Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  A man whose affairs were so intimately entwined with those of the federal government simply could not leave the selection of a new chief of state to chance.

  “I think we should decide which Presidential candidate we are going to support, and then, I think we should go all the way!” wrote Hughes, completely nonpartisan, determined only to ride with a winner, even if it meant backing every man in the race.

  “I feel that if we climb aboard in the all-out manner I have in mind, then either our candidate or the organization of his party will be able and willing to give us some important assistance.…

  “For example, if we choose Kennedy or Humphries, then the Dem. party chairman and his associates should help us plenty thru the White House.”

  Among the Democrats, Humphrey was the obvious choice. For the moment, at least, Hughes saw Bobby Kennedy only as a card to be played in a cynical game that would further entrap the needy vice-president.

  “Bob,” wrote Hughes, spinning his scenario, “I am wondering if we should not sit down with Humphries and tell him I have been propositioned by Kennedy in the most all-out way.”

  It was not true. But the lie was certain to scare Humphrey, who did not have ready entree to many other billionaires.

  “That I feel I can only sponsor one man in a truely important way,” Hughes continued, feeding lines to his henchman to feed to the vice-president. “[T]hat I am willing to risk offending Kennedy and agree to give the most unlimited support to Humphries—not just in Nevada—but on a basis that should provide far more than he ever contemplated for the entire country.”

  Yes, that should do it. First spook Humphrey with the spectre of a Hughes-Kennedy alliance, then offer to underwrite his entire presidential campaign.

  “Then,” concluded the spider, finishing his web, “I think we have to tell him what we want. If he is indifferent, then I think we should go to work on Kennedy without a moments delay.”

  Humphrey was not indifferent. Even before he had officially entered the race, the vice-president had been doing the billionaire’s bidding. He arranged the preblast Sawyer-Johnson parley, also pressured a very reluctant AEC commissioner to meet with Hughes’s emissary (“the request was so strongly put that he agreed to the meeting,” noted an agency report), pushed for a ninety-day moratorium on “Boxcar” at Maheu’s urging, and as early as 1967 had tried to plead the billionaire’s bomb case with Johnson, only to be turned away by White House Chief of Staff Marvin Watson, who guarded the door to the Oval Office.

  Hughes looked on the vice-president as his man in Johnson’s White House and tried to influence the recalcitrant commander in chief through his more obliging lieutenant.

  “The only way I can see to motivate Johnson,” he declared before attempting to bribe the president directly, “would be through a meaningful offer of assistance to Humphries, who is, I understand, Johnson[’s] designee.”

  “There is one man who can accomplish our objective thru Johnson—and that man is H.H.H.,” wrote Hughes on another occasion. “Why dont we get word to him on a basis of absolute secrecy that is really, really reliable that we will give him immediately full unlimited support for his campaign to enter the White House if he will just take this one on for us?”

  Hughes expected a return on his investment and was not always satisfied with Humphrey’s performance. What the billionaire apparently did not know was that Johnson had only contempt for his vice-president, gave him no power, and in fact enjoyed tormenting him in the cruelest, crudest ways.

  The pattern had been established early, in their Senate years. Johnson, then majority leader, would regularly grab Hubert by his lapels, give him his orders, and send him on his way by kicking him in the shins. Hard. Indeed, Humphrey still had scars on his legs, and they were nothing to the scars LBJ later inflicted.

  Once he invited his vice-president down to his ranch, then decided that Humphrey should go horseback riding dressed up like a cowboy He pulled out an outfit that dwarfed his sidekick, complete with a ten-gallon hat that fell over his ears, and put him on the meanest horse at the ranch. Finally, he called in the White House press corps to snap pictures of Hubert looking like a circus clown in mortal terror.

  With Humphrey the heir apparent, Johnson continued the torment. Asked by a reporter for a comment on his candidate, LBJ replied, “He cries too much.” Pressed further, Johnson snapped, “That’s it—he cries too much.”

  And even now, as a presidential candidate, Humphrey remained quite firmly under LBJ’s thumb.

  At one point during the campaign, Maheu called Humphrey, and when an aide relayed his message, the vice-president exploded in impotent rage. “Goddamnit, tell Hughes to call the president of the United States, not me,” the candidate stood up and shouted. “Just tell him this: right now I couldn’t get a pothole fixed on Pennsylvania Avenue, much less have them stop atomic testing in the desert. Have him call Lyndon Johnson.”

  Still, Hughes continued to find missions for his man, often speaking of the vice-president as if he were just another employee. “I feel we must start a negotiation with the AEC, just as if we were negotiating a business deal,” he wrote. “I think we can go thru Humphries.…”

  “Please advise Humphries that the AEC shot off a 200 kilo test yesterday and did not even extend the courtesy of telling us about it,” he complained on another occasion. “Under these circumstances I wish Humphries would try to get a statement from the AEC as to their future plans.…”

  And when Hughes finally decided to contact Johnson directly, he considered using the vice-president as his messenger boy: “You know I am perfectly willing to write a short personal message to Johnson, which we could ask Humphries to deliver—hand deliver—to Johnson.”

  When LBJ rejected his bomb plea, the billionaire seemed to hold the hapless vice-president at least partly responsible.

  “He should have more influence on the present administration than anyone else,” wrote Hughes, still chafing over Johnson’s two-week delay in replying to his letter. “But if he is doing anything at all for us, why should the President have gone out of his way to rub it in? This certainly does not sound as if Humphries or anybody has put in even a kind word.”

  Johnson’s maddening intransigence, however, only intensified the billionaire’s determination to replace him with a more pliable president.

  Barely a week after Humphrey launched his campaign, Maheu launched the Hughes campaign. Soon the two drives would merge.

  “The pros feel that the natural person to champion our cause is the Vice President, because of his present position and, more particularly, his candidacy,” Maheu reported to the penthouse. “We feel it is important that he come to this conclusion ‘on his own.’ We, therefore, have the machinery in motion which we hope will cause him to invite me to Washington to plan the strategy.

  “In the next 24–48 hours there will be suggestions made to the Vice President. If he reacts as I am hoping and takes the affirmative to work with us on this program, I really believe we will have come a long way.”

  It did not take Humphrey long to come to the right decision “on his own.” The very next day he sent word that he was ready, indeed eager to join forces with Hughes. The news came through a member of his family who was already on board.

  Robert Andrew Humphrey, one of the vice-president’s three sons, had been hired by Maheu two years earlier as the “mid-western distributor” for Radiarc, Inc., an electronics firm Maheu had purchased as a private investment. The company was not part of the Hughes empire, but its most valuable asset, the junior Humphrey, most definitely seemed to be. He regularly acted as go-between in his father’s dealings with Maheu.

  “Bob Humphrey is his dad’s favorite and a very competent young man,” wrote Maheu in a memo on “political assistance” he sent to Hughes. “Any assignment given Bob Humphrey will automatically include the full support and effort of his father, as it has in the past.”

  Now the vice-president himself seemed ready to j
oin the team. “Bob contacted me today to advise that his father was very anxious to meet with me concerning the future plans of the AEC,” Maheu reported, adding a few days later that the Humphrey alliance would be cemented in Denver, Colorado.

  “Today the Vice President sent word to me that he will be in Denver on this Thursday and would like to meet with me to discuss his strategy to delay and eventually preclude the necessity of the big blasts in Nevada.”

  On May 10, 1968, just two weeks after he entered the race, Hubert Humphrey mortgaged his campaign to Howard Hughes. In a late-night meeting in the vice-president’s suite at the Denver Hilton, Maheu would later testify, Humphrey agreed to battle the bomb in return for a promised one-hundred-thousand-dollar contribution, half of it to be paid in cash.

  Deeming the joint venture too “candid” to reveal long-distance, Maheu submitted a written report to Hughes the next day: “The following reflects the suggestions and procedures set forth by the Vice-President. He feels we should have two objectives—(a) delay the future plans of these big blasts until (b) the propitious moment at which the Administration will urge that underground testing be added to the Ban Treaty. He pledges his support and that of the Administration.”

  This private nuclear-disarmament pact was a real bargain. It would cost Hughes just $400,000. A hundred grand for Humphrey, and $300,000 more to fund an “independent study” by six White House—approved scientists, all known critics of the bomb tests.

  “During this program, the Vice-President will work with us very closely and confidentially,” added Maheu. “He is anxious to get your reaction to the above-mentioned plan.”

  Hughes reacted with sour impatience. He expected results for his money—not studies—and he was willing to pay well.

  “You say: ‘What do you think of Humphries’ program?’ ” he wrote. “Bob, I am no expert at these things. If I were, we would not have to go to Humphries to start with. Any program is as good or as bad as what he can produce with it—I am certainly nobody to evaluate.

  “My position is very simple. You know what we want to accomplish and you know our resources are unlimited. You will have to take it from there. I thought you were satisfied with the results of your trip to Denver.”

  The disappointing Denver summit coincided with the opening of the Vietnam peace talks in Paris, which gave Hughes a new idea about how he might more profitably use the presidential candidate he had just acquired.

  He would send Humphrey to Paris.

  Obviously the vice-president could no longer be trusted to handle his own campaign strategy. Hughes would have to plot it from the penthouse. In fact, he had in mind a ploy so bold and complicated that Humphrey would have to be kept in the dark until after he had completed his assigned mission.

  For the rest of the nation, the burning issue of the 1968 election was the war in Vietnam. For Hughes it was the nuclear blasts in Nevada. It was now his inspiration to subtly link the two issues. If all went well, the unwitting Humphrey would emerge a hero, and Hughes would have peace with honor.

  “It is just beginning to filter through to me.” Hughes wrote, “that now is the ideal moment for us to persuade Humphries or some other strong voice to come out and make a very inspiring tender of good wishes and felicitations to the just now convening delegates to the peace talks in Paris.

  “In this first expression of the prayers of all mankind for the successful conclusion of the talks before the delegates and representatives now convening in Paris, I think it would be wise to omit any reference to the explosions in Nevada.

  “However, the man we encourage to deliver this tender of good wishes and the prayers and hopes of all mankind, etc., etc., should be some one we can rely upon to deliver an impassioned plea for postponement of any explosion that may be scheduled. In other words, the man we select for this occasion should not know what we have in mind at all, and we should make sure he says nothing at this time to disclose what is being planned. However, it should be somebody we feel we control sufficiently so that, upon request a little later, he will be calculated to say what we may want him to say.

  “This sounds more complicated than it is,” Hughes assured Maheu. “I think you, knowing my devious mind, are pretty well aware [of] what I am thinking about.”

  Maheu knew very well what Hughes meant, but he still appeared to place more faith in the Denver plan his master had scorned. Humphrey did not embark for Paris. He seemed, however, to be doing quite well for Hughes in Washington.

  So well, in fact, that the Atomic Energy Commission became increasingly alarmed that a Hughes panel of scientists, backed by the vice-president and packed with bomb-test foes, might well derail the agency’s entire Nevada operation.

  Soon top AEC officials were exchanging memorandums almost as frequently as Hughes and Maheu, trying to determine if the man who might soon be president of the United States had actually joined with its wealthiest private citizen in an antinuclear alliance.

  “I called Col. Hunt in the Vice President’s office to discuss with him rumors we had been hearing in Las Vegas as regards an agreement between the Vice President and the Hughes organization,”reported the agency’s director, Arnold Fritsch. “I indicated to him that while we had this only as a rumor, we were concerned since the high-yield test program involves some vital national security needs.”

  When the AEC discovered the rumors were indeed well founded, it first tried to abort the “independent” Hughes study, then, unable to block it, scrambled to remove the panel from the billionaire’s control.

  AEC Chairman Seaborg got word to the president. Johnson was angry. He had enough troubles without a new ban-the-bomb crusade to fuel antiwar feeling, and he did not appreciate Hughes’s attempted end run. Besides, Humphrey was hardly being discreet about his dealings with the billionaire. Already it was common knowledge in the White House that the vice-president was getting campaign money from Hughes. Johnson was not merely angry. He was worried.

  “Hubert had better keep his pants zipped,” the president told an aide. “He’s going to get caught with his pecker in Hughes’s pocket.”

  Nervous about Humphrey’s now open advocacy of the Hughes protest, Johnson took charge. He scuttled the Hughes-Humphrey plan by himself appointing a panel to investigate the bomb tests. But instead of Humphrey’s half-dozen doves, Johnson picked a group of scientists more likely to call down tactical strikes on the Las Vegas Strip.

  Still, Humphrey had forced the first official probe of nuclear hazards. And when the presidential panel made its report, its findings came as quite a shock. Hughes was right. The big blasts were dangerous. A blue-ribbon panel of conservative scientists hand-picked by the AEC, led by its own former research director and two top White House advisers, declared Hughes’s fears well founded, warned that the megaton explosions could trigger major earthquakes, and called for a halt to the Nevada tests.

  Humphrey had come through. Too late, however, to do either himself or his hidden benefactor any good. By the time the scientists convened in November, Humphrey had already lost the election. He was never even allowed to see their report, which first Johnson and then Nixon entirely ignored and completely suppressed. Despite the warnings of real and present danger, the bombing continued unabated.

  Back at the penthouse, Hughes, always dubious about Humphrey’s indirect approach, anticipated just such a debacle.

  He had checked with his own scientists at the Hughes Aircraft Company, who warned that the government would simply reject any adverse findings: “They said, ‘If you could bring Einstein back from the grave and let him make the study, it would not make one damned bit of difference.’ They said, ‘You are playing with a stacked deck, and surely you have been in Las Vegas long enough to know what a stacked deck is!’ ”

  Indeed, Hughes knew precisely what a stacked deck was. He was using one, stacked in his favor, in the high-stakes game he was playing with candidate Humphrey.

  As the AEC battle raged through the summer and into t
he fall of 1968, Hughes found new tasks for the vice-president. Still fighting the Justice Department on the antitrust front, and certain he was the victim of some unknown conspiracy, he expected his candidate to discover who was behind the vendetta.

  “Here is what I dont understand,” complained Hughes, speaking of Humphrey as if he were just another employee. “If we have notified H.H.H. of our responsiveness to his prior requests, then why dont we simply tell him we want to know who has instructed the Attorney General to threaten action against us in the S/dust matter. It is unrealistic to assume that Humphries does not know or cannot find out the real source of our trouble.”

  When Hughes was also hit with an antitrust threat regarding his attempt to seize control of ABC, he was no longer content to rely on Humphrey alone.

  “The Justice Dept. is driving us crazy,” he fumed.

  “Bob, I think it is imperative that we make an alliance with Humphries, the White House, Nixon, or McCarthy and agree to supply all-out unlimited support in return for taking this Justice Dept. off my back but now!”

  It was not the vice-president’s willingness Hughes doubted so much as his ability. A bought man who could not deliver was hardly better than a man who could not be bought.

  There was, of course, among the Democrats, no viable alternative to Humphrey, whatever his failings. And after June 6, 1968, there was no alternative at all.

  Bobby Kennedy was dead. His assassination dramatically altered the presidential campaign, left the nation shaken, and even caused Howard Hughes to reassess his position. The political marketplace was in flux. It was no time to make a hasty purchase. He would wait a couple of days.

  “Re. the next 48 hrs.,” wrote Hughes, “I think we must decide whom we want to see nominated by each party, and then not wait for it to happen, but go out and do something about it.

  “The last person I want to see nominated is Edward Kennedy. He would receive too much support from others. I want to see a candidate who needs us and wants our help. I still favor Humphries. But I urge against any further support until we feel his pulse. Only a couple of days—but I dont feel we should increase our investment in him in the meantime. Only until you get some kind of an indication of his attitude and his capabilities.”