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with what went on in the Eisenhower years and followed the same thing, ..... in it weres Arthur Goldberg [Arthur J. Goldberg] and Pat Moynihan [Daniel Patrick.
John E. Byrne, Oral History Interview—JFK#3, 10/10/1969 Administrative Information

Creator: John E. Byrne Interviewer: Ann M. Campbell Date of Interview: October 10, 1969 Location: Washington, D.C. Length: 31 pages Biographical Note Byrne, press secretary to the Governor of Maine (1958-1960); an executive at the General Services Administration (1961-1980); and advance man for President Kennedy's trip to Texas (1963), discusses press relations at the General Services Administration; construction of government buildings, including the Executive Office Building in Lafayette Park; and scandals during and criticisms of the Kennedy Administration, among other issues. Access Open. Usage Restrictions According to the deed of gift signed on February 24, 1998, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. Users of these materials are advised to determine the copyright status of any document from which they wish to publish. Copyright The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excesses of “fair use,” that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. The copyright law extends its protection to unpublished works from the moment of creation in a tangible form. Direct your questions concerning copyright to the reference staff. Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any

concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the Library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings. Suggested Citation John E. Byrne, recorded interview by Ann M. Campbell, October 10, 1969, (page number), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

John E. Byrne—JFK#3 Table of Contents Page 114, 125, 130 121 126 128, 144 131 134 136 141

Topic Press operations at the General Services Administration (GSA) Criticisms of the Kennedy Administration Executive office building in Lafayette Square Government buildings Attempts to regulate the literature sold in public buildings GSA press office during the Johnson Administration GSA Administrators Speechwriting for Bernard Louis Boutin

Third of Three Oral History Interviews with John E. Byrne October 10, 1969 Washington, D.C. By Ann M. Campbell For the John F. Kennedy Library

CAMPBELL:

Mr. Byrne, you noted in an earlier interview that your operation in the GSA [General Services Administration] press office was congressionally oriented, let Congress savor the good news. How did

that work in practice? BYRNE:

Well, on announcements for projects they always went to the Hill before we made any public announcement. The net effect of that was that the people on the Hill were calling their favorite news people and making the announcement. Now this is not a new, or was not then, a new situation. I think, probably—I wasn’t here at the time, but it had probably developed to a high art during the [-114-] Eisenhower [Dwight D. Eisenhower] years, at least this is what I’ve been told, people who were here at that time, that prior to the Eisenhower years that there was more or less announcements directly by agencies, but in that period it had developed where the Administration was making a very strong effort to let their friends in Congress announce all significant things in their areas, projects. And when I came to GSA in April of 1961, the people who were then running the Assistant Administrator’s shop had been very familiar with what went on in the Eisenhower years and followed the same thing, except, of course,

with the different change in Administration, for instance, usually the Democrats rather than the Republicans got an hour’s advance notice. I will say that under our situation it was very congressionally oriented. For instance, if there was a real big project involved, Bob Griffin, Robert T. Griffin, the Assistant Administrator, or even possibly Bernie Boutin [Bernard Louis Boutin] when he was Administrator, would call the White House, the appropriate person [-115-] in the White House, and tell them about the project coming up, and maybe the White House then would make notifications on lesser projects or when told to by the White House, the notifications would be made directly from GSA to the people on the Hill. My role in that usually—I was two things. I was….. Bob Griffin was Assistant Administrator, and I was deputy Assistant Administrator, Director of Information. Now, for instance, I would take the projects and I would write something up or have my people do it, and then they’d give it to Bob Griffin’s shop which would make the congressional calls. And then, of course, shortly thereafter we would get calls from newspaper guys asking for further information, which we would furnish them, and then we would issue a news release. In that way our operation was very much congressionally oriented. CAMPBELL:

There was an idea in the Kennedy Administration [John F. Kennedy], a desire to speak with one voice. How much guidance did your operation receive from the White House?

BYRNE:

Well, my operation, directly, didn’t receive very much. [-116-]

Of course, we had a situation where first we had Administrator John Moore [John L. Moore]. When I came in in April, he was aboard. He had been a friend of Billy Green [William J. Green] in Pennsylvania and was appointed Administrator and underneath him was Bernard L. Boutin, Bernie Boutin, who had been a very strong Kennedy New England man for some years. And there was a tight connection between Bernie Boutin and the people in the White House, such as, well, Bobby Kennedy [Robert F. Kennedy], the President himself, and Kenny O’Donnell [Kenneth P. O’Donnell]. [Interruption] Well, I was not privy to all the things that went on by any means, and I think that guidance that came on the top level cases from the White Houses to Bernie Boutin, for instance, and I probably didn’t know anything about it, so I just followed orders like from Boutin. In some cases, I presume, Bob Griffin knew things, especially in the early days when we were not all very close, that I didn’t really know all the details on. So really what I would do would be to take directions from Bernie Boutin and Bob Griffin, and so I really didn’t know the extent, especially in the early days, of what the White House might have [-117-]

been thinking about or directing. But my own contact was Pierre Salinger [Pierre E.G. Salinger], who as you know I got to know when he came to Maine with the President, when they were seeking the nomination. And I had a pretty good relationship with Pierre. If I had a problem, I would be able to call him up and get him in the phone and ask him. Of course, Pierre had a lot of things going and he was always very courteous. He never gave too much concern about problems of the General Services Administration because, by and large, they were not major. So I really can’t say there was any strong direction per se from the White House. I think there was direction in another respect though that…. Well, for instance, myself and some of my associates were pretty strongly committed to the ideas and ideals of John F. Kennedy, so I suppose there was direction, unconscious direction, in that respect. CAMPBELL:

You were the press officer of an agency, while a very large one, that is not the most glamorous, the most exciting one in the government. Was there [-118-]

any concern in your Administrator’s office about the image of GSA, any attempt to change that image? BYRNE:

Yes, Bernie Boutin, for instance, was very gung-ho. Bernie was always talking about the image of GSA and how we were aggressive and he liked to think of it as the business arm of the President. He was very enthusiastic about the agency, and I think in the early days we probably reflected a little bit of that gung-ho feeling in our press relations. On the other hand, I have been a professional newspaperman and not a public relations man and my idea was, rather than to salt the news or time it, was to be responsive to the newspapermen. And I think I spent most of my time—that was my contribution to the information operation, at GSA, was to be responsive to newspapermen rather than trying to sell a particular position or a line of thought or an image change. CAMPBELL:

Were special arrangements made at times for representatives of the wire services, representatives of the major dailies? Same treatment for everyone or were there some special.... [-119-]

BYRNE:

On big announcements, for instance, we would have a press conference and invite everybody that was interested. Usually, the most important projects which GSA would be involved in—and that was true then and it’s true today—is Public Building Service projects, the big construction projects. And on occasion, not very often, we’d have a general press conference if the Administrator had something to speak about. Ordinarily we’d do it by the technique of press

releases, which were printed and distributed to everybody of interest. We didn’t really follow any favorites. As a matter of fact, though, the agency in those days was covered only on a regular basis by the Associated Press through its press office in the Interior Building. Mr. MacFarlan [W. Joynes MacFarlan] was the longtime AP man over there. And, naturally, he probably got a little more than anybody else because he was present and he would come around, and he would follow up on press releases. Many of our contacts were dealing with the press, really, as they came back to us from the congressional notifications. I think this was [-120-] probably the major part of our work. CAMPBELL:

How was press handled for the regional offices? Did you coordinate all of that, make all the releases?

BYRNE:

Yeah. Well, we put out.... In the central office I put out all the news releases and practically talked personally to all the newspaper people who were asking questions. In the regional offices, we had directors of business affairs who are in charge of the business service centers. There are ten regions and we also had an extra office in Los Angeles (not a regional city) so there were eleven all together. And these people acted as the spokesmen, the regional office spokesmen. Now, they worked for the Regional Administrator and they worked for our office, the Assistant Administrator’s office. We had a director of business service centers in the central office, who was under my operation. CAMPBELL:

The term “news management” becomes prominent in the Kennedy Administration, the attempt to somehow perhaps schedule releases and at other times maybe [-121-]

not release news, certain things, at all. How did GSA attempt to deal with this? BYRNE:

I don’t think that’s a real valid—well, shall we call it an accusation— during the Kennedy time because…. Well, just to back up a little bit though, news management, to be a little theoretical about it, I guess everybody who makes news practices some degree of news management. They don’t like to talk about what’s embarrassing and they like to blow their horn on what rebounds to the renown of the organization. So in that respect, I suppose we tried to duck embarrassing questions and we tried to focus on the accomplishments of the agency, but in our operation there really was no news management. We were responsive to questions and we, on a routine basis, put out our news releases and announcements. I really can’t think of anything to lend credence to the idea of news management as far as GSA was concerned.

CAMPBELL:

And another problem that one notes, another charge against the Kennedy Administration, is that of being anti-business. Did your office get involved in public [-122-]

relations along that line? BYRNE:

Well, I suppose during the great stockpile investigation with allegations that windfalls had been made by big business in selling products to the government for their stockpiles of strategic and critical materials, and when President Kennedy came out and said that he thought that we were overloaded in our stockpile and should get rid of some of these holdings, I think that and I think the investigation that followed on the Hill, which was spearheaded by Senator Symington [Stuart Symington II], probably would have given people the impression that the Administration was against high profits, high profits that were out of line, by big business. And we had a lot of… [Interruption] We had considerable unpleasantness when there were companies that thought that they were being unfairly tarred by the investigation focusing on the stockpiles. And later on, as the time went on, when there was the steel price increase, it’s my recollection, as being a big procurement agency for the government, that we promulgated regulations which were designed to put [-123-] the squeeze on the steel people following the President’s lead. So in that respect, I guess we carried out what could be looked upon as an anti-business posture. But of course I don’t think it was anti-business, I think it was anti-unpleasant parts of business. CAMPBELL:

Selective. I read someplace about a new procedure at GSA during the Kennedy Administration of a more open bidding program and also just a program of opening files to newsmen. How did this work?

BYRNE:

Well, bidding, of course, has always been open, so I really don’t think that there was any change in it. I mean, we have public bid openings and that’s the way it has been and that’s the way it is. Of course, you have occasional—or I suppose sometime more than occasional—negotiated procurement actions, but there’s usually good reason for that. I don’t really think that there was any real change, any perceived change in the bidding procedures. And your second question was? CAMPBELL:

A question of open files to newsmen.

BYRNE:

Well, I don’t know whether that was ever so. I don’t [-124-]

know anybody who opens their files, except, since we’ve had the Freedom of Information Act, more people can see more information if they request it. But in those days we didn’t really open our files. I, as I said, tried to be responsive to newspapermen and tried to give them what they wanted. I didn’t let them go on fishing trips through the files as a general basis. I mean there’s all sorts of personal memorandum in the files that they couldn’t see. We’d look at the file before we’d show it to them. CAMPBELL:

Were GSA announcements.... Who determined the release date for them? Were they sometimes held for release at a particularly appropriate time?

BYRNE:

Well, most of the time when you have projects, construction projects, the release date is determined by the schedule of the project itself. You’ve got to a point where you’re awarding a contract for the construction of a federal building in New York…. Well, you have the bid opening on one day, and then you have our staff going over it and deciding who’s responsive and who’s the low bidder. So it was fairly [-125-] much determined by the event itself when they would be. And of course as the Democrats got a little—as I indicated earlier, when we did get to the point of putting out a release, being congressionally-oriented, we went to the Hill first. CAMPBELL:

GSA gets involved in Lafayette Square during the Kennedy Administration. Can you tell us about some of that?

BYRNE:

That’s a very interesting story, and I wish I had the opportunity and the time and all the knowledge to sit down and really put it on paper. I suppose most of it’s in the minds of various people of what actually occurred. But the broad parameters of the problem was this, that under the Eisenhower days, the Eisenhower Administration, the plan was to build two large federal buildings on Lafayette Square and they had hired a consortium, joint venture of architectural firms, to do it and which had designed at least one building. And they were mammoth buildings, very huge type federal buildings that would have completely changed the character of Lafayette Square. President Kennedy and his wife [Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy] were very, very [-126-] unhappy with this, and to the best of my knowledge, they are the ones who stopped it. I understand that.... Well, I know that the President was personally interested in it, and I know that his wife, Jackie, wrote the Administrator, Bernie Boutin, either when he was Administrator or when he was deputy I am not—I can’t recollect when. I know she wrote him a long letter telling him the dissatisfaction with the plans of the agency to go ahead with

these mammoth buildings over there and making a suggestion for preserving the human scale. Out of that dialogue came the appointment of John Carl Warnecke as the architect for the refurbishing of the Square. And another person who played a large role in it was the artist friend of the Kennedys, William Walton, I am sure that his ideas were received by the President and Mrs. Kennedy and that he contributed much to the eventual basic thinking about the square. So John Carl Warnecke designed these buildings and preserved the small Federal residences along the Square, keeping a facade of small residences on both [-127-] sides and having set back the federal buildings and having them in the—what some people object to—the red brick effect with the mansard roof. And I think as more people look at it today, they’re beginning to see the wisdom of that approach. The square has been preserved as a residential type place. It has a human scale, and it would not have had a human scale if the Eisenhower Administration plans for those huge federal buildings had gone ahead and these small Federal architecture buildings had been destroyed. One person who played a large part in that square, too, is Karel Yasko, who has been, in some ways, the stormy petrel architect of GSA. Karel is a very brilliant man and an intellectual, and he had had some difficulty fitting into the federal bureaucracy. He brings tremendous credentials of creativity and intelligence to his position. Of course, for a while, under Boutin he was appointed as Assistant Commissioner for Design and Construction of GSA. Under Lawson Knott [Lawson Knott, Jr.], he was demoted, the idea being, Lawson Knott’s contention being, that [-128-] he couldn’t keep all the projects running smoothly and the paper work and all the dovetailing that an administrator type should have done. And this, under Lawson Knott—and that would be under President Johnson’s Administration [Lyndon Baines Johnson]—though, became very, very sticky, when Knott took Yasko and broke him down to a lower position. Karel today is now Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Public Buildings, where he is able to operate as an idea man and a creative thinker without really having all the program responsibility for keeping projects moving. But he was a very salutary effect upon the building program of the government because Karel was a thinker and the buildings that are standing today that are probably the best examples of good architecture as far as the federal government is concerned—take Marcel Breuer’s HUD building, Housing and Urban Development building—that’s Karel Yasko’s hand at work. CAMPBELL:

Might I just ask you—you mentioned a newsman in the government service—were press contacts by people [-129-]

from GSA central office all supervised in some way by your office? Were people free to grant interviews at will? Meet the press on their own terms?

BYRNE:

No, they weren’t. There was.... I was supposed to exercise control. I was responsible for what appeared in the papers. I think sometimes people thought I had some magic wand that I could wave and what I said appeared in the papers. In effect, I was supposed to be the spokesman for GSA, which I was and which I was responsible to them. But my own personal interpretation of this stricture was to impose it where it could be imposed without embarrassing either the agency, the persons involved, or the press people involved. In other words, we did what we could to see that everything was channeled through one spot, but if somebody demanded to see a particular person, I’d usually talk to the person, and they would usually call me after the interview. But I made no effort to completely dominate all the news that emanated from GSA. CAMPBELL:

At one time GSA.... There’s a question before the [-130-] House of book sales, what kind of books will be available for sale in public buildings. Could you comment about that?

BYRNE:

Oh, that was a—that was something. I was just trying to string back in my mind to those days. It seemed, as I recall now, the trouble started in San Francisco where a buildings manager or area manager told the operator to take some, what he considered, dirty books off the stands in the lobby. And the San Francisco newspapers got all excited about it and wanted to know what business GSA had imposing censorship upon written material. Now Bernie Boutin was favorable to the idea that there should be some strictures on what kind of printed literature appeared in the federal buildings and he thought that what he would call, also call, dirty books should be kept out of the buildings. And the papers got very excited about freedom of the press here, and Bernie Boutin had a very strong reaction on the other side. He thought that indeed the federal government had a duty to keep these kind of publications out of the buildings. [-131-] And the controversy waxed very strong and furious in many newspapers throughout the country, most of them critical of GSA. My personal recommendation to Bernie Boutin is that we should move very lightly in this area because I didn’t think that we had the capability to act as censors. He disagreed. Incidentally, Pierre Salinger agreed with me and kept calling me on it because Pierre was getting some pressure because these were San Francisco newspapers which he had been involved with in the past. But when he called me, I told him, “Don’t talk to me, Pierre, you know how I feel about it. You talk to Bernie Boutin.” And he said he would, but I don’t think he ever did. Well, it got rather ludicrous. I made a survey after this San Francisco thing broke out to discover if it had been widespread throughout GSA. The regional administrators at first reported negatively on it,

but as they dug a little deeper they found some interesting things. For instance, the then regional administrator in Region Three, which is the Washington local office, finally called me and, rather crestfallen, admitted that [-132-] one of his building managers had had a entrepreneur remove a book from the lobby of a federal building because it sounded dirty. It was Male and Female by Margaret Mead. And so Bernie Boutin wanted to have a strong hand. He wanted to have a strong regulation taking care of what kind of books should be in the lobbies of federal buildings, should be sold. And he had Joe Moody, who later became Deputy Administrator under Lawson Knott, who was General Counsel under Boutin, he had him working on a strong regulation. And at that point, I believe, the American Civil Liberties Union sent in a brief to the agency. I don’t know who the brief was addressed to, whether it was to a court or whether—I think it was just a brief laying out the position. And when Moody, who was clever, read the brief, he saw that this whole case was blown up. So the great censorship furor died down as GSA backtracked after having been in an area where it had no real business in the first place. CAMPBELL:

Were you involved at all in the press concerning the stockpile investigation or was that handled elsewhere? [-133-]

BYRNE:

To a remarkably small extent. I was involved when the newspaperman came and said, “I want to see certain such records, and I want to see how much nickel you bought in these years.” Then I would get the information and give it to him. But I was not completely in the know on the stockpile investigation. There was, well, a lot of mysterious people passing in and out of GSA from the White House, investigators like Carmine Bellino [Carmine Salvatore Bellino], and it was being handled at a level that was removed from me the most part. I did have a lot of just giving factual information to newspapermen about the stockpile, but as far as really making big policy pronouncements, they seemed to be rather strongly controlled by the White House and by the Symington people. CAMPBELL:

By the Committee. [Senate Armed Services National Stockpile and Naval Petroleum Reserves Sub-Committee] While we’re still on your press operation, could you comment on any change in your operation which might have occurred with the advent of the Johnson Administration? BYRNE:

Well, as everybody knows, Mr. Johnson was secretive, and I think, again, you needed no guidelines. You [-134-]

knew that he didn’t want to read in the paper about him that he didn’t say or authorize. So I think there was rather a more careful approach to discussing any project that had anything to do with the White House or had anything to do with President Johnson after he became President. I can’t really think of.... well, of course, I can think later on when we became involved in the financing for the new President and the old President that you were very, very leery about saying anything about that because you knew that he wanted anything that was said of that to come out of the white House. And anything about the Presidential Library in Austin, I was always on tenterhooks when the questions came up from the press on that, not knowing—because GSA, of course, had responsibilities there—not knowing what to say and what not to say. I did a lot of checking back and forth with the White House Press Office on all questions like that. I did much more checking with the White House Press Office when anything involved President Johnson [-135-] than I had done really in the Kennedy days. I really hadn’t thought of that until this particular time, but it occurs to me that there was much more back and forth during the Johnson years. CAMPBELL:

I’d like to talk a little bit about GSA top-level personnel changed. You’d mentioned, I think in our first talk, that perhaps John Moore had some difficulty in adjusting to his position at GSA. Anything specific,

a specific problem? BYRNE:

Well, I didn’t know John Moore too well. He was here when I arrived, of course, and I arrived in April of 1961. I’d been hired by Bernie Boutin, who I had met in Maine, who came up to Maine on a problem for Ed, Senator Muskie [Edmund S. Muskie]. And so I was hired by Boutin, who was Deputy, and there didn’t seem to be any doubt that he was hiring me and nobody else, although subsequently I went down to Boston and met Bob Griffin who had come up and who I would be directly working for. But the point was that Bernie Boutin, at the time I arrived, seemed [-136-] to be really running the agency and that John Moore was acting as a figurehead. John Moore seemed to be a very nice man. He’d come from the academic life. I believe he had been business manager of University of Pennsylvania and, of course, he’d been a good friend of Congressman Billy Green, who’d been so helpful to the Kennedys. But he seemed to be a fish out of water in the GSA position. I know he was very disturbed about the political pressures that were put on him for selection of architects, and it was enough to drive him right out of the office on occasion because he didn’t like that kind of hot kitchen. Then he had also, I guess, the problem of Bernie Boutin being so well acquainted at the White House and being able to talk directly to people. So finally John Moore resigned and Bernie Boutin was appointed. If I recall, that was on Thanksgiving Day in 1961. Yeah, because he only lasted about nine months.

CAMPBELL:

Any real disagreement with Boutin? [-137-]

BYRNE:

Between John Moore and Bernie Boutin? I really don’t know. At the time John Moore resigned he was asked what he thought of Bernie Boutin. He said he was very aggressive and a good administrator. But I really don’t know what the relationship was there. It looked apparent that Bernie Boutin was running the agency from the beginning and that John Moore was in an untenable position. CAMPBELL:

Was there any real question that Boutin would move up?

BYRNE:

I guess not. I remember we handled the announcement. I wrote a news release on it in conjunction with Pierre. And they were up in Hyannis Port on, I think it was Thanksgiving Day, and I know I was supposed to call Pierre at the time to release it. And we didn’t talk on that day. I guess I…. It seems to me I read the press release to Wayne Hawkes, who was with.... Pierre put him on the phone. They were in a motel up there. And I guess the announcement was made there, then. And then we also circulated here in Washington, that’s my memory. Of course, that announcement also said [-138-] that Lawson Knott was Deputy. Now, that was not a Presidential appointment. That was Bernie Boutin’s appointment because there’s only one Presidential appointment in General Services Administration, that’s the Administrator. CAMPBELL:

How is Knott chosen?

BYRNE:

Well, there again it was another question. The.... [Interruption] Karl Wallace longtime GSA official had been Commissioner of the Public Building Service. He was an older fellow from Texas, and Lawson Knott was his deputy. And you had a situation where Boutin didn’t care to deal too much with Carl Wallace so he was.... He was Deputy Administrator, and Knott was Deputy Commissioner of the Public Building Service. And Knott was dealing directly with Boutin, and they were doing the major business of the agency as far as construction goes between the two of them. And since that is the big activity of GSA, when it came time for him [Boutin] to be named Administrator, he picked the man that he’d been doing business with [-139-] to be his deputy. CAMPBELL:

How close were Boutin’s contacts with the White House? Very

frequent? BYRNE:

Yes. Bernie Boutin used to go over there, well, at least every week. He was a pretty close contact. Now, who he saw all the time, I don’t know. He saw the President quite often. He saw Larry O’Brien a lot. He was one of the insiders from the pre-nomination days and was treated as such. CAMPBELL:

Was there some tendency, perhaps as an insider, to bypass the channels within Washington in which a GSA administrator would ordinarily work?

BYRNE:

Yeah, well Bernie was impatient, Bernie was very impatient. He didn’t like the Bureau of the Budget. He.... I recall a remark once: “If I ever got to be President of the United States, the first thing I’d do is get rid of the Bureau of the Budget.” He didn’t like any intermediary between the head of an agency and the President. He was very impatient in those ways. CAMPBELL:

Could a comparison be drawn between Boutin as [-140-] Administrator and Moore as Administrator?

BYRNE:

Well, I don’t think that John Moore ever got a handle on the job. I do remember one time when I had some newspapermen in who wanted to talk the to him about the Public Buildings program that we had.... Karl Wallace, who was Commissioner of Public Buildings, and another—was shortly after the new Administration came into being and.... Well, John Moore just hadn’t done his homework yet on the thing because rather than it being a press conference with him, it turned out there he was asking the questions, too, of the specialists that we had there to support him. So he…. As I say, it was a different kind of a life for him, and I think he was much more happy in the academic business manager circles of a university. That’s where seemed to have been his forte. CAMPBELL:

Now, you were involved, I think, in some of Boutin’s speeches, preparing them?

BYRNE:

Yes, I wrote, I guess, I wrote a lot of speeches. Of course, Bernie did a lot of speaking off the [-141-]

cuff and he, like most public officials, he liked to have a speech and he liked to discard it. He also.... He spoke rather well. He spoke rather lengthily. I’ve been to even just staff meetings where there was a monologue for an hour and fifteen minutes

without anything else occurring. But he was a…. He had a good, orderly mind and a quick mind and he was a good speaker. I prepared quite a lot of speeches for all kinds of groups for professional groups, trade groups, political rallies, the whole gamut—even some speeches for delivery at educational institutions. CAMPBELL:

Did the White House want to clear speeches like that?

BYRNE:

Well, that was a funny situation. Boutin was always saying to me, you know, did you clear this with the White House? And so I’d call Pierre, and Pierre always sounded like.... “Well, here’s a problem and I don’t know what to do with it.” “Oh, yeah, send it over.” And I’d send it over and that’d be the end of it pretty much. There wasn’t any [-142-] real.... Of course, we weren’t making policy pronouncements. The Administrator of General Services, let’s face it, as for.... People who hold the position like to make grandiose plans, but he is actually a man who, by and large, presides over an agency which provides services to other agencies, and it isn’t a tremendous policy making position. CAMPBELL:

Did you get involved with Hatcher [Andrew T. Hatcher] and Kilduff [Malcolm M. Kilduff] over in the White House at all?

BYRNE:

Andy Hatcher I talked to on a couple of occasions, but Andy didn’t seem to be too sure of himself over there. I guess—I don’t know. I talked more to.... I talked directly to Pierre on important things, and then Kilduff a little bit while the Kennedy Administration was there. I really didn’t get to know Kilduff—I just knew him as a voice on the telephone—until the Johnson years when I was an advance man for Johnson, and [-143-] then I got to know him very well. CAMPBELL:

How was Salinger’s operation to work with?

BYRNE:

Well, I rather liked it because it was in many ways casual. One fellow who worked for Time Magazine, who was a neighbor of mine, used to complain about that being casual. He said…. He was writing business news, and I believe he was an economist. And he said, “You know, Pierre just doesn’t go deep into these things, that everything’s pretty superficial and very often you’ll get a quip instead of an answer.” But, of course, a lot of the newspaper fellows liked that approach. There was some humor in Salinger’s operation where, by God, there should be some humor. CAMPBELL:

I think we’re about come to the end of this. Anything else for posterity

about General Services? BYRNE:

I don’t think so. Well, one thing is of interest—and somebody might want to follow it up some day—is I think that, in addition to the Lafayette Square restoration, that one of the important things that GSA did during the Kennedy Administration was the guidelines on federal [-144-] architecture which were developed by a committee. And the persons who played a large role in it weres Arthur Goldberg [Arthur J. Goldberg] and Pat Moynihan [Daniel Patrick Moynihan]. It’s my understanding they had a major role in drafting these guidelines for federal architecture. And they are good guidelines and they resulted in some good architecture. CAMPBELL:

Thank you very much. [END OF INTEVIEW #3] [-145-]

John E. Byrne Oral History Transcript – JFK #3 Name Index B Bellino, Carmine Salvatore, 134 Boutin, Bernard Louis, 115, 117, 119, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142 Breuer, Marcel, 129

E Eisenhower, Dwight D., 115, 126, 128

Kilduff, Malcolm M., 143 Knott, Lawson, Jr., 128, 129, 133, 139

M MacFarlan, W. Joynes, 120 Mead, Margaret, 133 Moody, Joe, 133 Moore, John L., 117, 136, 137, 138, 141 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 145 Muskie, Edmund S., 136

G Garner, John Nance, 106 Goldberg, Arthur J., 145 Green, William J., 117, 137 Griffin, Robert T., 115, 116, 117, 136

H Hatcher, Andrew T., 143 Hawkes, Wayne, 138

J Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 129, 134, 135, 136, 143

K Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier, 126, 127 Kennedy, John F., 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 127, 135, 136, 137, 140, 143, 144 Kennedy, Robert F., 117

O O’Brien, Lawrence F., 140 O’Donnell, Kenneth P., 117

S Salinger, Pierre E.G., 118, 132, 138, 142, 143, 144 Symington, Stuart, II, 123, 134

W Wallace, Karl, 139, 141 Walton, William, 128 Warnecke, John Carl, 127

Y Yasko, Karel, 128, 129