Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  Danner testified that “sometime during the summer” Maheu told him, and Danner told Rebozo, that “$50,000 was available now, and another $50,000 would be made available later on.” Danner’s June 26, 1969, meeting with Rebozo in Miami was confirmed by travel records he submitted to the Senate Watergate Committee. According to bank records, Maheu arranged a withdrawal of $50,000 from Hughes’s bank account the next day and picked up the cash on July 11. His son Peter testified that he kept the money in his safe a few weeks, and then, on his father’s instructions, turned the $50,000 over to Danner for delivery to Rebozo.

  Danner’s delivery of the Hughes ABM memo to Rebozo on June 26 and Rebozo’s delivery of the memo to Nixon on July 4 are established by Maheu’s reports to Hughes. Danner also testified that he gave the memo to Rebozo, and that Rebozo told him that “the president and Dr. Kissinger both examined it and were very much impressed and felt that they would like to brief him further … Dr. Kissinger would do it.” Rebozo himself confirmed the Kissinger offer in Senate Watergate Committee testimony: “I do know that the offer was made to have Kissinger brief him on it.”

  Nixon’s July 16 meeting with Kissinger was established by Maheu’s report to Hughes on the same date and by White House logs obtained from the National Archives, and was confirmed by Alexander Haig in an interview. Haig also recounted Kissinger’s reaction to Nixon’s order that he brief Hughes, and two members of his National Security Council staff independently confirmed Kissinger’s tirade. Kissinger himself refused repeated interview requests.

  Larry Lynn, a senior aide who handled the ABM, recalled Haig’s own reaction to Hughes’s memo, and in an interview speculated that the Hughes connection may have led Nixon to propose abandoning the ABM as part of the SALT negotiations a year later: “I have always felt that some of Nixon’s zigs and zags on the ABM issue were unexplainable by anything I knew. He seemed to abandon it too quickly, and for all I know if Howard Hughes was stuffing his pockets full of money, that might have made a difference.”

  Nixon’s and Kissinger’s review of plans to test the ABM warhead in July 1969 was confirmed by members of the NSC staff and detailed by AEC and State Department documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. One “Memorandum for the President” from the NSC Undersecretaries Committee noted that moving the nuclear tests to Alaska would cost $200 million and warned that “the Soviets can be expected to be sensitive to our plans to conduct tests of this magnitude in the Aleutians.” Nixon, however, ordered the biggest blasts moved to Alaska, apparently more worried about Hughes.

  11 Howard Throws a Party

  When Hughes first announced his intention to buy the Landmark late in 1968, the Johnson Justice Department warned Hughes that his acquisition “would violate the Clayton Act” and threatened antitrust action. A month later, on January 17, 1969, three days before Nixon’s inauguration, the department told Hughes that it did not “presently intend to take action with respect to the proposed acquisition.” Maheu received advance word and flashed the good news to the penthouse: “We just received a telephone call from the anti-trust division advising that they had formally approved our purchase of the Landmark.”

  The description of the Landmark is based on contemporaneous local press reports and personal observation.

  Dean Martin ultimately did perform at the opening, as did Danny Thomas, and even Bob Hope offered to make an appearance, only to drop out at the last minute due to the death of his two brothers. Hughes apparently never forgave Hope. When the comedian called Maheu six months later seeking a donation of $100,000 for the Eisenhower Hospital, Hughes at first refused to give anything and reluctantly agreed to contribute $10,000 only after being told that Nixon had also asked his help.

  Martin had points in the Riviera casino, which FBI wiretaps in the early 1960s revealed as being secretly controlled by the Chicago underworld. Mafia informer Jimmy Fratianno also claimed that Sidney Korshak, a reputed organized crime leader, owned “a pretty good piece of the Riviera” (Ovid Demaris, The Last Mafioso: The Treacherous World of Jimmy Fratianno, Times Books, 1981, p. 272).

  The depth of Hughes’s angst over the Landmark opening is demonstrated by the fact that in all the thousands of memos he wrote during his four years in Las Vegas, it was only during the Landmark brawl that he really got into deep introspection, that he summed up his life, that he searched his soul.

  And his fight with Maheu over the opening was so intense that years later Maheu’s wife would recall that brawl above all others, remembering the shouted phone conversations she heard through many nights (Ron Laytner, Up Against Howard Hughes: The Maheu Story, Manor Books, 1972, pp. 34–35).

  12 Nixon: The Betrayal

  Several Nixon aides recalled the president’s intense involvement in planning the moon-walk dinner. “This was not only the big state dinner of his administration, the highpoint of his first year in office, but also was on his home territory, California,” said Ehrlichman. “He was certainly involved in preparing the guest list. I know that Haldeman went over the draft guest lists with Nixon in great detail several times.” Haldeman himself claimed not to recall the party preparations, but one of his aides said Nixon personally reviewed all 1,440 invitations and also made a list of “enemies” he did not want invited, including one of his wife’s best friends.

  Several top White House aides noted Nixon’s sensitivity toward Hughes. “He was feared in the Nixon White House, where some believed that the ‘Hughes loan’ scandal had cost Nixon the 1960 election to Kennedy.” wrote John Dean in Blind Ambition (Simon & Schuster, 1976, p. 67). “On matters pertaining to Hughes, Nixon sometimes seemed to lose touch with reality,” wrote Haldeman in The Ends of Power (Times Books, 1978, pp. 19–20). “His indirect association with this mystery man may have caused him, in his view, to lose two elections.”

  Nixon first tried to get the CIA to put a “full cover” on Donald and when the CIA refused turned instead to the Secret Service, according to the final report of the House Impeachment Committee. Ehrlichman confirmed in an interview that the president had him arrange the Secret Service surveillance in May 1969, and that Nixon also ordered Donald’s home and office telephones tapped, primarily to keep track of his brother’s dealings with Meier. “Don’s involvement with Hughes had already caused so much pain in the past, and Nixon was not anxious for another Hughes connection to emerge,” said Ehrlichman. “The president was very upset that his ‘stupid brother’ was involved again in this kind of thing, he was angry.”

  When Donald was caught at the airport meeting with Meier and Hatsis in July 1969, Ehrlichman immediately called Rebozo, who immediately called Danner. “Do you know where John Meier is?” demanded an angry Rebozo. “I think you’ll find that he is at the Orange County airport with Don Nixon.” Ehrlichman pulled Hatsis’s FBI file, which he said in an interview showed Hatsis to be an “ ‘unsavory character’ with organized-crime connections.”

  Kreigsman’s inquiry about Hughes to the AEC is confirmed by AEC documents dated July 25 and August 2, 1969, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The AEC’s report on Hughes to the White House is dated August 18, 1969, and was personally reviewed by Chairman Seaborg. Seaborg recalled in an interview that top White House aides contacted him on several occasions to say that Hughes had expressed concern about the bomb tests.

  Hoover’s report on Hughes was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Its description of Hughes was based on a January 7, 1952, report to the FBI by a disgruntled Hughes executive who had also accused the billionaire of income-tax evasion. Hoover had been keeping tabs on Hughes since the 1947 “Spruce Goose” Senate hearings, receiving regular reports from his agents that focused primarily on Hughes’s escapades with various starlets. FBI files also reveal that Hughes contacted Hoover directly through his chief Mormon, Bill Gay, on August 20, 1955, to discuss “a very delicate matter,” and according to FBI sources shortly thereafter Hughes tried to hire Hoover as his Washington lobbyist. Dean E
lson, FBI bureau chief in Las Vegas who later went to work for Hughes, said in an interview that Hoover told him that Hughes came to see the director while Hoover was on vacation in La Jolla, California, and told Hoover he could “name his own price, write his own ticket.” Hoover told Elson he turned the job down because he considered Hughes “erratic.” FBI files show that before he met with Hughes, Hoover received from his top aide the same report on Hughes he later sent Nixon.

  The nuclear test announced on September 10, 1969, and detonated September 16 was code-named “JORUM” and according to AEC reports was “under a megaton.”

  Maheu’s reports to Hughes, pilot logs of the Hughes jet, and Danner’s travel records show that Danner and Maheu saw Rebozo in Key Biscayne on September 11 and 12, 1969. The Senate Watergate Committee in its final report called this “the most probable delivery date for the first contribution.”

  Danner in his first account of the hundred-thousand-dollar payoff told the IRS that it had taken place in Rebozo’s home at Key Biscayne in September 1969 and that Maheu was present: “We took the de Havilland, flew to Miami, went to Key Biscayne, met Rebozo at his house. Maheu handed him the package and says, ‘Here’s $50,000, first installment.’ Rebozo thanked him.” Maheu also testified that he was present in Key Biscayne when $50,000 was delivered to Rebozo in 1969, but said that Danner handed over the money. Rebozo himself first told the IRS that the initial $50,000 was received from Danner in Key Biscayne in 1969.

  Later, all three men gave contradictory accounts. Rebozo, in an effort to explain why some of the hundred-dollar bills he eventually returned to Hughes were issued by the U.S. Treasury after the date he originally said they were delivered, claimed he received all the money late in 1970. Under pressure from Rebozo, Danner changed his account and said he did not recall if the first delivery was in 1969 or 1970, but also testified that it was Rebozo’s insistence that led him to change his mind. The only other reason Danner gave for retracting his original testimony was his recollection that the September 1969 trip related to Hughes’s concern over the dumping of nerve gas. This is clearly wrong, as the nerve-gas dumping actually took place in August 1970.

  All details of the delivery of the first $50,000 to Rebozo are based on Danner’s testimony to the IRS and the Senate Watergate Committee, and Maheu’s court testimony and statements in interviews with the Senate staff.

  Nixon’s activities and state of mind in September 1969 were established by his own account in his memoirs, and further detailed by Kissinger in The White House Years (Little, Brown & Co., 1979) and interviews with White House and NSC aides. As noted, Kissinger refused repeated interview requests.

  Interviews with top White House officials, including Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Colson, establish that while Nixon was well aware of Hughes’s opposition to the bomb tests, the president never indicated that he had any idea of the true extent of Hughes’s terror and outrage. Also, Nixon may well have been falsely reassured by the report on Hughes he received from the AEC just weeks earlier, claiming that “Hughes will not object as long as detonations do not exceed a megaton.”

  The account of the September 1969 blast is drawn from press reports, AEC records, and after-action reports to Hughes from his aides.

  Danner’s meetings with Attorney General Mitchell on the Dunes deal are established by his Senate Watergate Committee testimony, Justice records obtained through Senate staff investigators, and Maheu’s contemporaneous reports to Hughes. In addition, FBI Director Hoover let Nixon and Mitchell know that he knew about the Dunes deal in a March 23, 1970, report sent to Justice: “Information was received by the Las Vegas office of this Bureau that on March 19, 1970, a representative of Howard Hughes … stated that Hughes had received assurance from the Department of Justice that no objection would be interposed to Hughes’s purchasing the Dunes Hotel.”

  Maheu described Hughes’s orders to give Nixon a million-dollar bribe to halt the March 1970 bomb test in statements to the Senate Watergate Committee, which he confirmed in an interview and detailed in a sworn deposition in his 1973 slander suit against Hughes.

  Danner’s travel records submitted to the Senate Watergate Committee show that he and Maheu were in Key Biscayne on March 20–22, 1970, and in Senate testimony both Danner and Maheu confirmed meeting with Rebozo on those dates.

  13 Exodus

  Hughes’s fifteen-month effort to escape Las Vegas was described by several of his aides in depositions, further detailed by two of the aides in interviews, and also established by the memos Hughes sent and received during the period.

  “It took about a year and a quarter to get going on our trip to Nassau,” testified one of the Mormons, John Holmes. “There was some business to attend to. We had a big dust storm in Las Vegas, or it was raining cats and dogs in Nassau. One thing led to another. Also, we required twenty-four-hour advance notice, and he didn’t want to commit himself.”

  The account of the nerve gas dumping was drawn from press reports, confirmed by Defense Department records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. These records also show that one of the options presented to the president was exploding the gas at the Nevada Test Site.

  In addition to contacting Rebozo through Danner, Maheu also attempted to halt the gas through O’Brien’s associate Claude DeSautels. “Maheu called at seven in the morning, which was four or five A.M. in Las Vegas,” recalled DeSautels in an interview. “I said, ‘My God, what are you doing up at this hour?’ and he said, The old man saw the eleven o’clock news last night and saw the trains and told me to stop them.’ And I said, ‘Bob! How can I stop the train?’ I knew the president had approved it, the secretary of defense had ordered it, and the surgeon general had testified that it was safe. And Maheu said, ‘Well, stop it!’ So I called some people at the Pentagon, and I called Maheu back and said, ‘There’s no way to stop those trains, they’re already rolling.’ And Maheu said, ‘I knew you couldn’t stop it, but now at least I have something to tell the old man.’ ”

  The account of Danner’s delivery to Rebozo of the second $50,000 from Hughes on July 3, 1970, was based on Danner’s sworn testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee and confirmed by Rebozo’s own Senate testimony. “When I delivered the money to him,” said Danner, “he slid it out of the large manila envelope and counted the bundles, and thanked me. The delivery made at San Clemente was in his room in the presidential compound. He laid the bundles out on the bed and counted them, he put them back in the envelope and put them in his handbag.… He took me into the president’s office and the three of us sat there and chatted for possibly ten or fifteen minutes.”

  Rebozo testified that he put the $50,000 in his safe-deposit box along with a letter instructing that it be turned over to the finance chairman of the 1972 campaign, but he also testified that he later destroyed that letter and held on to the money himself until the IRS came after him in 1973.

  Danner’s daily diary submitted to the Senate Watergate Committee confirms that he contacted Rebozo through the White House on August 8, 1970, the day after Hughes discovered the nerve gas. “I relayed to him Hughes’s fears that this dumping might lead to catastrophic results,” testified Danner.

  Defense Department and AEC records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act confirm that Nixon rejected the option of exploding the nerve gas in Nevada and approved the alternative of dumping it in the Atlantic near the Bahamas.

  Bennett recounted Gay’s contacting him and his own contact with Colson in an interview with staff investigators of the Senate Watergate Committee. Davis’s role in the injunction through his legal associate Lea is revealed in memos both Maheu and the Mormons sent Hughes, which also establish his contact with Governor Kirk. The account of court proceedings was drawn from press reports.

  Gate logs maintained by the Marine Corps confirm that Rebozo was at Camp David with Nixon the weekend of August 15–16, 1970, as Maheu told Hughes.

  The account of the Glomar Explorer operation is b
ased on interviews with former CIA director Colby, then deputy secretary of defense David Packard, two confidential sources at the CIA directly involved, Hughes Tool Company Vice-President Raymond Holliday, and a staff investigator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who reviewed CIA records of the operation. In addition, a copy of the contract between the CIA and the Hughes Tool Company signed by Holliday on November 13, 1970, shows that the first Glomar proposal was sent to Holliday in August 1970, followed by a formal proposal for the “cover aspect of the project” on November 6, 1970.

  Both Colby and the Senate investigator confirmed that the CIA considered Maheu a “bad risk” and kept him out of the Glomar dealings. Colby conceded that the CIA had no information of Hughes’s actual condition, and CIA records indicate that the Agency knew only that Hughes was reclusive.

  While it has been suggested in recent accounts that Hughes himself neither knew of nor approved the CIA cover arrangement, and that he actually believed the Glomar was engaged in deep-sea mining, Holliday said in an interview that he personally briefed Hughes by telephone and later sent him “a long, detailed memorandum.”

  “I was the only one in the company who discussed it with him,” said Holliday. “But Chester Davis and Bill Gay both knew he was aware of it, and some of his aides were also aware of it. I discussed it with him extremely thoroughly, I told him the true mission was the submarine-raising, which is what the CIA told me, and Hughes approved our involvement long before the contract was signed.” Holliday’s account is confirmed by the fact that Davis later sent Hughes a memo referring to the Glomar’s “primary mission” and by the fact that a copy of the Glomar contract was among the documents found in his Acapulco penthouse after he died.