rostow became johnson's national security advisor.uring the kennedy presidency, he was talking about bombing and putting ground troops in. he never gave up on that war. i knew rostow as well. his attitude was, we saved the other southeast asian countries. we gave them time to develop. that was his rationale. >> page 329, there is a juxtaposition in one long paragraph. it gets back to the image of the president and whether or not if we had known he was that sick, would he have been elected? this is another one of these that if we had done this, what would we have thought? jackie kennedy reflected mimi beardsley was who? >> she was a 19, 20-year-old intern who kennedy began having an affair with in the summer of 1962. he had a sustained affair with her to the end of his life. he saw him the week before went off to texas. she claims in her book that he said, i wish i could take you with me to dallas. of course he couldn't because jackie kennedy was going on the trip with him. he had this relationship with were vitallythey tied to one ano

rostow became general -- >> had impressed him as all that masterful about any of the big issues that they faced in cuba, berlin, or vietnam. that's a strong indictment it seems to me. he was someone who grew in the office. was badly burned by the cuban bay pig experience. he had listened to the experts, see? c.i.a., joint chiefs of staff. and he said, and he went to see e gall in france, made the trip in 1961. and the gall said to him, you should surround yourself with the smartest possibly people. listen to them. hear what they have to say. but at the end of the day you have to make up your own mind. and he kennedy remembered what harry truman said, the buck stops here. after the bay of pigs he was determined to make up his own mind, hear what these experts had to say, weigh what they were telling him but at the end of the day he was going to make the judgment and he was the responsibility party and you see that, you say that -- that was abundantly clear when you listen to all those and read e transcripts of all those those tapes during the cuban missile crisis. you know he hell the