Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [22]
The television channels flipped by in rapid succession.
Hughes checked out the full gamut of stations on the color TV that flickered at his feet. Then, satisfied, he set aside his Zenith Space Commander.
It was just after two A.M. on Thursday, June 6, 1968. ABC was dark. NBC had also signed off for the night. Only channel 8, the local CBS affiliate that Hughes himself owned, was still on the air to broadcast the grim news.
Robert F. Kennedy was dead.
Hughes had been awake for two nights, gripped by the video spectacle. He had watched Kennedy claim victory in the California presidential primary, smiling, joking, earnest, vibrantly alive. He had heard the shots just minutes later, muffled at first by the noise of the still cheering crowd, then distinct and unmistakable. He had seen Bobby lie bleeding on the cold cement floor.
It was a shared national experience. The shock and horror—the agonized moans of disbelief, the panic, the hysteria, the tears—spread in waves through the throng of stunned campaign workers and was instantly transmitted to millions across the country. Everywhere people watched television and waited, listening to hospital bulletins, reliving the immediate tragedy in endless replays that also revived painful memories of Dallas.
Through it all, for almost twenty-six hours, Hughes had kept his TV vigil, and now he watched a red-eyed Frank Mankiewicz walk slump-shouldered into the floodlit hospital lobby to confirm everybody’s worst fears. Biting his lip to hold back the tears, the press secretary bowed his head for a moment, then read a brief statement: “Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today. He was forty-two years old.”
Mankiewicz spoke softly, but the fateful announcement blared from Hughes’s television, its volume turned to the highest level to accommodate the partially deaf billionaire. News of the tragedy continued to reverberate in his room.
But Hughes was no longer listening. He reached over to a bedside night table, grabbed a long yellow legal pad, and, propping it up on his knees, scrawled a fevered memo to his chief of staff, Robert Maheu.
“I hate to be quick on the draw,” wrote Hughes, “but I see here an opportunity that may not happen again in a lifetime. I dont aspire to be President, but I do want political strength.…
“I have wanted this for a long time, but somehow it has always evaded me. I mean the kind of an organization so that we would never have to worry about a jerky little thing like this anti-trust problem—not in 100 years.
“And I mean the kind of a set up that, if we wanted to, could put Gov. Laxalt in the White House in 1972 or 76.*
“Anyway, it seems to me that the very people we need have just fallen smack into our hands. Also, if we approach them quickly and skillfully, they should be as anxious to find a haven with us as we are to obtain them.…
“So, in consideration of my own nervous system, will you please move like lightning on this deal—first, to report to me whom you think we want, of Kennedy’s people, and second to contact such people with absolutely no delay the minute I confirm your recommendation. I repeat, the absolutely imperative nature of this mission requires the very ultimate in skill. If it is not so handled, and if this project should leak out, I am sure that I will be absolutely crucified by the press.…
“However, I have confidence that you can handle this deal, and I think the potential, in manpower and in a political machine all built and operating, I think these potentials are just inestimable, and worth the risk—provided you move fast. Please let me hear at once.”
Hughes lifted his ball-point pen, read the memo over carefully, and signed it “Howard.” He slipped the two-page message into a large manila envelope, then snapped one long fingernail smartly against a brown paper bag hanging at his bedside as a depository for used Kleenex. It made a sharp noise, summoning from an adjoining