Company again expanded into the magazine field by buying Art News, the most widely read monthly in the art field, and Portfolio, a hard-cover art quarterly, from Albert M. Frankfurter. Involvement in politics While running the Washington Post and other parts of the Post Company, Graham played a backstage role in national and local politics. In 1954, Graham was the leading force behind the founding of the Federal City Council, a highly influential group of business, civic, education, and other leaders interested in economic development in Washington, D.C. In 1960, he helped persuade his friend John F. Kennedy to take Lyndon Johnson on his ticket as the vice presidential candidate, talking frequently to both during the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California. During the 1960 campaign, he wrote the drafts for several speeches that Johnson gave. After Kennedy and Johnson were elected in November, he successfully lobbied for the appointment of Douglas Dillon as Secretary of the Treasury, and frequently discussed other appointments with Kennedy. In the years after Kennedy's inauguration, he wrote occasional drafts of speeches, primarily for Johnson, but also for the President and for Robert F. Kennedy. In 1961, Kennedy named Graham to serve as an incorporator for the Communications Satellite Corporation, known as COMSAT, a joint venture between the private sector and government for satellite communications. In October 1961, he was appointed chairman of the group. Mental health problems and death In Katharine Graham's book Personal History, she notes that her husband was always intense and spontaneous, but occasionally lapsed into periods of depression. In 1957, he had a severe manic episode and, at the time, no medicines were available for effective treatment. He retired to the couple's farm in Marshall, Virginia, to recuperate. Thereafter, periods in which he functioned brilliantly alternated with periods in which he was morose and erratic and isolated himself. He often drank heavily (something he had done prior to 1957), and would become extremely argumentative and blunt. Through the Post Company's Newsweek arm, Graham eventually met Australian journalist Robin Webb, and in 1962 they began an affair. In 1963, he and Webb flew to Arizona; he appeared at a newspaper publishing convention inebriated and/or manic. At the microphone he made a number of provocative comments, including the revelation that Kennedy was sleeping with Mary Pinchot Meyer. His assistant, James Truitt, called for his doctor, Leslie Farber, who flew in