Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [172]
Whether Hughes knew that his money had gone to Rebozo, whether he was hoping that it would buy him a nuclear accord with Nixon and approved the delivery despite his anger, is unclear. But he contacted Maheu at the crack of dawn the next day, expecting to get word to the White House.
“What is the plan today?” he demanded. “I just heard the announcement of the President’s planned defense meeting. When do you expect to endeavor to penetrate thru to him in this matter? I am anxious to know in order that I may have as much time as possible in preparation of my material.”
While the billionaire plotted the antibomb campaign on his bedside legal pads in Las Vegas, and Rebozo stashed the Hughes money in a safe-deposit box at the bank he owned in Key Biscayne, Richard Nixon convened his top advisers in Washington for a major review of the war in Vietnam.
The president was frantic, perhaps as frantic as Hughes. He had been elected on a pledge to end the war but had failed to bring peace. Now Nixon huddled with Kissinger secretly plotting a major escalation, a “savage, punishing blow” against North Vietnam, while the same antiwar movement that had toppled Lyndon Johnson threatened to bring Nixon down, massing for a nationwide protest that would culminate with the moratorium march on Washington in October.
Nixon had from the outset of his administration felt himself encircled by enemies; now, as he himself would later put it, he was “reeling under siege.”
Yet even at the peak of crisis, the president did not ignore the billionaire’s bomb protest. Once more, he offered to send Henry Kissinger to Howard Hughes. Maheu transmitted this offer to the penthouse, along with Nixon’s pledge that the scheduled nuclear test posed no danger.
“In all sincerity, Howard,” he wrote, “I truly believe that this is one hell of a concession for the President of the United States to make, since we were given the definite indication that you would become knowledgable of certain top secret information available only to a handful of people in this entire world.”
Again, Maheu assured his boss that the negotiations with Kissinger could be handled by telephone, sparing the recluse a personal confrontation; but the secret peace talks had to be held directly with Hughes.
“I cannot find it within myself to be presumptuous enough to insist that this information be made available to me when it is you to whom they want to talk,” added Maheu. “I am thoroughly convinced that Nixon has a deep-seated respect for you which won’t quit. And also that there are certain things which he cannot entrust to any of your subordinates, unfortunately including me.”
Hughes was not impressed. Again he spurned shuttle diplomacy, once more refusing to receive Kissinger, and this time not in fear but anger.
“I am surprised that you would accept without some resistance the statement of this explosion’s so-called ‘safety,’ ” he shot back at Maheu, rejecting the president’s assurances.
“As to my listening to Kissinger, the statement that he has things to tell me which cannot be entrusted to your knowledge is an insult, and simply not true.
“As to the contention that this explosion is in some way necessary to maintain our strategic negotiating position, or our military security in respect to Russia, this kind of an argument is just a plain insult to my intelligence.”
Hughes had had it with intermediaries. No more envoys: he would not receive Kissinger, and he did not want Maheu to deal with Rebozo. It was time to go straight to the top.
“Bob, I want you to go all the way on this,” he ordered at dawn the next day, with the dreaded blast now only three days off. “I have written some very carefully drafted comments, and I want this argument made to the President in the very most forceful way.
“I dont want to write a letter as I did to President Johnson, and have it discarded into some dead file,” he noted, bitterly