Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [23]
Maheu, an outwardly genial former FBI agent whose soft round features masked a toughness only hinted at by his cold black eyes, apparently failed to fully grasp the nature of his new mission. In a follow-up message later that morning, Hughes impatiently explained his orders while a presidential jet flew Kennedy’s body back to New York to lie in state at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where 150,000 people waited in a line stretching more than a mile for a glimpse of the coffin.
“Bob,” wrote Hughes, “I thought you would understand. I want us to hire Bob Kennedy’s entire organization—with certain exceptions, of course, I am not sure we want Salinger and a few others. However, here is an entire integrated group, used to getting things done over all obstacles. They are used to having the Kennedy money behind them and we can equal that. This group was trained by John Kennedy and his backers, and then moved over to R.F.K. when John died.
“It is a natural for us. I am not looking for political favors from them. I expect you to pick our candidate and soon. I repeat, I dont want an alliance with the Kennedy group, I want to put them on the payroll.”
Maheu understood. And he delivered. Not the entire Kennedy team, but its leader, Bobby’s campaign manager, Larry O’Brien. Before the month was out, Maheu had made contact. A few days later, O’Brien—a central figure in American politics, a White House insider who had already directed two successful presidential campaigns and was about to take command of the Democratic party—was in Las Vegas talking terms. Soon he was “on the payroll.”
Moving with the cold audacity of a grave robber, Hughes had switched O’Brien from Camelot to his own dark kingdom almost as effortlessly as he switched television channels. And he had done it without ever leaving his room. By remote control.
To a nation of mourners focused on the public passion play, this hidden backstage drama would have seemed a blasphemy, its language alone an outrage. There was no hint of sorrow, no sign of any emotion, only a terrible urgency to close the “deal.” For two days Hughes had watched a tragedy and seen only an “opportunity.”
He had also seen what the mourners missed. Power in America was not an Arthurian romance of martyred princes and loyal knights honor-bound to an ideal, but a marketplace where influence and allegiances were bought and sold.
There was nothing unusual about the O’Brien transaction, except for its macabre backdrop. Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson—virtually every major political figure of the era, including even Bobby Kennedy himself—also had a Hughes connection, as did scores of lesser national leaders and local potentates. Hughes had appraised them all with the cool detachment of an investment analyst. “I have done this kind of business with him before,” he had said of Johnson. “So, he wears no awe-inspiring robe of virtue with me.” Humphrey was “a candidate who needs us and wants our help,” and thus “somebody we control sufficiently.” Bobby Kennedy, on the other hand, “would get too much support from others,” but might win, “so lets cover our bets.” Only Nixon (“my man”) got the ultimate accolade: “he I know for sure knows the facts of life.”
Camelot was a trifle. Howard Hughes had long ago set out to buy the government of the United States.
“Try to determine who is the real, honest-to-God, bagman at the White House,” he once ordered his henchman Robert Maheu. “And please dont be frightened away by the enormity of the thought. Now, I dont know whom you have to approach, but there is somebody, take my word for it.”
Hughes