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and Roz [Roswell L.] Gilpatric, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, were literally on the steps of the Pentagon to meet us. That's how tense things were at that time.

We had a friendly meeting with Bob McNamara, who didn't play his cards openly to us, although I think the three of us felt afterward that he was sympathetic to our position. Gilpatric I didn't know. Roz I got to know later quite well, because he was on the CBS board. I never talked with him about it, because I felt he was such a political animal that I just didn't understand which side he would decide to play that particular day. So I never talked with him about it.

I did talk to Bob about it later--because I had known Bob before he was Secretary. And certainly I found a sympathetic guy in him. But, of course, he was unable to persuade Johnson that this was the thing to do. And Johnson was a very confident guy, in terms of his abilities to do things, and it was beginning to wear on him, as I saw it--and certainly Lady Bird indicated to me that it did. But he stayed with it, because I think he believed that this was the mandate he had.

Then when he realized that he couldn't--the nomination--I think he could have been elected. In fact, I told him that. The morning after he made the announcement that he wasn't going to run he ordered me down to Andrews Air Force Base to fly out to Chicago with him. Except for one person on his staff and several press people--they were in the front part of Air Force One but Johnson and I sat in the back in the President's office in the back of the plane, and he said: “Did I do the right thing?”

I said that was not for me to judge, but that I was convinced that if he had stayed in