scale of money were we talking about? Why hadn’t Brown & Root sent the money itself? And more important, what had happened to the money? How did Johnson use it? How was it distributed? What was the mechanism by which it was distributed? There was no clue in the telegram, or in Johnson’s reply. But the money had come from Texas, and George and Herman had friends who, I knew, had been contributing, at the Browns’ insistence, to Johnson’s first campaigns. Most of the contributors, I had been told, were oilmen, in Texas parlance “big oilmen.” I started calling for the big oilmen’s folders in LBJA
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