Page 18 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

CHAPTER 1

OPENING THE DOOR

TO THE WHITE HOUSE

A genuinely free society cannot be a spectator society. Freedom, in its deep-
est sense, requires participation—full, zestful, knowledgeable participa-
tion. Toward that end, I have today established a new program entitled
the White House Fellows.
—President Lyndon Baines Johnson,
October 3, 1964

BOURBON AND BRANCH WATER
For a young man, Air Force Major John Pustay already had accomplished
a lot. The New Jersey native had served as a military officer in South Korea
and Japan, earned a doctorate, published a book on counterinsurgency war-
fare, and taught at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Although only one mili-
tary officer had made it into the first class of fifteen White House Fellows
in 1965, he decided to apply for the prestigious program. After a grueling
selection process, he was chosen in 1966 and assigned to work for Secre-
tary of State Dean Rusk.
Pustay knew that as a Fellow he would be given access to people and
places in government that are generally off limits to everyone but the best-
positioned Washington insiders, but nothing had prepared him for the
experience he was about to have. In his first month as a Fellow, Secretary
Rusk sent him to the Oval Office to take notes for him at an impromptu
meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and some of his most trusted

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