Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [152]
“It is logical to assume that if the U.S. builds an ABM, then the enemy will do likewise.… Any ICBM’s saved from destruction by the ABM would not be completely effective, since they would have to run the gauntlet of enemy ABM’s before they could reach their targets.
“Now, on the other hand, if the same X billion dollars were expended for an increased fleet of Polaris Submarines, it would be an expenditure for a known and proven product, instead of an experimental, unproven, completely unpredictable weapon system of fantastic complexity.
“The U.S. will never know, really, whether the ABM will work until a real, true enemy missile is actually launched and in flight on its deadly course through the upper regions of space headed for its target in the U.S.
“No matter how it is tested, it will never really be known whether or not it is going to work.”
Hughes concluded his ABM memo without mentioning the $100,000, but he had Danner deliver it to Rebozo with word that $50,000 was available immediately and that a like bundle of cash would soon follow.
“Danner is meeting with his friend Rebozo on the ABM situation in Washington, D.C. on Monday,” Maheu reported late in June. “Depending on the results of that meeting, we may decide, subject to your approval, to have a personal meeting with the President.”
In fact, it was not until June 26 that Danner finally caught up with Rebozo in Miami. The next day Maheu withdrew $50,000 from Hughes’s personal bank account for “nondeductible contributions,” the code word he used to cover political payoffs.
The deal went down on the Fourth of July.
The president had spent that morning reviewing a parade in Key Biscayne, performing his public duty with obvious discomfort, sweating profusely in a heavy suit on a sweltering hot day, telling parade spectators they were “proof that the great majority of people haven’t lost faith in this country.”
Then Nixon boarded a helicopter and flew off with Rebozo to a private island in the Bahamas owned by his other millionaire crony, Robert Abplanalp, celebrating this weekend, as he did so many others, drinking martinis with his two old pals. Finally alone, having escaped his wife, having escaped the press, having escaped even Haldeman and Ehrlichman, the president got down to private business.
Rebozo gave Nixon the Hughes memo, undoubtedly also brightening the festivities with word that the long-sought payoff had finally been arranged. Then the Cuban placed a call to Las Vegas.
“Howard, Rebozo has transmitted your message on the ABM to the President,” Maheu reported that same day to the penthouse. “He was very appreciative but Rebozo could not tell from the reaction whether or not the President was ready to countermand the position of his Secretary of Defense.”
Nixon, however, was prepared to immediately show his appreciation to Hughes in another way.
“Howard,” Maheu added in the same report, “our present intelligence indicates that the President’s approval of Air West and that of the CAB will come down next week.”
Hughes was, at long last, back in the airline business. Air West was not, of course, TWA. But it was an airline, and Hughes, who had first gained fame as an aviation pioneer, very much wanted to own one again. He had been plotting to take over the struggling little carrier for a year.
“This plan necessitates that the stock edge downward,” he had written at the outset, outlining his scheme to swindle the stockholders, “and then that we come along with a spectacular offer.”
At first it had gone according to plan. When the stock had tumbled to sixteen dollars a share, depressed by a spate of adverse news stories secretly orchestrated by Hughes publicists, the recluse made his offer—twenty-two dollars a share. More than half of the stockholders voted to accept.
But then a stubborn Air West board of directors voted 13–11 to reject Hughes’s bid. “I do not think