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He said: “You'll have to work that out. We'll pick you up and take you to Dulles airport right now.” Not to Dulles National. No, as a matter of fact, it wasn't National; it was Andrews.

I said: “I'm not equipped. I've got no clothes with me.” Because I was just going back and forth in the CBS plane to these meetings. So I called Ruth and told her I was off to the ranch, much to her displeasure. She felt, in her defense, that Johnson was using me, and to a certain extent I think he was. That was easier for a wife to say than it was for me to carry out.

At any rate, I went down, not knowing what I was coming in to. I was shot right from his little airstrip over to the house and was told that he wanted three people there to talk to. So I was bold enough to say who, and he said: “Don Cook and Tom Watson. I don't want to get into it now. Let's talk about some other things.”

Then we all had some dinner, and I kept saying to myself, “When in the hell am I going to get out of here?” Because I had told Ruth I thought I would be back sometime late at night. I think she was dubious about it, so I did get out and call her and told her that this looked like it was going to go quite late. The dinner ran on and on, and finally we went into the front room. There were a lot of Johnson's friends there, some staff people and some local friends from his station.

He said: “Don, let's take a walk.” To Cook. So I looked at Tom Watson, raising my eyebrows and realizing we were going to be put into a torture chamber. So Don and Lyndon came back and nothing was said. Johnson went on and made some small talk, and