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Well, I certainly can't say it came out - I would say that, on a few occasions at publishers' luncheons, in which I and some of the other Times executives would be at the table, Lester Markel was particularly vehemently against our policy, if I remember correctly - if I remember correctly, Cliff Daniel and, I'm certain, Rosenthal and Gruson and - these were the news executives - were very dubious, to put it mildly, about our policy. Occasionally at publishers' luncheons, this would come up in a rather, sometimes a rather tense form.

Would they be direct or oblique?

Well, I would say fairly direct, at least when Markel was involved. When Markel was involved in the argument - Markel, my old boss, for whom I have tremendous respect as an editor - but nevertheless, he was very argumentative on this.

He went along with Johnson a hundred percent?

I would say that that was a pretty fair estimate at that time. This was fairly early that we're talking about, in the period, let's say, during the Johnson period, yes, '65, '66.

There's nothing extraordinary about this, as you point out. I remember my mentor Allan Nevins came to a break in his long friendship with Walter Lippmann on this very issue.