i also remember him telling me about grameco, which was very early on, how he'd seen grameco, how they had taught him everything and they want to put him in the position of lying to him. i said, how could you not say, you rat, sitting there, and he said, what, and tip the whole hand? he described that to me. and then i remember another thing. the man that roger hillman wrote me a letter about just this winter, about how one of the worst days of it all, some u-2 plane got lost over alaska or something. >> uh-huh. violated soviet air space. >> some awful thing. oh, my god. then the russians might have thought we were sending it in and that could have been awful. i remember him telling me about that. oh, and i remember hearing about how anderson at the pentagon was

mad. i don't know if that was afterwards or before. then i remember just waiting for that blockade. i couldn't think life was unlike an election night but much worse. some big ship was coming, a giant freighter turned back that had nothing but oil on it, anyway, and hearing that joseph kennedy was saying, jack, did you send these? and he said no. and then finally some ship turned back that we boarded or something, and then we heard the first relief. i can't remember, you know, the day finally when it was over and bundy saying to me that if it had just gone on maybe two more days, everybody really would have cracked. all of us were awake night and

day. tax shepard in the situation. then i wrote a letter to mcnamara afterwards which i showed to jack. everyone worked to the peak of human endurance. ♪ >> how did the president feel about restoration? >> the restoration? >> of the white house. >> oh. well, he was interested in it. he would always get so interested in anything that -- i cared about him, but he was nervous about it. he wanted to be sure it was done the right way, so he sent clark clifford to see me. and clark clifford was really nervous because he tried to persuade me not to do it which jack never. >> why?

>> he said, you just can't touch the white house. he said, it's so strange. everyone in america feels so strangely about it. that's the truman balcony, and if you try to make any changes, it will be just like that. and i said, it won't be like the truman balcony and i told him about harry dupont and all the people we hoped to get. so then we talked about how you tried setting this up and he said it was good setting up the guidebook. so once he saw it was going along with good counsel, he was so excited about it. >> was there ever criticism of the things you did in the white house? >> no, the most incredible interest. and then the tours would start going. and every night i would come home saying, we had more people today. this would be after you found the monroe tour or something.

the guidebook was selling out the door, and i would be teasing mcnally about it. he was just so proud. i was happy that i could do something that made him proud of me. because i tell you one wonderful thing about him. i was really -- i was never any different once i was in the white house than i was before. but suddenly everything that had been a liability before, your hair, that you spoke french, that you didn't just adore a campaign and you didn't break bread with flour up to your arm. in the white house, all those things i had done suddenly became wonderful. and i was so happy for jack, that he could be proud of me then. it made him so happy, it made me so happy. those were our happiest years. [ applause ]

can you hear us all right?

in her foreword to this book, caroline said will parents were the most wonderful people you could ever meet. we're fascinated to meeting people in our past from edwi edwinsburg to onionsburg. here is a family that lived in a home that has not been welcome to its in habit ants, it was like living in a prison. you were struck by how many times the word "happy" came up in these conversations? >> i was, and she is nothing if not frank throughout these interviews, and one thing that she says more than once is that when her husband was elected in 1960, she had a novel reaction very unlike most incoming first

ladies. she was terrified and she was depressed partly because she had just given birth, but partly because she thought it would wreck their family life, that there would be just such a fishbowl of so many pressures, and she was amazed to find, she says, that it actually had the opposite effect. during their marriage since 1953, john kennedy had run for vice president, run for reelection of the senate, run for president, and so was gone, she says, almost every weekend, very much apart. the first time, now, they were there at that house, she worked in the oval office, they were together in physical proximity a lot more, so i think there was an exhilaration finding that, contrary to what she expected, there real those really were her happiest years. >> there was talk about wisconsin -- >> she really loved wisconsin,

caroline said. >> i don't remember if these proceedings are being televised in wisconsin. >> she's extremely fond of wisconsin. everyone in wisconsin, just don't read that part. >> in fact, there is a word in your transcript i always wondered how to spell. in describing wisconsin in the winter, she said, ewwwwww. >> she actually said she didn't like a single person that she met in wisconsin except for the people that worked for jack, and in west virginia she liked almost everyone she met. >> that's right. but, dick, obviously she brought great charisma to the art of campaigning and was an asset from well before the election. in the hard work of daily politicking, how did the staff feel about her? >> oh, she was great. i am sorry that she was not as happy about wisconsin as i saw

her, because we were in a main street broken down storehouse, and that was the headquarters. and i remember her being there with writing and things, and at least entertaining the people who came. they found who she was and they wanted to visit with her, and they did. so i do not remember her bad part of that. i do remember that there was a pestiferous salesman for some newspaper and kept bothering her and bothering her. and eventually she was riding with the president, because kenny o'donnell told me this, and she said, you know, that fellow, i bought an ad, and he said, well, for what?

she said, i wrote it. it was not what they had hoped it would be. but thereafter, in west virginia, of course, she was great. and she was marvelous. the best part about her was that if you got an assignment for her, it was done completely and f fastiduously and if you were on the committee, you better make sure you did everything proper. but she was very good in that. >> one of the most fascinating things, there was a crew doing a documentary of the wisconsin primary, which i'm sure many of you have seen. just to give you a sense of how far she came in such a short period of time, she's standing there in the grocery store with a microphone almost begging people to come over and say hello, and they're still

shopping, not paying her any attention. i think that may have had some influence on her, quite deser deserveedly. >> when the book was published in 1974, the media got some things right and some things not so right, but some attention was paid to her role as a wife and to prescribe to her political opinions. glad somebody laughed, thank you. however, that federal meetr that was -- metre that came into existence. obviously she has very independent thoughts. she is a sharp judge of human nature, and with all the people publicating the white house, and

eventually she did work. where do you see her as a feminist in evolution? >> i would say she was an unw unwitting feminist. but when you read and listen to her, this is someone who, as caroline said very well, she came to the white house. yes, she decided to do it in her way. she found for herself an enormous project which was restoring the white house, which was probably three careers at the same time, at the same time as she had young children. she did the job of first lady in a way that was very much her own choice and she made other choices about her life, too. so i think by the definition of f feminism, i think she was a feminist, but some of these

early tapes would make her say, no, i was not a feminist. >> does that track with your memory, bill? >> yes. there was no question she was a feminist, she just basically took over and did a job that somebody might have assigned it to a man, because when she undertook the remodeling, remaking of the refurbishment, the correction of the mistakes that had been made in the white house, she did it with a strength and a verve and an intelligence that captures everybody. so i would not dismiss her on any count, but certainly for her lack of some wishy-washyness, but that wasn't her style. z >> one of the things that jumped out at me was the physical pain

president kennedy was in during his life and pretty much through his presidency. dick, if i can direct this to you, as someone working in campaigning and direct liaison, was that constant pain something you picked up on as a staffer in the white house? >> no, he never complained of pain. he complained about lack of having sufficient hot water, and in order to get it, and she relieved him of his back pain, but she was naming herself the corre corrector of all illnesses, including with sam rayburn. obviously, it was not giving him the relief of what he should

have had. this latest thing with a doctor who taught him straining and stretching was what gooif real estate leaf, but he was not a complainer. >> she talks about these two back operations in 1954 and 1955, and the most poignant thing, she describes what torture was and how he went through this, and we later found out it was absolutely unnecessary. she says the following summer he went back to the senate, and she says he looked so wonderful in his gray suit and he was strolling around the senate floor as if there was nothing wrong, then he would go back to bed at night in a hospital bed. the other thing is, you know, when he was president, i think dick would confirm. the number of times we now know

he was -- they won their first foreign visit, which was to canada, and they planted a tree. he went over and especially rkt almost, unbearable pain. he was such a stoic and he was so unaccustomed to make the people was ever in such constant physical disd. right. it enurged my team.

-- >> you must have been thinking about arthur's questions as you were researching this book and he was a friend of all of ours. were there questions he didn't ask that you wished that he had? >> did, but everything is always hindsight, 20/20 47 years later, as caroline pointed out. nobody would have thought to ask her about her own experience. in those days, it was sort of a flight event and there was less on her. and also the point was basically to talk about president kennedy, but caroline and i have discussed this, too. there were things that as you know happened later on, you certainly wish you would have asked, for instance, what president kennedy might have done in vietnam, other issues that weren't so important in early 1964, in retrospect, we now know are very important.

>> it seems like by asking arthur, and there was no one else to ask with better skills or training as a historian, a decision was made to take a certain path to the story which was the path of the harvard elites who would come down to the white house. dick, did you feel like there were stories that weren't told? >> yes. and anything arthur was told, because arthur was the greatest author of stories about himself. i know specifically, because denny arthur told me, when dean russ came to visit the president, he had a specific message. would you please get this lesson off the list of people who get my cable? why? because arthur was about the most garrolous party-going person in the whole white house.

because russ said, listen, anything you get by cable is around town by nightfall. so -- and then he said to kenny, no, you better not. i'll have to do it. you're going to come out poorly in this book as it is. >> and one thing she says in here is how compartmentalized their lives were. >> one thing i found that was real, no one in the staff really did anything by memos. we communicated by phone and conversation and that's it. so there are not great records. >> one reason for the old history program. >> that's right. and it made it very refreshing

when something you know you had seen or had been done was not recorded. but you could also see -- >> was there anything particularly that you would have liked to have recorded? >> no. no, i have saved up for my book. the thing that i remember best out of all of that is when we came -- it was really about getting some stuff done at the white house and everybody would get all excited about why is so-and-so writing a memo or why are they doing that? we don't need a memo, we just get things done.

i think dave powers' remark that we should no historian, we should have just some three decker people give a report of what went on. because that was his personal look at the president's attempt to deal with people on the staff. but the people on the staff dealt very generously with one another. generously, not so generously, but critically, you bet. but not in an offensive way, nor were we offensive to one another. though i could have been, but the most important memory i have of the thing was the formation

of the campaign for the presidency. and that really began with the fight or the control of the democratic state committee in massachusetts. >> it's onionsburg, not edmonburg. >> yes, onionsburg. it was in the western part of the state, and i think it was onions because they had an onion patch out there -- >> it was an onion farm. >> it started because that was when we determined that this guy, who had just been elected to the senate, and should take a shot at getting control of the mechanics of the party, now, that is really how you get recognition nationally. nobody cares who is chairman of the democratic party in new

hampshire or anyplace else. but they were the opposite. but if you were getting ready for a convention, to people who care about who are the party leaders, want to know who is in charge, even though they find that being in charge doesn't put you in charge of much. but they did. so that's when we started the campaign of the democratic control. that went on and on and on, although i remember quite clearly it was on mother's day in the year in which the election was held the year we were in the hotel park plaza, whatever it is -- copley plaza, and the president was interviewing the people of the state committee and asking if

they supported him or not, and if they did, we thought they were wonderful people, and if they seemed a little hesitant, we wanted to find out -- >> and you remembered years later who was for you and who was against you? >> oh, yes, you do. you remember, yes. and if you wanted to get a ticket to go to the white house, you better have been on the right side. but that's when it began and it was a crucial campaign. we did onionsburg and juicy ganerra -- >> who is juicy ganerra? mrs. kennedy talks about these wonderful figures but they have not been part of her life. juicy ganerra and another person referred to as the china doll.

tell about them. >> this really goes back to the hotel belleview, and the hotel belleview, which apparently no longer exists, was at that time the -- about a block from where the president's apartment was. it was the buzz word of all parties who were around, and they were in and out, and we didn't have any mail -- >> he had his headquarters there, hadn't he? >> i don't know. perhaps, but, you know, it was not a place -- we don't have e-mails and twitters and all that type of thing because you just met them and you whistle. we had a fellow at home we called whisper iin whispering e.

>> why did you call him whispering? >> because he would whisper. they would spread rumors as quickly as you could spread a disease, and they were afraid what he did spread was a disease. but as they were getting ready for the fight in the -- for the control of the state committee, we had mayor lynch of summerville, which was our champion, and they had onionsburg was the champion of the mccormicks. but nako mccormick, who was eddie mccormick's father, was also on the committee. and nako was about as different of a speaker as you could make. he was coarse and rough and tough, and i remember when his son was withdrawing from a campaign for the attorney generalship or something of that nature, and the father stood in the middle of the aisle in the

mechanics hall yelling at his son, sit down! that's a stupid thing to do! so he wasn't what you would call a wise counselor that you think of is in the back of a lot of these things. but we got through this fight and everybody was convinced there were big piles of money, because the kennedys were going to buy this thing, and how much are you getting? so i went home and said, gee, i hope there's something waiting for me. dinner was waiting for me. but that was the meter of the day, to determine who was good and who was bad. but that continued on, and everybody is correct, people will recall, where were they in the fight for lynch and o'neal

burke? and they never did get it solved. because people were still mad much, much later. and they never, ever would stop that. >> you think they were still mad about 1980 or so. >> i had high hopes of talking about other things, but it really is fun talking about onionsburg. there is a fascinating what-if in the story, michael. there was a hint that the opening of china was anticipated in the mid-'60s and the quoting of mao and the trip to russia. did that strike you as a surprise? >> i suspect it was the first time we really had more solid evidence from the prime witness. john kennedy essentially was beginning to plan his second term, and two wof the things tht he planned to do was go to the soviet union.

that would be the first time a president had been there, believe it or not, and also an opening to china, which, in retrospect, given what our world is like today, was an enormous oppression. he used to say in private, face it, those are subjects for the term after reelection. >> and lyndon johnson, who you worked extensively with, does not fare well in this treatment. there was a story how he went out one night in georgetown and had a bit too much to drink and felt he wasn't up to the job. does that track with your sense of where lbj was? >> i think mrs. kennedy, had she read this later on, would have felt she was a little hard on lbj. this was spring of 1964. lbj had just become president. she was not happy that he was beginning to overturn a number of her husband's intentions and there were other personal glitches going on the previous two months. and i think if she were here, the one