Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [103]
The news from Washington, however, was bleak. “There is no way we can get even a one day delay from the AEC,” reported Maheu. “The only way this can be accomplished is at the White House. Now is the time to bring in another force.”
Another force? Hughes was in no mood to find a new emissary, to send another hat-in-hand diplomat to Washington. He was through with go-betweens. He was through with peace talks. He would handle the final bomb offensive himself, and he would use his own ultimate weapon.
For the past nine days, Hughes had played many roles—mad prophet, naked general, movement leader—but here again he would deal with his bomb obsession the way he dealt with all other matters: by looking for someone to bribe.
“We must find a way to close them down,” he wrote as the moment of doom neared.
“So, how do we acquire enough political strength to accomplish something like this? Well, there is only one way I know, and fortunately this is an election year.”
He would not, like the peaceniks or the old ban-the-bomb crowd, reject America and take to the streets. He would embrace America and buy nuclear peace. Unique in the annals of corruption, Hughes would try to bribe the government to do what was right.
But now, just one day before the big blast, Hughes would make one last appeal to reason. At T-minus-24 and counting, he would personally take his plea to the man who had his finger on the button.
At the zero hour, it would be Howard Hughes and Lyndon Johnson alone at the summit.
7 Mr. President
“Mr. President,” wrote Hughes. The time had come for direct action. Sovereign to sovereign.
It was in the odd 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. One hundred miles from ground zero, “physically very ill and emotionally reduced to a nervous wreck,” the exhausted billionaire remained determined to block the scheduled blast. He had just over twenty-four hours. And there was only one man who could still halt the relentless countdown.
So now, in sleepless terror, Howard Hughes drafted his letter to Lyndon Baines Johnson, the president of the United States.
“You may not remember it,” he began, “but years ago when you were in the Senate, you and I were acquainted, not intimately, but enough so that you would have recognized my name.”
Restrained. Dignified. Tactful. No need to mention the nature of their relationship. Johnson would remember.
“So, when you became President,” Hughes continued, “I was strongly tempted to communicate with you, as one occasion after another developed in which I urgently needed your help.…
“However, I decided you were too busy for me to disturb you for anything with a purely selfish purpose.”
Right. Put it all on a higher plane.
“Now, something has occurred that only you can alter from its present course.
“Based upon my personal promise that independent scientists and technicians have definite evidence, and can obtain more, demonstrating the risk and uncertainty to the health of the citizens of Southern Nevada, if the megaton-plus nuclear explosion is detonated tomorrow morning, will you grant even a brief postponement of this explosion to permit my representatives to come to Washington and lay before whomever you designate the urgent, impelling reasons why we feel a 90 day postponement is needed?”
A bit vague, perhaps, but surely there was no need to name the scientists or cite the evidence. Hughes was offering his “personal promise.” And armed with an absolute certainty of the claimed danger—the “definite evidence” was in the pit of his stomach—the billionaire now barreled ahead.
“I am certainly no peacenik,” he declared. “My feelings have been well known through the years to be far to the right of center.
“It is not my purpose to impede the defense program in any way, and I can positively prove that if my appeal is heeded”—he started to write “it will have no deliterious