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Sure, there have been times when I've seen incompetents--people that I thought were incompetent in some of these jobs and I've said to myself: “My God! I could have done it better.”

Let me at it. [Laughs]

But you don't know why they were incompetent. They were probably incompetent because they couldn't handle the staffing problem.

How frequently were you in contact with the President? A weekly basis? Daily basis?

With Johnson?

With Johnson. What I'm trying to get at is--

There was a period when it seemed like it was daily. It was probably weekly. And I'm sure that if you looked at my log, it was probably less than weekly. But it was so bad at times that Ruth would say around 7:30, “Please don't answer the phone, because I know that it will be an hour before you get back to the dinner table.” And why 7:30? Because it was after the evening news, and Johnson had watched the evening news and wanted to find out why did we take the position we did or why did we report this. Not why did we, but why did ABC, why did NBC? I was sort of the lightning rod.

For the whole press, you mean.