I TRIED

Secret Service agent's regrets over the assassination of JFK

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

AT THE age of 92, Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who leapt on John F Kennedy's car after the president was shot, sums up how he would like to be remembered, saying: "Two words. I tried." He continues: "That's all that needs to be said. I tried." Iconic images from the assassination on November 22, 1963, show Clint scrambling on to the presidential limousine to shield first lady Jacqueline Kennedy after her husband had been shot by Lee Harvey Oswald.

It was 12 years later, in 1975, that Clint spoke publicly for the first time about the assassination, giving an interview to Mike Wallace on the US show 60 Minutes, during which he blamed himself for JFK's death, saying if he had acted "five-tenths of a second faster" the president would be alive.