Clinton J. Hill (born January 4, 1932) is a former U.S. Secret Service agent who served under five United States presidents, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Gerald Ford.

[4] He attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota,[4] where he played football, basketball, and baseball, studied history, and graduated in 1954.

[citation needed] Hill was riding on the left front running board of the Secret Service car immediately behind the presidential limousine.

He then jumped across onto the bumper of the limousine and on reaching it heard a second shot which he said sounded different to the first and like "someone was shooting a revolver into a hard object" which echoed.

Hill, along with Secret Service agents Kellerman, Greer, and Rufus Youngblood, provided testimony to the Warren Commission in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 1964.

According to the Warren Commission's findings, there were no bodyguards stationed on the bumper that day because: ...the President had frequently stated that he did not want agents to ride on these steps during a motorcade except when necessary.

Regardless of the Warren Commission's findings, photos taken of the motorcade along earlier segments of the route show Hill riding on the step at the back of the car.

[citation needed] As an alternative explanation, fellow agent Gerald Blaine cites the location of the shooting: We were going into a freeway, and that's where you take the speeds up to 60 and 70 miles an hour.

The limousine then rapidly exited Dealey Plaza and sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital, only minutes away, followed by other vehicles in the motorcade.

Hill declined to tell Kennedy over the phone that his brother was dead, saying in a 2013 interview: "I explained to him that both the president and the governor had been shot and that we were in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital.

So I said, ‘It's as bad as it can get.’”[11] Although the Secret Service was shocked at its failure to protect the life of President Kennedy, virtually everyone agreed that Clint Hill's rapid and brave actions had been without blemish.

[12] Hill has expressed his belief in the official conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and has refuted conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination.

[14] In a BBC Today interview, broadcast in December 2010, Hill recalled the assassination and his first visit to Dallas in 1990 since the events of 1963, during which he surveyed the scene of the shooting.

Asked whether he thought that the President's life might have been saved if things had been done differently, Hill replied that "He [Lee Harvey Oswald] had all the advantages that day.

[17] The same year, Hill was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame, a signature event of the North Dakota-based organization Norsk Høstfest.

[19] In 2016, Hill released Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, which summarized his entire Secret Service career.

[20] On October 5, 2018, Hill received the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award from Doug Burgum, the Governor of North Dakota.