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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Vietnam. I don't mean before I went to Vietnam, but immediately after I came back.

I sat and talked with him, or listened to him until 1:30 in the morning. My clothes were over at the hotel. No! My clothes weren't at the hotel. I was going back because I had my plane, I was going back after the meeting. The pilot was trying to find me, and my driver was trying to find me, and, of course, Ruth was going crazy, because she didn't know what had happened. Again. Although by this time, she figured I'd gotten hooked up and as soon as I got out of the talk with the President, I called Ruth and told her. She felt that I could have stepped out earlier and called her, but it isn't that easy to step out when you're talking to Johnson.

Now in that meeting, and I don't recall anything about the fact that he was feeling sorry for himself in terms of the problems he had and the dissension in the country and the trouble on the Hill and he had trouble with his own Cabinet and so forth. That was just nothing but a recital of disappointments.

He just wanted, I guess, to pour out his heart to somebody because I know the door between his room and Lady Bird's bedroom was just like maybe twice the distance between here and that wall. And Lady Bird came in in her nightgown and said: “Lyndon, you ought to go to bed and you ought to let Frank get some sleep.” So it was that kind of a cozy kind of thing. I'm sure he'd poured his heart out to her, and she knew what he was doing.

Hell, she could have heard it, because the door to her quarters was open most of the time she was there. Much to my embarrassment, because, you know, you feel sort of being in the bedroom with the First Lady and the President [laughs] is something I'm not used to.





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