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to the general public, white or black... I guess the only people who were on my side were the people on the NEW YORK TIMES, who were always against Adam because they too were involved in what I call the “selective morality” of believing that Adam was the only devil in Congress. And they could never understand, when they spoke with me, why I wouldn't go all out in support of their castigation of Adam. If you're going to castigate Adam, you can't stop with Adam, you know. You're going to have to look into the Congress, Senators, others who use their power for personal gain. And all Adam was doing was integrated political corruption, which is the most difficult area of our society, I guess, to integrate. Economic, financial, political corruption is an area which apparently whites wanted to preserve for themselves. Well, Adam's fight for racial justice --he believed -- should include racial right of a black Congressman to exploit a position of power to the same extent that a white Senator or a white Congressman would.

Well, there's a certain hard, tough validity to that, damn it. The belief that a black public official should be more sacrosanct, sacred and virtuous, than a white public official is, to me, a very subtle, insidious kind of racism.

And to put it at its best, I guess, if I were looking for a motivation for understanding Adam, deep in his unconscious was, aside from the fact that he was a consummate con man, was that he was being consistent in his corruption. You know, that this was Adam's personal FEPC, in a way.

I guess he would -- if I ever said that to him, and I think I