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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

wasn't wise enough to know that. I saw it as the glamour organization of business, sixty guys that ran the country really in terms of the business side. Most of [Dwight D.] Eisenhower's cabinet came out of the Business Council. It was that kind of a club. I should not have joined it.

Q:

Why?

Stanton:

Because I think you can't, when you're in the press business, with the power that radio and eventually television came to have, you just cannot have any friends in either politics or religion or business. Because you're going to stick a needle into them, and they're going to be upset and hostile. It just isn't a healthy relationship. In fact, I don't think anybody in my job should have been on a corporate board. Maybe the board of the Red Cross, but not even the Red Cross. Because if you're going to do investigative reporting, sooner or later you're going to uncover something in the blood banking or the relief program that you're going to want to expose. Boy, that just tears asunder all kinds of relationships. But I did it. I did join the Business Council. I was delighted to join it. I enjoyed every day that I was there. I had a lot of good friendships. In fact that's where I first knew Fred Borch was in the Business Council. Jack [John R.] Welsh, now the chairman of GE, is I guess the first vice chairman of the Business Council and will move up and be chairman of the Business Council. It's the blue chip group as far as business is concerned. More heavy industry. Very few people from downtown financial houses, although Sydney Weinberg was I guess the first Jew in the Council. He always ran around telling everyone that. He came out of Goldman, Sachs. But there weren't many other people from financial houses or from banking houses. I guess because many of those people in that business world had to deal with those people and couldn't keep an arm's-length kind of relationship. That's true with the press. Every time





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