Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [213]
“We could get that,” said Nixon. “You could get a million dollars. And you could get it in cash. I, I know where it could be gotten.”
Nixon was determined to handle Watergate the same way Hughes had tried to handle Nixon—with a big bribe. In fact, Nixon planned to use his accumulated payoffs, the money he had taken from Hughes and others, if need be the entire secret slush fund gathered by Rebozo, to buy his way out of Watergate.
As the scandal engulfed him in mid-April, Nixon sat with his last two stalwarts, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, told them they would probably have to resign—and offered them money from Bebe’s little tin box.
“Legal fees will be substantial,” said the president, desperate to buy off his two closest aides. “But there is a way we can get it to you, and uh—two or three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Let’s wait and see if it’s necessary,” replied Ehrlichman.
“No strain,” Nixon quickly assured him. “Doesn’t come outta me. I didn’t, I never intended to use the money at all. As a matter of fact, I told B-B-Bebe, uh, basically, be sure that people like, uh, who, who have contributed money over the contributing years are, uh, favored and so forth in general. And he’s used it for the purpose of getting things out, paid for in check and all that sort of thing.”
Nixon was nervous. He stuttered and stammered, barely able to spit out the name of his personal bagman B-B-Bebe. This was the first time he had revealed to anyone that Rebozo maintained a secret fund for his personal use, cash gathered from “contributors” who were “favored and so forth in general.” Clearly the Hughes $100,000 was just part of a much larger kitty.
“Very substantial” is all the president now told Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and he was still nervously pushing the money on his reluctant henchmen as they walked out the door.
“I want you to, I hope you’ll let me know about the money,” he said in parting. “Understand, there’s no better use for it. Okay?”
Nixon made the offer all over again two weeks later when he called Haldeman and Ehrlichman out to Camp David to tell them the time had come, that they had to resign.
“It’s like cutting off my arms,” wailed Nixon, weeping now, but not at all certain this display of emotion was enough. Ehrlichman, especially, remained bitter and suggested that Nixon himself resign.
“You’ll need money,” said the president, desperately. “I have some—Bebe has it—and you can have it.”
Ehrlichman shook his head. “That would just make things worse,” he said, turning to go, leaving Nixon alone with his money.
Years later Nixon would tell TV interviewer David Frost that the cash he offered Haldeman and Ehrlichman was the $100,000 Rebozo got from Hughes, and it is tempting to believe that Nixon tried to buy his way out of Watergate with the same payoff that led him into it.
But, in fact, even as the president was trying to bribe his two closest aides, Bebe Rebozo was frantically trying to return that hot hundred grand to Howard Hughes.
There was only one problem. The money was gone.
At eight A.M. the next day, Monday, April 30—as Nixon prepared to announce the purge of his top White House staff in a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office—Rebozo met furtively in a room down the hall with the president’s personal lawyer, Herb Kalmbach.
Rebozo was tense. He swore Kalmbach to secrecy, said he was there at the request of the “big man,” and then revealed his big problem. It was the Hughes money.
The IRS, Rebozo said, had finally asked to see him about the unreported $100,000 “campaign contribution,” the tax interview was just ten days away, and Rebozo told Kalmbach that he no longer had all the money. It had already been spent. And not for any campaign.
Rebozo said he had given some of the secret Hughes cash to Nixon’s two brothers, Edward and Donald, to the president’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, and to unnamed “others.”
He asked Kalmbach what to do. Kalmbach was not merely the president’s lawyer but also his backstage fund-raiser, the chief