Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [202]
Meier, now known to have stolen millions from Hughes, even claimed secret meetings with the president himself. “An analysis of expense vouchers submitted by Meier to Hughes Tool Company,” one IRS report noted, “shows that Meier and his wife accompanied by Donald Nixon and his wife traveled to Washington for consultation with president-elect Richard Nixon on November 21, 1968.”
Ehrlichman kept Nixon informed as the IRS probe zeroed in on the White House. On one such occasion, the president told his domestic-affairs chief the “true story” of the old Hughes “loan” scandal. Nixon, who had personally arranged that entire transaction, now said he had nothing whatever to do with it. He was never even aware that the money had come from Hughes. All he ever knew was that his mother had borrowed some money for his brother from an accountant.
Ehrlichman understood. The president was giving him the official line, rehearsing it, getting ready for the scandal that had cost him the 1960 election to resurface.
Nixon was clearly upset. He railed on and on about his “stupid brother” getting involved all over again with Hughes. Never once did he mention his own $100,000. But Nixon now knew that Rebozo had already been drawn into the IRS investigation. And he had to wonder how long it would be before the revenue agents followed Jack Anderson’s lead and opened up Bebe’s little tin box.
But it was not Bebe or his brother, not Anderson or the IRS, not Maheu or Bennett or Greenspun who triggered the final series of events that led to Nixon’s downfall.
It was Clifford Irving.
Off in Ibiza, the expatriate novelist had been following the lurid story of the struggle for control of the secret Hughes empire. He decided that the billionaire was either dead or disabled—certainly in no shape to make a public appearance—and that gave him an idea. He would concoct his own epic and present it to the world as the autobiography of Howard Hughes.
The coup was announced December 7, 1971. McGraw-Hill said it would soon publish Hughes’s personal memoirs, his true life story as told to Clifford Irving.
It became an immediate worldwide sensation. The Hughes organization branded the book a hoax, but with the billionaire himself unseen and silent, that only added to the hoopla. And nowhere did the book arouse more intense interest than at the White House.
Haldeman told Colson and Dean to find out what was in Irving’s manuscript. Bennett soon made contact, once more pushing a criminal investigation of Maheu, who he was sure had put Irving up to it, supplied inside information on Hughes, and orchestrated the entire caper.
“Is the book hard on Nixon?” asked Dean. “Yes,” replied Bennett, “very hard on Nixon.”
Haldeman started getting FBI reports on the Irving affair directly from J. Edgar Hoover, and finally the White House managed to obtain a copy of the still secret manuscript from a source at McGraw-Hill.
It came as quite a shock. Irving claimed that Hughes had passed $400,000 to Nixon when the latter was vice-president, in return for fixing the TWA case. It was an inspired guess, the $400,000 figure probably not far off the mark.* To Nixon it must have looked as if Irving had the real story, and it hardly mattered whether he had it from Maheu or Hughes.
And the imaginative Irving had just begun. Next came his tale of the big double-cross. It was Hughes himself who had sabotaged Nixon in 1960. Angry that Nixon had not come through on TWA, the disgruntled recluse had intentionally leaked the “loan scandal” story to columnist Drew Pearson.
“Nobody was raising a hand to help me,” Irving quoted Hughes as saying. “So I leaked the details to Drew Pearson. I got