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have Hugh working for me. I can't manage him. I wouldn't do it.”
I remember saying to Mary that night, “Here are two grown men, rich as Croesus, who claim to be friends of Johnson, and they won't do for him what you and I would do for anybody we had just a bare acquaintance with.” It made me feel kind of sad. I felt a little low-spirited that they wouldn't do it. They knew his virtues and they knew his weakness, and they wouldn't do something to save his face and to save the President. They both claimed to be great friends of the President's.
That was that episode anyhow. It was days before I said anything to the President. By the time I did say something to the President, McIntyre had told him an awful yarn, which I knew nothing about, about Johnson doing something that was disgraceful and slightly obscene when he was in an intoxicated state in some semi-public place. McIntyre had heard this, I suppose, through gossip circles. However, that I knew nothing about.
So when the President said to me, “What is this I hear about Johnson not being himself?”, I was entirely innocent of this episode that McIntyre had told him.
I said, “I suppose he isn't entirely himself actually. I think you knew that. I think you know his weakness.”
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