Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [0]
CITIZEN HUGHES. Copyright © 1985 by Michael Drosnin. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
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First Broadway Books trade paperback edition published 2004
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Drosnin, Michael.
Citizen Hughes / Michael Drosnin.— 1st Broadway Books pbk. ed.
p. cm.
1. Hughes, Howard, 1905–1976. 2. Millionaires—United States—
Biography. 3. Political corruption—United States. 4. United States—
Politics and government—1945–1989.1. Hughes, Howard,
1905–1976. II. Title.
CT275.H6678D74 2004
338.7′67′092—dc22
[B] 2004049671
eISBN: 978-0-307-48299-0
v3.1_r1
For my family,
for my friends,
for all who kept
the faith.
“There was nothing either above or below him.… He had kicked himself loose of the Earth.… His intelligence was perfectly clear—concentrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear.… But his soul was mad.…
“Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.”
—Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Author’s Note
Introduction The Great Hughes Heist
1 Mr. Big
2 Bob and Howard
3 The Kingdom
4 Network
5 Fear and Loathing
6 Armageddon
7 Mr. President
8 Poor Hubert
9 Camelot
10 Nixon: The Payoff
11 Howard Throws a Party
12 Nixon: The Betrayal
13 Exodus
Epilogue I Watergate
Epilogue II The Final Days
Authenticity Report
Notes on Illustrations
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Author’s Note
It’s been two decades since this book first revealed the truth about the world’s most secretive man, Howard Hughes. It is now out again with a new Hughes movie, The Aviator.
In that time two things have been proven beyond any doubt. First, that the nearly 10,000 documents on which this book is based are real. They are the papers Howard Hughes sent and received, the handwritten notes he wrote from hiding to his unseen henchmen. It was the way the billionaire hermit ruled his empire.
The papers were stolen from Hughes headquarters on June 5, 1974. A million-dollar buyback bid from the CIA and an FBI investigation failed. I tracked down the burglars two years later. We made a deal—I would keep their identity secret if they gave me the stolen Hughes documents.
After this book was published, the man who received most of the Hughes memos, his righthand man, Robert Maheu, confirmed the authenticity of the documents on ABC and NBC television news shows. And one of the few who had direct contact with Hughes, Roy Crawford, the aide who delivered the memos from Hughes to Maheu, also confirmed the documents were genuine on the ABC news magazine 20/20.
It was indisputable proof that two top handwriting experts—Ordway Hilton, who exposed Clifford Irving’s famous hoax “autobiography” of Hughes as a fraud, and John J. Harris, who proved Melvin Dummar’s “Mormon Will” a forgery—were right: These handwritten Hughes documents were authentic.
So this book is proven to be the one true account of Hughes from the only reliable source—Howard himself.
A second fact proven true after this book was originally published—Hughes really did try to buy the government of the United States, and instead helped bring it down.
Just last year, PBS broadcast a documentary in which a key Watergate conspirator, Jeb Magruder, said on camera that he heard President Richard Nixon personally order the break-in that led