Mr. Valenti loves and admires his former boss. Mr. Dugger loathes him, at least

partly on the unusual ground that "Johnson was actuated by pre-nuclear-terror

formulations of conceptions like patriotism, honor, courage, and these pre-nuclear-terror formulations, unexamined in a seated President, are dangerous to the human race." Mr. Valenti comes right back: "I recall in two hundred meetings on Vietnam, it was Johnson's inescapable fear of starting World War III... that caused him to do what later critics assaulted him on as a great omission, and that is to go in and win the war. He held back. He fought a limited war ... He never even countenanced the use of any kind of nuclear weapons." Never the twain shall meet--but there is solid information (e.g., on the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic) mixed with the verbal fisticuffs.