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he's now head of the Washington Bureau--who was a Russian expert and spoke the language perfectly. He's also an expert in the international nuclear arena. And I don't know exactly, I don't know how he did it, except that Victor Louis, who's that dubious captive capitalist that they, the Russians, keep as a link to the journalistic world. He slips things to the capitalistic journalistic fraternity when the Russians decide they want something slipped. Why anybody over there wanted Khrushchev to do this is beyond me, but it was obviously done with somebody knowing about it. You could not have done it without. Our operator in the matter was Strobe Talbot.

So you didn't have any direct dealing?

I had no direct dealing.

What about Nixon?

No, I had nothing to do with it.

What about the Clifford Irving-Howard Hughes?

Oh, Jesus.

You must have at some point gotten involved in that.

That's for sure. [laughter]