Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [149]
One week later, Maheu was down in the Bahamas, conferring with representatives of the incoming administration, and there are indications that he at least tried to pass the money again. A cashier at the Sands casino noted on a fifty-thousand-dollar withdrawal slip dated December 5, 1968: “The money was given to Bob Maheu. I was told he was to give this to President Nixon on Maheu’s trip to the Bahamas.”
So much money was gathered from so many sources—$50,000 from Hughes’s personal bank account early in September, another $50,000 from the account “for Nixon’s deficit” in December, the disputed $50,000 from the Sands a few days later, yet another $50,000 from Hughes’s 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 hundred-dollar 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 terrible guilty secret whose feared discovery would drive him to self-destruction—the tell-tale heart of Watergate.
Richard Nixon entered the White House on January 20, 1969, in broad daylight to the cheers of thousands, the duly elected and sworn president of the United States. But trusting no one, fearing everyone, he immediately retreated into isolation behind his palace guard and tried to run the nation like Hughes ran his empire—secretly, from hiding, through a small group of henchmen instilled with the same siege mentality.
It was a government Howard 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 this Administration after so many years of all-out effort to achieve it,” the billionaire wrote Maheu shortly after the inauguration, eagerly anticipating a good return on his investment.
Even before Nixon actually took office, Maheu began flashing news of early triumphs to the penthouse.
“Nixon has decided on his law partner, John Mitchell, to be Attorney General,” Maheu reported from the Bahamas, where he was hobnobbing with members of the new administration during the transition. “Mitchell is thoroughly acceptable and we have excellent entrees to him, particularly through Bebe Rebozo.
“We have a definite promise that it will not be [Herbert] Brownell or anyone on whom Brownell can exert any influence,” he added, referring to the attorney general under Eisenhower who was now special master in the TWA case and had recently slapped Hughes with the one-hundred-thirty-seven-million-dollar default judgment.
Later, in Washington for the inauguration, Maheu had more good news to report. Things were shaping up quite well at Justice, which for months had blocked Hughes’s bid to buy the rest of Las Vegas. “I am most happy with the new head of the anti-trust division,” Maheu told his boss. “He was our #1 choice from among several very highly qualified candidates whose names were submitted to me well in advance of the appointment.”
The early signs were good, 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 reentry into the airline business, a vast increase in his already great cost-plus no-competitive-bidding business with the Pentagon, even an end to federal financing for the dreaded Nevada water project.
But still Hughes was not satisfied.
First there was the Wally Hickel problem. “I sent word to you a couple of days ago that the confirmation of Hickel as Sec. of the Interior would not be consistent with the best interests of my various entities,” Hughes complained to Maheu, although there was no apparent reason for his objection to the former Alaska governor. “I was