Citizen Hughes

Part I

In the early-morning hours of June 5, 1974, unknown burglars staged a daring break-in at 7000 Romaine Street in Hollywood--the nerve center of a vast secret empire, the supposedly impregnable headquarters of Howard Hughes.

The burglars were after not only his money but also his secrets. At the height of his wealth and power, the phantom billionaire commanded his empire by correspondence, scrawling his orders in thousands of handwritten memos, hearing back from his operatives in reports dictated to his aides. And the Romaine Street vaults safeguarded all those hidden files.

Before dawn, the burglars had escaped with nearly 10,000 of the most secret papers of the world's most secretive man, memos Hughes himself called "the very most confidential, almost sacred information as to my very innermost activities."

The CIA, the Mafia, the White House and the Hughes organization itself were all suspect, but despite a top-secret FBI investigation and a $1,000,000 CIA buy-back bid, the break-in was never solved and none of the stolen papers were ever found.

The papers were still missing and the mystery still remained when reporter Michael Drosnin began his own investigation years later--an investigation that eventually led him to the burglars and to the stolen Hughes secrets. They will be published in December in his book "Citizen Hughes," and are presented here in Playboy for the first time. They are the Pentagon papers of the private sector, the Watergate tapes from the other side of the ledger--not merely the self-revelations of a man who spent millions to remain a mystery but a startling record of the secret history of our times.

Remote Control.

There was no need to venture out, not even to stand up. The little silver-gray box had invisible power, and its four oblong buttons controlled everything. At the slightest touch, it sent out a special high-frequency signal, silent to the human ear, but capable of activating an immense circuitry that reached almost everywhere.

Howard Hughes gripped the rectangular instrument.

Alone in the darkened bedroom of his Las Vegas penthouse hideaway, lying naked on a double bed, propped up by two pillows and insulated by a layer of paper towels from the disheveled sheets that had not been changed for several months, Hughes pushed one button. Again. And again.

The television channels flipped by in rapid succession.

Hughes checked out every station on the color TV that flickered at his feet. Then, satisfied, he set aside his Zenith Space Commander.

It was just after two A.M on Thursday, June 6, 1968. ABC was dark. NBC had also signed off for the night. Only channel eight, the local CBS affiliate, which Hughes himself owned, was still on the air to broadcast the grim news.

Robert F. Kennedy was dead.

Hughes had been awake for two nights, gripped by the video spectacle. He had watched Kennedy claim victory in the California Presidential primary, smiling, joking, earnest, vibrantly alive. He had heard the shots just minutes later, muffled at first by the noise of the cheering crowd, then distinct and unmistakable. He had seen Bobby lie bleeding on the cold cement floor.

It was a shared national experience. The shock and horror--the agonized moans of disbelief, the panic, the hysteria, the tears--spread in waves through the throng of stunned campaign workers and were instantly transmitted to millions across the country. Everywhere, people watched television and waited, listening to hospital bulletins, reliving the immediate tragedy in endless replays that also revived painful memories of Dallas.

Through it all, for more than 25 hours, Hughes had kept his TV vigil, and now he watched a red-eyed Frank Mankiewicz walk, slump-shouldered, to a floodlit podium to confirm everybody's worst fears: "Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today. He was 42 years old."

Mankiewicz spoke softly, but the fateful announcement blared from Hughes's television set, its volume turned to the highest level to accommodate the partially deaf billionaire. News of the tragedy continued to reverberate in his room. But Hughes was no longer listening. He reached over to a bedside night table, grabbed a yellow legal pad and, propping it on his knees, scrawled a fevered memo to his chief of staff Robert Maheu:

I hate to be quick on the draw, but I see here an opportunity that may not happen again in a lifetime. I don't aspire to be President, but I do want political strength....

I have wanted this for a long time, but somehow it has always evaded me. I mean the kind of an organization so that we would never have to worry about a jerky little thing like this anti-trust problem--not in 100 years.

And I mean the kind of a set up that, if we wanted to, could put Gov.[Paul] Laxalt [of Nevada] in the White House in 1972 or 76.

Anyway, it seems to me that the very people we need have just fallen smack into our hands. Also, if we approach them quickly and skillfully, they should be as anxious to find a haven with us as we are to obtain them....

So, in consideration of my own nervous system, will you please move like lightning on this deal--first, to report to me whom you think we want, of Kennedy's people, and second to contact such people with absolutely no delay the minute I confirm your recommendation. I repeat, the absolutely imperative nature of this mission requires the very ultimate in skill. If it is not so handled, and if this project should leak out, I am sure that I will be absolutely crucified by the press....

However, I have confidence that you can handle this deal, and I think the potential, in manpower and in a political machine all built and operating, I think these potentials are just inestimable, and worth the risk--provided you move fast. Please let me hear at once.

Hughes lifted his ballpoint pen, read the memo over carefully and signed it "Howard." He slipped it into a large manila envelope, then snapped one long fingernail smartly against a brown-paper bag hanging at his bedside as a depository for used Kleenex. It made a sharp noise that summoned from an adjoining room one of the five male attendants who served him in rotating shifts around the clock. The Mormon aide licked the flap, sealed the envelope and handed it to an armed security guard stationed just outside. The guard, in turn, took an elevator nine flights down, walked a few yards and delivered the Hughes memo to Maheu at his home next door to the hotel.

Maheu, an outwardly genial ex-FBI agent whose soft, round features masked a toughness only hinted at by his cold black eyes, apparently failed to fully grasp the nature of his new mission. In a follow-up message later that morning, Hughes impatiently explained his orders:

Bob--I thought you would understand. I want us to hire Bob Kennedy's entire organization--with certain exceptions, of course, I am not sure we want Salinger and a few others. However, here is an entire integrated group, used to getting things done over all obstacles. They are used to having the Kennedy money behind them and we can equal that. This group was trained by John Kennedy and his backers, and then moved over to R.F.K. when John died.

It is a natural for us. I am not looking for political favors from them. I expect you to pick our candidate and soon. I repeat, I dont want an alliance with the Kennedy group, I want to put them on the payroll.

Maheu understood. And he delivered. Not the entire Kennedy team, but its leader, Bobby's campaign manager, Larry O'Brien. Before the month was out, Maheu had made contact with him. A few days later, O'Brien--a central figure in American politics, a White House insider who had already directed two successful Presidential campaigns and was about to take command of the Democratic Party--was in Las Vegas talking terms. Soon he was "on the payroll."

Moving with the chilling audacity of a grave robber, Hughes had switched O'Brien from Camelot to his own dark kingdom almost as effortlessly as he switched television channels. And he had done it without ever leaving his room. By remote control.

To a nation of mourners focused on the public Passion play, this backstage drama would have seemed a blasphemy, its language alone an outrage. For two days, Hughes had watched a tragedy and seen only an "opportunity," But he had also seen what the mourners missed: Power in America was not an Arthurian romance of martyred princes and loyal knights but a market place where influence and allegiances were bought and sold.

There was nothing unusual about the O'Brien transaction, except its macabre backdrop. Camelot was a trifle. Howard Hughes had long ago set out to buy the Government of the United States.

Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson--virtually every major political figure of the era, including Bobby Kennedy himself--also had a Hughes connection, as did scores of lesser national leaders and local potentates. Hughes appraised them all with the cool detachment of an investments analyst. "I have done this kind of business with him before," he said of Johnson, "so he wears no awe-inspiring robe of virtue with me." Humphrey was "a candidate who needs us and wants our help" and, thus, "somebody we control sufficiently." Kennedy, on the other hand, "would receive too much support from others" but might win, "so let's cover our bets." Only Nixon ("my man") got the ultimate accolade: "He, I know for sure knows the facts of life."

Hughes spoke the language of power stripped of all pretense. What set him apart, finally, more than his money, more than his megalomania, more even than his mystery, was his blunt buy-the-bastards approach. It was not that he cynically bought politicians--others also went to market--but that he innocently demanded a bill of sale. All who did business with him knew that they had entered not a mere deal but a virtual Faustian pact.

He ordered repeated payoffs to Presidents, Presidential candidates, Senators, Congressmen and Governors, caring nothing about party labels or political ideologies, not at all caught up in personal charisma or campaign rhetoric, guided only by his own golden rule: "Find the right place, and the right people and buy what we want."

When his agents approached the Government on a businesslike basis, the payoffs often succeeded. But Hughes was driven by his fears and phobias to seek what even his money could not buy, and no matter how much power he acquired, it was never enough.

"I have given a full lifespan of service to this country, and taken very little for my personal pleasure or glorification," complained the unappreciated patriot. "If I don't rate better than this shoddy treatment, it is pretty sad."

Citizen Hughes. He bought politicians, but never voted. He railed bitterly against taxes, but paid none at all for 17 consecutive years. His empire produced strategic weapons of the nuclear age, but he fought atomic testing in his own back yard.

Citizen Hughes. He tried to buy the Government of the United States, but instead helped bring it down.

Neither he nor anyone else could have known it at the time, but the nation's long slide toward Watergate started with the memo Hughes wrote the night that Bobby Kennedy died. That memo eventually brought Larry O'Brien into Hughes's orbit, and their relationship came to obsess Richard Nixon, who feared that the hated Kennedy gang would now discover his own hidden dealings with the billionaire. For years it has been rumored that the Hughes-Nixon-O'Brien triangle triggered Watergate. Now new information from Hughes's private papers and other sources make it clear that Nixon inspired the break-in as part of a desperate effort to cover up his Hughes connection. Hughes had so carefully hedged his bets, had channeled so much secret cash to so many rival powers, that such a collision was inevitable.

If others more sophisticated, less paranoid, managed to acquire more actual power, still it was Hughes who became the very symbol of hidden power, it was Hughes who brought down a President and it was Hughes who again forced the age-old question: Is there a Mr. Big?

•

He was only trying to protect himself.

There were dangers everywhere, and he was so vulnerable. The world was dealing with a façade. The real Howard Hughes lay hidden in a self-made prison, a naked old man in terrible pain and terminal terror, living like an inmate in the back ward of a mental institution, looking like a corpse laid out on a slab in the city morgue.

He was a figure of Gothic horror, something ready for or just risen from the grave. Emaciated, practically skeletal, with only 120 pounds stretched out over his 6'4" frame and hardly a speck of color about him anywhere, not even in his lips, he seemed not merely dead but already in decay. Only the gray hair that trailed halfway down his back, the thin, scraggly beard that reached midway onto his sunken chest and the hideously long nails that extended several inches in grotesque, yellowed corkscrews from his fingers and toes seemed still to be growing, still showing signs of life. That, and his eyes. At times they looked dead, blank. But at others they gleamed from their deep-sunk sockets with surprising, almost frightening intensity, fixed in a hard stare. Often, however, they seemed to stare in, not out.

Hughes was in pain. Physical pain. Mental pain. Deep, unrelenting pain. Many of his teeth were rotting black stumps, some just dangling loose from his puffy, pus-filled gums. A tumor was beginning to emerge from the side of his head, a reddened lump protruding through sparse strands of gray hair. He had bedsores festering all down his back, some so severe that eventually one shoulder blade--the bare bone--poked out through his parchment-like skin. And then there were the needle marks. The telltale tracks ran the length of both arms, scarred his thighs and clustered horribly around his groin.

Howard Hughes was an addict, a billionaire junkie. He was shooting up massive amounts of codeine, routinely skin-popping more than 20 grains daily, sometimes three or four times that much, regularly taking doses thought to be lethal.

So there he was. Sprawled naked on his unmade bed. Mr. Big. Like the portrait of Dorian Gray, his was the true but hidden face of power in America, all the inner corruption made visible. And like that horrible picture, Hughes, too, had to be locked away, concealed from public view.

No one knew what he looked like. No one knew how he lived. No one--not the businessmen or the politicians who dealt with him, not the Presidents who treated him as an equal, not even his own top executives--had the slightest inkling of what Howard Hughes had become. No one had seen him for almost a decade.

Without ever leaving the confines of his Las Vegas penthouse hideaway, Hughes controlled Nevada more completely than any man has ever controlled a sovereign state. He bought local politicians wholesale and seemed to have enormous influence over Paul Laxalt, then Nevada's governor, now a U.S. Senator who is Ronald Reagan's campaign chairman and perhaps the President's closest friend. Hughes would have been disappointed. The billionaire planned to make Laxalt himself President of the United States.

To make the Laxalt deal work, we have to find a means of motivation....

When I have a real tough assignment like this, I search about for two ingredients: 1. A man who can do the job if he truly wants to. And, 2. A means of furnishing a consideration to this man which will be of such a nature and such an amount as to be well nigh overpowering in its effect upon the man.

Now, Bob, I think Laxalt can be brought to a point where he will just about entrust his entire political future to his relationship with us. I think that is the way it should be and the way it can be.

I think we must convince him beyond a shadow of a doubt that I intend to back him with unlimited support right into the White-House in 1972. I think I must even set up some legal intity charged with doing this job, and said entity must be self perpetuating, so that, in event of my death, or change of political objectives, the financial support for Laxalt will continue uninterrupted.

An eternal Laxalt-for-President slush fund. That should motivate the governor, indeed, have an overpowering effect upon him. In fact, without once meeting his benefactor, Laxalt granted Hughes nearly feudal rights, placed him above the law in Nevada, intervened on his behalf with Federal agencies, even acted as his go-between in business deals, doing everything in his power to help the unseen billionaire buy up Las Vegas, allowing an invisible man to seize control of seven major casinos, to become the state's biggest private employer, its largest landowner and the King of its one industry, gambling.

Hughes, however, was not content to let it go at that. As in all his acquisitions, he needed 100 percent control, and he was worried that others might get their hooks into the man he was grooming to be leader of the free world.

We must show enough interest to keep the Gov. solely and exclusively devoted to our interests. The first time he ties up with somebody like K. [Kerkorian] or Crosby of Mary Carter Paint or any other source of financing, I think we will be forced to pull out of here lock stock and barrell. I am ready to ride with this man to the end of the line, which I am targeting as the White House in 1972, but there is no room in our program for a second angel.

No, Hughes could not share his governor, but he did have to find some means to keep him devoted until he could promote him to the White House. Perhaps the promise of a second term in the Statehouse; may be just an offer to put him on the payroll. Why not both? Hughes was ready to let Laxalt write his own ticket.

Any time you will tell me to go ahead, I am prepared to make a personal phone call to Laxalt and tell him it is my desire that he remain governor and that I promise unlimited support for this campaign, and, further, that, should he fail to be elected governor for another term, I want him to accept a position in private industry which I know will meet his requirements, no matter how extreme they may be.

Hughes's interest in Laxalt continued unabated, as did his directives to Maheu.

"Please call the Governor," he wrote, "and simply tell him that I wanted to be sure he understands that I do want him to become one of the very top executives of my company."

Maheu, who had become Laxalt's favorite tennis partner, was soon sending Hughes regular progress reports on the secret job negotiations: "I had a very fine meeting with the Governor.... I (continued on page 90)Citizen Hughes(continued from page 82) truly believe that I can convince him to join your organization permanently as a top executive in charge of all your Nevada operations or anywhere else you may choose to assign him."

As Hughes stalled on the details, Maheu reported again a few weeks later, "Governor Laxalt has started to ask me precisely what his assignment will be in your organization."

The talks dragged on for years, and the governor continued dickering for a job with the billionaire almost the entire time he remained in office. As late as June 1970, Maheu noted, "Laxalt is very anxious to discuss his future employment with us and I really believe we owe him the courtesy of sitting down with him at a very early date."

Rather than accept the job Hughes kept dangling just out of reach, however, Maheu speculated that the governor would instead rejoin his family law firm, which received at least $180,000 from the billionaire while Laxalt was in office.

"My guess is that he will hit us for a retainer with the understanding that we have priority on all of his time," Maheu reported after another meeting with the governor. And, indeed, Laxalt would ultimately send Hughes a handwritten letter suggesting just such an arrangement, noting that the long-discussed job would be such a blatant conflict of interest that he dared not go directly on the billionaire's payroll.

"Dear Howard," wrote the governor, as he prepared to leave the Statehouse, "I fear that a direct contract relationship with you might be misinterpreted. I would dislike, as would you, to have anyone think that the cooperation of our administration with you during the past four years was on a 'quid pro quo' basis....

"Primarily for these reasons, I've decided to open a law office in Carson City....

"If you should ever have need for any assistance from me, I'll be happy to provide it."

Almost immediately upon leaving office, Laxalt did, in fact, start collecting legal fees from Howard Hughes that would total at least $72,000.

•

By 1968, Hughes's latest Las Vegas acquisition, the Silver Slipper casino, had become an odd fixture of Nevada politics. Its neon-lit high-heeled slipper revolving atop a 20-foot pole was a beacon for local statesmen. They flocked to the Hughes-owned casino next door, the Frontier, where the billionaire's bagman Thomas Bell--law partner of the governor's brother--handed out $100 bills drawn from the cashier's cage at the Slipper.

Over the next three years, $858,500 passed from the gaming tables of the Silver Slipper to Nevada politicians, always in cash, always in $100 bills. There was hardly a race Hughes didn't finance. He instructed Bell to support the likely winner, regardless of party or politics, and back both candidates if the race was too close to call. U.S. Senator Alan Bible got at least $50,000; his colleague Senator Howard Cannon got $70,000; Lieutenant Governor Harry Reid, $10,000; Attorney General Robert List, $9500; District Attorney George Franklin, $5000; and 27 state-legislature candidates trooped into Bell's office to collect a total of $56,000. Judges and sheriffs and assorted commissioners all came by and left with cash-filled envelopes. From time to time, Governor Laxalt himself visited Bell to solicit contributions from the Silver Slipper slush fund. At Laxalt's request, the state Republican chairman got $15,000, and the governor urged that Hughes go all out for his would-be successor, Edward Fike, who personally picked up his $55,000. Fike's Democratic opponent, Mike O'Callaghan, was more discreet; he sent an aide to get $25,000. The parade of officeholders and seekers never stopped.

Nor did the demands from Hughes for a return on his investments. Outside his penthouse, far beyond the gaudy strip of casinos and high-rise hotels, far removed from the make-believe world of glittering neon, $100 bills and fat cigars, there was another Las Vegas. Hughes couldn't have seen it even if he had peeled back the tape, opened the shades and peered out his window. But it was there. And so were most of the city's blacks.

They had been kept in a ramshackle ghetto out on the edge of the desert, and that was where the billionaire wanted them kept--in crumbling homes and segregated schools.

By the late Sixties, the problem no longer seemed possible to ignore, not even in Las Vegas. Federal courts ordered the classrooms integrated, and bills were introduced in the state legislature to end discrimination in housing as well.

Hughes reeled in horror at the news.

"I just heard one TV news report that stated the latest fair housing bill is the very most extreme anywhere in the U.S.," he wrote to Maheu. "That sounds pretty frightening."

His lobbyists in the state capitol went to work, and two weeks later, Maheu had good news: "Howard, Tom Bell was successful in knocking out the Fair Housing Bill in its entirety." But not even Bell, Hughes's paymaster to Nevada lawmakers, could so easily end the threat. Within another two weeks, a new--albeit far weaker--bill had been introduced, this one ostensibly backed by Governor Laxalt himself. Hughes was shocked and enraged:

"Bob, what is this about Laxalt's open housing bill? I thought he was a friend and I thought Bell had told him how I feel about that issue."

How could the governor so callously ignore the wishes of the state's leading citizen? Had Hughes not been generous? And just to take care of 30,000 blacks, who probably never contributed a dime. It was an outrage. Hughes fired off a second memo to Maheu, this time enclosing evidence of the governor's perfidy:

Please read all--every word--of this article. This worries me. If Laxalt goes this far in his leaning toward benefits favoring the colored race, it may influence other legislation.

What worries me most is that I am just hovering on the brink of further huge investments in Nevada, and Laxalt's friendship is an important part of this decision.

If Laxalt knows I dont want this legislation, and he goes ahead and pushes it anyway, that is peculiar friendship.

It says in this article that the bill would not pass except for Laxalt's urging.

Please call him or ask Bell to contact him at once. It may be impossible to reach him in the AM and tomorrow may be too late.... I would like to go ahead with all my Nevada plans, but this worries me a great deal.

Just in case the governor was not moved by the promise of Hughes's new (continued on page 162)Citizen Hughes(continued from page 90) investments or the implied threat of his not making them, Hughes now offered the real bait to bring the normally obliging statesman back to his senses:

You may send Laxalt through Bell absolutely unlimited assurances of unlimited financial support. He does not need the colored vote and I want him to know this loud and clear!

Apparently, the message got through--loud and clear. The civil rights bill was killed in the senate finance committee by a 4-3 vote the next morning, April 16, 1969. Maheu immediately reported the victory to his boss:

"Tom Bell just called to inform they have just definitely killed the open housing bill. He wanted you to know that Laxalt was very 'quietly' helpful in accomplishing this. In other words Howard, he delivered to Tom the critical vote which enabled Bell to kill it in committee."

•

Even in his own kingdom, however, Howard Hughes was no longer the most powerful invisible force. The bomb was. Atomic fission--the ultimate out-of-control power--was the ultimate terror to Hughes, who above all needed to be in absolute control.

He was determined, at all costs, to stop what he called "the bombing"--nuclear explosions at the nearby Nevada Test Site, America's proving grounds for all atomic weapons. It became his greatest obsession. He would carry his battle through every level of government and finally into the White House, offering bribes to Presidents and Presidential candidates, in a desperate effort to stave off nuclear devastation.

Hughes had finally found a menace worthy of his madness. After years of casting about for a danger to justify his dread, drifting from germs to blacks to impure water, his paranoia had become so finely tuned that it now focused on the central horror of our age. Nightmare visions of nuclear annihilation exploded in his mind. Again and again, Hughes would return to his image of "gaunt, ghastly horrors and tragedies of nuclear warfare with all its ghastly residue of burned, maimed, mutilated and scarred human flesh."

The time had come for direct action. Sovereign to sovereign.

It was in the predawn hours of Thursday, April 25, 1968. At first light the next day, the most powerful underground nuclear explosion in history was set to be detonated in the desert outside Las Vegas. One hundred miles from ground zero, "physically very ill and emotionally reduced to a nervous wreck," Hughes remained determined to block the scheduled blast. He had just 24 hours. And there was only one man who could halt the relentless countdown.

So, in sleepless terror, naked and even more than usually disheveled, Hughes drafted a letter to Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The four-page letter took Hughes all night and half the day to write and rewrite, and with the blast less than one day away, there was no time to send it to the White House. Instead, one of Hughes's Mormons dictated it over the telephone to Washington attorney Thomas Finney--law partner of Johnson's newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Clark Clifford--who hand-delivered the impassioned plea to the President's office.

Hughes, who had not slept in three nights, continued his vigil into Friday morning, desperately awaiting word from the White House. He scribbled a note to his nursemaids: "Please watch me carefully and dont let me go to sleep at all." Then, acutely conscious of the approaching blast, he added a final plea: "But try not to startle me." Finally, in a fevered bid to avert the impending holocaust, Hughes wrote one last memo to Maheu.

"It is vital that somehow you prevail upon Mr. Johnson that this is an emergency and persuade him to read my letter," the billionaire begged. "There is about 20 minutes left."

In fact, Johnson had seen the letter almost as soon as it arrived and was right now in his own bedroom weighing the needs of national security against the words of Howard Hughes. In an unprecedented move, the President had withheld approval of the nuclear test until the last possible moment, but when his top defense experts all advised an immediate go-ahead, he decided to detonate the bomb.

Right down to the final minutes, Hughes had hoped that his personal appeal to Johnson would save the day, but now it seemed clear that summit diplomacy had failed. The President had not even bothered to answer his letter.

Finally, two weeks after the blast, a double envelope--the inner one marked Personal & Confidential to Mr. Hughes--arrived at the Desert Inn. Inside was a two-page message from Lyndon Johnson. It was hardly a welcome surprise.

"I received the letter from the President," wrote the bitter and dismayed billionaire, "and was it ever a disappointment!!

"He gloats over the fact that the explosion did not vent, there was no significant damage....

"Further, the A.E.C., with his complete support, is going right ahead full-steam to conduct their major high-yield explosions at Pahute Mesa in the N.T.S.

"Why would the President have gone out of his way to rub it in?" wondered Hughes, nearly as shaken by Johnson's reply as he had been by the blast. "I did not expect anything with a hint of future assistance. I realize this would have been too much to expect, but Jesus! He did not have to spend two full pages of deliberately hostile provocation."

In fact, the President's response, while formal and a bit distant, was hardly hostile. "I personally considered your letter and discussed it with my advisors, before coming to a final decision," it read in part. "I approved execution of this test only after considering its importance to our national security--and only after receiving the Atomic Energy Commission's assurances that extensive safety checks had clearly demonstrated that there was no cause for concern."

The entire tone of the letter was respectful and reassuring. And if Johnson also let Hughes know who was President, still he had gone to extraordinary lengths to deal with the billionaire's protest. But to Hughes, the President's letter was a deliberate slap in the face. Not only had Johnson failed to stop the nuclear test, not only had he refused to move all future blasts elsewhere, but he had kept Hughes waiting two weeks for a response.

Perplexed and indignant, Hughes studied Johnson's reply, reading and rereading it to find hidden meanings, his paranoid outrage mounting. By the next day, he was certain his original interpretation had been correct.

The memo Hughes wrote to Maheu in response was a diatribe of lost innocence.

He had taken the high road in his letter to Johnson, had offered a reasoned and restrained case against nuclear testing--and the President had ignored his plea, had dismissed him as a fool or a skinflint.

So be it. From now on, Hughes would do what was expected of him--and he would bring the bombing to an end.

I think you should try to determine who is the real, honest-to-God, bagman at the White House. And please dont be frightened away by the enormity of the thought. I have known for a number of years that the White House under this particular Democratic administration is just as crooked as it can be. Now, I dont know whom you have to approach, but there is somebody, take my word for it.

Finally, in a casual postscript to his chilling memo, the billionaire took the true measure of the man he had tried to reach by honest reason, Lyndon Johnson.

P.S. One thing I should have told you, in connection with my assumption that the Pres. may have waited the two weeks to hear from me on some kind of a hard-cash, adult, basis, I should tell you that I have done this kind of business with him before. So, he wears no awe-inspiring robe of virtue with me. I gave him some critically needed funds when he was in the Senate. He remembers this, as he spoke of it to Finney. This is why he may very realistically have waited the two weeks for me to send somebody to him before he replied or took a stand. Anyway, I think this is one very plausible explanation of everything, including the hostillity when he did write.

Johnson's rejection of the billionaire's earnest appeal marked a turning point in Hughes's approach to politics and politicians in general. It shut off his last remaining inhibitions about using his private wealth to buy public power.

"Now," concluded Hughes, in a classic expression of free-enterprise morality, "I think there is a market-place, somewhere, where the things we want can be bought or sold, and I urge that instead of spending any more time begging for a free hand-out, we find the right place, and the right people and buy what we want."

Hughes would pursue L.B.J. to his last days in office--and would eventually offer the President a $1,000,000 bribe--but his focus had already shifted to another national leader.

•

Hubert Humphrey announced his bid for the Presidency on April 27, 1968, proclaiming "the politics of happiness ... the politics of joy." His speech came bubbling over Hughes's television set the day after the huge Nevada blast, just as the shaken but determined recluse was plotting a very different kind of political campaign. The politics of money, the politics of graft.

His drive to buy up Las Vegas had been stalled by a Justice Department threatening antitrust action. His cherished plan to acquire the ABC television network needed Federal Communications Commission approval. His move back into the airline business, through an illegal take-over of Air West, would require both Civil Aeronautics Board and White House clearance. His TWA legal battle, with $137,000,000 at stake, would come before a Supreme Court reshaped by the new President. A major overhaul of the nation's tax laws loomed, imperiling the loopholes he had so carefully constructed. And there was always Hughes Aircraft to consider, a billion-dollar-a-year business almost entirely dependent on defense, CIA and space-agency contracts.

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!

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.

Indeed, among the Democrats, "Humphries" (as Hughes always wrote) was the obvious choice. For the moment, at least, Bobby Kennedy was only a card to be played in Hughes's cynical ploy to entrap the needy Vice-President.

"Bob," wrote Hughes, plotting 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. "That 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."

It was an elegant gambit, a classic power play: First, spook Humphrey with the specter of a Hughes-Kennedy alliance, then offer to underwrite his campaign.

"Then," Hughes concluded, completing his plan, "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.

On May 10, 1968, just two weeks after he had entered the race, Humphrey mortgaged his campaign to 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 $100,000 contribution, half of it to be paid in cash.

On July 29, Maheu checked into the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, where Humphrey was holding a fundraising dinner. Invited to accompany the candidate on a drive to the airport, Maheu left the dinner, went up to his suite and returned with a black briefcase.

Humphrey's limousine was waiting. Satchel in hand, Maheu joined the Vice-President in the rear compartment. They sat facing each other and chatted a few minutes about Hughes and the bomb tests. Then Maheu placed the briefcase--stuffed with $50,000 in $100 bills--at Humphrey's feet. The motorcade came to an unscheduled halt after traveling just 500 yards, and Maheu, mission completed, stepped out.

Hubert Humphrey had lost his virginity in the classic American way--with a furtive quickie in the back seat of a car.

•

For a while, it had looked as if the Kennedys were going to steal the White House from Hughes all over again. Months earlier, on Saturday, March 16, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy had suddenly entered the race, announcing his bid to reclaim the throne from the same Senate room his brother had used to launch his 1960 campaign.

Hughes watched Bobby's televised speech, then grabbed for his yellow legal pad. He was not about to be denied the Oval Office. Not this time. He would own the next President even if he had to buy every candidate in the race.

"Re. Kennedy, I want him for President like I want the mumps. I can think of nothing worse than 8 years under his exalted leadership. God help us!

"However, lets face it. It could happen, so lets cover our bets both ways."

Before the billionaire could move to cover his bets, however, Bobby Kennedy was dead. His assassination dramatically altered the campaign, left the nation shaken and caused even Hughes to reassess his position. The political market place was in flux. It was no time to make a hasty purchase.

Re. the next 48 hrs., 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.

Hughes fired that off to Maheu within hours of Kennedy's death, but was now so excited he could not sleep. Instead, he continued to watch the replays of the assassination and the film clips of Bobby's life until dawn. Finally satisfied that he had seen the full meaning of the tragedy and all its opportunities, he went to sleep just as most of the nation awoke in horror to discover that Kennedy was dead.

Hughes himself arose Thursday afternoon, still excited.

"I have just awakened," he wrote to Maheu. "I was up all night [Tuesday] and [Wednesday] nights. I heard Mankiewicz make the fateful announcement, and since our ch 8 was still on the air, I stayed up to watch in amazement as we continued to achieve absolutely exclusive coverage of his death and obituary material etc...."

The billionaire was thrilled by the coup (continued on page 166) his own television station had scored. "Anyway, Bob, please do not say anything to anybody about our achieving this TV exclusive ..." he cautioned, perhaps recognizing how unseemly it would be to boast about their small triumph when things so much more important were at stake.

"Returning to this morning," he wrote, "I am certain that you, at no time, really understood what I was urging you to do. Bob, it is true that I have discussed another project with you: The proposal to select one Repub. and one Demo, candidate and then to give that candidate full and all-out support. This project I still want carried out.... However, the item set forth in my first message of [this] morning was something entirely different."

He had to make sure that Maheu understood his plan to buy the Kennedy machine and use it to place his own man in the White House. Yet not even that megalomaniacal vision could still his hatred of the Kennedys. It had been building for decades and was gnawing at him all night while he watched TV chronicle their glorious and tragic saga. Now, on the day of Bobby's death, it all came boiling up out of Hughes, even as he continued to calculate the opportunities presented by the assassination.

"I am mor familiar than you realize with the history and the remaining entity of the Kennedy family," he wrote. "You see Joe Kennedy used to own the biggest part of RKO studio before I got into it." He continued:

The Kennedy family and their money and influence have been a thorn that has been relentlessly shoved into my guts since the very beginning of my business activities. So you can see how cruel it was, after my all-out support of Nixon, to have Jack Kennedy achieve that very very marginal so-called victory over my man.

So, as I point out, thru this longstanding feeling of jealousy and personal enmity, I have become fairly well informed about the organization of people that sprung up, first around Jack, and then around Bob. Essentially the same group. They just moved over. But think of the experience they have had in the two campaigns combined.

Now, I am positive that all of these people (and dont forget the Convention and victory was virtually within their grasp) that all of these people, after they come-to following a 48 hour effort to drink themselves into oblivion, will feel awfully alone and terribly frightened. Of course, they might make it again with Ted, but that is a long and uncertain road. Now, Bob, just try to visualize how it would feel....

There is some similarity between the group who assisted the Kennedy brothers and my own organization, although, unfortunately, I do not have the lovable qualities of Jack and Bob that led to their famous popularity.

Anway, I do feel competent to judge the feelings of fear and loneliness which I am certain must have consumed the Kennedy group by now. I have experienced these emotions myself, and I know how powerful they can be. So, I repeat that I am positive this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire a ready-made political organization, all trained and ready to go.

Hughes was certainly an expert on fear and loneliness, but he had to move fast, before the Kennedy people sobered up and found new patrons.

"If we do not move quickly," he concluded, "they may make other tie-ups ... and once announcing same, they will be much more difficult to deal with.

"So, Bob, this time, instead of waiting until somebody else grabs these people, let's move first!"

Bobby Kennedy was not yet buried, but as his funeral train moved south, Hughes plotted to seize control of his political machine.

•

Larry O'Brien was on that funeral train, feeling awfully alone and terribly frightened. He had quit Lyndon Johnson's Cabinet to manage Robert Kennedy's campaign, as he had managed John Kennedy's eight years before, and now Bobby lay in a flag-draped coffin in the last of the 21 cars, en route to a grave beside his brother's.

After 16 years in service to the Kennedys, O'Brien was suddenly without a job, without a patron, with no idea how to support his family or what to do next.

He was sitting at home in Washington when Robert Maheu called.

"Larry O'Brien--He is coming here on Wednesday next for a conference as per our request after the assassination of Senator Kennedy," Maheu reported to the penthouse. "He is prepared to talk employment and has received a commitment (without any obligation whatsoever) from the four or five key men in the Kennedy camp that they will not become obligated until they hear from him."

The leader of the Irish Mafia arrived in Las Vegas on the Fourth of July. He was put up in style at the Desert Inn but never met his would-be employer, upstairs in the penthouse. "I've never met him myself," Maheu explained, then pulled out a handwritten Hughes memo to prove that the boss actually wanted to hire O'Brien.

In fact, O'Brien left Las Vegas without striking a deal, but he never stopped his job negotiations with Maheu. When they met again in Washington at the end of July, Maheu gave O'Brien $25,000, cash Hughes had promised the Kennedy campaign just before Bobby's assassination. And at that same Washington meeting, Maheu and O'Brien came to terms. Hughes would become a client of the newly formed O'Brien Associates, and its proprietor, Larry O'Brien, would get $15,000 a month, $500 a day, for at least two years--a $360,000 secret contract.

Hughes had done it. He had signed up the leader of the Kennedy gang, hired its top gun--just as he had plotted to do the night that Bobby died.

Now the man who had managed the 1960 Kennedy campaign, the 1964 Johnson campaign and Bobby's aborted 1968 race, the man who had just taken command of Hubert Humphrey's Presidential drive, would also handle campaigns for Howard Hughes. Now the man who had lobbied Congress for the White House--for the New Frontier and the Great Society--would instead lobby Washington for the penthouse. Now the country's premier political operative would handle politics for a completely hidden, entirely mysterious, totally naked madman.

Only the details remained to be worked out.

•

Richard Nixon learned of the Hughes-O'Brien connection in the summer of 1968, just months after O'Brien's journey to Las Vegas to meet with Maheu.

Hughes and O'Brien! It was driving Nixon crazy! It became an obsession that would grow throughout his Presidency.

O'Brien, who had once again become the Democratic national chairman, was not merely a figurehead party chief but the real leader of the opposition. With Johnson in exile and Humphrey in defeat and Teddy Kennedy in disgrace, he would go on to become the pointman for his party in the 1970 Congressional elections, touring the nation, attacking Nixon. And although he had no proof yet, Nixon now knew that the leader of the Democrats was also a secret Hughes lobbyist, getting $500 a day from the billionaire--and getting away with it! The leader of the Kennedy gang getting away with it, just like the Kennedys always got away with everything. Nixon was determined to nail O'Brien, to get proof of his Hughes connection, to find out just what he was doing for all that secret money.

Eventually, Nixon called in Haldeman, he called in Ehrlichman, he called in Colson, he called in Dean, he called in the IRS, he called in his pal Rebozo, he called in his private gumshoes and, finally, he called in his Attorney General, and Mitchell called in Liddy, and Liddy called in McCord and Hunt, and Hunt called in the Cubans, and they all got caught in Larry O'Brien's office at the Watergate.

All in a desperate effort to get to the bottom of the Hughes-O'Brien connection.

"I thought, it would be pleasant--and newsworthy--irony," Nixon later explained in his memoirs, "that after all the years in which Howard Hughes had been portrayed as my financial angel, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee was in fact the one profiting from a lucrative position on Hughes's payroll."

But there was another factor in Nixon's obsession, one he did not mention in his memoirs.

The President was also on the pad.

•

In Nixon, Hughes had at last what he had always wanted--a debtor in the Oval Office.

"I am determined to elect a President of our choosing this year, and one who will be deeply indebted, and who will recognize his indebtedness," the billionaire had declared early in the 1968 campaign. "Since I am willing to go beyond all limitations on this, I think we should be able to select a candidate and a party who knows the facts of political life."

"If we select Nixon," added Hughes with lewd certainty, "then he, I know for sure knows the facts of life."

Theirs was a special relationship. It stretched back more than two decades, had survived multiple crises and still endured. Hughes, of course, flirted with other politicians; but with the others, it was often hard to tell how far he could go, and he always went back to Nixon, who appreciated a big spender and would always go all the way.

Hughes had supported Nixon in every bid for office since his first Congressional race, in 1946, and would continue to back him to the end. In addition to campaign funds, he provided large sums for the personal use of the President and his family. The known bequests--the few made openly and the hidden payoffs later discovered--eventually totaled more than half a million dollars.

More than a financial angel, Hughes was a virtual fairy godfather in Nixon's faltering rise to power. He always seemed to materialize when Nixon was in need. Then, suddenly, the spell was broken.

The billionaire's largess cost Nixon his first bid for the Presidency, when a scandal erupted in the closing days of the 1960 campaign over a never-repaid $205,000 Hughes "loan." Nixon had personally requested the money four years earlier, shortly after he was re-elected Vice-President, ostensibly to bail out his brother Donald's failing business--a chain of restaurants featuring "Nixon-burgers." The cash came from a Canadian subsidiary of the Hughes Tool Company and was transferred through a cutout to the Vice-President's aged mother, Hannah, who passed it on to her bankrupt son. The name Hughes appeared nowhere on the loan agreement, and none of the Nixons were responsible for repayment. Their only collateral was a vacant lot in Whittier, California, once the site of the Nixon family home. It had an assessed value of $13,000.

The "all-out support" Hughes gave Nixon in 1960--a still-unknown number of $100 bills secretly passed through the same bagman who had handled the loan transaction--never became public, but the loan scandal would not die. It resurfaced full force when Nixon ran for governor of California two years later, and once more he was sure it caused his humiliating defeat. "I must have answered the question about the Hughes loan at least a hundred times," he complained. "The media loved the story and played it up big ... because it was so damaging to me."

Hughes had become a haunting symbol of Nixon's greed and corruption, apparently driving him out of politics forever. Yet in 1968, he was staging a startling comeback. And both he and Hughes were ready to deal again.

"I want you to go see Nixon as my special confidential emissary," the billionaire instructed Maheu just two days after the Presidential race opened with the primary in New Hampshire. While the rest of the nation focused on Eugene McCarthy's upset of Lyndon Johnson, Hughes immediately recognized that the real victor was Nixon, now facing a badly split Democratic Party.

I feel there is a really valid possibility of a Republican victory this year. If that could be realized under our sponsorship and supervision every inch of the way, then we would be ready to follow with Laxalt as our next candidate.

Nixon was also eager to renew their ill-fated relationship. Even before Maheu could get to Nixon, Nixon reached out to Hughes. Barely started on his improbable return to power, he set in motion a replay of the very scandal that had nearly destroyed him.

At one of a series of meetings in Washington and Florida in the spring of 1968, Nixon huddled with his closest friend, Bebe Rebozo, and the man who had introduced them to each other 20 years earlier, Washington attorney Richard Danner.

"Mr. Nixon and Mr. Rebozo asked me to attempt to contact someone in the Hughes organization relative to a contribution," Danner would later testify. "The question was 'Would he contribute and, if so, how much?' "

So much money was gathered from so many sources--$50,000 from Hughes's personal bank account in early September, another $50,000 from the account "for Nixon's deficit" in December, perhaps $50,000 from the Sands a few days later, yet another $50,000 from the Hughes account in June 1969 and $50,000 more from the cashier's cage at the Silver Slipper in October 1970--that it is impossible to determine how much money actually reached Nixon.

But it is certain that $100,000 in secret cash, two bundles of $100 bills from Howard Hughes--still undelivered by the November election, still undelivered by the January Inauguration--finally found its way to Bebe Rebozo's safe-deposit box.

Where it came to haunt Richard Nixon. It was the telltale heart of Watergate, the terrible guilty secret whose feared discovery would drive Nixon to self-destruction.

•

Richard Nixon entered the White House on January 20, 1969, in broad daylight to the cheers of thousands, the duly elected President of the United States. But trusting no one, fearing everyone, he soon retreated into isolation behind his palace guard and tried to run the nation the way Hughes ran his empire--secretly, from hiding, through a small group of henchmen instilled with the same siege mentality. It was a Government Hughes himself could have created and one with which he could certainly do business.

"I want to see just how much water we really draw with the administration after many years of all-out effort to achieve it," the billionaire wrote to Maheu shortly after the Inauguration, eagerly anticipating a good return on his investment.

The early signs were encouraging, and within a year, Hughes would get nearly everything he wanted from Nixon--a green light for his Las Vegas monopoly game, approval of his illegal re-entry into the airline business, a vast increase in his already great cost-plus, no-competitive-bidding business with the Pentagon.

But the billionaire was not satisfied.

Hughes, in fact, grew deeply disillusioned with Nixon long before most of the nation. Not over Cambodia or Kent State, not over Vietnam or the Christmas bombing, certainly not because he knew that Nixon was, of course, a crook. No, the billionaire was appalled by Nixon's decision, in March 1969, to build an anti-ballistic-missile system.

"The news just reported that Nixon will go ahead with the ABM," he wrote to Maheu, full of dismay. "Bob, this is an awful mistake. It would perhaps be to my best interest selfishly to do nothing and let the system proceed, but it is a ghastly mistake for the country and for Nixon, whom I want to grow in stature."

Building the ABM meant big money for Hughes the defense contractor, but it also meant more big bomb blasts in Nevada, the nuclear nightmare Hughes thought had ended with the election of a man who "knows the facts of life."

One month later, Hughes's disappointment turned to shocked outrage when White House communications director Herb Klein made a speech in Las Vegas backing the nuclear tests.

Hughes, in fact, was so shocked that he could hardly believe Nixon's ingratitude:

"Sometimes I wonder if Nixon is aware of the donation which I hope was made, or did somebody possibly forget to make it."

No one had forgotten. Maheu had passed $50,000 to Nixon's campaign through Laxalt before the election, and even as Hughes wrote his pained memo, Rebozo and Danner were finally arranging the long-delayed $100,000 donation to Nixon's private slush fund.

Nor had the President forgotten about Hughes. He had asked Henry Kissinger to read a memo Hughes had sent to Nixon opposing the ABM. On July 16, 1969, the day that the Apollo 11 astronauts blasted off for man's first walk on the moon, Nixon huddled with his National Security Advisor. That morning in the Oval Office, just before they shared the historic moment, watching the launch on television, the President told Kissinger to go see Hughes.

Kissinger returned to his White House basement office angry and incredulous. He told his deputy, Alexander Haig, that Nixon had just ordered him to give the billionaire a private top-secret briefing not only on the ABM but also on the general strategic threat, on the balance of nuclear power--and, as a final outrage, to solicit Hughes's own defense-policy views.

"He's out of his mind!" yelled Kissinger. "He can't sell this! I can't hold private peace talks with Howard Hughes."

Haig himself seemed to find it all amusing. He emerged from Kissinger's office waving the Hughes memo in his hand and told Larry Lynn, a senior aide who handled the ABM program, "Guess what's up now--Howard Hughes is in the act!"

It was shuttle diplomacy of a new order--Nixon dealing with Hughes as if negotiating nuclear policy with a sovereign power. But the prospect of Kissinger's visit only drove the billionaire to terror. He simply could not deal with an outsider, not even Kissinger, not even by telephone.

Re the ABM. I urge you thank the President profusely for his offer to send Kissinger, but tell him I do not consider that this is necessary and I do not think it would advance the situation.

Bob, to have this man here could only embarass me.

It would place me in the position of refusing to see an envoy of the President, and, no matter how you try to dress it up, this is the way the President will view it.

Please, regardless of how you do it, kill off this trip in some way.

All through July, Nixon and Kissinger had been considering final plans for a series of mammoth blasts designed to test the ABM warhead. No official decision had yet been reached. But now, on July 16, the Commander in Chief sent advance word to his hidden benefactor.

"Howard," Maheu flashed to Hughes, "we are reliably informed that the AEC has finally given up the battle and will have all tests of a megaton or more held in Alaska. We are also informed that, for security reasons, they cannot, at this time, make any public announcement confirming their capitulation."

Howard Hughes had won his battle to ban the bomb. Or so it seemed.

Then, on September 10, 1969, Maheu called Hughes with disturbing news--the AEC was about to announce a new Nevada blast, and a big one. Maheu tried to put the best face on the first major nuclear test of the Nixon Administration. It was less than a megaton, and the really big bombs would be exploded in Alaska, just as the President had promised.

Hughes was not appeased.

I wish you would tell Mr. Nixon thru Mr. Rebozo that this is the most outrageous and shocking breach of faith and attempted deception I ever heard of any highly reputed government like the United States attempting to perpetrate against one of their own citizens.

If this is the way the U.S. pays off one of its own citizens, who has given a lifetime of service toward the betterment of the defense system, and contributed countless important advances, plus a half a billion dollars in taxes, then how can anyone expect foreign governments to believe our promises.

It is unlikely that Nixon had any real concept of Hughes's terror and outrage, much less that he viewed the bomb test as the test of their entire relationship.

The blast went off on schedule, at 7:30 on the morning of September 16, 1969. 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.

•

In the months that followed, Hughes--assured that the nuclear nightmare was finally 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 his purchase of the Stardust hotel in April 1968, threatening antitrust action. But now Hughes had won a complete reversal of policy at John Mitchell's Justice Department. He had broken the antitrust blockade; he was finally free to expand his Nevada empire.

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

By Holy Week in 1970, an atmosphere of terminal crisis gripped both the penthouse and the White House.

Hughes learned of the impending blast on the same day in March that 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 Cambodian invasion, the murders at Kent State and the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam--events that shocked the nation.

But it was the Easter bombing in Nevada that shocked Hughes and sealed Nixon's fate. The billionaire's response was immediate. Once more, he grabbed his yellow legal pad and, in one last, futile effort to prevent the bombing, scrawled a threat to leave the country, taking all his assets with him.

Bob, I dont know where to begin.

You said the President couldnt care less whether I remain in Nevada. This may well be true in the literal sense.

However, bear in mind that, if I pull up stakes here, I am not going to some neighboring state.

I am going to move the largest part of all of my activities to some location which will not be in the U.S.

The President already has the young, the black, and the poor against him. Maybe he will be indifferent if the richest man in the country also finds the situation in the U.S. un-livable, and because of the country's intense preoccupation with the military.

I know one thing:

There is at present a violent feeling in this country against all the experimental activities of the military....

So, I just dont know how the public would react to a frank statement by the wealthiest man in the U.S. that he, also, considered he was being elbowed aside by the military.

I know one thing: It would, or, at least, it could be a hell of a newspaper story.

Despite Hughes's plea, the Easter bomb was exploded, and before the year was out, he would make good on his threat. He would leave the United States forever. And his departure would set in motion a chain of events that would, indeed, become a hell of a newspaper story. One that came under the headline "Watergate."

Richard Nixon, in bombing Howard Hughes, had unwittingly brought about his own destruction just as surely as if the White House had been ground zero.

•

"This is for Haldeman," said Nixon, speaking into his dictating machine aboard Air Force One. It was January 14, 1971. The President had just emerged from a ten-day retreat at San Clemente, plotting his re-election campaign and brooding with Bebe Rebozo, and now he was flying to the University of Nebraska to "forge an alliance of the generations." But his mind was elsewhere, fixated on another alliance--one he had to destroy before it destroyed him.

"It would seem that the time is approaching when Larry O'Brien is held accountable for his retainer with Hughes," declared Nixon, going on the attack, dictating his message to Haldeman. "Bebe has some information on this, although it is, of course, not solid. But there is no question that one of Hughes's people did have O'Brien on a very heavy retainer for 'services rendered' in the past. Perhaps Colson should check on this."

Just six weeks earlier, on Thanksgiving eve, Hughes had made his great escape from Las Vegas, fleeing his penthouse cell under the cover of darkness, after a bitter personal dispute that had led to the firing of his right-hand man, Robert Maheu. During the four years Hughes spent in the penthouse, Maheu had handled all of his political money, including the payoff to Rebozo. And now Maheu was out and the Hughes empire was split--a split that left Richard Nixon in mortal terror.

It was not the money O'Brien had gotten from Hughes that really obsessed Nixon. It was his own Hughes money--the hot hundred grand hidden away in Rrbozo's safe-deposit box. Throughout his Presidency, Nixon had heard that telltale heart beating, had grown increasingly fearful that others could also hear it, that soon they would discover the $100,000 his pal Danner had delivered to his pal Rebozo, that again he would be ruined by an ugly Hughes scandal, that it would cost him the White House as it had before.

Nixon had never gotten over that 1960 defeat. His narrow loss to J.F.K. still haunted him, and he still blamed it on the $205,000, never repaid, that his brother had received from Hughes. Yet Nixon had taken more Hughes money. And now, with the Hughes empire split by a bitter power struggle in the aftermath of Maheu's dismissal, Nixon was certain his terrible secret was about to spill out.

That very morning, before leaving the Western White House, the President had seen a Los Angeles Times report that Maheu planned to subpoena his former boss for a $50,000,000 lawsuit. Even if the billionaire himself failed to appear, secret Hughes memos impounded by the Nevada court were likely to surface. Indeed, the dreaded columnist Jack Anderson already claimed to have seen some of them.

The more Nixon brooded, the more terrified he grew, and the more he focused on Larry O'Brien. He was getting away with it. The leader of the Kennedy gang, the very man who had beaten him in 1960 by exploiting the Hughes loan scandal, was now himself getting $15,000 a month from the billionaire while he served as unpaid chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Nixon wanted revenge. He wanted to unmask O'Brien as a secret Hughes lobbyist. He wanted to make O'Brien pay as he had paid.

But now, aboard Air Force One, the President was gripped by a darker thought: the sickening fear that O'Brien knew--that he had somehow learned from his Hughes contacts about the secret cash in Bebe's little tin box.

Nixon could not tell that to Haldeman. He could not say to his chief of staff, "My God, O'Brien must know! We've got to find out what he's found out. We've got to get him before he gets me." Nixon could not say that, because Haldeman didn't know. None of the President's men knew. Only Rebozo shared his secret. So, instead, Nixon ordered Haldeman to get O'Brien.

"We're going to nail O'Brien on this, one way or another," the President told him back in Washington the next day. He called Haldeman into the Oval Office and said, "O'Brien's not going to get away with it, Bob. We're going to get proof of his relationship with Hughes--and just what he's doing for the money."

It was the start of a desperate covert campaign. One that would end with Richard Nixon's burglars caught looking for Howard Hughes's secrets in Larry O'Brien's office--at the Watergate.

A Note on Authenticity

The authenticity of these documents was established by proof of their origins, confirmed by six years of research and also by a series of handwriting, typewriting and other tests performed by two of the nation's leading experts--Ordway Hilton, the man hired by the Hughes organization to prove Clifford Irving a fraud, and John J. Harris, the man hired by the Hughes estate to prove Melvin Dummar's "Mormon will" a forgery. Harris, who examined all of the Hughes memos reproduced here, declared, "I am of the firm opinion that all the documents I examined were written by Howard Hughes."

All details of the narrative are based on the documents themselves, on hundreds of interviews with persons who had direct knowledge of the events, on sworn court testimony and on Government records. In reconstructing scenes and events, the author tried to check every detail with at least two sources and checked their accounts against all available records.

Part II of "Citizen Hughes" will appear next month