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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

enough to discover us allies with Communist China. [laughs] I would love to have known what his reaction would have been to that. I get a great kick out of Ronald Reagan being buddy-buddy with Communist China, and I would love to know what Harry would have said about that now. History is history, and it unwinds in the most improbable fashion. My quarrel with Harry was that he was so dogmatic; he was so absolutely sure of himself. And of course, part of that is based on his very strong religious beliefs.

Q:

How directly did he influence, let's say, Jessup's editorial writing, editorials? In that era in LIFE.

Heiskell:

He influenced, he influenced. There's no question he influenced him. On the other hand, Jessup was a very rational character, and what ended up would more often than not be 70% Jessup, 30% Luce, than 70% Luce and 30% Jessup. As I said earlier, it's easy to thunder but it's very difficult to make other people thunder for you.

Q:

But in other words--to debunk a little bit what Swanberg said--you don't think that there was a particular memorandum or, you know, that set editorial policy for the 1950s, what he's calling this “Ridgefield Memorandum”?

Heiskell:

Oh, hell--if you want to read all the memoranda that Luce wrote and say they set policy, you can make a book out of the memos! But they didn't, in fact. If they influenced? Sure! He was a





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