Met Ted Sorensen Tonight

[Octafish]

He sounded great. President Kennedy’s counsel and speechwriter spoke about the 60s at Macomb Cultural Center at Macomb Community College in Clinton Township, Michigan. It’s smack dab the middle of Reagan Democrat country.

I wished my wife and kids could’ve been there with me. I also wished my DU friends could hear him talk about the decade that he said will be remembered as a most important period in the coming centuries.

Sorensen described three major accomplishments of the Kennedy Administration that may prove essential for the survival of the nation and planet:

1. Man left the earth, braved the sea of space and voyaged to the moon, exploring a new world. In the process, the U.S. demonstrated to the world that free people can establish technological and peaceful pre-eminence in space.

2. Established in law that all Americans are equal, enforcing the integration of universities in Mississippi and Alabama. Federalized states’ national guards and sent in the Army to preserve law and order on the campus.

3. Kept the peace when almost every counselor in his cabinet and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged the President to launch an attack on Cuba, a move that would have immediately led to a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.


Mr. Sorensen detailed how the world would be after a nuclear war, one where a radioactive atmosphere would mean only a few things might survive if they were underground somewhere. That’s when I thought of cockroaches and Cheney.

Anyway, Mr. Sorensen stood up the entire time, very engaging, great sense of humor, interesting and profound.

I met him in the book signing line after the speech. He asked my name and I couldn’t remember because I was thinking what a wonderful human being. And how lucky I am to be here, not just in the presence of history, not just in the presence of greatness, but in the presence of goodness. It was so moving, I teared up.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. You were right there

with a living piece of history. That's powerful stuff. No wonder you got emotional.

That guy looks so good - he always has - that I swear he made a deal with the Devil. Ted Sorenson has looked the same since 1960.

I'm glad you had that experience. It's wonderful that you appreciate what you heard and saw. There aren't many of those guys left. Sorenson might be the last one - well, Nick deB. Katzenbach, maybe, but he was not as "inside" as Sorenson.

I worked for the man who had been Harry Truman's White House Counsel after Clark Clifford, so I know what you're feeling. Every day, I heard another story. It was phenomenal...............

[Octafish]

4. It was very powerful emotionally.

Normally, I'm not maudlin. I came up with a smile after the speech. It was so cool, I was second in line with my book. His assistant asked us to open to the proper page and I was going to say my name, to make it easy for him to sign.

He looked up and smiled and the tears just filled up. A remarkable moment.

Thank you for reminding us about your former colleague, Tangerine LaBamba. Please feel share those stories with us. It's how we can preserve our nation's history, as well as give We the People direction.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

13. I like you.....

I like people who are really in the moment, and it sounds to me like you were right there, drinking it in. I'm sure Sorenson found your reaction quite wonderful.

You met history. Not many people get to do that, and the really great ones, like from the brief time of JFK, are overwhelming.

I got thrown into that world in the late seventies, when, as an almost-brand-new lawyer, I joined a DC law firm, and went to work for the man who was the general counsel of an airline. I was his assistant - as in, assistant general counsel. Charles Springs Murphy helped write the Airline Deregulation Act. He didn't like it - neither did I - but we worked on it (and wrote in a million dollar subsidy for our client - back then a million dollars was a lot of money), and today, well, the results aren't pretty.

Charlie liked to freak me out. One day, he asked me to go with him to deliver a book to someone. In person. He was an old man, a North Carolinian by birth, Duke undergrad and law school, former Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, an assistant secretary of agriculture under LBJ.

So, it being a nice Spring day, Charlie and I wandered out of our office at 18th and K, NW, and we started walking south. I asked him where we were going, and he said, "You'll know when we get there."

At the entrance to the White House, we gave our names, showed our drivers' licenses, told our places of birth, and our birthdates.

We walked up the driveway to the West Wing. (I'd been to the White House before, during the Nixon years, but that's a whole other story.)

Inside, Charlie was greeted effusively by Ham Jordan, who he kissed my hand when Charlie introduced me.

We were escorted into the Oval Office, where President Carter was waiting for us. He beamed when we walked in, and after Jordan saw that we were all right, he departed.

We all sat down, and Charlie explained to President Carter - who, strangely, was bigger than he appeared on TV - what the book was (I no longer remember) and why he wanted the President to read it. They talked some, while I looked around. I had never been in the Oval Office before. It's really gorgeous, and the light is amazing.

President Carter then asked me some questions, where I was from, where I went to school, how I liked working for "a living legend," and he put it.

Then he did the sweetest thing.

He asked me if I'd like to sit at his desk.

There were no papers on his desk. Photos of Rosalynn and his kids, but no papers. I guess they clean off the desk when visitors arrive.

So, there I was, sitting in the President's chair, at the desk of the President of the United States.

I said I liked it and would take it. Carter laughed, Charlie smiled, and then - because this was unusual back then - President Carter said the switchboard could connect me to any phone in the world. Would I like to call someone?

Well, YEAH!!!

I picked up the phone, and, as President Carter instructed me, gave the operator my mother and father's phone number.

No pressing buttons, just pick it up. It was a black phone, by the way. No red phone anywhere. I looked.

My Mom answered, and I said, "Hey, Mom, guess where I am?"

She said, "Where, honey?"

I said, "I'm sitting at President Carter's desk. I'm in the Oval Office. Remember? Remember when we saw it when Gus brought us here? But we couldn't go in. Remember?"

And my mother said, "Tangerine, that's not funny."

I said, "No, Mom, really. That's where I am."

President Carter was laughing, and he reached for the phone, got on, and waited for my mother to stop talking while I died a thousand embarrassed deaths.

Then, there being no mistaking that soft Georgia drawl, he assured my mother than her daughter really was in his office.

They chatted a bit, and then he handed the phone back to me. "See, Mom, I told you," I said, still blushing.

She said, "He sounds nice. I should have voted for him."

I wondered if Nixon's taping set-up was still running. I could have died all over again.

President Carter has, ever since, had the most special place in my heart.

[eleny]

2. Thanks for your very moving post...

I was in high school during the missile crisis. Yes, a critical decade for all of us.

[Octafish]

6. Mr. Sorensen helped prevent nuclear war.

He is a human treasure, a peace maker.

[mckara]

3. Bookmarking For the Morning

Looks interesting

[Octafish]

22. It was a fascinating two hours.

Mr. Sorensen was very, very witty.

The man who introduced him is the college provost. Mr. Sorensen thanked him for the kind words and said, "Old provosts never die. They just lose their faculties."

The place cracked up.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. ever read Walter Karp on this? wish I'd known you'd be talking to him:

The Reaction is Launched,
The Road to Reagan
excerpted from the book
Liberty Under Siege
by Walter Karp
Franklin Square Press, 1988, paper

{THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CARTER PRESIDENCY BY THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS}

.....There is the matter, too, of Theodore Sorensen, President Kennedy's former aide and Carter's choice as director of Central Intelligence. On January 13, the appointment, seemingly unexceptionable, runs into "unexpected difficulties," reports the Times. The Senate Intelligence Committee has been shown two Sorensen affidavits concerning the celebrated "Pentagon Papers"-the classified documentary record of U.S. involvement in Vietnamese affairs. The affidavits say what every member of the committee understands perfectly well: that the classification system is grotesquely overblown, that high-ranking officials, Sorensen included, routinely use "top secret" files in writing their memoirs; that the Pentagon Papers had posed no threat whatever to national security. Fury, nonetheless, sweeps through the Intelligence Committee. Pentagon Papers no threat? Liberals join hands with conservatives, with the John Birch Society, with every rabble-rouser of the Right they can muster, to block the appointment of Sorensen.

The President-elect in Plains, Georgia, knows nothing of this until January 15 when Senator Byrd, at his regular Saturday press conference, announces that Sorensen's confirmation faces "considerable difficulty." What is more, he tells the press, he doesn't think he will endorse Sorensen either. Heep's knife quivers in the director-designate's back. Carter says a few words in Sorensen's defense, but the President-elect has no stomach for this fight. On Monday, January 17, the first day of the confirmation hearings, Sorensen, "with trembling hands," reads to the committee a "strident" defense of his character against "scurrilous and personal attacks," against "outright lies and falsehoods."

He defies those "who wish to strike at me, or through me at Governor Carter." Upon saying which, he withdraws his name from consideration as director of Central Intelligence. The Reaction has scored another victory over liberality of mind and draws first blood in the destruction of a President. To gauge the full measure of the victory-and of Carter's stunning defeat-parliamentarians delve into the archives and report that only eight Cabinet-level appointees have ever been rejected in the entire history of the United States. The last time a Senate of the President's own party had done such a thing was in 1925. Byrd "just wanted to teach Carter a lesson," a "junior" Democratic senator, nameless, explains to Time. And the lesson is: How feeble is a president with no party to support him.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Walter_Karp/Reaction_Launched_LUS.html

remember The Committee on the Present Danger? (mentioned earlier on this most highly recommended link) they had a big hand in this sordid episode. Carter had a 61-39 Senate majority at the time. Sorensen was his first major nomination, and, as shown above was not able to even BRING IT TO THE SENATE!!!

[Octafish]

7. That's what I was going to ask him about.

Honest to Goodness, Gabi Hayes.

I didn't know I was going to be there, today. My wife reminded me and I was practically out the door.

I wanted to ask one of the questions after his speech:

"Sir. President Carter wanted you to serve as Director of Central Intelligence. The conservatives in Congress were vehement in their opposition. What would you do as head of the CIA to cause that kind of response?"

I never got the chance to ask him, even in the book signing line. Instead, I just thanked him* and cracked up.


* I look like Luca Brazi from The Godfather anyway, so I can come across as a bit imposing. Then when I start talking like Luca Brazi it's embarrasing for people with me.

Then, it starts: "Thank you sir, for all that you did for the country. My family and kids thank you too." He knew what I was talking about.

So, in answer to the question, I can only imagine his answer. Sorensen as DCI would bring the fear of God to the War Party, as he'd expose the Truth.

[Gabi Hayes]

9. Carter had the chance to do some of the things Kennedy wanted to do; things for which he was killed.

they were ready for Carter, and eliminated him politically, in part because of his naivete, causing an unwillingness to confront his own party, as well as the repugs and media. in that first link, Karp mentions Carter's threat to go over the heads of his political opponents in both parties, and his failure to do so. said failure marked the death knell of his presidency, which actually occurred in the months between the election and his inauguration!

I wonder if he's going to be in Chicago on his tour....maybe I'll see if I can ask him that question.

also, did you read Seymour Hersh's book, Dark Side of Camelot, IIRC? didn't know what to make of that, as some of the most scandalous stuff in it was shown to be bogus. lots of interesting charges to be found within. dunno how much to believe, though.

his Kissinger book, Price of Power, was pretty damning, thought, and not really refuted.

[Octafish]

12. In ''Counselor - A Life at the Edge of History'' he discusses the opposition...

...to his nomination. He was most troubled by his own party, criticizing him for various mundane and microscopic imagined offenses. The usual GOP suspects: Goldwater, Garn, Dole. He was surprised by the DEMs, though, including Adlai Stevenson III, Joe Biden, Dan Inouye, Robert Morgan, Scoop Jackson.

Regarding Hersh, the guy got scammed into creating disinformation regarding the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe. It's part of a 46 year long program of character assassination of a president who stood up to the War Party.

Please hear Mr. Sorensen speak if you can, my Friend. The guy really is a wonderful human being. I just started reading his memoir -- he devotes a chapter of about 18 pages to the subject. I'll give you a better report ASAP, Gabi.

[Gabi Hayes]

14. I just reserved his book, and will be picking it up at the drive-up window of my

library tomorrow

can't wait to hear his side of the story.

and you're right about him and the Missiles of October. thank god for him and the relatively few sane advisors he had, or those of us left would be fighting off giant cockroaches today

ha!

[Captain Hilts]

18. Dark Side of Camelot IS trash...

that said, the JFK PR machine is pretty impressive.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. three other excerpts here, dealing mostly with Reagan

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Walter_Karp/Liberty_Under_Siege.html

[bottomtheweaver]

10. Sorenson for CIA, you gotta admire him for trying.

That's like making Wyatt Earp sheriff of Tombstone and unfortunately the Clantons of Langley have owned Tombstone for some time.

[Gabi Hayes]

11. that's right, and the media chose to ignore this significant story, choosing to

make a three ring circus out of the Bert Lance affair, joyfully painting all the southerners once again in power as turnip trucking buffoons.

among the worst were Sally Quinn and watergate icon hubby Ben Bradlee, who were among the coolest of the cool people then, and treated Carter much the same way they did interlopers LBJ and WJC

liberal media, indeed

[barbtries]

20. i think carter may have been

the most underrated president. certainly of my time.

[Old and In the Way]

15. Great post, my friend.

It's refreshing to read a post that pays homage to Americans that make a difference...we need more Ted Sorensens in our nation's service. And more people like you who won't let us forget that evil works overtime to marginalize/destroy those who inspire our better ideals.

[Octafish]

24. Thanks, Never Old and In the Way.

Coming from you, that means the world to me. I really did wish my friends from DU were there with me. I know you would have appreciated when Mr. Sorensen described how they reached their decision to go to the moon.

JFK wanted to be able to demonstrate technological supremacy of free people over the Soviet system. The thing was, the Soviets had developed bigger boosters for their heavier strategic warheads. The lighter American designs had led to the development of lighter boosters. So the trick would be in jumping farther ahead of where the Soviets were then at and were then heading -- Sputnik was in 1957 and here was Gagarin orbiting the planet in 1961.

A meeting was convened in the White House where the the President's science, industry and technology advisers, military liaisons, and the deputy director of the Budget Office gave their thoughts on what was possible. They proposed orbiting two men at once, sending a space station into orbit, establishing a space base. For each, Sorensen asked: "Could we do that first?" The advisors said, "No." Then someone said, Sorensen didn't remember who, "How about going to the moon?"

Everyone thought the idea, at first, was Science Fiction. Then people started to see how it could be done, so they built in some wiggle room for the speech where JFK said "Before this decade is out" because it could mean 10 years from that moment or until the 60s are done or until 1970.

Sorensen said the moon shot idea fit perfectly into JFK's grand vision for the New Frontier. Sorensen heard JFK say, "Space is the new sea and we must sail on it."

[MinM]

16. The Posthumous Assassination of JFK

Apparently the wingnuts were not satisfied with the coup d'état, November 22, 1963 in Dallas...

From the co-creator of 24...New 10 Hour Kennedy mini series
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5333403 :rant:

Thankfully there are people out there telling the real history, like Ted Sorenson, James Douglass, Octafish...

:kick: & R
Probe V4N6: The Posthumous Assassination of JFK - Part I

Probe V5N1: The Posthumous Assassination of JFK Part II

http://www.ctka.net/jfkarticles.html

[bottomtheweaver]

19. You saw what happened to Caroline.

Thanks for the heads up. Let's hope Goebbel's latest never emerges from the grave.

[Octafish]

25. You have honored me, MinM.

Thank you, my Friend. I really meant what I said: I wish that my DU friends could've been there.

Listening to Mr. Sorensen, I got the idea that he was the intellectual equal of JFK – a true counselor who told JFK what he needed to know, not necessarily what he wanted to hear. The President applied that principle to those he wanted to reach, too.

Sorensen said, when attempting to move the nation forward during the Civil Rights struggles, JFK invited to the White House “Fish Room,” a conference room across from the Oval Office, a number of groups. Each night, a new group would come in, representing labor and union leaders, business and industry leaders, banking and finance, religious leaders, and so on. JFK would personally brief them on the struggle for civil rights and how the U.S. Government could not force the nation to move forward by itself. The nation needed the active help of all these institutions in order to move the agenda for equality and progress forward.

Regarding the posthumous assassination: Oh they are evil, these warmongering traitors. Here's a bit you probably know, but will be news to 99.99-percent of Americans:

The Left and the Death of Kennedy

By Jim DiEugenio
Probe, January-February 1997 (Volume 4, No. 2)

In this issue we are glad to be able to excerpt parts of a new book by Dr. Martin Schotz. This new work, History Will Not Absolve Us, is an anthology of essays on varying aspects of the Kennedy case. In that regard it resembles previous anthologies like Government by Gunplay, and The Assassinations. This new collection compares favorably with those two. One of the glories of the book is that it includes Vincent Salandria’s early, epochal essays published in 1964 and 1965 on the medical and ballistics evidence. These essays were written in direct response to comments given by another Philadelphia lawyer, Arlen Specter, at the conclusion of the Warren Commission’s work. Working only from evidence available to the Commission and in the public record, Salandria shatters the case against Oswald almost as soon as it was issued. It is a shame that we have had to wait so long to see Salandria’s wonderful work collected in book form.

There is more. Schotz has included a speech made by Fidel Castro, in which, from just reading the press reports off the wire services, he 1) exposes the murder as a conspiracy, 2) shows Oswald for what he was, 3) points towards the elements in American society from where the plot emanated, and 4) indicates the reasons for the murder. All this within twenty hours of the assassination. Shotz’s opening essay furthers his ideas used in Gaeton Fonzi’s book, The Last Investigation, dealing with concepts of belief versus knowledge and what that means for the mass psychology of American society. This fascinating, intuitive essay gives the book both its tone and its title—a play on a phrase used more than once by Castro.

There is much more to recommend the book. We choose to excerpt here two particular selections: one in whole, the other in part. They both deal with the response of the left, or as Ray Marcus terms it the “liberal establishment”, to the Kennedy assassination. The first excerpt is an analysis by Schotz of the early editorial policy of The Nation to the assassination. The second section is from Ray Marcus’ monograph Addendum B, originally published in 1995. We chose to excerpt these for three reasons. It shows both Schotz and Marcus at their best. Both the people and institutions they discuss are still around. And finally, what they deal with here is an emblematic problem that is so large and painful—the response of liberals to high-level assassination as a political tool—that no one left of center wishes to confront it.

Concerning the second point, The Nation repeated its pitiful performance when the film JFK was released by giving much space to writers like Alexander Cockburn and Max Holland. Neither of these men could find any evidence of conspiracy in the Kennedy case, any value to Kennedy’s presidency, or any validity to the scholarship within the critical community. In other words, a leading “liberal” magazine was acting like Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post. As far as The Nation is concerned, their editorial policy has been quite consistent throughout a 33 year period. Their article policy, with very few exceptions, has also been uniform.

Ray Marcus extends this analysis. Marcus is one of the original, “first generation” group of researchers. In 1995 he privately published his Addendum B, which is a personal and moving chronicle of his attempts to get people in high places interested in advocating the Kennedy assassination as a cause. Ray has allowed Schotz to include sections of that important work in the book. Probe has excerpted the parts of Ray’s work which touch on the reaction of the left, both old and new, to the assassination. We feel that the section entitled “Five Professors” is especially relevant. For in this section, Ray reveals his personal encounters with some of the leading intellectuals of that ‘60’s and ‘70’s movement called the “New Left”, namely Howard Zinn, Gar Alperovitz, Martin Peretz, and Noam Chomsky. He shows how each of them rejected his plea. The instances of Peretz and Chomsky are both important and enlightening. For Peretz, in 1974, purchased The New Republic, another supposedly liberal publication. He owned it during the period of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Except for excerpting declassified executive session transcripts of the Warren Commission in the mid-seventies, I can remember no important article in that publication dealing with the JFK case during his tenure. In fact, at the end of that investigation, The New Republic let none other than Tom Bethell have the last word on that investigation. Ray shows why Peretz allowed this bizarre, irresponsible choice. Bethell’s 1979 article tried to bury Kennedy’s death. Five years later, his periodical tried to bury his life. It actually made a feature article out of a review of the tawdry Horowitz-Collier family biography The Kennedys. Who did that publication find suitable to review this National Enquirer version of the Kennedy clan? None other than Midge Decter, wife of neo-conservative godfather Norman Podhoretz, mother-in-law of Elliot Abrams. Decter, presumably with the Peretz blessing, canonized this Kitty Kelley antecedent.

CONTINUED...

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/The_critics/DiEugenio/Left_and_death_of_JFK/Left_and_death_of_Kennedy.html

PS: Thanks, again, MinM. Your friendship means the world to me.

[Captain Hilts]

17. Cool! I love stuff like that. nt

[bear425]

21. I am reading this book now. It's completely captivating.

It's called Counselor - A Life At The Edge Of History. What an honor it must have been to meet him. I'm glad to hear that he is doing well. ty

on edit: I see you named the title upthread. Just wanted more people to see the title so they can go get it.

[mnhtnbb]

23. Ted Sorenson came to a cocktail party at my home in Lincoln, NE

prior to a Jefferson-Jackson Dinner one year. We also had Bob Kerrey and Ben Nelson there at the same party. Hubby talked to Sorenson for a little while; I chatted with Bob Kerrey who plopped himself
down on a counterstool in the kitchen and stayed there for the whole party.