The ambassador was so enthusiastic, I almost felt sorry for him. This was somewhat ironic since besides towering over me physically, the ambassador was also intellectually intimidating. He was a renowned economist and one of President Kennedy’s most trusted political advisors, and here I was in the middle of these negotiations. One wrong move would not only be the end of my career, but could easily turn this trip into a full-blown international disaster.
“Why don’t we plan to meet every afternoon, say around five o’clock at my residence,” Galbraith said at the end of the meeting. “That way we can brief each other and handle any problems before they arise.”
“That sounds great, Ambassador. I’ll see you tomorrow at five.”
The meeting had gone well, and I liked Ambassador Galbraith. He really had the best of intentions and wanted nothing more than to show Mrs. Kennedy the India he had come to know and love. But if he had his way, she would be trekking from one end of India to the other for six weeks. I had to get on the phone to Washington right away.
There was a ten-and-a-half-hour time difference between India and Washington, D.C.—I had never heard of time zones in half hour increments but so it was in India—so when it was daytime in Washington, it was nighttime in New Delhi. Later that night I called SAIC Jerry Behn, while Gordon worked the frequency. Unfortunately, the shortwave radiophone connection was terrible—not by any fault of Gordon’s; it was just that international telecommunications at that time were still rather primitive. There were echoes and delays and often we would just get cut off completely. With all the stops and starts, I didn’t get to bed that night until after 3:00 A.M.
So that became my routine. Early evenings at Ambassador Galbraith’s residence, followed by a midnight call to Washington that usually lasted two or more hours, catch a few hours sleep, up at dawn to work logistics, meet with Indian security officials and political representatives. Then report back to the ambassador’s residence and start the cycle again.
I would get the ambassador to remove two stops from the schedule, and then he’d come back the next day with one more. It was two steps forward and one step back. The White House staff was the source of another major problem—they kept changing Mrs. Kennedy’s departure date.
Frustration reigned on all sides and it was a bit like I was in the middle of a diplomatic game of tug-of-war. Just when it seemed the trip might not happen at all, President Kennedy called Ambassador Galbraith himself. I don’t know what was said, but after the phone call, the ambassador rather sheepishly accepted everything I had proposed and the schedule was finally set. What had started as a seventeen-day itinerary in India alone, had been successfully whittled down to nine days.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as Mrs. Kennedy stepped off the plane at the New Delhi airport on Monday, March 12, 1962. Dressed in a bright pink silk coat and matching hat, she looked absolutely stunning. The crowd of three thousand people that were standing behind fence lines on the tarmac broke into a welcoming roar.
A group of about twenty press people had accompanied Mrs. Kennedy and her sister Lee on the flight, including Frances Lewine from the Associated Press, Sander Vanocur from NBC, Marjorie Hunter from the New York Times, and Barbara Walters from NBC’s Today show. They were eager for comments from Mrs. Kennedy, but she largely ignored them.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, together with Ambassador Galbraith and an array of government officials were there to greet her and as she went down the receiving line, I could tell by the enthusiastic smile on her face that she was truly excited to be here. After greeting her hosts, she looked around and saw me. Our eyes connected and she mouthed, “Hi, Mr. Hill,” before carrying on with her hosts.
Agent Jim Jeffries had accompanied her from New York, along with another agent from the New York Field Office. As the Special Agent in Charge, Jeffries would be with her throughout the trip, while I would continue supervising the other agents conducting the advances throughout India and Pakistan. At least that was the original plan.
MORE THAN ONE hundred thousand people lined the roadway as we proceeded by motorcade into central New Delhi. I couldn’t believe it. Mrs. Kennedy and Lee sat in the back of a convertible Mercedes sedan, provided by the Indian government, with Agent Jeffries in the front seat, while I rode in the follow-up car. Snake charmers, men on the backs of camels, bullock carts and their drivers, all lined the route waving and shouting, “Jackie! Jackie! Welcome Mrs. Kennedy!”
I had seen this kind of reception in Paris and South America, but on those trips she had been with the president. Here, all of these people had come out just for her.
We took her to the guesthouse arranged by the U.S. Embassy, where she had a short time to relax. Her first official visit was with President Rajendra Prasad at his 350-room presidential mansion, the Rashtrapati Bhavan. As it turned out, President Prasad had just addressed Parliament and as was the custom, would be traveling in a grand procession filled with pomp and circumstance from Parliament back to his mansion. Upon arrival at the airport, Prime Minister Nehru had mentioned this to Mrs. Kennedy and suggested that she might like to see the parade prior to her meeting with Prasad.
She of course loved the idea. Agent Jeffries
