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“I have a very special reason for asking you on this particular occasion. I'm going to bring someone whom I don't want to tell you about now. I hope you'll be very cooperative and I hope you'll never mention his name or the situation he wants to lay before you.”

Nelson had taken a house in Washington in a nice cool place on the edge of Rock Creek Park somewhere. The person who was coming to see me, had to lay a matter before me that he wanted to keep secret, was Blackwell Smith. Blacky Smith was torn with this terrible sense of loyalty to Johnson and sense of duty and obligation to his country. He was just torn, in terrible conflict. He wouldn't even say this before Mary and Nelson, but asked me if I would go into Nelson's library as he wanted to talk to me about something. He didn't come over until after dinner.

He said, “Now, I've come to you because I think you are the only person who will understand this, to whom I would dare tell this story, and who perhaps has influence enough to do something about it. General Johnson is in terrible condition. Frankly, he is not fit to conduct any kind of business. It nearly kills me to tell you this and I ought not to tell anybody, because after all I work for him and must be loyal to him. But he's wrecking himself. He's wrecking his family. He's wrecking the NRA, and he'll