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times and said: “Come on down and take over HEW.” I've forgotten who was there at the time, but somebody that he wanted to move out.

He offered me the second place in State under Dean Rusk. He offered me Commerce, very early on in his administration. The same night he offered Don [Donald] Cook Treasury and Tom Watson something else I've forgotten what it was. But all three of us were taken out to the woodshed down there at the ranch and offered jobs. And all of us turned him down, as politely as we could. He sent us back in an Air Force plane and made sure that it didn't land where anybody would see us getting out of it at Kennedy. So we had to land way to hell and gone and have an escort all arranged by the White House. I think the people at Kennedy thought, you know, it must have been the President himself coming in.

He didn't want the press to see us, because he was afraid the press would ask us questions and we would talk. Tom Watson didn't talk. Don Cook didn't talk. And certainly I didn't talk. So far as I know, with the possible exception of Winnie [Williams] and Ruth, I've never told anybody this story before, because I was chairing a meeting of the Rand Corporation in Washington on a Saturday morning, and Jack Valenti called me and said: “The President wants you to come to the ranch.”

I said: “Gee, can't I put it off?” Because I could say that to Valenti.

He said: “No, the boss wants you down here and he wants you right away.”

I said: “Gee, I got twenty-five guys here. Important people. I can't just walk out on them.”