Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [105]
So when Johnson picked up the billionaire’s letter, his first reaction was blind outrage. “Who the fuck does Howard Hughes think he is?!” the president bellowed, seeing the desperate plea to halt the bomb test as yet another challenge to his power.
It was, of course, a good question. Who, indeed, was Hughes? Neither Johnson nor anyone else at the White House really had the answer. Despite some past dealings, the president knew only what everybody knew—that Hughes was the richest man in the United States, a man of incalculable power whose secret empire seemed to reach everywhere, a mythic figure now in hiding who also happened to be the country’s biggest private military contractor. That was enough.
Beleaguered as he was, Johnson did not ignore the bomb plea, nor did he take it lightly. In a move without precedent, he withheld approval of the scheduled blast, secretly alerting the AEC to await his final go-ahead.
The president’s mood swing was dramatic. Although still more than a bit irritated that any private citizen would presume to dictate national defense policy, Johnson was also fascinated, even flattered by the hidden billionaire’s direct approach. The letter seemed to make him feel more important. He proudly displayed it to several White House aides, more like a kid who had just obtained a celebrity’s autograph than a president who had been petitioned to halt a nuclear test. In fact, Johnson was so intrigued by the personal contact from this mystery man that he falsely claimed Hughes had also telephoned, embroidering his tall tale with a detailed account of the conversation that had never taken place.
Moreover, the president was clearly impressed by what he considered the surprisingly logical and forceful case the reputedly eccentric financier had made.
“He may be wrong,” Johnson told his chief speech writer Harry McPherson, “but he sure as hell isn’t a loony.”
Back at the penthouse, the naked recluse, while unaware that he had been officially certified sane, was nonetheless confident he had made the right move.
“My letter to the President was a masterpiece,” he exulted. “Also when I started focusing my memory on the relationship I had about 8 years ago with Johnson, I came up with some very solid memories.”
Solid memories. To Hughes that could mean only one thing: hard cash. And, indeed, the two Texans had once had what Hughes would later describe as a “hard cash, adult” relationship. Hughes had not only backed Johnson’s first serious White House bid eight years earlier (when he had lost the Democratic nomination to their mutual enemy John F. Kennedy), but had secretly supported Johnson for at least two decades, right from the beginning of his rise to power as a freshman senator. The full extent of their dealings is unknown. In any event, it was a relatively small sum Hughes gave in the early days that now came most solidly to mind. He had once bought the man who was now president with pocket change, and if Johnson had since moved up in the world, to the billionaire he remained just another politician who had his price.
“I have done this kind of business with him before,” explained Hughes. “So, he wears no awe-inspiring robe of virtue with me.”
To what degree these past dealings now affected Johnson is less clear, but there is no question that the president had once been on the pad. In his leaner years as a raw-boned young congressman, Johnson was a regular visitor at the Houston headquarters of