Did Secret Service Agent Larry Cockell document that Bill Clinton stopped to speak with a homeless Desert Storm veteran named Marcus Williams outside the Kennedy Center in 1997? No, that's not true: This sentimental story is fictional clickbait. The story's many details make it sound believable but they do not check out. There is no record of this 1997 interaction prior to its appearance on social media in 2026 and there is no record of a memoir authored by Larry Cockell.
The story appears in a post (archived here) published on Facebook by Bygone Beauties on Jan. 7, 2026. It opened:
On a bitterly cold December evening in 1997, President Bill Clinton was leaving a holiday concert at the Kennedy Center when he noticed a homeless veteran sitting outside the entrance, shivering in a thin jacket and holding a cardboard sign that simply read 'Marine - Desert Storm - Hungry.' What happened next shocked everyone in the presidential motorcade--Clinton immediately stopped, took off his own overcoat, draped it around the stunned man's shoulders, and sat down on the freezing concrete beside him to talk. The veteran, forty-two-year-old Marcus Williams, later recounted to reporters that the President didn't ask him what went wrong or lecture him about getting help--instead, Clinton asked about his service, which battles he'd seen, and whether anyone had properly thanked him for his sacrifice.
This is the photo included with the post:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from facebook.com/BygoneBeautiesHistory/posts/pfbid02kEHaKLshu7BPcGSduyREiFmMw5fzdjxhUFMEqcM9hetv19JWBz87LE58fRGvbWmUl.)
This is a real UPI photo (archived here) taken in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Feb. 17, 1996 when Clinton was on the campaign trail. The real photo has no connection to the fictional story about Marcus Williams.
The story continues:
Secret Service Agent Larry Cockell documented in his memoir that Clinton spent twenty-five minutes sitting on that sidewalk in the bitter cold, and when Marcus mentioned he hadn't eaten in two days, the President sent an agent to get food from a nearby restaurant and insisted on staying until Marcus had finished eating. What makes this story so incredibly moving is what Clinton said to Marcus before leaving, words that Marcus repeated to social workers, shelter staff, and eventually his own children years later when he'd gotten back on his feet: 'Brother, this country failed you when you came home, and I'm sorry--but your story isn't over yet, and I'm going to make sure someone follows up to help you write the next chapter.'
The details of this story can not be verified. Larry Cockell was indeed a Secret Service agent during Clinton's Presidency. He was notably called to testify before a federal grand jury in Ken Starr's investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. (CNN reporting archived here) There is no record that Cockell has penned a memoir, which would have certainly attracted attention if he had. A Google search for "Larry Cockell" AND memoir only returns duplicate copies of this clickbait story (archived here). A search for authors named Larry Cockell in the Library of Congress brings up no results (pictured below).
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from search.catalog.loc.gov/search.)
Clinton did attend an event at the Kennedy Center on Dec. 7, 1997, but this was not a "holiday concert". A Sipa press photo of the event (listed for sale on eBay archived here) shows Bill and Hillary Clinton with the five honored artists. This description is on the reverse:
PRESIDENT CLINTON HONORS 5 ARTISTS FOR EXELLENCE
President Bill Clinton, accompanied by First Lady Hillary Clinton, honored a group of five artists selected this year to receive the 1997 Kennedy Center Award for their contribution to United States' cultural life on 7 December 1997.
Each year the Kennedy Center board of trustees selects a group of five artists for the award. The only selection criteria is artistic excellence. This years recipients were as follows: actress Lauren Bacall, actor Charlton Heston, singer Jessye Norman, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and dancer Edward Villella. Washington D.C., December 7, 1997
A Google search for "Bill Clinton" AND "Marcus Williams" also did not produce any relevant results (archived here). Almost all of the results were duplicate copies of the clickbait story. One result returned a link to the Bowdoin College Library where a person named Marcus Williams had conducted oral history interviews (archived here) with Bowdoin Alums. No results verified a story about a homeless Desert Storm veteran by that name or an interaction with Bill Clinton.
