Bill Moyers Interviewed Stewart Udall who was John F. Kennedy's
Secretary of the Interior last week. Mr. Udall called "Washington's a
Cesspool of money."
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EXCERPT
MOYERS:" Forty years ago next Friday, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in
Dallas. At that very moment, six members of his cabinet were above the Pacific en route to
a meeting in Japan. One of them, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, remembers how
they got the word.
UDALL: The information we got was from the Associated Press. It was very simple, very
direct and very bleak. It said that the President had been shot and taken to hospital. But
then within… the next one that came said that he was dead.
And I still have the ticker tape. I just… it passed around, and I put it in my pocket."
……………………………..
MOYERS:" It's harder and harder in the West, isn't it, to get elected without the support of
business, without a lot of money from that side in to your campaigns?
UDALL: You know, it almost seems sometimes in Washington that they appear and say,
"Well, now, what can we do for you, if you will make big contributions to our political
campaign?"
Washington's a cesspool of money, Bill. I was there 49 years ago. It has changed so
drastically it makes me sick every time I look at it.
MOYERS: Because?
UDALL: Of money. Of money.
Bill, I want to say something to the business community. The business people that I knew
in the 60s and 70s and worked with them on projects had a sense of integrity. That they
owed duties to the country, duties to the community. The element of honesty was very
strong.
This breakdown that we've seen in the last three, four years in corporate America, the greed
that we see… And the shocking thing to me is that nobody's shocked. There's no indignation
in Washington."
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