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Anyway, I brought him onto the editorial board somewhere in the middle or early '60s, with very much the idea -- because I thought he had a lot of imagination -- that he would become the editor of the Op-Ed page when we eventually got around -- when I eventually got an Op- Ed page cleared with the publisher. For all sorts of reasons, which I've gone into earlier, the Op-Ed page just never materialized, despite my bringing it up frequently -- first with Orvil Dryfoos, who died in '63 -- and then with Punch. There was always some reason -- but I think the essential reason -- I've said this before -- it didn't get anywhere, which I didn't realize, was that the news department people really didn't want to give up the space to the editorial department because it was obvious, or at least I thought it was very clear that it would be, if we ever established an Op-Ed page, that I would be in charge of it. It seemed to be obvious.

[Telephone rings, Tape Stopped]

Sorry about that telephone interruption. You were asking me about Dick Peters and I was explaining to you that I had him in mind to run the Op-Ed page -- when and if we ever got one -- to run it under my supervision, obviously. Then he left the Times, when it just became one delay after another and it didn't appear at this point, which was 1967, May of '67. It looked, because of difficulties in getting a decision on it, that God knows when we would ever get around to having one. Then, later, when the Op-Ed page really began to be forming and it was clear we were about to have one, in '69-'70, I did, as I've said earlier, have in mind a member of my own editorial staff in mind to run the page, under my supervision. But Punch, as I've already said, insisted on Salisbury running it.

Let me ask you a question about that. Did you have reservations about that decision?