The Presidency: I Need to Talk

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THE PRESIDENCY

"Why don't you all come in my office after lunch and we'll have a—what do you call it—an impromptu press conference," said the President to White House reporters one morning last week.

At 4:10 that afternoon, 150 newsmen stood shoulder to shoulder in the oval office for one hour and 33 minutes while Lyndon Johnson, not inhibited by the presence of television, lounged comfortably behind his desk—and talked on and on and on about every subject under the moon.

First, the President urged those in the back of the room to speak up if they could not hear. But when a woman correspondent complained, "Sir, we don't hear a word," the President bawled back jocularly, "Good!" Later, with a grin, he admonished the newsmen: "Now won't you all quit writing these stories—'Won't anybody say no to L.B.J.' Because I have more people running around here saying no." The President read prepared statements for nearly half an hour, then set a 20-minute limit on the question-and-answer period. But when the time was up, he said buoyantly, "I'll give you five more minutes because I need to talk." He did—for a lot more than five minutes.

He announced that Army Secretary Stephen Ailes, appointed in January 1964, would resign July 1, and that Under Secretary Stanley R. Resor would replace him (TIME, May 28). He spoke of the hopes of former Commerce Under Secretary Franklin Roosevelt Jr. in the New York mayoralty race: "He performed a very valuable service to this Administration, but I am not in the business of selecting mayors for any cities." He discussed other nations' nonpayment of U.N. debts ("We are very concerned"), the exchange of information between U.S. and Soviet atomic scientists ("It has furthered our hope that science can serve as a common ground between East and West"), and reductions in Government employees ("down something like over 4,000"). Among other subjects covered:

∙CRITICISM OF U.S. POLICY IN VIET NAM.

The President recalled a story once told to him by Louisiana's Huey Long. It was about a farmer who couldn't sleep at night because of "frogs barking in the pond." The farmer was so irked by the noise that finally "he went out and drained the pond and killed both frogs." Said the President: "We aren't going to kill anybody, but we recognize the frogs and the ponds and they keep us awake sometimes. That is the freedom we love." Johnson added, "I have been around Congress too long—35 years—not to understand that there are going to be different viewpoints."

∙THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. When a reporter from the Polish newspaper Trybuna Ludu asked Johnson for his assessment of the situation, the President clenched a fist, glared at the newsman and said: "Some 1,500 innocent people were murdered and shot, and their heads cut off, and six Latin American embassies were violated and fired upon over a period of four days before we went in. We didn't start that. We didn't intervene. We didn't kill anyone. We didn't violate any embassies. We were not the perpetrators, but after we saw what had happened we took the necessary precautions, as I have said so often, and as I repeat again: