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don't and then they name somebody who I think is terrible, I'll be kicking myself for the next four or five years.” So I did.

When you were thinking about their motivation what were some of the things that occured to you? Their motivation for this council?

The people who put together this council?

Yes.

Well, it came to me very slowly that, whereas the avowed purpose was to promote private funding of the Arts and Humanities, probably the most important item was the hidden agenda: namely to act as defenders of the two endowments because they had very cleverly made Mrs. Reagan honorary chairman of the committee. And if the committee had enough friends of the President, not that I qualified on that score, and the honorary chairman was Mrs. R., and the two chairmen of the N.E.H., and N.E.A. were on the committee and indeed became part of the executive committee, this would act as a good defense. So I took the job and I think I'm right about it because -- One of my first encounters was with Representative [Sidney] Yates from Illinois, Democrat who was very much against this committee, and very much for the N.E.A. and N.E.H.. And he quite clearly thought that this was going to be used as a method of attacking expenditures in these fields. At our first encounter he was very antagonistic. He assumed that I was one hundred percent behind the administration and he was rather astounded when I said, “Congressmen I have to admit