Peter I. Lisagor Oral History Interview – JFK#2, 5/12/1966 Administrative Information
Creator: Peter Lisagor Interviewer: Ronald J. Grele Date of Interview: May 12, 1966 Place of Interview: Washington D.C. Length: 32 pages
Biographical Note Peter I. Lisagor (1915-1976) was a journalist and chief of the Washington bureau of the Chicago Daily News from 1959 to 1976. This interview focuses on John F. Kennedy’s foreign policy and the Kennedy administration’s relationship with the press, among other topics.
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Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the Library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.
Suggested Citation Peter I. Lisagor, recorded interview by Ronald J. Grele, May 12, 1966, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.
Peter I. Lisagor– JFK #2
Table of Contents
Page Topic 54 Walter Rostow’s transfer from the White House to the State Department 56 The Foreign Service during the Kennedy administration 58 John F. Kennedy’s [JFK] speech on the Foreign Service becoming the epilogue to Lisagor’s book 60 Youth of the people in the Kennedy administration 62 Debate over whether JFK should go to Germany 64 JFK’s change in opinion about Southeast Asia 65 JFK’s displeasure over articles on Vietnam 68 Criticism of JFK’s press conferences 69 Impression of Pierre Salinger 70 Hierarchy of newsmen during the Kennedy administration 71 JFK’s personal diplomacy with visiting dignitaries 73 Travelling with JFK to Vienna 75 Cuban Missile Crisis 76 The Kennedy administration’s failures in foreign policy 78 JFK’s uncertainty over the nuclear test ban treaty 80 Article on Tish Baldridge 81 Article on entertainment at the White House 84 JFK’s views on Joseph McCarthy Second oral History !nterview
with
PETER LISAOOR
May 12. 1966 wa shinqton •· D~c.
By Ronald J. Grele
For the John F .. Kennedy Library
GRELE: Were you at all privy to the reasons for the shift of Walter Rostow fr.om the White House to the State Department?
LISAGOR: No, I'm not sure about those reasons, but I think here again they wanted to kind of beef up the thinking, the planning of the St!ate Department and Walt \.Z:.s their White House .man. I thought i:t was an idea 1 place for him to be over there in the Policy Planning council where he coula ,really le_t his l~ind of pyrotechnical mind explode in all directions. But it was again this byplay, quiet, nevertheless rather ardent byplay among those who thought the State Department simply wasn't carrying it.s full share of the load and the old traditionalists who felt the Departm.ent had its role to play and it was playing it. I think that was the reason for Rosto\'l' s move over there although there may have been something within the t>."bite Bouse staff i ;tself that ac counted for it. I'm not aware of it. one of the things about Kennedy when he first went into the job that interested me a Dr. Travell \'lbo was continuing to treat me at the White House .. ~ . I tried to find out, you know, ·what it was like, what the atmospherics were like ·-55-
backstage and all ! could find out: was-- she was a very dis creet wornan--but she ue-ed t.o say, "He wanta to bit into everything.'' ~is used to account fof the faet that you 'd bear he'd call a lowly desk officer ove:r at the State Department and find O "ut;.~ he v:1anted to lc.now ·something:.. The desk officer would pi ·~ k up, and he • d say·, .. ThiS. is the .Pr(l)sident. ' And he•d think somebody was playing a joke on him ~ But he wnnted to bit into· everything, $he said. That was the impression you got when.ever you sa"' Kennedy. He wanted to bite into everything; he '\o .GJUSLE: I have he~rd rumors of; not a o:onflict, but a hit of ·tension between Rostow and [McGeorge] Bundy. 'ro ycrur knm.111 ledge was there any sub stance? LISAOOR; I doo 't r eal:~Y have any knowledge of that . All I know is that Rostow is a man, a$ I said earlier.,. of some volatility in the way of ideas . He may have been just a little bit too active in that line for Bundy'$ operation. I think BUndy wanted a cooler, calm.e:r, more lethargic, if you will, type and he. fot.tn d him in Carl Ka:ysen--that is. to ac t as deputy. But I've never heard Walt mention anything to suqge.st there mig}?t have been some feud, or I never heard Sundy either. -56·~ GREtE: If we aan move on now to some of your writings, you. co-authored a book ·1rd:.th Marguerite Higqins on the Foreign S·ervice? LISAGOR: Right. ~(}~ was your; op.inion, or your general im pression, of the Foreign Service under Kennedy? LISA~R: I think that ~ennedy tried l1is best to upgrade it, to bring' in fresb· talent. But \'le ooened that book ·.; it;h an anecdote; an.d I think maybe it: would be instructive here . . The two ;Kemnedy brothers, 3ohn, the President* and the Attorney General, weae sitting in the Kennedy compound up in Hyannis Port dis -~ ussing the n.eed to really overhaul the State Department and the Foreign service. Ambassador Kennedy, their father, was sitting in a corner presumably reading a newspaper or a .magazine and not paying much attention,. but be toast in fact, eaverr;dropping. He heard the t wo boys say that they were goi:nq to r eally overhaul this thing. they were going to g~t all this tired, de?td woo d out of there a.nd going to put in some nevr, lively young people., fresh, \v ith a. lot of get up and go about them. 1 ae listened until his patience. ran thin# and then he sa.i d , "Sons, I want to tell you that I once t<~ent to see Franklin D. Roosove..l.t who made mud1 the same kind of talk that you're making no"1 · He lamented the State Department. ta-lked about razing the whole thing {.that is,. burning down) and starting from scratch. He dian•t do a damn about it, and neither at!e yotl . ~· This ".;as the anecdote \~a told anll that:, in fact , really is the case. '!'hey d id bring .in some people. 'fhey brought !.n some excellent new ambassadors. They brought in people like {t11illiam] :Sill 1\ttwood--he 'a a journalist--and they sent him to Guinea where he d id a first .rate j ·ob. They brought in some good labor people, like [Philip M. ] Phil Kaiser . There are whole lists of young, bright p~oplE!--[Edward .M . ] Ed lto·rry, who ·went I think to Ethiopia, another journalist. I think of the j ournalists because I happen to be .in the 1>U$iness,, but there wer(f! othe.l;;js f.rom other \"alks of life that were good--some lawyers, some pro f~s sors,. as. you know. --57- $1ley bxouqbt in [,J. Kenneth} Ga lbraith, they br ought in Lincoln Gordon to b~ ambassadors. They tried hard, but they dldn • ~t succeed r eally in any major revol:ut1on in the Foreign servic-e·. No~1 l think. th~ Ferei9n Seriic e is nQt much different from any other br.anoh o f the government. 'What they aclOuse ·the F'orei.gn Servic-e. of, mainly, is wb:at bureaucracy is guilty of. You could make the same charges against the Commerce nepar.tment,; the A9r iculture Departmentt or any other depar tment i£ it was in the spotlight. GRELE ·~ Teo mudh nar row spec ializa.tion·? LISAGOlh Well, too muoh narro\"1 specia.tizat:ion, a ten dency to get fr,ozen into your. job, job security becotnes more important really than taking r isks and being imaginitive. the slowness of the movement of m piece of paper :.d.. mpty because it has to be initia,lsc:l and it has tQ be ground down in languag~ to some common denom!nato.t that .only bureauc rat::t kno'!;'l1 a.bout-- all of the things of \>2hia h bu:reau-::.raoy is guilty~ they eomeh0\1 made a s-pecial c rime in the Sbate Department and the Foreign service. I never thought, tha·t iw \'9·as that way . Now in years past there was a legend o:r: a myth about the Porei9n Service, namely that it consisted only of Ivy League College graduates., wealthy Eastern inte.tnation.~list ~ypas- ~ dandies in · t~ mnin and bespatte a ~ if they still wore spats. 'l'hts cpncept waa a false one and it bet:Jan to be false ~~ter the ~r . 9\lt in the 195.0 'e those entering tho Foreign Service .. from west of the Appalachian mountains range, for examp le ~ I think axcee.ded tbos · f rom the East, and yo~ tg'Ot a better aistr ihut:ion of Americans o .: all types; especially gEJo.gr a.phic distribution an d .t'egional distr:i.bution. so it 'ffn~ s no lontger true that ~be For.·eign Ser vice was ths haven .rea lly of tne Establishment or of some kind of !vy League set . This \'las tl1e basic criti·- ism.s about t he Department--they t be~rt ,of ·the Congo crisis, was arrested many timea and beaten up. Prank Carlucci was roy idea of the new breed of Foreign Service officer. He'd go plnCE!$r be's a tough, little, br.tght fellcwv~ Welnt t.:o the t~oodrow Wilson School of Intexnational Studies at Princeton, for e}~amp-le . Y~t his ba «RELE: President Kennedy wrote the epilogue to your booJ~ . Ho\<~ . • · • LXSAGQRt Ri9ht. Let ma explain about that epilogue because be didn * t vll:'ite it f .or our bootc v1hat he did wt1s he made an off the record speech to the Fore,ign Service ot1ce. It remained off the .record until we d id this book and it occmrred to \.\S t;hat he, if he edited it, mi·ght pGrmit us the use o£ it for the :book because it seemed to be .a good Wtlty t;o express his vie\,.1 of the Foreign Service, in hic'h by the way ~ as you may re.eall from reading it, he had changed bis mind about the Foreign Service in it--those Vi¢WS that he 'had that it \'17aS no good and aouldn 't be relied upon. ue told these people thatt really they '""ere the beginning of policy, and they were 1:-eall.Y at the end of poli c:y. The 9overnmcmt here '"-'aS only so 9ood as their reporting 59- was good, as their intuitions were good, as their judgment was good . l think this was correct. lvell, ~nhat happened waa '"e \'lc~mt to thG; White Uoua.e to a$k if this ooulcl be expung~d of anything he felt should be kept off the record. 't'le had never seen it~ ·v,e bad only heard a goo~ deal about it. Pierre Salinger took up the job with Mac Bundy of eensoring out that \>~hiob--the P:rEJ.s:f. ... {!ent agreed to let. tbis happen--o-f censoring out 'What ought to be ce-nsored out . Pierre Saling-er had this in hi·a dis. patch ca$o flying to Tokyo with a grottp of Cabinet Qfficers on ~ovenaber 22.nd, l~H5lt intending' to finally clear it up and them bring it back f-or President Ke:nn .ec1y~s approvll. Well# he waa kill.ed on November 22nd. We felt then that the project bad been just aimply blown out of water~ It tb~.n occurred to us that ~rha1_-;rs. not. wa went back. to Salingex v.·bo clidn 't quite knov; who now rgi vee the approval for tl\:i.s. He thought !t wa$ a presidential paper . We .asket1 Attorney GenErral Robert Kennedy l.if he would sqrt of e>cpedite this, or give approval fot: tbe ~$e of it. rt really was very, at that point, innocuou.s .in terms of What the President may have thought bout the Foreign seriice, but f~our purpose it wa$ still kind of us~ful . we finally got it cleared for use. So it t.tas a t*Omewbat co~pliaated story, and it v1as printed for the fi.rst time in that boott . Did you ever have any peraonal cliscussions with John Kenn•qy about it? LISi'dlOR' No. Well; y~e., we had one asking for the use of it in wht~h he said, wall~ be o::uJ:Sl1 1 t opposed to it e ~aept be wanted to see it after it was sort of clee!ned up.. He asaignec1 the j ob# apparently, to Mac Bundy to ao that and, of course, he didn•t live to see it~ aut I never talk·ed tc him really about any changed v .:i.e'\.vs of the Foreign Serviae that h.e might ha'\re bad.. They were simply .reflected in tltat little speech he made to the q:roup. fie made another one on another occasion that ~7 as- public and was quite good~ too, I thought. In your article for tb~ New :t:ork. Times on tfalt Rostow you quote a Ken~edy aide on the usefulness of walt Rostm.n -60- Yes. l.ISAOOlh Well, I think. if I'm not mistalc:en, it was Fre.d Holbo. n \.,..bo was--or it could have b~en l(ao Bundy . I forget now who . It was unidenti fied in the piece. I talked to a lot. of people about 'tlalt 'a operation at the White Ho.ua$1, but the two people that I t.,ould ·be likely to bave talked abot1t ori a aubstantive rnatte.r of ~.,hat walt • $ usefulness was like would be Fred Bolborn o r. MoGeorge Sundy. Was the .f£an.nedy Administration really the coming together of the junior officer elase, as Roatow so .often el<."~imed? ,. LISJ\GO'Rt I n~ver quite knew ·what he mean't by it except in a gen~l:'aticnal aenae. t think that--l used that I kn'G\>tr. I think that he l'lad a kind of a gttn.c,;-no attitude about the juniot'· officer-s who were really the hard core of tl1e command structure of World w.al:' II. \~alt Rost:.ow is a man of Iuany .enthusiasms; and he believed that,. like hims.elf, there ware others as you know at Harv ard in the CaMbridge group--l•m sure in the New Yotk ~stablish ment-·....who were of a younger.~ who were of the Ke·nnedy genera tion That's the simple size of it. Tbey v1ere of the Kenned:y generation . Kennedy often tur.ned to th$Se people. lie had :people spotted all through ~h& 90Vet'f1Jl\S.ttt who Wt!H of what Walt Roato\v "'muld call the junior officer class. :t think that's p.tobabl.y what h<:: had in .mine, but l don't think th{:!.re was any more content to it, basically, tluln the generational content because you thi.nk 'back, K~n~edy had Red F y over at tho Osfense Det'artmen·t . Now Paul Fay 1 didn • t know very 'lr..rell, but 1 think his relationship to Walt Ro·stotv \!'IOtlld be no gre:-ate.r, except. in a genet', tion&-l sensef than his ralationsh!p would have been to a stevedore or rather to his college p.rofassor . You kn..ow, it 'I.>Jas that kina Of thing But in the ag~ g.roup he was certainly right because tho I leaned on the old ti.lners4 the elder st.ate$1llen, fa the, kind -61- of work that Averell Harriman did, that \J"ohn .McCloy did in the disarmament field. But they wanted these younge,r types to really take over. They came floaki.ng to the 90Ve.rn. ment. They wanted to come . They applied. They didn't have to he dragooned, in the main. You used the term New York establishment. Did that have any meaning? LtSAGOR: No, it didn't. tt''S eome to have meaning. But there was a turn to JQhn McCloy and Robert Lovett, R$ l mentioned earlier, for people. "The New York establislvaent is obsolete as a ooncept . It was all right in the EisenhO\ver years--mainly in the Truman years. It -was obsolete in the Eisenho'Vller years. Do you realize that Eisenhower neV'er brought any prominent Republi.can of this group into hils Administration? It was only the Democratic administrations that brought these Republicans tn, and they brought them in to put a kind of Republican da$t on t.b.e.a .Democratic ·operation. I don't believe that ~1illiam Foster or John McCloy or Robel:t Lovett did any major ass'ignments in the eight years of the Eisenhower Administration.s. I would be s~xprised-..-I 'tn speaking really off the top of my bead now--if they did any major job, but they were the pe-ople that literally $taffed the .Marshall Plan. and the .ECA [Economic cooperation Ad ministration}. I mean, they were the eharacters who did it. They dtdn' t really oorne back into their own in a small ..-..-1ay until the Kennedy time, and then it was a little late for them. They were a little long in the tooth tl'ten. Sut this is a misnomer exoept it does tend to i dentify a handful of people, and only a handful... Take Lucius Clay . He did a great job of help!n9 Eisenhower choose his C~binet, but so far as I kno\v he did no major stint during tbe Eisenhower yearF;J . But the moment Kennedy came in, Kenned y dispatched him to Berlin where be ""as a kind of hero and father con fessor . He di d a number of jobs for the Kennedy Administra tion . Now he • s back rai,s.ing money f .or the Republican National Committee . GRELE: Did you ever discuss any of your articles with John Ket'lnedy? -62- LISAOOR: No, I never did. I would go to him to see him once in a while oi'l an arti.ele I1t.QS doing, but I'm not one of t'hose ·reporters who he obviously read daily and would call up and complain about somethi.n9 or say something GRELE: What were his arguments? LlSAGOR: His argument was that if an American president came to · Ge~any and didtt go to Berlin, it would destroy the morale of the west Berliners to the point where they'd probably all pack up and leave. It was just simply a show of determination to stand firm in Berlin at a time when Berlin was still pretty fragile and pretty intraotabl~ a problem. GRELEt What were the President's reservations? LXSAGOR: The President's reservaticns were not his ovm, but .many advisors had 1cil.d him that they thought it would be provocative, needlessly provocative, of tbe Russians for him to go in there., there would be security problems because you were, you know, cheek to jowl \'lith the communists,. and that just altogether there • s no use .raking up in a provocative. sense that problem. But Nichol said that that was just absolutely out\"'eighed by the other considerations, and Kennedy listened very. . . . 1 almost knew at the moment that he had made up his mind that Nichol knew more about this than the other advice hew::ts getting. I could almost see it in his manner. t we.nt in to see him on other occasions ~ Once l toot~ [W illiam H. ] Bill Stoneman, our chief European correspondent stati.on~r1 in Paris them, now in London, an~ we then talked about a whole range of European probl(;l!ms. Kennedy ha-d a remarkable heibit . He had a h elbit of looking up people that were q-oi.ng to pay him visits and !ji,ndill9 out a little some thing about them. He· threw a couple of things at Bill that just: astonished Bill. Bill had been in London when Ambassad or K$nnedy was at ·the Court: of St. James· and "&"'rhen Jack Kennedy was a young fellow who • ,j come in and out, but obviously they may h~ve had vague memories of each other but .no more than that . :aut «me p~;. e.si.:dent bad gone to the trouble of looking up some vital statistic:s about Bill, had d!soover$Cl who Bill's friends 'tfere. ana had mana9ed to mention,,one fellow Jack Seldone that Bil~ •aid he hao.n 't thought of for a long t~e. and a book that Jack .Seldon wrote~ Maybe. I think that Stoner:tlan was ment!.oned in that book. But you ooulsoviet Union or even d ~ Gtitulle·, just stand firm with himt go t ·o the mat with him if you have to. Sill\llas a real kind of a militant patriot abr ·o~d. Kennedy aetually had spoken a ·while. about how he viewed the German problem, the Serlin problem, and a few ot.h~rs. Bill wa$ p leased, and he sat~l , ''Why, that's wonderful, Mr. President. That's exactly wbat I think ought to be done... Or somethin9 like that. And 1\ennedy then Bhruqged and said , "Yes1 you know th~t '$ t11hat our poliey is, but the Russians read Walter Lippmann~ They read Walter Lippmann and lO'lrushqhev reads him. I k!l0\';7 Khrushchev reads him, and he thinks t.hat Wslter Lippmann is revealin9 American policy. Now how do I get over that problem?" It's a pro blem that's be~n endemic in this town form ny years, of 1'----' -64- course. But Lippmann was writing contrary stuff. He was advocating other policies, and Khrushchev, if he followed LiJ?pmann, would have been terribly confused about American policy at that time. Kenned.y was greatly concerned about that . He was also concerned about Southeast Asia at tbe time and Viet Nam. He said he didn't think at that time it was in the vital interests of the United States. He felt itwas far more complicated a problem than, for example, Berlin was. He said, ''Serlin is clear-cut compared to Southeast Ass ia." He was troubled about Laos at the time. Some of Kennedy's thinking on things in Southeast Asia was conditioned by the Bay of Pigs.. The met that be did not order American force into Cuba was a great inhibitor on him in not ordering American force into southeast Aai.a. He figured, if we can't send them ninety miles offshore, what sense does it make to send them six to eight, ten thousand miles away. He made this point to a great many people, including to us the one time \ve went in to see him, the time I am talking about now. GRELE: Do you feel that he changed his estimate before he died? LISAGOR: I think he did, as a matter of faot. I thought he •.•. Senator [Wayne L. J Morse, I know, is now saying that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had he lived, would not have been involved in Viet Nam theway we are. I'm not sure of that because Kennedy's jump from nine hundred to sixteen thousa.nd advd:sors in percen~ age terms wa s far greater than the jump that Johnson ma oe . Of course,the r. ole changed from an advisory role to a com]t}at role. I wa s in Viet Nam during the advisory role period, and I oan attest that the Americans there were simply advising and were ter ribly frustrated that their role was confined to aclvice . Now lots of Americans clucked at the i dea of advisory and said , uoh, we're running things. That ' s a euphemism, you know. " But it isn't true . It literally isn't true. I thought that we should be doing more than advising myself, but they v1ere limited to a dvisory roles. I don't know what Kennedy would or could have done . Viet Nam wa s not something -65- ,. .,e chose to do in a systematic -v1ay. It was fo.rced upon us. Every move was p.r.ovoked. Now~ may have made mistakes in ()Ut responses, that's anotha: story. BUt \vhat Kennedy would have done, :t don't know:. There's a clue to what he might have done, though# in t.he fact that he sent five thousand troops to Thailand \ Becauaa ~f your closeness to Miss Higgins did the President ever discuss with you any of Miss Higgins' articles on VietNam? LISAGOlh No, no, he never discussed 'ivith me any of her articles on Vi~t Nam,, but he discussed with her many of her artie les on Viet Nam. She would tell m~ about some of these discussions. She troubled him because she was writing stuff, as you know, that was dif ferent almost from the stuff anybody elsa \>laS writing.. I think she fortified hi& vie't..t that the New Y-ork Times' ~ .. covera9e of that situation \\TaS wrong and narrow and paro-- t:hial. You remember t;lle incident, as other people will tell you better than l aan,. o:f hi.s disappointment with David Halberstarn 's covQatage. Marguerite Higgins ,.,as just willing to declare open '\ttar on the Till\es • coverage of the Vi~t Nam situation feeling that they t.l$re .. out to get [Ngo Dinh] Diem" as she might have put it had she lived--in fact, as she did in her book called Q!!! Viet ~ N~shtmare in which she wrote about. it. But she U$ed to go both to -66- McGeorge Bundy and to the President. In fact, he told her one day that. '*How can I send troops to Laos when I didn't send them to the Bay of Pigs?" I remember that quote from her. She troubled him. Her reportage troubled him because it was a kind of advocacy of continued American role and a firm American role. Sh4! \vas of a piece with [Joseph] Joe Alsop on this. and the President used to say only Joe Alsop wanted to send American troops to Viet Nam. Well, she would have advoca&ed it,. too. But he never talked to me about. . . . I V'e talked to Sobby about her c,overage. Bobby was the god father of one of her ~hildren, aod we talked a little bit more about her. But Ketlnedy rarely. . .. . I didn't even have that relationship with him where be talked about ac counts of other people. We had an extremely professional and brisk and businesslike relationship whenever I went to see Mm or whenever we would .meet somewhere except for this back condition. It was always "How's your back?.. And I used to regret this bec~use I'd spend fivE! minutes talking about backs when I'd ratherbe talking about Cuba or South Viet Nam. I once complained to Salinger about this, and Salinger never would talk to me about my ba.hk again and X w.as'l'eppy fo:; that. He said, "Okay, t>~e won't talk about your back anymore." But the Presidentf he \'ras sympathetic and so was X sympathetic with his condition, bu~ we tended to talk about backs when we talked something other than t:.he immediate issue. GRELE.: Did you ever discuss with him your article on visiting dignitaries and their treatment? LISAGOR: No. As a matter of fact, be sent, through somebody, a congratulatory note tone. I for get who that w s. Somebody. . . . Oh, I think it was [Letitia} Tish Baldridge., as a matter of fact, said the President was delighted with that piece, or li~ed it, I think she said. She '"as the social secretary to Mrs. Kennedy. But he never commented himself on. it. GRELE; What was your impression of Angier Biddle Duke as chief o f pl'otocol7 -67- LISAGOR; :r did some pieces about him. one never ap- peax-ed in print. ! thought that Angier Biddle Duke was a great surprise. He was to me. 1 thought that he was really of the kind of epitome of that old foreign service off~ee1: that I talked about earlier who wore spats# who carried a black hombur9• and who was a dandy and a playbocly type and pushed cookies and drank tea. Nothing could nave been further fr<;un the truth. Angier Duke had a story to tell about his tranaformation He was at one time all of tboae things# or mo$t of them. But he went either into Buchenwald or Daebau at the end of the ~Jar. the concentration <::amp. He sav.J these people crawling around like animals, a.na he had a traumatic experience as a result of it. He decided he was going to do something useful -..v1th himself and with his life. When be took thi$ job, he woul -."bit ~ have taken i't. .. . Be tolc.'i me, and l have to take him at llis \-.rord. And I tbtnk it•s correct becu1use I once talked to Kenn.edy briefly about Angie Duke, and he was very pleas.ed at the job Duke was doing. See., I had done some work on visitors.; as you knOvJ from this article. DUke wanted to qet into the policy business, and Kennedy, 1 think, snowed h;f.m a little bit by saying,, •twell, the protocol man is a policy man in many ways. The way be handles his job is part of policy. i•· Well, it was in a way, but Duke brought some mw enthu$iasm to the faat that he was going to clean up Route 40 between New York and Washington where Neqro diplomats could not be served <:tt roadside restaurants. He hired a man just to do that work. Pedro San Jaan was kind o.f his. .. • . You ought to get a hold of Pedro San Juan. He' d haVG some fascinating s ories to tell~ He's an artist. He's around town. He had some showings of his art work# and they're very good. I'm quite sut"prised and pleased with his art work. But P.edro San Juan was a flamboyant kind of--I don't know whether he•s Puerto Rican or Spanish, Latin American--but he 1 s flamboyant, excitable. He used to qet up in the middle of the night and ·go out to these places when he'd get a call that they wouldn•t serve coffee to some African diplomat. He just did one hell of a job. This ia Angie's inspiration. So Angie felt a great usefulnes·s in the polit.ical sense as protocol chief than previous protoaol chiefs had or -68- subsequent protocol chiefs have. He was quite good. He worked hard at it. .Angie Duke is one of my favorites in this area . :t think •he did quite a job .. on April 20, 1961, you eriticiz~d the Kennedy press confeJ;ences at the Ame.rican Society of Newspaper Editors Con'Vention. LISAOOR: Did you ever change your opinion? LISAOOR: No; never changed. The only tbing that really t have done is harden my opinion. I . th·ink I tf&s right in that beeaufle the presidential press eonfeJ;ence hae now withered into nothing. There is an amusing iro11y there lf I may tell it. At that same American Soci~ty kind of debate z had with Pierre Salinger and Mae Freedman and someone else was on the program~ I said that I tbouvht that the ideal conference; of course., was one in the President's office with a few reporters standing around or those repox-ters who \~tere interested.. Piezre 9'0t up, and be said that \-las a retreat into the nostalgia of the Roosevelt time, would never happen again, and it was j .ust nonsense; when you have two or three thousand accredited lthite House correspondents, how the hell can they all get in the Presi dent's office. 'l'he irony of it is that Pierre lived in that job to preside ever just that sort of return becau.se Johnson pr.eferred that little, intime group of reporter.s in bis office and did have them and did them on short notice or with no notice at all--surprise.. unscheduled press con fer ences. I one was going to write a piece to twit Salinger abtlut this, but I never did . But it•s cur ious that Johnson saw the kind of artificiality of the theatrical press conference. Kennedy was good at it, and used it for the purposes. • • • He was a great showman in that ·setting. He spoke to the people at the other end o f the television r eceiver, not to us . Johnson was far leas comf rtable in ... this r ole, an.d so be aboli.Jhed it. He just doesn't do it anymore, and I think that- -I don • t wa.nt tot. seem immo dest- b ut my c r iticism seemea bor n out by evenes . -69- GRELE; How effeotive was Pierre Salinger as press secretary·? :tlSAOOR; Pierre Salinger was a fine, amiable, hail fellow-well-met, good sport, but he wasn't useful on substantive matters... He conducted. a fairl~ useful role, I think., in revealing the President's movements and his schedt.lle. The arranqements were sloppy but not bE:ld . He was unfairly comp•u:ed to [James c. J Jim Hagerty, a great technician in this field. But in terms of substance; that is, going .in, stt·tiny d'C'1~n and talkin.g to Pierr~ about presidential attitudes toward NATO {The North Atlantic Trea·ty Organization} or to,>~ard the New P.tontier domestic programs, except \~here they spilled over into polit.ics--Pie:r.J;e was fair. on politicss he was a p-olitical animal and he could talk a little bit about politics--it was not. very usef\11. At least;. it \ltaGn • t to me, and I 1 m surtl! mos.t of my colleagues share t .bis view. But he had grea.t style, Pierre d i d , and h:e had a 9raat flair in this job4' but in texms of hard information he wasn't very usefuL But no press secretary is . Generally they are constticted, reatricted. They don•t know much, thoylre not told much. (l'lilliam D. ] Sill Moyers is the single exception in my experience here. Hagerty did kno~.v a lot. Hagerty kne-w alrnoBt everyth'ing, but he wa.sn ~ t terribly forthcoming. But Hagerty . and Moyers, Moyers is really a sub.tstance man. He kno s all there is to know. Kennedy wasn't a.nxious for Pierre Salinger to knm~ everything there was to know. Kennedy often felt~ as John$on does,. that heis his own best press secretary. He'll decide whE!t goes out and bo>J it g-oes Otl t and when it goee out. GRELE: were people like Roger Tubby or Robert Manning more helpful? LXSAOOR: Yes . Tubby had diffictllties in the j ob, and he was finally r emov·ed from it. I ""as one of those i'i '"'ho r ecommen ded Roger Tubby for that job,. and I waa sor ry he didn 1 t do better at it . But tbey we ~ e . . •. nob Manning was ex cellent, anc1 so vo~ as [J ames L ] Jim G2;ennf ield who f ollO\ved Bob 1--lanning . They '"Jere excellent f or a r epor ter liko myself who wasn•t looking for scoops but -70- who wa·s looking~ . basically, for guidance and for illumination. I hate to use those t.vords, but they describe where are we teniU.ng, and what does it mean; and what are the forces and factors that go into this directional procesa. They were \!~lry ·good at that. 'l'hey weren't af.raid to talk to you. They were newspapet'llten tbemselves one$ ox- magazine men. ~hey understood your neetls. If they trusted you, you eould talk t~ them, you could find out wbat you needed to know. ~here are two kinds of newspapermen in this t.ownt the one wh:o tlu:ive.s on the e~cclusive bit of information wbic:h doesn 1 t often .illuainate much., and the p~rson who takes his s::oops ~men he gets ebem but primarily tries t :O explain what this city and what this town anll what this .g-overnment is all about .. to the Kennedy years would yQU s.ay that there was a bie.tarehy of newsmen in terms of access and f:run~J.i.ar.ity witb tbe Whit.e Bouse staff? Always ha.$ been., always has been. Is this by personality or by 1nsti t;ution? LISA(I)R: Mainly by ins·tit.ution whsr·e Tne New York Times and Time~ Magazine and Newsw~ ;ag'azi.ne ·are concerned# or maybe ~perhap~ the Washin,Sto~. Post :t would al$o inol'Ude ,in that. 1!'hose inst.U7,\ltiona z:_ead here in town every day o·r those with vast; airc:u.tlation like Time ~lagab:~i.n!!, it doesn • t mat:teJr who reports for them--"i+Jell, it d·oes ma·tter in a way but not greatly--they had doors opened to them that the Cleveland Plain Dealer~ the .cpioag~ ~~ly New_e, or the Pho~ni.x Gazette_ would never ba\l'e opened to th~ . 1 think maybe I 1 ve told the story about wben I do a New Y:ork Times ftagazin,e piece~ and I call up and say, "!'m doing a New York Times Magazine piece," I qet peepl~ to see rne within a day or maybe \oJi thitl the same day.. Bu.t if I say ''! .m Pete Lisagor of the Chieag:o Dailx; News. I'd like to ,come over a-ns ~ see t.he fellow." "We.ll, be's busy this week . 1 10 Se \-;on t be free for two or three weeks . :r m exa9~rera t ing f but only sl'ightly. sure, doors open to th~m and thes.e men. . . .. \, \ \ ;\ l\ -71- i r l I Hugh Sidey is a classic case. Hugh Sidey was assigned by Time Mf!ga.::;ine to live with Kennedy, almost literally, from about 195e-•s9, I thi.nk. And Hugh did, and he was roade their White Souse co,rrespondent, wia~ly. He was' clQEJe-r t.o the President than any single reportG!X in a profes$ional sense. l remember talkin9 to Hugh who $aid he'd never been invited to dinner at the Kennedy's or to any of their s~cial f.urt~tions. But in a pr.ofessional sense he was a loser than almost anybody, knew more·, and l\e wrote the book about l{enn~dy that was. probably as full of mo ~e i.maignt as any thinq that•s yet been done, including the Schlesinger book. Ar thU:r Sc·bl"sinqer bo-r rowed heavily from Hugh Sidey and credited him for it, ..~ ian' t credit him in a lot of instances. So you had the institutional thing. Then you had personal friends of Kennedy. The out standing examp~e is [Charles] Charlie Bartlett who intro duced the Pre.siden·t to ~is- ·wife-to-be. Charlie worked for a Chattanooga paper an£.1 wrote a cc·lunm around the country. but he was not a prominent figure locally or in these institutions I spoJ GRELE: In your. N~ York Tittlq,a article on visiting dignitaries., you said that John Kennedy preferred private chats to staff meetings . Do you think that this type of personal diplomacy domi nated duri.gg tl1e Kennedy Administation? LISAOOR: Yes. ! think that :Kennec1y started. . . . Well, of c~urse , summit diplomacy was started under Eiset'lhower. It was a concept of .John -72- Foster Dulles • . But. I think true summit diplomacy. • . . I al\\1ays thought those summit displays '\'1-Elt'e often usel.esa, mean_inql.ess. They \vere generally displays tbat ~.complished very little because they were. ill prepared. But true sum mit diplomacy was the kind o£ private chat tbat Kennedy liked to have alone with a visitin~ bead o ~ state or head of g~vernment. It disturbed me a little bit beca~s~ 1 wondered ~iho took notes. Vlell, I diseovered later that Kennedy would com-e back and diotat.e. what \~e describe as a matnorandum o£ conversation.. t.'fellf today 1 you kno\\l, the Pxesid.ent is on his mettle to accurately reflect an important per.sonal conversation because the other felle>w m.ay have different views of what wata said. But Kenn~dy used it. First, he '"anted it as a kind of icebreaker'*· and I think it•s qoQd as. an icebr~akar~ Johnson exploits it to the hilt.- and I think it • a probably very useful because Johnson in a room vtith one man is a very persuasive quy. H~ .gets tight up close to you. nose to nose practically# and it's hard to r esist if he's tryin9 to sell something or buy something:. Kennedy did more of th!s. He started it in a major \iay beaau$e he had confidence. in himself in theae· private me~tings . Eiaenbow.er was a staff man ~ He };)eU .. eved in having .evetybody around. Kennedy I think got a good deal~complished. . I know ftom storie.$ l •ve hea.rd afterward that it just went so well or didn't go v;ell. but at least he went right to the issue . Once wben [John] Diefenbaker oame to town. I once had. an account from the other ·a;Jide of Diefenbaker coming to town. He was in some political trouble in canada. He wa:s the canadian prime minister. He went to $e~ Kenttedy . They went in; they went in alone. Diefenbakerms astonished. I enormous and pretty horri.ble? 1iby shouldn't they cut through this old diplomatic amenities and qet down to cases? So X think Kentledy a id use this. and I think b~ used it to great effeat!vensss in most eases . Did you cover the !'..resident at Vienna or . • . LISAG:>lh I was \'fitb 61e PresidEtnt at Vienna. I went with l{c~nnedy on all hi.e. :e:uropean trips . X went on his last one to Germany. I happened to be th~ pool. man on ·the plane coming back from Vienna to London. I ";as one of flitUr reporters on that };l..ane .. ~e others were ~lilliam] Sill Lawrence who had switohed from The New YoJC"k ~ ...... Times to AQC jU:St heft>.re that .European trip. l was also pool man at the £lyaee Palace the ntqht that de Gaulle gave this fantastic ball .for Kennedyf for the Ken,nedys. aut on the p.ane trip, I think it' t! instructive on the plane trip O{M.'niflg back from Vientta etft.&r his confrontation with Khrushchev, ·1e tri-ed t;,p ett9ag~· l Ren 0 f t>omtell eame up to me, and he said. tlrhat! .. . . " He 't\taS ·sweal:'ing at t a pretty innocent and green bunc'b.. I \J1ent back and sat \'lith 'l'eQ Sorensen for. awhile trying to get sotn~ flavor o:f the meetil\fh sante little t!dbi.t hera or there, a%ld Ted aa!d he v~a_s just reading the mitlUt.es at that mome.nt.. He was ,not very anwious to talk. aut they were a chastened group. They bad l'lO'\tl come faae to faca, as it wore-... ::r.; don't. want to ovezdramatize it... - but ~ey had come f~o~ to face with the enemy, a cunning. ~hr-e,.;d, clever, eattby,. inoiatve, l'Jild in 'rllMY ways faoe of t'he enemy1 '-vhic.h vms I(h-rushohev, 'W'ho v:as unli1te anything a~,YPO'dy ' ·s aver seen t yot.'( ki\.ow. He was pretty bough. It \-lata. going- to be a cold \>~inter, Kennedy t.t;ld hi.m, if he swot~ on ·that line.. l1ell, Kennedy looked kind of ti.red and a btt~ U$e"d up wh~n w~ w.ent into London. We had a p;~Jett.y good re¢ept:ion in .Lond.on a:n.d then Wt;!nt t;Q Prince [Stani'alaus] R.aaziwill' s· house~t:~t far from Wh$r.e Z used to live in Uondon du.rin~ tb$ war year$. 1 US_¢~ to live in Chelsea on a plaoe eall.ed J<:tng' s Rpad. lt was. jQeU: a few blooks away froltl \there the Radzi.\>~ills' houstL • It t GRELE.: As per:t:tonalities, who do you think John kennedy found .it more diff'ieult to deal tllith, R'hrulilhehev or de Gaulle? LISAOO:lt: ~at • s an ihtere$ti.nq question. z 've thouqht ~of it myself . I tl\ink that he probably found de Gaulle mot·e difficult. 1 think onae be .got on to 't(kru3hc-hev. began to. wade his. way through the bluster, he saw in ~ssenoe a kind ef politician thatlJhe ould oope td.. th, t·ough, hard, and unaomproraislng. But I think the mytrtique and sQme of the ~osetamer that de ~lllle .aur.r:ou.nds hin'illlJ!~lf with must have b~en quite p1.1z~ling to K~nl'l<\ldY. rl1is is just sirapix. a curbstone .guess'-; · ~iy view is that de Gaulle frustiated hinte ana Khrushchev made bini mad. -75- .And there • s a great cU i:fere-nce . And he had the furth~.r pro ~ bl.e:m of--I hear more of it t.oday than t ctid then-·-of M.t"S. Kennerly and de GaUlle ~ Ytnt, know, Mrs .. Kennedy l'la& so, kind of. . . . She loved de Gaulle so rnuch and the French and evexything that. she ueed to complain that peo~le were b$aSt1y to de GaU1le c A fellow in the State Department told me not long ago thatt every time he said anythi.l1.9' nasty about de Gaulle he '<1 gQt a call from the PreaJ.dent a.aying, ••My wife carne in almost. in tears saying 'WhY sre you being beastly to cte Ga\.tlle? ~ •• And he said, "!t was a problem. At least \.\te don j t have that pro't)lem with Johnson, you see. ,. s~oau .se nobody' s ·going to bleed over: de Gautle over at the tillite Rouse notv. They may not know who de Gaull..e is but. , l:n any case she, Mrs. Kenn~dy~ being of some Fr One last que·stion on American diplomacy. What would you oon$ide.r John F . Kennedy's greates·t achieventent in fo~eign poliey? LtsAOOlh I think th~:r.e can be no quest ton. It was the Cuban mie.sile e.rtsis. t think that it was the first example ·of how a fle;.,c ible response, l4hi thought of sorne enormity. And yet:. this !a the· circumstances of the- nuclear aqe . It was a watershed in our :relations with the RUS$lans . X happen to th1nk historically that it simply put ~e eap on what had already started to develop, that l$, the i.o~ jf!Un had begun to break. r think it began ·to break in 1959, as a me~tter of fact. But z think this put the cap on it be.ccU.l.Se flO\'T th<2 RuS$i.ans '\'(ere looking own that :eame gun barrel, &s it were, lt wa$ a c.b staning ex per·ience, and 1 think .it will undoubt-edly 90 down a$ his chief accomplishment. if you can call a thinc;r like that an acoornplishnl~..nt, of his bri~f presioency ~ And bts greatest failure? LlSAGORt P4!0pl~ are inclined to say the Say of Pigs because it's dramatic and it's visible, it's deaori.babl~ and soon. .l ' ll'l n-ot s.o ;sure of that.. I •m not so sure that history won 1 t: marie down some c.retH.t.s fo,;r- refJt:raint of a great power in ·the Bay of Piqs ~ I think that. it. t~as a gha$tly mistake to ever have undar ta.k~n it, mind you!,. but; thare. were prol,lems if he had. not undertak~nl it" I don ,.t J;,;:no\-i about qrea~st failures. I suppose you' d have to .• because. it was v1sibleand identi fiable, describabl¢, the aay of Pigs p.robbbly was it. I hc;;;..v~ a feeling that in the long .r:ange of history, however, there ·may 'Qe anQther failu ~ e ·that will probably oversb$dow th~ .Bay of Piqs., make the aay of Pigs n footnote. l 'm not sure wh~ther :t would s,ay it was Asia, you kno·.. ;, "~"Jt~re we. began to qet. bogged down and maybe JMnnedy dir.S,n ' t mal<.e the right moves, or '\>tbether it '\'UiS not going onE1! step further in th~ Cuban missile crisis, turning that sqrew just m little more and demanding the depa.rture of the total Soviet presen.o(a in cuba .. X rather think that won•t be it because we've c.eu to live \'l'ith that problem and it gets les.s a problem a$ the yeara qo on . I ' nt no:t su.r.$ it \-ton' t be the trip to Germany even, when he campaigned aqaitrst the ~~hole idea th~t <'ie Gaulle has now foisted upon ue . l thougbt. it \~as a t.rem~ndouit:y at!.rrin9 spectacle and a r eally moving experience of an American pre ' dent going to Eur ope to campaign aga inst European isa./ati6'i\la'f'i1;) whlch is a far c r y from Alne x i.aa.Aa role in the -77- t>Jorld up that point Ol:' up to world tvar II .. Itm not sure what. his greatest failure ill be~ I'm not s-uqgasti.ng that tllaxe will be a one g.reat failure . .aut :t tm not su~e it • a going> to be the Bar of Pigs ....~en people begin to sort out sl.:u;:c-esses arH~ failures. I'm not even s:ure that it's qui:te aecura.te to d.esor-ibe the cuban misatle crisis in term$ of l"tis qJ:eatest triumph. His speech~$ on interdependence of America and Europe may be hl.s greatest triurn:?b in t.itne. Maybe tbat t'l!ll be the pbil:osophioal .unde.rpinnings fer sometbinq 'Ne don't yet fo.ra.see 4 So it rs cl l£i tcult, but if~ 11ad to do a short :range journali$tic judgtttent_, I suppose the cuban missile <.n:· isis would be his gr You went t>n the con11ervation trip in 1963. I · ve been a eked to ask yot-1 -v;hat was the origin of th¢ name Johnny 1\ppl.eseed . LIS.AOORc Well, t:hare' s a p ieae that Sander vanocur did for ~ithe r Atlantic {M'QntblyJ .or HaJ:pe:r: 's on that v1estern trip. It was d!ffic;ult- writing copy about the t r i p beaause1ft started out rather d ~.tll . I Jrote a piece in which I aompared Kennedy to a combination o·f Smoky the Bear, beca'uae he W·as speaking conser vation, and Jollnny Appleaeed, because he was SJi)·r eadintg, you know .. the ~ospel ar ound , Did he e ver comment to you . LISAGOR: No, he never d i cl, he nevel~ d i d _ Ac tual.l.y f the Vano<:ur a r ticle appc.;a red after hie death, but ~ Ma2azine p icked it up. Th0y d i dn't credit me wit.h it. They called rne and apologize d f or not cre1d :i.ting m ,_ but they d i d use i.t 'rha t t r i p lfi a EJ int.t:u:es·ting in -78- Kennedy was always uncertain about the political impact of his nuclear tese ban treaty. He \'tae not sure \¥bather this would be regat'ded a$· a soft on communt.s.t result .01: t-Jhethar it '"ould be a kind of yielding, you know, being a little, we1l I guess soft is the word, not being tough enough. Making an agreement '"ith the Russians was not al tog-ether the most pOl'ular thing at that time . He didn't talk about it for the first da.y or so of ou~ ·ta:i.p, bt.1t out t tbinJt it -was in Montana somewhere--vanoa:ur describes this in his article--he mentioned it for the fir$t tilue in a tentative t,.;ay, and he \'11'El$ interrupted by the audience '"1ith an explosive outburst of applause. You could almost see him startlect by t:his ~ 'l'hen he b~an to .mention 1t more. an cl :no~ tbing stop~~d the audienae as much a$ that, when he would mention the partial nuclear test h~n treaty, .even in Salt Lake City near the Tabernacle ~ Now~ you .know, the Mo.t'mon church is regarded as a pretty, t:wo- fi$ted ant! C01'6lntll1tst operation and mainly an the conservative side. t;fhe met'ltion of the nuclear test ban treaty just. . . . You'd $ee mothers ri.se up in applaus.e, mc#lly mothers, it seemed to me. The women_, it seer11ed ·to me¥ took over at that point , Well, it tuxned -out to be politically the most popt1lar thin.g he had done and, boy, he began then to e :-:ploit it to the· hilt . So it just g:o~s to show you ho>.N <:i.ifficult it ls to make judgments about particular actions. 'l'hat t\•as a revelation to him and to all of us . That really ,..,.as the genesis of Sander Vanocur •· s piece, liThe Discovery of the West'1 he called it It was the diacov.e.ry of the nuclear test ban t;:eaty aa one of th.e rtlost. popular political issues he -had going for him . That \'las the }:eal .story of that western trip, It didn • t have much to do with con servation and irrigation and all t _he rest of it. It had to do ..-.rith tho discovery that he made that this ~1-as one very potent issue The peace issue then becrune paramount in .his calculation which again throws some light on an unanswered question--what would he have done about Viet Nam . Having had that e .:v~perience, '!.\That ~ould he have· done if he had to go in ' 64 . It ' s difficult to J{nOvl. -79- GRELE : In an a ~ ticle in The New Yo rk Times on November .....,..._. __...... , - -~ - 24 , 1963, yot' arqued that John I Yes. y~s . ! do . The~e are others I would now add but GREtE: trv ill you add them? LlSAOORa t1e1l, for e :.;ample, I think. tbe i .dea that a regional. a mara formerly thouqh.t to be strictly a eeetional candidate like Lyndon Johnson can't be elea ted , a man south o·f the Mason-DLron Li ne. Johnson is a. . Well.- you know_, there's a whole western, r egi.ona l, sectional shibboleth that once ·e xiste-d# is qone I think that the fact that you bad a preEJident an .;~ viee pr esident both f.roro west of the Mississippi i.e an interesting thing . :t m really for the first time not·l t: r ying to think of some others, but ;c think these are all quite true. GRELEt In the sat ,u:::d~y Ev'en .ing Po.$t on May 9, 1959 , there appeared an article by you on uzf You Get into Tr ouble Abroad. " In that artiale y'Ou mentioned an a!rmsn by themme o£ [A. L . J Pope*. I ' ve been told that the incident with the imprisonment of Pope was a crucial issue in tndonesian .... united States .relations. LtSAGOR; That's r i.gbt . I think that ' s true. I think no\,.--I 'm not sure \vhat I said in that a r ticle it was so long ago--I thinK Pope was a CIA operator, if z •m not mistaken . If I didn't say it then, I think that was the c a.s.e; if I d idn't write it. lt was just a d i f ficult--the deli,aacy oS dealitlg with a man doing a j ob . t-7asn 't he in t l1e employ o f the. 0 f the :reb(ila . He had • - BO- LISAGOR= Of thEl repels, that Is right. Of the Indonesian rebels. vteli, it t4as just the old queetion of what do you do w!tb an AmGric~n who gets into trouble abroad. 'm'le Indonesian$, I think, resented the faqt that we were interceding: in a way t "o try and get this fellot-v sprufl9' as a soldier of fortune, to put i.t. ,euphemistically. GRELE: What . . . LXSAGORe :tt ,..,orke GRELE: I ju~t \vant to turn the tape over., and then I have a few more questions . '!-/ I 1210 TAPE II, SIDE I GRELE: Wbo did you confer with on y.our article on Tish Baldridge which appeared in McCall's in JW"l~ of 1961 unaer the title ·Of i'Pirst Lady to the First Lady"? LxlAGOR: W~ll, I talked te an awfu2 lot of people on that one. T'ish, .of course. I wante6 to talk to Mrs. Kennedy about it. Pid I or didn•t. I? I don't think I did. But :t talked to large numbers of member$ of the sta.ff, a whole group of staff people.. I talked to one Negro valet o r doorman or some thing over there. They've GRELE: was there ever any tenderness about talking about tbe East Wing of the White House? L:tSAGORt Yes,. there was alwayllJ a certain retiaenae, mainly on the part of Tish who didn ., t know hov; far she ought to go, Jho was fearful that I migh.t write somethi_ng that would get her in bad with Mrs . K~nnedy. Tish was primarily concerned about giving credit to Mrs. Kennedy for ideas ~fuich publicly had been creditQd to Mrs. Kennedy but which in reality were Tish' s ideas. I don't rem~mber "-lhat those were now, but that was the point on which .she was abs.o1utely worried sick. BUt it turned out all ri9ht because in the end it was ~ flattering piec-e ~11 around~ Nobody cQuld 'have felt badly about it ~ There were no snide remarks in it. Xt w·as .t".eally a quite. innocuous p!eee. I got a call one sunday morning f'rom TiSh~ bar mother and her father,. all1 you know, thankinq me for the pieoe about Tisb and all quite r'elieved that she wasn't going to be fired for some·thin9 I had written. GRELE: Ho\>~ d i d she handle her job? LISAOOR: She was: wonderfuL ll'ieh naldr$.dge really is a born publicist. ShO'd v1ritten a book called Roman Candle from whicb X borrowed heavily both for idea.s and for question$ and approaches because it. told a good deal about her experience with Clar~ Boothe Luce. But she was one of th~se very tall '\·lomen. big women, that had to compensate for size "'ith a good deal of skill and intelligence and hard werk. She did and she's just a mag nifioent tvoman. that • s all. GRELE: Tou also wrote an article for Mc.Call 1 S with Marguerite Higq!ns on the n.et~ style of enter taining at the Whit-e Hou1Je in which you said that Caroline Hagner Shaw had reacted negatively to this new style. What \vere her objections? LISAOOR: Yes, I think shewae a traditionalist. She believed t.l-tat you ougbt to be in white tie t~hen you won.t to \i'1hite House affairs~ I didn't particularly care for protocol.. 'l!hey wanted to break: or amend the rules of protoaol. Angie Duke helped them in this process becauae he \..ras a quite willing accom plice, if you will, in the \'thole process. l think she liked people. • . . ae wanted to mix the people up at. the table. He didn't want all of the slobs down below the salt while all of the c1iplomats. . . . .If he had a meeting \'lith, a dinner with diplomats mixea up with labor leader·s, with cllftsume~ types., he didn't want protocol to force him away from the l.)ec>ple be ~ted moat to be inter mituJled wit.b. So they hx-ox:e those .rules, and s_he was a little.. . . • She wrote a piece about it once. I think her basic contention in the pieeet though.,. was the departure of the white tie; that tortu e rack, you J~now. Kenn.edy didn * t oare about that. Of course, Johnson bas carried that a little s·tep furtber· too. Protocol is almost non e:d.ste:nt now. We knOvJ mua'h about Mrs. Kenaedy Is. entbu·siasm for Sh~h:espeare and the ballet in the White House., but there is a di$pute· as to .John Kennedy I e .reaction to this. LISAGOR• ¥es. I think mys~lf that John Kennedy bad a gre.at feeling for the \ttritten \'lord and, there fore., probably bad some feeling for ShaJcespeare and Shakespearean perfo:mnances, but I thinJ<, a good deal like myself, can take it or leave it, prefer to read it than to s .it through a long -cwening of it. I always was amused by tbese chamher music evenigtrs. I think that he probably couldn't care lGss for anything than ohamber mtttsic, for eY-ample~ Like people of our generation, I guess, grm1ing up the \'lay he did--I don't 'rJant to equate myself t'f'ith the Kennedys because he gret•J up in a very 't'l7ealtby family--but I euspect that his tastes for this thing \>Jere fairly common~ routine. l think be •d prefe·r--this ·may be a lt_ttle harsh beca\.tse I don • t. really kr1ow-··but I think he'd prefer ~ Benny Goodman conce.rt to one by the Budapest String Quartet. I just can't imagine him sitting- for a long time absorbing tho stri11g quartet. - 83- aut l think he \x1as proud to be making this new inroad into the ";vay the l1hite House entertained. t think he was quits consciou$ and deliberate about elevating- the taste of lfuite House entertainment in the hopes that there would create ripples that tvould iJnprove tastes g·enerally. I think that he admired and appreciated and re(fpeot.ed an{i perhaps loved his wife for doing this beeause it r~ally made the White House into sometbin9 it never had been before. It \'las kind of the center of the latest in fa$lionab1e taste~ style and so on, in entertainment as tvell. This was a great boon, I think. In tne EisenhovJer years--I don' t~nt to scoff at L::t'"'rence Welk because millions of people like him, love . Lawxen.oe Welk •.s music--but 'Lawrence Welk \'Ja.s the maximum t I ln ente·'rta!nment values at the trntite House ~ X,.awrence 'i 'V'1elk and Fefd 'V7ari'ng and his Pennsylvanians. To have 1 Shakespeare brought ln, to, have Metropolitan Opera stars. l ( Tish Baldx-idge aetuallt. had an assi~t from Mrs. j Kennedy to find unsung artists so that they could enter tain at the White .House. One o£ these \t'Ta:S a Negro singer who 'lflas never ~ven known in ·this country, who had been makinq a career al>road, named Grace Brumbree, or Bumbry I guess he·r name was, a St. Louis Negro sop..rano or contralto. ~ey found her. I remember Tish telling me the story of ho-v.1 they discovered her . It was, you kn0\'11 by chance, some tip here from somebody that there 1 .s a singer at some \~agnerian feat.ival i.n EUrope who was born in St. Louis, and you ought to try and ~t her. They did, and she became a name in her own country for this one appearance. It was a great pi,ea·e of American promotion. in addition to being fine, elevating entert.aitJment. But I think the Preiliident tolerated this more than he pl. ung~d into it '"ith great enthusiasm. It Is ju.st my guess .really because I don 1 t Jmow. From all those around him, hia age who were aroU11d, they'd alwaye lead you to believe, fiWell, of course, the madam has arranged thia, and he's going through with it, but h~ didn't particularly care for it.u -84- GRELE: Was his invitation to [J Robert] Oppenheimer as radical a break as it was painted? . '' . : .' ~ ' LlSAGORI Picture~ to be? I suppose it was. I suppose • .. • .... l ~ Kennedy was a kind · of man who wanted to re veraie wha~ be might have considerdd the in justices of the paat with some people. I think Kennedy also had a feeling abou·t Hc:Carthyisra that haunted him in · many waya. You know • .Mra. Roosevelt never forgave him what: she thought: was a somewhat craven attitude toward Mccarthy, Senator {Joseph a.] Joe McCarthy, I mean. Kennedy was ill and he waa in hospitals and he never was around to vote. Bllt he never openly condemned Joe McCart:hy for two reaaonea one, hie father thought that ' • , . Joe waa doint ause~al servicer alld two, among the :trish ~atholica in the Boston area- b Maaaac:husetta, Joe McCarthy . ' ' .a not the vilial.a he waa picture4 here, where he seemed '· : . ~o ' . be a bull 1ft a dbina ship running rampant over people's ~ . . .,utations and name•. % think he had a sense of quilt .)Ut it, and % think he wanted to make amends where pos- • I •. '---' . :· sible. While Oppenheimer was not a dire.ct victim of · ' . McCarthy, it came out of an en associated with the witch ''I bunting syndrolttf!. So X think that 1t waa a break, and it I._ ...- ";as evidence of I LISAGORt No. gee, there • re probably a thousand things that X' 11 tbiltlt of at some other time but I • tl! • GRELEt If on readiny the transcript you think of any tbin• tlmt you • d like to insert jtlst • . • LISAGOlta When I •a reading lt, well, fine, I '11 do that. I think that' • a useful thing to do. There were, you know; lota of other oeaasiona in which some ·1'ht might be thrown on Kennedy but I'm afraid that all the ) ..__ :sonal stuff I •ve probably given you. ~ .! -85- ,,'• ...... • . .. ·j : - , _,. • • • . ' · : ~ . ' .'' : ~ ~ I .-·. '' ·.•·::. Well, thank you very much • ::-~ ..:.; .. : ,. -~: ~---: :. ·.- 1 1 ~" ' ' •t- _ I • ·, .. ; . . .- ..... : : ... ~~." -1 ::: •i.:: . ....-'-