Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [168]
“However, I will be very grateful if you will keep such procurement to the bare minimum, until I am able to discuss with you, in considerable length, some of my views relative to the procurement of food.”
Shortly before seven P.M., as the first arrivals drifted into the bizarre Landmark lobby for a VIP cocktail reception, one final message arrived from the penthouse.
Maheu was already at the hotel when Hughes’s memo reached him, greeting guests with his usual aplomb, flashing his big gold cuff links, confidently standing in for his unseen boss. And although something was obviously askew about this grand opening, although there was a bit of a buzz about the last-minute telephoned invitations, none of the guests could have imagined what Maheu had been through, and none would have grasped the unintentional black humor in the two sentences scrawled on the sheet of yellow legal-pad paper that Maheu now removed from its sealed manila envelope.
“Bob—You and your people have my wishes for good luck tonight, in every way,” Howard Hughes had written from the safety of his seclusion.
“Is there anything further I can do to be helpful?”
12 Nixon: The Betrayal
Three thousand miles from Las Vegas, someone else was planning a party. It was to be the greatest party the world had ever seen. A lavish state dinner in honor of the first men to walk on the moon. The host was Richard Nixon.
Although he hated playing host, Nixon threw himself into planning this affair, driving everyone crazy, from his top White House staff to his wife to the waiters, getting personally involved in the smallest details, picking the menus, making the seating arrangements, even choosing the party favors. And, of course, approving the guest list.
There were 1,440 invitations to this August 1969 dinner, the most prestigious state dinner in history, and Nixon went through them several times, name by name, simultaneously compiling a list of the people he didn’t want invited, his first “enemies list.” Nixon was still making final revisions the day before the big party.
There were governors and senators and Supreme Court justices, Hollywood celebrities, business and religious leaders, fifty astronauts, diplomats from ninety nations, luminaries from every walk of life. But most important were the special honored guests, aviation and space pioneers like Charles Lindbergh and Wernher von Braun—and Howard Hughes.
Hughes was puzzled by the invitation. “Re the President’s party, what is it you actually need from me?” he asked Maheu, uncertain how to R.S.V.P. “In other words, Bob, I will not be able to attend. But I am sure you already knew this.”
The invitation also puzzled White House aides. Nixon rarely discussed Hughes with even his closest advisers—and never disclosed his dealings with the billionaire to anyone except Rebozo—but all his top men were aware of the old loan scandal, knew that it still touched a raw nerve. And Hughes was feared in Nixon’s White House, an unspoken yet palpable fear that emanated from the Oval Office.
Now, with the hundred-thousand-dollar payoff finally arranged and about to be delivered, the president’s submerged fears started to surface. As the secret deal went down in the weeks before the party, Nixon initiated a series of stealthy inquiries about his hidden benefactor, working through the back channels of the federal bureaucracy.
He had already ordered the Secret Service to bug and tail his brother, worried that Donald’s bumbling deals with John Meier would revive the loan scandal and blow his own bigger dealings with Hughes. Rebozo was constantly on the phone with Danner, demanding that Meier be kept away from Donald. “The President is truly concerned about wheeling and dealing involving these two characters,” Maheu informed the penthouse. “We are reliably informed that they have opened an office in Geneva, are involved in very precarious oil leases in Alaska, and God knows what all else.
“The President and Rebozo have confided in us that