Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [196]
When the story reached Hughes in his Bahamas bedroom, he was enraged. He immediately released the proxy that stripped Maheu of all power and fired off one final memo dissolving their partnership. It went not to Maheu but to his rival Chester Davis.
“You can tell Maheu for me that I had not fully determined in my mind to withdraw all support from his position until he started playing this cat and mouse game for his own selfish benefit,” wrote Hughes.
“In other words, Maheu does not believe for one second that I am dead, disabled, or any of the other wild accusations he has been making.…
“Consequently, when he started claiming that my messages were not genuine and that I had been abducted, and all the other wild charges.
“When he demanded entrance to my apartment (to look for foul play, no less!)
“In other words, when this entire TV writer’s dream started unfolding, it soon became obvious that Maheu had no concern about the truth in this matter.
“He knew full well where I was,” Hughes continued. “I have been planning this trip for more than a year, and I had discussed it with him many times.
“So it became clear that Maheu had decided to milk his relationship with me and my companies to the last possible dollar.
“It was only at this point, that I decided the case against Maheu had been fully and conclusively proven.
“Up to this time, in spite of the massive array of evidence, I would gladly have listened to his side of the issue.
“It was his shocking conduct since my departure that left me feeling all efforts to explain away these actions would be totally without purpose.
“And, if his conduct since my departure consisted of a mass of lies, then I must assume that, in hundreds of other instances wherein his contentions were in direct conflict with other of my associates who had been with me for years and years of honest, loyal service, I repeat, if he has been lying since my departure, then I must assume that he was lying in these many, many other situations wherein I was forced to choose between accepting Maheu’s contentions or the equally impassioned and, so far as I could tell, equally genuine and truthful claims of other of my associates whom I have learned to trust.
“Up to this time,” Hughes concluded, “I simply had no way to know who was telling the truth, and who was not.
“But Maheu’s actions since my departure have made this entire situation very clear.”
Not long after, John Ehrlichman encountered Bebe Rebozo coming down the stairway from the president’s private quarters inside the White House. They spoke in hushed tones about the strange doings in Las Vegas and the Bahamas. Rebozo wondered aloud whether his pal Richard Danner would survive the big shake-up. His real fear remained unspoken: Would Richard Nixon?
Epilogue I
Watergate
“This is for Haldeman,” said Richard Nixon, speaking into his dictaphone aboard Air Force One. The president had just emerged from a ten-day retreat at San Clemente, plotting his reelection campaign and brooding alone with Bebe Rebozo, and now he was flying to the University of Nebraska to “forge an alliance of the generations.” But his mind was elsewhere, fixated on another alliance. One he had to destroy, before it destroyed him.
“It would seem that the time is approaching when Larry O’Brien is held accountable for his retainer with Hughes,” declared Nixon, going on the attack, dictating his message to Haldeman. “Bebe has some information on this, although it is, of course, not solid. But there is no question that one of Hughes’s people did have O’Brien on a very heavy retainer for ‘services rendered’ in the past. Perhaps Colson should check on this.”
It was January 14, 1971. Just six weeks had passed since Howard Hughes made his great escape, and the ugly aftermath of the Hughes-Maheu split had Nixon in mortal terror.
It was not the money O’Brien got from Hughes that really obsessed