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And this man said: “Well, he can get the letter back.”

I laughed my head off, because The New York Times, or any journalistic organization having that letter and knowing that there was fire up there in Black Rock, wasn't about to say: “Oh, we'll give it back,” and act like it never happened.

So I simply took a very firm position and said: “Fred can continue as a producer, but not as head of CBS News.”

What I referred to a minute ago, about something I learned was, that--I had told Jack Schneider that he had to act promptly to replace Friendly, because we couldn't be without a full-time head of news and I was opposed to the idea of having “acting” heads. Schneider had to find somebody in the organization, or outside, to take over Friendly's job, because I thought that if we didn't do that, Friendly and his lawyer would continue to try to nibble away and say: “Can't we come back.” And I'd had it with Fred; there wasn't any question about it. This wasn't the first incident of this kind, but this one really was straw broke my back.

Schneider said that, after his consideration of the available people, within the organization there was a man who was one of the top editors at Newsweek and came to us from--had a very distinguished career in print. Was then working in the News Division as the man in charge of hard news. Friendly had documentaries. He had religious broadcasts. He had the conventions. He had the daily hard news and so on. This man was on top of the hard news. Gordon Manning was his name. Sharp, tough, very effective