Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  “I think that while Somoza is being so decent to me in the face of all this bad publicity,” wrote Hughes, “something might happen tomorrow to change all this.

  “The Central and South American people are very emotional and changeable. So before this happens, I think I should make a present to Somoza.

  “I suggest a really desirable automobile. We should find out whether he likes to drive himself and would prefer a sports car, or a very elaborate limousine with a bar and telephone and TV set, and the very last word in accessories.

  “Also, I want to be damn sure he (Somoza) is told loud and clear that this was my personal idea because I appreciate the considerate treatment he has shown me.”

  Somoza, however, had a bigger reward in mind. He asked Hughes to bail out his country’s bankrupt airline, which the general himself happened to own. Hughes bought 25 percent of the stock. The dictator was not satisfied. He offered his guest an interest in his plywood factory, his pharmaceuticals company, and some choice local real estate.

  Less than a month after his arrival, Hughes decided to leave Nicaragua, before Somoza tried to sell him anything else. But on the way out he made an extraordinary decision. He would break fifteen years of isolation and meet with his host.

  Preparations for the big meeting began two days in advance. Hughes watched a movie, Mirage, then called in an aide to create his own illusion. For the first time in years he had one of the Mormons cut his hair, trim his beard, and pare those toenails. After four hours of grooming, he even took a shower.

  It was a new man who welcomed Somoza and U.S. Ambassador Turner Shelton aboard his Gulfstream jet at 10:45 P.M. on March 13, greeting both with a firm handshake. They chatted until midnight, and when his guests left, Hughes shook hands again.

  Hughes, his public image restored, flew off to Vancouver and arrived in broad daylight. Now quite bold, even reckless, he sauntered through the hotel lobby in his bathrobe, and once up in his penthouse paused at the window to watch a seaplane land in the harbor.

  The Mormons were not pleased. They quickly hustled Hughes into his new blacked-out bedroom, warning of spies with telephoto lenses—“we know that we are presently being surveilled”—and their boss passively reverted to a life of hiding, of movies, and of drugs.

  While the White House burglars plotted the break-in back in Washington, Hughes lay in a stupor watching Diamonds Are Forever, a James Bond movie about a reclusive billionaire held prisoner in his Las Vegas penthouse, his empire run by an evil imposter. And Hughes was still in that darkened room, watching The Brain That Would Not Die, when the burglars were busted at Watergate.

  But if Hughes himself remained oblivious of Watergate, his henchmen were becoming ever more entangled in it. Back in Washington, the mysterious Bob Bennett immediately assumed a central role in the cover-up, acting as go-between for Liddy and Hunt, all the while doing his best to expose it, reporting not to Hughes or even his fellow Mormons, but to the CIA and the Washington Post.

  On July 10, over lunch at a Marriott Hot Shoppes, Bennett came in from the cold. To his CIA case officer, Martin Lukasky, he passed on everything he had learned about Watergate from Hunt and Liddy. He said that the White House was behind the break-in and pointed the finger at his pal Chuck Colson: “Colson most likely suggested the break-in to Hunt on an ‘I don’t want to know, just get me the information’ basis.”

  Lukasky deemed Bennett’s report so sensitive that he hand-carried it to CIA Director Richard Helms.

  The report revealed that Bennett was busy on several fronts, all aimed at undermining the cover-up. He had established “back-door entry” to Edward Bennett Williams, the lawyer representing Larry O’Brien in a million-dollar civil suit filed against Nixon’s campaign committee.

  And he was talking to the press—to the Washington Star, to the New York Times, to Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times. According to a CIA report, “Bennett took relish in implicating Colson in Hunt’s activities, while protecting the Agency at the same time.”

  But most of all Bennett was talking to the Washington Post. He told the CIA he was feeding stories to Bob Woodward, who was “suitably grateful,” making no attribution to Bennett and protecting his valued source.

  Later, much later, Nixon would tell Haldeman that he believed Bob Bennett was “Deep Throat,” and he would wonder whether Hughes and the CIA had plotted together to bring him down.

  For the moment, however, Nixon remained obsessed by Larry O’Brien. And just a month after the break-in he saw his chance to go back on the attack.

  The president was sitting with his feet up on his desk, sipping a cup of coffee, when John Ehrlichman came to see him on July 24. Ehrlichman had just received the latest IRS “sensitive case report” from the still growing Hughes investigation. There was more bad news about Donald, but that was not the big news. A new name had popped up in the probe—Larry O’Brien. The IRS had turned up the dirt that all the president’s men had failed to find: proof of O’Brien’s Hughes connection.

  Ehrlichman read it to Nixon: “Hughes Tool Company paid $190,000 to Lawrence F. O’Brien and Associates, Washington, D.C., during 1970. Purpose of these payments are unknown.”

  The president was excited. He took his feet down off his desk, swung around, and leaned toward Ehrlichman. “The American people have a right to know about this!” he declared. “The American people need to know that the chairman of one of its two great political parties was on Hughes’s payroll.”

  Ehrlichman had rarely seen Nixon so excited. Even now, even after his pursuit had led him to Watergate, the president remained determined to nail O’Brien on Hughes.

  “This made a lot of trouble for me, and it’s going to make a lot of trouble for O’Brien,” said Nixon. He was sure that the IRS had uncovered only the tip of the iceberg, that O’Brien had received a lot more Hughes money, and that he had probably failed to report it all on his tax returns. He told Ehrlichman to order a full audit of O’Brien’s financial records and to get him for income-tax evasion.

  “I want to put O’Brien in jail,” said the president, pounding his fist on the desk. “And I want to do it before the election.”

  Ehrlichman immediately called Nixon’s man in the commissioner’s office, who took a surreptitious look at O’Brien’s returns and found that he had received a whopping $325,000 from Hughes but had reported it all and paid his taxes.

  Nixon was not satisfied. He had Ehrlichman call Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz and tell him to push the O’Brien audit. Shultz reported back that O’Brien’s returns had been examined and everything was in order.

  Nixon was still not satisfied. He had Ehrlichman call Shultz again and demand that O’Brien be interrogated. The IRS interviewed him in mid-August and informed the White House that the audit was closed. Ehrlichman demanded that it be reopened.

  Finally, Shultz reviewed the case with IRS Commissioner Johnnie Walters and together they called Ehrlichman to report that there was nothing against O’Brien. “I’m goddamn tired of your foot-dragging tactics,” shouted Ehrlichman, and he continued to abuse Walters until the commissioner hung up.

  Nixon had been foiled again on O’Brien, but his cover-up of Watergate had succeeded. On September 15, a federal grand jury indicted only the five burglars and their ringleaders, Liddy and Hunt, ignoring their masters in the White House.

  Nixon was not content, however, merely to beat the rap. He wanted revenge. Not merely against O’Brien but all his enemies.

  “I want the most comprehensive notes on all of those that have tried to do us in,” he told Dean that same day. “They are asking for it and they are going to get it. We have not used the power in the first four years, as you know. We have never used it. We haven’t used the Bureau and we haven’t used the Justice Department, but things are going to change now.”

  “What an exciting prospect!” exclaimed Dean.

  A few weeks later, on November 7, 1972, Richard Nixon was reelected president in an unprecedente
d landslide.

  Howard Hughes did not send in an absentee ballot, but he did send a check. Several checks, in fact, totaling $150,000. But he was still worried that he had not done enough.

  “Why didn’t Chester do more in the area of contributions?” asked Hughes, now back in Nicaragua.

  “We gave as much as we could safely,” his aides assured him, adding that his generosity was appreciated. “Because of the polls, which indicated a Republican landslide, contributions dried up and many committees were completely out of money when we came along like angels out of heaven.”

  Nixon had not waited for Hughes to descend with the manna. In the spring of 1972, even as his fears about the original hundred grand were leading him to Watergate, even as the break-in was being planned and approved, the president had reached out for more Hughes money. It was a fatal attraction he apparently just could not resist.

  Rebozo called his pal Danner in March or April and asked if Hughes was going to make another “contribution.” Danner explained that he was no longer the bagman, but Rebozo was not put off so easily. “Try to find out,” he insisted. Danner checked with his new bosses, Gay and Davis, but was told not to get involved, that the matter was being handled “back East.” And so it was.

  Bob Bennett was taking care of everything. While he continued to secretly undermine the cover-up with leaks to the Washington Post and reports to the CIA, the mysterious Mormon was also slipping more Hughes money to Nixon.

  Even before Rebozo called Danner, Bennett had advised his fellow Mormons to make a “voluntary, unsolicited, sizeable contribution,” but nothing “so ostentatious as to appear to be an attempt to ‘buy’ something.” They settled on $50,000.

  On the morning of April 6, one day before a new law took effect requiring that donors to political campaigns be identified, Gordon Liddy took time off from plotting the break-in and dropped by Bennett’s office to pick up the money. So much secret cash was pouring in before the deadline that even Liddy had been pressed into service as a collector.

  By the time of the November election, Nixon had accumulated a staggering $60 million and had a huge surplus. But he wanted more. On the weekend before the election, Bennett got a call from Thomas Evans, a partner in Nixon and Mitchell’s old law firm (which now shared Washington office space with the president’s campaign committee).

  “I’m just checking, is Mr. Hughes going to give any more?” asked Evans, claiming that the money was needed to help cover Nixon’s “deficit.” Bennett asked how much more was needed. Evans said $100,000.

  Hughes had planned to give the president only $50,000 more, and give another $50,000 to his opponent, George McGovern, but now he decided to turn over the entire hundred grand to the needy Nixon. Just like an angel out of heaven.

  All Bennett asked in return was that the president call Hughes on Christmas Eve to wish him a happy birthday. Although Nixon was preoccupied with planning the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, he agreed to call his benefactor. It would be their first direct contact.

  As it turned out, however, Hughes had more urgent business to handle on his birthday. On December 23, one day before he turned sixty-seven, Howard Hughes was routed from his Nicaraguan penthouse by a massive earthquake that leveled most of Managua.

  He was sitting naked in his lounge chair at 12:30 A.M. when the quake struck. He had just finished a twenty-four-hour film festival and called for another movie when the first violent shock toppled a heavy soundtrack amplifier that nearly crushed him. A Mormon rushed in and caught the speaker just before it hit his frail boss.

  The room was still heaving, the lights had gone out, and chunks of plaster were falling from the ceiling, but Hughes remained calm. In fact, he refused to leave. “We’ll stay right here,” he told his frantic aides, and again asked for his movie.

  The Mormons, certain the entire hotel was about to collapse, coaxed Hughes onto a stretcher and started to carry him down nine flights of stairs, but Hughes suddenly demanded they go back. He had forgotten his drug box.

  The billionaire spent the night huddled under a blanket in the backseat of a Mercedes while the aftershocks continued, the earth split open across the city, buildings crumbled, fires raged out of control, and the death toll mounted to more than five thousand.

  At sunrise, the Mercedes drove through the devastation, down streets clogged with rubble and dead bodies, past thousands of dazed homeless victims, taking Hughes to the safety of Somoza’s country palace. Secluded in a plush cabana alongside the dictator’s swimming pool, Hughes for the first time showed fear. He insisted that a blanket be draped across the windows, afraid that someone might see him.

  That night, in the chaos of Managua’s airport, Hughes was loaded onto a private Lear jet and flew back for the first time in two years to America, landing just after midnight on the day before Christmas at Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

  Where the IRS was waiting for him with a subpoena. Instead of a birthday call from the president, Hughes was greeted by a surprise party of revenue agents. The tax probe that Intertel had instigated against Maheu, the runaway investigation that had already reached into the White House, had finally turned against Hughes himself.

  Trapped in his hangared jet, surrounded by tax men demanding to board the plane, Hughes frantically maneuvered to escape the subpoena. His aides called Chester Davis. The gruff attorney ordered the agents to hold off until he contacted IRS headquarters in Washington. They agreed to wait, but only for half an hour.

  Twenty minutes later, a triumphant Davis called back. He said he had spoken to IRS Intelligence Chief John Olsiewski, who reportedly roused Commissioner Walters out of bed, and told the agents in Fort Lauderdale they would soon get orders to scuttle their mission.

  At 2:15 A.M. the district chief called from Jacksonville. As Davis had predicted, he told his men to back off, forget the subpoena, stay off the plane, and instead merely let a customs inspector read Hughes an IRS statement requesting a voluntary interview.

  The besieged Hughes resisted even that. Through the closed door of the jet the waiting agents heard a shouted conversation, and then one voice rising above the others, screaming “No, no!”

  Finally, however, the customs man was allowed on board. He made his way to the back of the darkened plane and turned a flashlight on a bearded old man whose face was half hidden by a black hat pulled down past his ears. The agent handed him the IRS interview request and asked if he understood it. The man in the black hat said he did. That was the last time any U.S. government official would see Howard Hughes alive.

  He flew off to London, where arrangements had been made with the Rothschilds for a penthouse suite at their posh Inn on the Park Hotel, overlooking Buckingham Palace. By four in the morning, an hour and a half after checking into his new hideout, Hughes had settled back into his familiar routine, picking up where he left off before the earthquake, sitting on his Barcalounger watching a movie, The Deserter.

  He had been in London less than two weeks, however, when news from the States sent his spirits soaring. On January 10, 1973, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in the TWA case. It was a stunning victory for Hughes. Reversing all lower-court findings, the high court dismissed the case he had lost by default when he refused to appear ten years earlier, and threw out the judgment that with interest now totaled $180 million.

  Hughes was ecstatic. He decided to celebrate, to break free of his earthbound prison, to relive his past glory—to fly again!

  The Mormons were shocked. Hughes had not piloted a plane for a dozen years, had rarely left his bed in the time since, his eyesight was so bad he couldn’t read without a magnifying glass, and of course he didn’t have a valid pilot’s license. No matter. He was going to fly. He sent his aides in search of the proper outfit, a leather flight jacket and a snap-brim Stetson, like the one he had worn back in the 1930s when he had broken all the records. He also started to watch a steady stream of airplane movies—Zeppelin, Helicopter Spies, Doomsday Fl
ight, The Crowded Sky, and Skyjacked.

  Months passed while Hughes readied himself for the big event. Finally it was set for Sunday, June 10. The night before he watched Strategic Air Command twice and that morning called in an aide to groom him. It took four hours to cut his hair, trim his beard, clip his long nails, and get him dressed, but shortly before two P.M. he slipped out of the hotel and headed for Hatfield Airport, just north of London.

  There a private jet waited. Hughes inspected the Hawker Siddeley 748, settled into the pilot’s seat—and stripped off his clothes. Naked now except for the trademark brown fedora, Hughes gripped the controls and took off.

  He spent all that day flying, an experienced English co-pilot who hoped to sell him the plane at his side, and he flew twice more in July, by now quite at home again in the skies.

  It was during this time of high adventure that Howard Hughes discovered Watergate. He was looking at a picture of an airplane in the London Express when he noticed a story about the crisis he had unwittingly caused.

  “What’s Watergate?” he asked. It was the first time he had seen the word. His Mormons tried to explain, but Hughes didn’t understand and soon lost interest.

  A few weeks later, on August 9, Hughes got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, lost his footing, fell to the floor, and fractured his hip.

  His flying days were over. He would never get out of bed again.

  By the time Hughes discovered Watergate, Nixon’s condition had also taken a sudden turn for the worse. On the morning of March 21, John Dean came into the Oval Office to give the president his bleak diagnosis.

  “We have a cancer—within—close to the presidency, that’s growing,” said Dean. The malignancy had spread through the entire White House, and the cover-up was about to blow.

  “We’re being blackmailed,” said the shaken young counsel. Already more than $350,000 in hush money had been passed to the burglars, and they were demanding still more.