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then finally said: “Tom, come on, let's you and me take a walk.”

So then, of course, I knew my walk was going to come up, and when he walked with me, he said that I had to do something to support him, because both Cook and Watson were selfish and so forth. He was very nasty about them. Hurt, as I knew he was going to be about me. So he got to it right away and said he needed me in Washington and if I'd done a decent job of organizing CBS, after all these years I'd been in it, it could run without me, and [William S.] Paley could work for the first time in his life; and that kind of stuff.

And let's face it. If I had wanted to do it, I could have done it. There wouldn't have been any problem. But I did not want to do it. So I told him I was leaning away from it. I didn't want him to be encouraged by anything I had said, but I'd talk it over with Ruth, and if we decided we wanted to do it, we'd do it and I'd get back to him. So that's the way that was left.

We were all sworn to secrecy, and my car met me at Kennedy. Tom Watson, Don Cook and I rode in, three in the back seat. They let me out at 92nd Street and Fifth Avenue. I said I'd walk in. In those days I felt secure enough I could walk on my street. We all said that we wouldn't tell anybody about it, and if one of us decided to give, we'd tell the other two. Otherwise, we were all going to get back to him with the same negative answer. And I never talked to Don or Tom about it after that. And obviously neither one of them took the job.

That wasn't the end of my offers from Johnson, but, at any rate, he, the Under-Secretary of State, HEW, and USIA, I guess, were the three firm offers. If you can call them firm