Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [173]
“Bob, I want you to request a personal meeting with the President just as quickly as he will grant it.
“I will give you the full text of what I hope you will say before you go into the meeting.”
Having stayed awake all night to plot this bold move, however, Hughes could not wait to begin scripting Maheu for his big White House scene.
“You might tell him,” he added, spinning out lines for delivery to Nixon, “I am deeply, deeply sorry for the shortness of time, but that … I had made my feelings known concerning the testing of large bombs in this area.
“And now, as a complete farce, they plan a test here at Las Vegas which is supposed not to violate the implied agreement they made with you, because it is marginally under one megaton.
“I hope you can find some way of showing this disgraceful trickery to the President as the fraudulent effort to deceive that it really is.
“Bob, I have given a full lifespan of service to this country, and taken very little for my personal pleasure or glorification.
“If I dont rate better than this shoddy treatment, it is pretty sad.”
Maheu accepted the script but rejected the part. It was not that he didn’t like the lines, only that he didn’t think they would play well at the White House. He knew that it was futile to see Nixon. He had known it from the start. But it was pointless to tell that to the frenzied scenarist up in the penthouse. Instead, Maheu insisted that Rebozo was the man to play this part.
Hughes was not convinced. “I am fully confident of Rebozo’s position with the President,” he replied. “I just am fearful he cannot convey the entire story, simply because he does not know it all.”
With that, Hughes was off again, giving Maheu his lines, determined to write, direct, and produce this melodrama as he saw fit.
“If you were with the President,” he told his alter ego, “you could tell him about the 200 million dollar loss I am swallowing on the helicopter, due to my patriotic zealousness in accepting a contract at a price that did not even pay for the bill of material,” presenting as noble his bungled bid to corner the market for the war in Vietnam.
“Also, you could convince the President that, had it not been for his personal identification with the Air West order by the CAB, I would have extricated myself from that unfortunate involvement 100% by now, instead of finalizing the deal,” he continued, also claiming altruism for the illegal takeover he had just paid Nixon to approve.
“I think you could convince him that our arrival here in Nevada was an event of great good fortune to the state, as evidenced by the fact that Nevada has become a true oasis in the sea of campus disorders, race riots, poverty, etc.,” he added, claiming credit for the tranquility as if it had resulted from his Monopoly game.
“So, Bob, to summarize, I think what I am asking, in relationship to what I feel we have contributed, is God-damned little.
“And, if cost is disturbing the AEC,” he concluded, as final proof of his selflessness, “I feel so intensely about this thing, I will even pay the cost of moving this test to Alaska, out of my own pocket.”
The script had a shameless audacity worthy of Nixon himself, but the president would never hear it delivered. Maheu left Key Biscayne for Washington to mollify his boss, but before going he filed a discouraging report.
“Howard, I have just completed a long conference with Rebozo,” he told Hughes. “It is his humble opinion (and we must remember that he understands the top man, perhaps better than the rest of the world put together) that it would be a very serious mistake in strategy to try and see the President without going through Kissinger first.
“He recommends, therefore, that we make immediate plans for Kissinger to fly to Las Vegas and have a meeting with you in order to afford you the opportunity to convince them that what they are doing is wrong.”
Henry Kissinger was a power second only to Nixon himself. There was no door closed to him anywhere in the world. Except on the ninth floor of the