Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [16]
“Payoff: This option unquestionably rankles,” noted a CIA report, “but must be considered a mere pittance when weighed against the time, effort, and monies expended to date on Glomar.”
With the million in hand, the FBI and CIA prepared an elaborate scheme: “Informant being operated by LAPD would meet with chief suspect Woolbright within the next couple of days for the sole purpose of indicating that the informant has a possible interested eastern buyer. LAPD informant will introduce seller to Los Angeles attorney, who would then give name of New York attorney who had client interested in stolen merchandise. Bureau agent from Los Angeles division would be identified as assistant to New York attorney, and would be available to fly to Los Angeles with $100,000 with which to negotiate a buy. Stipulation would be not to buy package unseen, but rather to examine individual pieces of merchandise. It is believed that this procedure would enable undercover agent to examine all merchandise. $100,000 to be placed in safety-deposit box in Los Angeles bank as ‘show money’ to be utilized by undercover agent in buy transaction.”
That was the plan. Yet despite the trappings of high-level intrigue and high finance, what followed was low comedy.
On police orders, Gordon met with Woolbright at an all-night restaurant near his home. But the actor had not been given any lines. His instructions were simply to renew contact. No one had told him what to say. Left to improvise, Gordon concocted an odd story. He told Woolbright that movie star Robert Mitchum would put up the money for the stolen papers. The meeting ended indecisively.
Detectives hurriedly arranged for Gordon to confer with federal officials, but hours before the scheduled strategy meeting, Woolbright called and demanded an immediate rendezvous. The Mitchum story had not gone over. “All right, I’ll level with you,” said Gordon. “The police are onto it. The Feds are onto it. They know about me, and they know about you, and all they’re interested in right now is recovering those documents because national security is involved.”
Woolbright, according to Gordon, took the news quietly but issued a warning: “The people I’m dealing with are not the nicest people in the world. If this goes wrong, it might take a few years, but we’ll pay the piper.”
Gordon claims they then struck a deal: Woolbright would get one folder to verify that he had the documents; Gordon would supply $3,500 front money. “He told me he was leaving immediately, then added, ‘But my God, don’t tell the police—if I show up with a tail I’m a dead man.’ ”
Later that evening, Gordon met for the first time with a government representative. The official said his name was Don Castle, but never showed any identification and refused to say which federal agency he represented. He told Gordon to get word to him through the police when Woolbright called back.
The call came two weeks later. Woolbright said he was “still working on it.” Gordon was taken for a second meeting with Castle at a North Hollywood hotel. “When this goes down I want a controlled situation,” said the mysterious agent. Then he added with a laugh, “Maybe we’ll get the right folder and solve this whole thing for three or four thousand dollars.”
It was not to be. Gordon said he never saw or heard from Woolbright again. Nor did he ever have further contact with the mysterious Don Castle.
“They dropped me like a hot potato after that last meeting,” complained Gordon. “It was really strange. It was like I had the Hope diamond, and zap, all of a sudden it was glass.”
The great search for the stolen Hughes secrets had come to an abrupt end.
Why, after gearing up so intense a recovery effort, after bringing in the heads of the CIA, the FBI, and the LAPD, even alerting the president of the United States, why, after pledging a million dollars to the quest, did everyone simply give up after entrusting the entire mission to a second-string movie actor?
Apparently because Hughes’s secrets were thought to be so dangerous