Part: 1234         Session: 12345         Page 385386387388389390391392393394395396397398399400401402403404405406407408409410411412413414415416417418419420421 of 512

that he agreed with the Times -- But there again, I don't have that correspondence in my personal file.

It may be that I can find that in the Times archives, Sulzberger's papers. I don't know if I can gain access to them.

If you can gain access. But that's really about everything I can tell you about that. I do remember very distinctly that Arthur Hays, to my great gratification, sent our memo to Rusk. And, by the way, he got, as I recall, a nice, warm reply from Rusk. On one of my frequent visits to Washington during this period, I had a big conversation one evening with Rusk in his office in the State Department. While I don't believe our discussion had anything to do with the Rusk - A.H.S. exchange, which probably hadn't yet occurred, I do recall very distinctly arguing with the Secretary of State, that the war was evolving, as I saw it, into a civil war between North and South Vietnam and not a war like Hitler or any of the wars of aggression or not even a war of Soviet imperialism. In my view, as I told Rusk -- who politely disagreed -- it wasn't that kind of war, and that was all the more reason why we should extricate ourselves from it, instead of pushing further into it. Now, as I'm talking to you about this, I think that this conversation may have been apropos of the exchange of letters between Rusk and Arthur Sulzberger, but whether it took place before or after their dialogue, it remains sharply etched in my memory as a good illustration of the fundamentally different way the Times editorial page and the Johnson administration looked at the basic roots of the Vietnam war.

Do you think you were able to make any impression?