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I really hadn't given up on the idea, but I certainly felt that it was very much on ice, for the reasons that I've already discussed with you.

This same situation continued through '68. I mean, it seems incredible but it's simply the fact that because of this opposition, whether unspoken or articulated, from the third floor, from the news department, the whole idea was absolutely put on ice. Now, I would grumble about it and raise the question every now and then with one or another of the top executives of the Times, Punch or Harding Bancroft or whoever, as that little memo that I've just read would indicate; but it was perfectly clear that there just wasn't any movement at all.

I never gave up, however, and by 1969, I was raising the question again with Punch Sulzberger - at every opportunity that arose to raise it, I would raise it - in this case, in '69, there was a question about adding Tony Lewis as a columnist to the Times - and while I was nominally in charge of the columnists (I wasn't, and I in fact refused to be. But the columnists did appear on the editorial page, and therefore I was sort of a housekeeper for the columnists, put it that way), obviously I had to know about any change in the columnists' schedules, or if we were going to add a new one.

I wasn't at all keen about our adding new columnists, new Times columnists. I thought we had plenty. (I want to say parenthetically, I think Tony Lewis was a very good one, and I think he has made a great contribution, but I was in principle not in favor of adding new columnists.)