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At any rate, this experience with Rodney Dutcher led me to talk with Ruth Finney. She said, “I think the best thing you can do is to have everybody in at once.”

I said, “That seems ostentatious. I don't know whether the press will all want to come.”

“Oh,” she said, “they want to come and they need the story.” It was the same old story, “They need the story. They need the money. If they don't get interviews and if they don't get news, why them they'll lose their jobs and the papers won't keep them, or they won't buy their stories if they're working on space rates. It'll be easier if you have them all in at once, easier because you won't have to have so many appointments. Otherwise you'll just have to give everybody who asks for it, like Mr. Dutcher, a special appointment and that's very hard.”

Anyhow, she put up an argument for the press conference. I suppose the same argument was being put up in other departments, because although we didn't start out having press conferences like the President was doing, it came gradually to be done. It wasn't always done with regularity, or on the same day, but you did hear that other members of the Cabinet had also had a press conference. There was a good deal of fussing about it in the press, about what the Cabinet officer had said or not said. Although we got to the point