slot. Thats how he became a secret Service Agent. That was in 1958 . E twenty hours eisenhower was president. Within a year of entering the secret service, he was promoted to the elite white house detail and clint, what was it like working for president eisenhower . What kind of man was he. He was a wonderful personable individual but had spent most his entire life in the military and he brought that with him right into the oval office, including some members of the former staff of his who were military officers. He was one of those individuals who, if we told him we had to leave at 930 in the morning, at 929. 30 he 9. 30 he was in the car ready to go. We never had to worry about his schedule with eisenhower. He referred to as mostly as his troops. Heating caused by name, he would just say agent and we would respond. One of those nice things about it is he loved to play golf and that gave us a chance to be on the golf course with him. We would have agents paralleling him. I would be one in the trees outside the fairway carrying my bag with about three golf clubs in it and a 30 caliber rifle. Down the fairway we would go, but we had the opportunity to see some of the best golf players in the world, including arnie palmer who got to be a friend and he was a joy to watch. He hit that ball off the tv and it would go down about 200 yards, 3 feet off the grouna and zoom skyward and landed right on the green, almost almost every time. So is really a pleasure to work with president eisenhower. In december 1959, you got to go on a fantastic journey with president eisenhower, visiting 11 countries in 19 days. Yes, the air force that acquired three big commercial 707 that made them available to the white house. President eisenhower took advantage of it and we took off one day and flew to rome and then we went to ankara and then karachi and then to kabul and new delhi anna side trip to see the taj mahal. Then we went back to new delhi and flew over to tehran and down to athens to see the king, we got on board a big ship in theoo mediterranean. It was the uss des moines and we took that over to tunis and tunisia, and then we got back on the ship and went to france and got on an express train to paris and went to madrid, flew down to casablanca to meet with the king and finally we got to come home. And that was your first trip outside the u. S. My first overseas trip. Not bad for a kid from north dakota. No, pretty special. You can see the crowd, this is a photo in new delhi, the crowds that surrounded president eisenhower. He was tremendously popular around the world. You were also involved in the election of 1960 during the campaign. Yes, president eisenhower hadnt done much to help vp nixon in that election in 1960, but he finally decided he would and we went to new york, we went outside a new york to long island and up to manhattan and my job was to secure the parade route down through what we called the canyons of new york city up to herald square. Ca i had both the president and the Vice President in an open car and there were millions of people on the street, looking out of windows, hanging out of windows, it was a very dangerous situation. Dy in 1960, jfk won the election and there was a transition now from a 70yearold general to this young man from massachusetts. What was that transition like for you . We went from a 7yearold grandfather to a 43yearold father of a 3yearold child and a wife who is only 31 who was pregnant at the time. We knew was going to be a real different activity level once the kennedys moved into the white house. The you werent assigned to president kennedy as you had thought you were going to be. What happened . I was down in the golf course with eisenhower in augusta georgia the day after the election in 1960, and kennedy one and i finally got a call from my boss telling me to get on the first plane back to washington, they wanted to talk to me. I flew back to washington went into his office and i was met by the chief, the deputy chief, to inspectors and they began to interrogate me and they did so for about 90 minutes. Nn they asked me questions, i knew they already had the answers to because my background investigation. You speak languages, can use swim, do you play tennis, all kinds of things. Finally they went to a corner and corner and confirmed and came back and said we made a decision, you are assigned to mrs. John f. Kennedy. How did you feel about that . I was devastated, angered, i didnt want that job. I knew what the agents did withy truman and eisenhower. They went to parties and fashion shows. They watched games and i wasr] about it. You dont want any part of that. No thank you. I wanted to be where the action was. But as it turned out, you had the best job in the secret service protecting jacqueline kennedy. One of the things you found immediately was that she was so popular that the people surrounded her all the time, wanted to get close to her. That was one of her pigs problems, crowd crowd control. Wa everybody wanted to touch them or see them, get an autograph or something so it became a very difficult situation. He spent a lot of time with them in. What was that like . They had a regular schedule. They would go to hyannisport for the schedule and summer and labor day and back on thanksgiving. Then christmas and new yearsas they would spend in palm beach. Up on the cape, they spent almost all the time on the water. The president would come up the there on fridays from the white house, he would fly on air force one, get in there a helicopter and theyd fly fight him over to the kennedy compound. S, would set a golf cart out there for him to use when he got off the helicopter. Hed get into the golf cart and hed yelled loud, anybody fry screamed and that was the signa for all of his nephews and nieces to come running, get ono the golf cart and he was going to take them two blocks away to the Ice Cream Store and hed have to foot the bill. When he was up there, do do people think he was on vacation but really a president is never on vacation, as you stop close. There is no such thing as the president ial vacation. Believe me. The press says there is, butr theres not. This photo is rather indicative. This is mrs. Kennedy and the children and their dogs in key card, but you see the president back in the corner, hes on the telephone. Thats what one on constantly. The president either on the phone being briefed by an aide, going over material that has to be acted on immediately orha trying to solve some problems in some foreign country that has just developed. It is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 30665 days a year. There is no downtime. It is because you are assigned to mrs. Kennedy that you ended up going on that trip to texas. Yes mrs. Kennedy talk to me and said she was going to make this trip to texas in 1963. She said, in 1960, she was not able to do as much as she should have to help president kennedyss to get elected because she was pregnant at the time. And so this time she said she was going to do Everything Possible to help him get reelected. D. This is a great photo of clint with president and mrs. Kennedy and this was taken on november 22, 1963. The trip began on the 21st and we flew down to san antonio where the president would make a speech and dedicated hospital and then we flew over to houston for a meeting with a group of hispanic people and then to pay tribute to congressman Albert Thomas who was at the space center and then over to fort worth to spend the night, got up the next morning, the president had a breakfast to go to, we finally got to the cars and went out to air force one at the air force base and flew over from fort worth to dallas. Now that sounds kind of ridiculous, im sure to everyone in this entire audience because you just dont fly from dallas to fort worth or fort worth to dallas. You drive. Well, we wouldve preferred driving but the political peopl wanted a photograph of presidena and mrs. Kennedy coming off air force one in dallas and so thats what we got. Tell us what were saying here this is after we got everybody in the car, ready to begin the milk motor cage going to dallas where he was going to make a speech. We started out in love fielderan went down through the town of dallas down toward main street. The crowds began to build and get larger and larger and we went down to main street, they were so large that the driver of the car was keeping the car to the lefthand side of the street to keep the president , who was in the right rear, away from the crowd on the right side of that put mrs. Kennedy right up next to the crowd on the lefthand side of the street. I would get up on the back of the car periodically to be as close to her as i could so that nothing could happen to her. Nd e we got down at the end of ancient street, we had a turn right on houston in order to get over to elm street and goo underneath the triple underpass to get on the freeway going to the trademark. After we made the left turn on elm, we were going downtownwe street, where about maybefe 150 feet down m street, i was standing there to my left foot the grassy area and then the trademark of the tripless underpass is right in front of us and all of a sudden i heard this explosive noise over my right shoulder. It came from the rear. So i started to turn toward that noise. Fa i only got as far as the back of the president ial vehicle because i saw what happened and how the president responded. I saw the president grab at his throat like this and then he started to fall to his left. I realized then this had been a gunshot and i jumped from my position on the followup car which is the car immediately behind the president s car and started to run toward the president ial vehicle with the intent of getting on the back to form a barrier or a shield to protect the president and his wife and all the occupants of the car. When i jumped, i had to get between a motorcycle officer who was on the lefthand side andth the car i was riding on, they were both making considerable engine noise. They told me later there was a shot that came during that running time of mine. I didnt even hear that, but as i approach the president ial vehicle, just as i got there, i heard and i felt a third shot. The president , at that point he had his head way down to his left. The shot hit the president in the back of the head here and exited above the right year. It took with it the scalp andth the bones from the skull and as he flapped forward, but it erupted blood and brain matter, brain fragments all over mrs. Kennedy and myself. As i got up on the back of the r car, she was trying to grab that material that came out of the president had and she did get a hold of some of it. I got her and i put her in the back seat. When i got on the backseat the president s body fell to its left with his head in her lap. I could see his eyes were fixed. There was a hole in the skull. L. I could see there wasnt any more brain material in the entire area so i assumed it wasn a fatal wound and i turned and gave a thumbs down to the followup crew. I turned and screamed at the driver to get us to the hospital and we raced down the freeway being led by the chief from the Dallas Police department. You are on the back of the car for about four minutes racing to the hospital. What was going through your mini at that time . All i could think about is can we get there fast enough to do any good. I was quite sure that the wound was fatal. I couldnt see how he could survive. It was just a matter of gettingn there. S you can see the position clint is on the back of the car here. There were going up to speeds of 80 Miles Per Hour hour right now there were only three shots fired that day, but he didnt know that only three shots were coming. You fully expected more and were in the position to protect the occupants of the car. You were there when the transition took place to the nes president aBoard Air Force one. Yes i was on Board Air Force one. Vice president johnson took the oath of office and asked president kennedy wife to stand beside him while he did so. She willingly did that so people could see there was an orderly transfer of government but also that she refused to clean up or change close because she wanted people to see what had been donf and so we took off from love field and we flew to the air force base in maryland and transfer the body out to the bethesda naval base where an autopsy was performed. You are assigned to stay with her for one more year. They decided they should have somebody with her. They asked her who she wanted and she asked for some of thehe agents to be with the children to remain what the children and she asked if i could stay with her for that year, and i did. And so, this is a photo photo taken in october 1964. It was a photo that we found in clints collection and was not published before our latest book came out. What was going on here that they . Johnson was running for the presidency for the first time in his own right. It was 19624. Bobby kennedy was running for the senate seat in new york and so mrs. Kennedy had moved to new york. I was living up there myself and the Carlyle Hotel and president johnson wanted to see mrs. Kennedy while he was campaigning in new york so he came to her residence at 1045th avenue to pay his respects and thats what you see in this photo as they are saying goodbye. Its mrs. Kenney, president johnson, Robert Kennedy and myself. In november 19 624, clint was transferred back to the white house the tail under president johnson. What was. What was that transition like going from Jaclyn Kennedy to lbj well it was quite a transition, going from the banks of cape cod to the banks of personnel us, from clam chowder to chile. But its one of those things, its part of the job. From what you told me, president johnson was not nearly as predictable as president eisenhower had been or kennedy. He was not predictable at all. C he had his opinion that if he didnt tell anybody what his plans were, nobody could do him harm and that included us. So often times what we would see as we would be on post and we would see the valet come out of the kitchen door with a little satchel and a hangup bag. We knew the valet wasnt going anywhere, but that meant the president was. We didnt know where. We get on a cart and head for the parking zone where we had jet star and helicopter in the we had cars so he had one choice on the three. He was either going to fly to st. Louis or detroit or houston, take a helicopter and austin or get another car and go to a neighboring ranch. We didnt know until he got there and then we have to quickly respond and react and let everybody know. He loved that ranch and you and spent a lot of time down there and the president would bring all kinds of people there. He brought heads of state, members of congress, members of cabinet. This photograph is a group of the joint chiefs of staff, secretary of defense and the assistant secretary. Thde they they are sitting on the one of the lbj ranch. There deciding the budget for the Defense Department next year end how best to do things in vietnam. Then you were there for the inauguration of 1964. Yes i was. I was seated in the stands. Im sorry this is in 1965. Having to use the same car. Yes we did. The car that was used in dallas was the secret service car 100 acts. That was the car that president kennedy was assassinated in. It was specially fabricated prior to that event, but it was not armored and did not have any armor on it at all. It had a plastic top that we call the bubble, but immediately after the assassination the car was taken back by Ford Motor Company and reconfigured completely. It was was completely enclosed and completely armored. In 1965, when the inauguration took place, that is me on the right rear fender as we went down pennsylvania avenue. Same car, same position as he had been november 22, 1963. So now you have an armored car, but president johnson found ways around that