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by almost every other serious newspaper, and I like to think I had a part, along with many others, in getting it started.” That's all I'm quoting from Scotty's book Deadline. There isn't a word in that that I would dispute, but the inference is clear that Scotty -- the unavoidable inference, if you read that paragraph --was a prime mover in that. He even quotes the then managing editor, quite correctly, I'm sure -- E.C. Daniel -- as being opposed to the whole idea. I would add, parenthetically, that Harrison, as Daniel's representative, as I said earlier, also was rather negative on Op-Ed when he sat in on that committee, of which I was chairman.

But what really outrages me is that Scotty infers that the only thing that blocked his idea of an Op-Ed was a power struggle between news and editorial. The truth is that during all the years -- ten or more -- that I had been fighting for acceptance of an Op-Ed -- of my design, which eventually materialized -- I never heard of Scotty's conversation with A.H.S. [Arthur Hays Sulzberger] in the '40s nor did I see any evidence of Scotty fighting for it, as I had been doing, throughout the '60s.

And he knew about that, do you think?

He had to have known about that. After all, why would Punch have made me chairman of this committee, of which Reston had been named as one of the members?

Did he attend the meetings?

I have a memo from Punch -- let me just pick this up -- On September 21, 1966, exactly four years before the Op-Ed page first appeared in the Times, is a memorandum to me from Punch. I'm going to read just a little of it: