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Our position, incidentally - my position tried to reflect it in the editorial columns - was never one as extreme as the extreme opponents of the war took. In other words, I really did not ever feel it was either necessary or even valid to question the American motives for getting into the war. I thought the American motives were pretty good. And my opposition began to be opposition against the escalation of the American military involvement, simply on the grounds that I felt this could not end up in the interests of the United States, the American military involvement there.

I was very sympathetic to trying to help the anti-Communist South Vietnamese oppose what I felt, at the beginning at least, was a clear Communist effort to enforce their will, to invade. I was sympathetic to the South Vietnamese effort to do this. But I felt more and more strongly that the American military involvement was simply unwise, and could only end in a disaster for us. And I began quite early to feel also, and to argue this point with people like Dean Rusk (privately, obviously), that this was evolving into a civil war, rather than a war of Communist conquest. And this was really, I think, the basis on which I felt - and, a priori, if we shouldn't have been militarily involved in this, even on a “resistance to Communist conquest in Southeast Asia” (basis), a priori, by a good many degrees, we shouldn't be involved in what was looking more and more like a civil war in Southeast Asia.

Well, this certainly was the overriding issue of the day, so I think it's worthwhile lingering a little on it. What about in your interpersonal relationships at the Times? Was there a sufficient awareness of the differences, and any other tensions that you felt? For example, when you were riding on the elevator with Gruson, would this ever come out, or with other people at the Times?