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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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Part:         Session:         Page of 512

Oakes:

Is that right? Well, then, my -- I didn't know that. If you had told [laughing] me --

Q:

That's on record.

Oakes:

-- that before, I would have been more confident in what I was saying. Funnily enough, I was talking to Punch Sulzberger about this only yesterday in the interview that I've already talked about, and this question came up, and Punch said he couldn't remember any particular opposition from the third floor, which is our news department. But I reminded him of the Gruson letter, which he then vaguely remembered. And I'm adding -- now, and I'm adding to my own comments, which I just made, that my recollection is, without any documentation to prove it, that several others of the top news executives did not like our policy at all. And what you just said to me now about what Homer said, of course, would bear that out.

Q:

Homer Bigart's oral history is on record at the New York Times. He, as a senior war correspondent -- and he had been with the Herald Tribune, you know, before -- he played a kind of mentor role to Halberstam and to Malcolm Brown and to some other people in Vietnam, which was key to their ability to get through to the editors.

Oakes:

I see.

Q:

According to Homer Bigart.

Oakes:

That's interesting.





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