While the late U.S. senator never directly told Essie Mae Washington- Williams he loved her, she said it seemed implied in the affection and hugs he gave her when they were together, often only once a year. And he never denied she was his daughter, she told Rather in the segment to be aired on tonight's "60 Minutes II."

An unedited copy of the transcripts was furnished to The Post and Courier in advance of Washington-Williams' press conference set for this morning in Columbia.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports today that the chief federal bankruptcy court judge for the state of South Carolina, who is Thurmond's nephew, acknowledged that he was a "pass-through" for payments sent to Washington-Williams.

Walter Thurmond Bishop, a longtime South Carolina judge and lawyer who is the son of Thurmond's late sister Martha, said he sent money at the senator's request whenever Washington-Williams indicated she needed it.

"He never told me she was his daughter," Bishop said in a car-telephone interview from Columbia. "I could surmise, but he never did point blank say it."

Washington-Williams also never heard Thurmond say the words directly.

"When I met him and the first time he sees me he said, 'Well, you look like one of my sisters. You've got those cheekbones like our family.' So that was like almost an admission without saying 'Yes, you are my daughter.' "

The interview with Rather centers largely on the times Thurmond met her and when she traveled to see him to get money.

It also discloses her feelings on being a mixed-race American, once common in the Old South, and sometimes from forced unions.

"I think the reason maybe you're hearing more about this is because of the position he had reached in life," she said of Thurmond, adding later that mixed-race, out-of-wedlock births were common. "Because the black people were suppressed and ... (whites) more or less did what they wanted to do. They sort of took advantage of the black people. And the way things were, I suppose many of them were probably afraid to say anything."

She said her mother, the Thurmond family's 16-year-old cleaning woman in their Edgefield home, never told her how their relationship began (he was 22), or how long it lasted or even if it was consensual.

"Those are things I cannot answer because these are things that were never discussed," she told Rather.

Her own children didn't learn of the bloodline until one undisclosed year when Thurmond traveled to Los Angeles, where she was living, to speak at a church. He asked her to bring her children -- his grandchildren -- along.

"They were kind of surprised. But they were glad to know they had a granddaddy, even though it wasn't the typical type of relationship," she told Rather.

At one point Rather asked Washington-Williams if she believed Thurmond, who was once a segregation-supporting Dixiecrat, was a racist. She said she did not.

"I don't believe he was a racist at heart. And when the times changed, he changed..." she said.

She told Rather they "very rarely" discussed politics.

"I did question him when I was in college. 'Why was he a racist, a segregationist at that time?' And he said 'Well, that's the way things have always been.' And I said 'but, you know you're in a position maybe you could do something.' And he said he was doing as much as he could at the time."

It was not racism, but politics that motivated him, she said.

"I think he did what he did to promote his career," she said.

Washington-Williams said her decision to go public now, nearly six months after Thurmond died at the age of 100, has nothing to do with making a claim to her father's estate but was more about the public recognition of her birth.

Bishop told The Washington Post that he sent the most substantial payment to Washington-Williams in the late 1990s as the increasingly frail senator disposed of his personal assets, placing some in trusts for his three surviving children. Bishop declined to give the amount, as did Washington-Williams and her attorneys.

"It is not about the money. There is no money," she told Rather. "We are not making any claims. And we wanted the acknowledgement that we have. We got that acknowledgement. It was nice to have that."

But she seems to indicate that it's the public's recognition that matters most.

"Nancy, his wife, and her children, they were nowhere around when I was born. And I had this relationship with him that was very good. So when they made that announcement, it didn't have any great effect upon me because I was there before they were."

The family issued a statement Monday saying "the Thurmond family acknowledges Ms. Essie Mae Washington-Williams' claim to her heritage." Thurmond's son, Strom Jr., said he would like to meet her, privately.

On Tuesday, she said that getting the story out was good for her family and children.

"Fifty or 60 years now this thing has been following me," Washington-Williams said. "So the fact that I am coming up now to talk about it is like a burden lifted. Because I had this secret. And even though many people did know about it, I hadn't gotten it off my shoulders."

"It's a story that needs to be known," she said.

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