I'm John Batchew with Professor Bill Taubman of Amherst College, with his brother Philip

Taubman, have published a new book that's filled with information I've never read.

Now, I'm not a narrow reader.

I'm a wide reader.

This, I had to ask Bill again and again before we started, has anybody ever seen this

before?

Much of it not, especially this part.

Lyndon Johnson wants to be elected President of the United States.

He wants the endorsement of the American people because he's inherited the job with the tragedy of JFK.

But on the eve of his nomination process in Convention Hall in Atlantic City in the heat of the summer,

he hears a story that Jackie Kennedy is going to come out for Bobby Kennedy

and urge his nomination for president.

That does not happen.

But there is reason to believe, in fact, it's in the voice of McNamara telling the

president that McNamara will spend the evening, the night, with Jackie Kennedy, before that event could happen,

and he will carry to the president the information, and he wants to know, will Jackie Kennedy do this or not.

A shorthand version is that McNamara, to win the favor of the president who's anxious and insecure and actually sure that he's going to be humiliated by the Kennedys again,

he uses McNamara to spy on the Kennedys, and McNamara goes along with it, and it's not the only time he does it.

Have I said that generally correctly, Bill?

Yes, you have, although I think I would alter slightly the notion of McNamara's motivation,

because by the time this happens, I think McNamara is already clearly Johnson's fair-haired boy.

I don't, I'm not at all sure of this would be speculation.

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