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One Sunday morning Lady Bird said to me, standing at the third floor of the White House - - there's a railing there, where you look down on a hallway on the second floor. She stood there, looking down, and said--this is just before lunch. She said: “You've got to help Lyndon.”

I said, “Sure. What do you mean?”

She said, “Well, you know the people in the East that are your friends, and you could get them to help him. He's uncomfortable with the eastern--” What she was talking about was the eastern establishment. She said it with such sincerity and such pleading that I felt sorry for her and for him, because I knew the kind of heartache he was facing. I think he went too far in trying to appease the memory of Jack Kennedy.

The first couple of weeks, when you went into the White House, there were almost two people in every office--one Johnson's person and one the Kennedy person. I said to him: “You know, you can't operate with a double staff.” I wasn't quite as blunt as that, but that was what I was getting at.

And he gave me a lecture. He said: “Those are Kennedy's men, and I'm going to honor his memory; and if they want to stay in there, they can stay in there.”

Well, they were taking advantage of him--because they were using the White House to make their appointments and get jobs and everything else. And do whatever favors they could do before they left the White House.