Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  Nixon had from the outset of his administration felt himself encircled by enemies; now, as he himself would later put it, he was “reeling under siege.”

  Yet even at the peak of crisis, the president did not ignore the billionaire’s bomb protest. Once more, he offered to send Henry Kissinger to Howard Hughes. Maheu transmitted this offer to the penthouse, along with Nixon’s pledge that the scheduled nuclear test posed no danger.

  “In all sincerity, Howard,” he wrote, “I truly believe that this is one hell of a concession for the President of the United States to make, since we were given the definite indication that you would become knowledgable of certain top secret information available only to a handful of people in this entire world.”

  Again, Maheu assured his boss that the negotiations with Kissinger could be handled by telephone, sparing the recluse a personal confrontation; but the secret peace talks had to be held directly with Hughes.

  “I cannot find it within myself to be presumptuous enough to insist that this information be made available to me when it is you to whom they want to talk,” added Maheu. “I am thoroughly convinced that Nixon has a deep-seated respect for you which won’t quit. And also that there are certain things which he cannot entrust to any of your subordinates, unfortunately including me.”

  Hughes was not impressed. Again he spurned shuttle diplomacy, once more refusing to receive Kissinger, and this time not in fear but anger.

  “I am surprised that you would accept without some resistance the statement of this explosion’s so-called ‘safety,’ ” he shot back at Maheu, rejecting the president’s assurances.

  “As to my listening to Kissinger, the statement that he has things to tell me which cannot be entrusted to your knowledge is an insult, and simply not true.

  “As to the contention that this explosion is in some way necessary to maintain our strategic negotiating position, or our military security in respect to Russia, this kind of an argument is just a plain insult to my intelligence.”

  Hughes had had it with intermediaries. No more envoys: he would not receive Kissinger, and he did not want Maheu to deal with Rebozo. It was time to go straight to the top.

  “Bob, I want you to go all the way on this,” he ordered at dawn the next day, with the dreaded blast now only three days off. “I have written some very carefully drafted comments, and I want this argument made to the President in the very most forceful way.

  “I dont want to write a letter as I did to President Johnson, and have it discarded into some dead file,” he noted, bitterly recalling the rejection of his last bomb plea.

  “Bob, I want you to request a personal meeting with the President just as quickly as he will grant it.

  “I will give you the full text of what I hope you will say before you go into the meeting.”

  Having stayed awake all night to plot this bold move, however, Hughes could not wait to begin scripting Maheu for his big White House scene.

  “You might tell him,” he added, spinning out lines for delivery to Nixon, “I am deeply, deeply sorry for the shortness of time, but that … I had made my feelings known concerning the testing of large bombs in this area.

  “And now, as a complete farce, they plan a test here at Las Vegas which is supposed not to violate the implied agreement they made with you, because it is marginally under one megaton.

  “I hope you can find some way of showing this disgraceful trickery to the President as the fraudulent effort to deceive that it really is.

  “Bob, I have given a full lifespan of service to this country, and taken very little for my personal pleasure or glorification.

  “If I dont rate better than this shoddy treatment, it is pretty sad.”

  Maheu accepted the script but rejected the part. It was not that he didn’t like the lines, only that he didn’t think they would play well at the White House. He knew that it was futile to see Nixon. He had known it from the start. But it was pointless to tell that to the frenzied scenarist up in the penthouse. Instead, Maheu insisted that Rebozo was the man to play this part.

  Hughes was not convinced. “I am fully confident of Rebozo’s position with the President,” he replied. “I just am fearful he cannot convey the entire story, simply because he does not know it all.”

  With that, Hughes was off again, giving Maheu his lines, determined to write, direct, and produce this melodrama as he saw fit.

  “If you were with the President,” he told his alter ego, “you could tell him about the 200 million dollar loss I am swallowing on the helicopter, due to my patriotic zealousness in accepting a contract at a price that did not even pay for the bill of material,” presenting as noble his bungled bid to corner the market for the war in Vietnam.

  “Also, you could convince the President that, had it not been for his personal identification with the Air West order by the CAB, I would have extricated myself from that unfortunate involvement 100% by now, instead of finalizing the deal,” he continued, also claiming altruism for the illegal takeover he had just paid Nixon to approve.

  “I think you could convince him that our arrival here in Nevada was an event of great good fortune to the state, as evidenced by the fact that Nevada has become a true oasis in the sea of campus disorders, race riots, poverty, etc.,” he added, claiming credit for the tranquility as if it had resulted from his Monopoly game.

  “So, Bob, to summarize, I think what I am asking, in relationship to what I feel we have contributed, is God-damned little.

  “And, if cost is disturbing the AEC,” he concluded, as final proof of his selflessness, “I feel so intensely about this thing, I will even pay the cost of moving this test to Alaska, out of my own pocket.”

  The script had a shameless audacity worthy of Nixon himself, but the president would never hear it delivered. Maheu left Key Biscayne for Washington to mollify his boss, but before going he filed a discouraging report.

  “Howard, I have just completed a long conference with Rebozo,” he told Hughes. “It is his humble opinion (and we must remember that he understands the top man, perhaps better than the rest of the world put together) that it would be a very serious mistake in strategy to try and see the President without going through Kissinger first.

  “He recommends, therefore, that we make immediate plans for Kissinger to fly to Las Vegas and have a meeting with you in order to afford you the opportunity to convince them that what they are doing is wrong.”

  Henry Kissinger was a power second only to Nixon himself. There was no door closed to him anywhere in the world. Except on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. Even in his final day of desperation, Hughes would not receive him.

  Instead, as the relentless countdown continued, the sleepless recluse pushed frantically to reach Richard Nixon, calling Maheu all night and into the predawn hours with pleas to stave off nuclear devastation.

  “Please give me some idea of what you plan to do in a last minute attempt to obtain some kind of a temporary reprieve in order to permit a direct request from me to the President asking for an audience to be granted you,” he scribbled at four A.M. on the morning of the scheduled blast.

  “It seems to me that, after 64 years of devotion to this country, I should be entitled to a 10 minute audience before the President.”

  At 4:45 A.M., Hughes sent Maheu another message for Nixon.

  “I wish you would tell the man that in 64 years as a citizen of this country I have not ever once asked the President to do or not do anything whatsoever,” he wrote, apparently forgetting that just in the last few months he had asked Nixon to scuttle the ABM, submit his cabinet appointments for approval, and move all bomb tests to Alaska.

  “I have not even ever sent a message of any kind to any President, except the one plea to Pres. Johnson to stop the other blast here.

  “Please say a three day delay will satisfy me, and forget the personal audience. It seems to me that if he grants this and I am satisfied, it would be 3 days well spent. If he will g
rant the 3 days and his answer is still ‘no’, I will not resist further, and will feel that I have been treated right.”

  At 5:15 A.M., in a final appeal, Hughes scrawled numbered points for Maheu to make to Nixon:

  “1—Cheap price to pay to satisfy me.

  “2—I will be content with the delay, even tho the decision thereafter is still go.

  “3—I cannot believe the pres. would be criticized for granting this plea even if it should be established at some later date that the purpose was solely to satisfy one important local citizen and avoid causing him to move elsewhere and destroy all of his extensive plans.

  “4—Certainly there can be no real deficit from a few days delay except a small increment of cost which I will gladly bear.”

  It was all in vain. None of the desperate pleas Hughes scribbled through the night ever reached Nixon. It is unlikely that the president had any real concept of the billionaire’s terror and outrage, much less that to Hughes the bomb test was the test of their entire relationship.

  At 7:30 on the morning of September 16, 1969, the blast went off on schedule. Three distinct shock waves rippled through Las Vegas. The penthouse swayed for a full minute. But the real impact of the explosion would not be felt for years. And then it would shake the entire nation.

  Its immediate impact was quite evident as Hughes grabbed his yellow legal pad half an hour later.

  “This test produced more ground motion than either of the other two,” he wrote in a hand that still showed the full effect of the blast.

  “I want you to contact Nixon-thru-Rebozo and say that I am really disappointed in this matter because I feel I was misled.

  “Anyway, Bob, I have had it. I want you to try today, while we are still in the position of having been turned down, to make an all-out effort to get an agreement that they will not test any more megaton, or ‘in name only’ bombs of the same general magnitude.

  “If they reject this, I am going to announce publicly my withdrawal from Nevada, and the abandonment of all my future plans here. I am going to state my extreme regret and explain why.”

  At the bottom of the page Hughes scrawled, “Rebozo for Nix only.” It was a cryptic warning that the president and his confidant would not comprehend. Not until it was too late.

  In the months that followed, Howard Hughes, assured by Maheu that the nuclear nightmare was now over, settled down to the routine business of buying the rest of Las Vegas.

  His Monopoly game had been stalled for almost two years, ever since Lyndon Johnson’s attorney general Ramsey Clark blocked the Stardust deal in April 1968, threatening antitrust action. Hughes had tried to run that blockade several times, then relented, waiting for a more friendly administration to take power.

  “If we emerge from the forthcoming election with the kind of strength we anticipate,” Hughes had confidently predicted during the 1968 campaign, “there will be no need for a negotiated settlement of this matter.”

  Maheu had concurred: “I strongly suggest we call off this caper and take another look at it six months hence—after the elections.”

  And, indeed, on January 17, 1969, as Richard Nixon prepared to move into the White House, the Justice Department did allow Hughes to acquire a sixth Las Vegas hotel, the Landmark. But the Landmark was a special case. Hughes was allowed to buy it only to save it from bankruptcy.

  Otherwise, the antitrust blockade remained in force.

  Now, early in 1970, Hughes prepared to test the new administration. He was eyeing the Dunes Hotel and Casino, a major resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

  His own lawyer, Richard Gray, warned him it was a dangerous move. “While the Republican Attorney General might have a different view than his predecessor,” he wrote, “it is my humble opinion that the acquisition of any additional hotel would make us a prime target for antitrust action.”

  Hughes decided to take the risk. Maheu had assured him that John Mitchell was an ally who could be reached through Rebozo, and that the new head of the antitrust division, Richard McLaren, was “our #1 choice.”

  In January 1970, Richard Danner, who knew John Mitchell well from Nixon’s 1968 campaign, initiated a series of secret meetings with the new attorney general.

  Neither McLaren nor anybody else from the antitrust division was invited. The Dunes deal would be handled informally, just between friends.

  By February 26, after his second session with Mitchell, Danner had good news. Maheu relayed it to the penthouse. “Howard,” he wrote, “you will be pleased to know that Danner had a very pleasant and friendly meeting with the Attorney General who sends you his gratitude for all of your cooperation. He indicated that he could see no reason why we should not move forward with the purchase of the Dunes.”

  A few days later, on March 9, the news was even better. “Howard,” reported Maheu, “it is our move to make on the Dunes. Danner had a long talk today with the Attorney General. He all but gave final approval today, but he wants the last say to emanate from the anti-trust division.”

  Mitchell called in McLaren for the first time on March 12. He told his deputy he was “inclined to go along with Hughes’s purchase of the Dunes.” McLaren was not so inclined. He immediately informed Mitchell that it would violate antitrust laws, that approval of the deal would be “entirely inconsistent with the Justice Department’s earlier refusal to approve Hughes’s purchase of the Stardust.”

  That kind of contrary attitude would eventually incur Nixon’s wrath. “I want something clearly understood,” the president later raged in a taped conversation. “And if it’s not understood, McLaren’s ass is to be out within one hour. I do not want him to run around prosecuting people, raising hell about conglomerates, stirring things up. Is that clear? I’d rather have him out anyway. I don’t like the son of a bitch.”

  In the Hughes case, however, Nixon’s rage was not required. John Mitchell simply ignored his antitrust chief.

  Just after noon on March 19, the attorney general again met secretly with Danner. He gave Hughes a green light on the Dunes deal. “We see no problem,” Mitchell told Hughes’s emissary. “Why don’t you go ahead.” There were no records kept. It was just a handshake deal.

  The approval was a signal victory for Hughes. He had won a complete reversal of Justice policy, he had broken the antitrust blockade, he was finally free to expand his Nevada empire, to buy the rest of Las Vegas.

  But the triumph meant nothing to Hughes. Nothing at all. It came just as a new megaton blast was announced in Nevada.

  An atmosphere of terminal crisis gripped both the penthouse and the White House during Holy Week in 1970.

  Howard Hughes learned of the impending blast on the same day in March that Richard Nixon got news of a coup in Cambodia. That coup, and the simultaneous failure of peace talks with Hanoi, started the president on a bloody course that led to the invasion of Cambodia, the murders at Kent State, and the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, events that shocked the nation.

  But it was the Easter bombing of Nevada that shocked Hughes and sealed Nixon’s fate. Oddly enough, instead it almost brought them together.

  Robert Maheu was in New York City, when news of the blast first hit Hughes, meeting with the executive committee of Air West to finally close that fraudulent deal.

  “Howard,” he wrote, “I am firmly convinced that only the President of the United States can stop this next blast.”

  Hughes’s response was immediate.

  He called Maheu out from the New York meeting and had him call back the penthouse from a pay phone. Then Hughes gave Maheu his mission: he was to proceed directly to Key Biscayne and there offer Bebe Rebozo one million dollars for Richard Nixon—if the president would halt the bomb test.

  Maheu flew down to Washington, picked up Richard Danner (who had just closed the Dunes deal with John Mitchell), and the two went together to the Florida White House.

  Maheu would later claim that he never offered the million-dollar bribe, which he and Hughes code-nam
ed the “Big Caper” in their telephone conversations that week.

  If Maheu and Hughes had their “Big Caper,” Nixon had long been enamored of the “Big Play,” a bold move that he often used to cut through some tangled crisis.

  While Maheu held back on the bribe, Rebozo tried out Nixon’s “Big Play” in his first meeting with Hughes’s emissaries on March 21. It was a three-option plan, one alternative being a Camp David summit meeting between Howard Hughes and the president.

  Maheu reported the dramatic offer to the penthouse.

  “Danner and I have just left our friend after 8 hours of solid and serious conference with innumerable phone calls back to the east,” he informed the billionaire, apparently referring to calls between Rebozo and Nixon.

  “Now, Howard, we have three alternatives which have been offered to us and it is imperative time-wise that we choose one of the three:

  “1—Kissinger is prepared to fly to Las Vegas and have a similar meeting as that which they were hoping would take place many, many months ago.

  “2—Although the President does not feel that he should go to Las Vegas at this particular time, he is prepared to meet with you at a moment’s notice, preferably at some place like Camp David.

  “3—They will guarantee that this one is very definitely the last big one.”

  Hughes was no more willing to see the president than he was to see Kissinger. Instead he pushed Maheu to make the million-dollar bribe.

  Maheu resisted for three days. Finally, he at least pretended to give in and reported a failed attempt to buy nuclear peace.

  “Howard, under very relaxed and comfortable conditions, I tried on the ‘Big Caper’ per our telephonic conversation of yesterday,” he told Hughes. “There is no doubt as to the trust and confidence which was clearly enunciated, however it was made very clear that because of the national defense aspects, which they so wanted to explain to you, it was categorically impossible to do anything in this particular instance.”