Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [118]
“Bob,” wrote Hughes, spinning 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. “[T]hat 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.”
Yes, that should do it. First spook Humphrey with the spectre of a Hughes-Kennedy alliance, then offer to underwrite his entire presidential campaign.
“Then,” concluded the spider, finishing his web, “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. Even before he had officially entered the race, the vice-president had been doing the billionaire’s bidding. He arranged the preblast Sawyer-Johnson parley, also pressured a very reluctant AEC commissioner to meet with Hughes’s emissary (“the request was so strongly put that he agreed to the meeting,” noted an agency report), pushed for a ninety-day moratorium on “Boxcar” at Maheu’s urging, and as early as 1967 had tried to plead the billionaire’s bomb case with Johnson, only to be turned away by White House Chief of Staff Marvin Watson, who guarded the door to the Oval Office.
Hughes looked on the vice-president as his man in Johnson’s White House and tried to influence the recalcitrant commander in chief through his more obliging lieutenant.
“The only way I can see to motivate Johnson,” he declared before attempting to bribe the president directly, “would be through a meaningful offer of assistance to Humphries, who is, I understand, Johnson[’s] designee.”
“There is one man who can accomplish our objective thru Johnson—and that man is H.H.H.,” wrote Hughes on another occasion. “Why dont we get word to him on a basis of absolute secrecy that is really, really reliable that we will give him immediately full unlimited support for his campaign to enter the White House if he will just take this one on for us?”
Hughes expected a return on his investment and was not always satisfied with Humphrey’s performance. What the billionaire apparently did not know was that Johnson had only contempt for his vice-president, gave him no power, and in fact enjoyed tormenting him in the cruelest, crudest ways.
The pattern had been established early, in their Senate years. Johnson, then majority leader, would regularly grab Hubert by his lapels, give him his orders, and send him on his way by kicking him in the shins. Hard. Indeed, Humphrey still had scars on his legs, and they were nothing to the scars LBJ later inflicted.
Once he invited his vice-president down to his ranch, then decided that Humphrey should go horseback riding dressed up like a cowboy He pulled out an outfit that dwarfed his sidekick, complete with a ten-gallon hat that fell over his ears, and put him on the meanest horse at the ranch. Finally, he called in the White House press corps to snap pictures of Hubert looking like a circus clown in mortal terror.
With Humphrey the heir apparent, Johnson continued the torment. Asked by a reporter for a comment on his candidate, LBJ replied, “He cries too much.” Pressed further, Johnson snapped, “That’s it—he cries too much.”
And even now, as a presidential candidate, Humphrey remained quite firmly under LBJ’s thumb.
At one point during the campaign, Maheu called Humphrey, and when an aide relayed his message, the vice-president exploded in impotent rage. “Goddamnit, tell Hughes to call the president of the United States, not me,” the candidate