Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [236]
In the final days before the “Boxcar” blast, Hughes sent three ambassadors to Washington. Gillis Long, at the time a former congressman from Louisiana, now chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, lobbied the AEC. Grant Sawyer, former governor of Nevada, met with Vice-President Humphrey. Lloyd Hand, an intimate of Johnson’s who had recently resigned as White House chief of protocol, tried to get in to see the president. Ultimately Humphrey arranged for Sawyer to see Johnson instead.
7 Mr. President
The scene of Hughes writing his letter to Johnson was described by an aide who was present and also established by Hughes’s own memos. Attorney Finney hand-delivered a copy of the letter to White House special counsel Larry Temple, who forwarded it to National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, who sent it to the president at 7:50 P.M. on April 25, 1968, according to documents on file at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.
The president’s daily diary shows that White House Chief of Staff Marvin Watson was in the Oval Office when Johnson received the letter. Watson claimed in an interview not to recall the incident. But another member of the White House staff said Watson that same day told him Johnson’s reaction: “Who the fuck does Howard Hughes think he is?!” A third aide, Devier Pierson, recalls the president saying something similar to him: “Who the hell does Howard Hughes think he is that he can dictate nuclear policy?”
AEC Chairman Seaborg confirmed in an interview that Johnson withheld approval of the bomb test until the last minute, and his account is verified by documents at the LBJ Library. “I remember that the question of whether we should go ahead with ‘Boxcar’ was under consideration up to the very end,” said Seaborg. “I don’t remember President Johnson, in holding the test in abeyance, relating it specifically to Hughes, but I do recall that the president was more than a bit concerned by the Hughes protest, because of the potential political impact of Hughes. He talked to me about it at least two or three times.”
Several White House aides recalled Johnson showing them Hughes’s letter. Special Counsel Pierson said: “There was almost a sovereign-to-sovereign-like quality to the exchange. I think Johnson viewed it as an irritation, and made some caustic comment, but he was also intrigued, fascinated by the direct approach that Hughes had made. And he certainly got very involved in handling it, and stayed involved.” White House speech writer Harry McPherson said the president told him Hughes had also telephoned the Oval Office: “Johnson told me that Hughes himself had called, and had gotten his secretary on the line and asked to speak to Johnson. When told that the president was not available he dictated very rapidly a rather long memorandum. And I recall Johnson saying he was quite impressed by the logical and forceful case that Hughes had made.” By the time LBJ told the story to another White House aide a few days later, he claimed to have actually talked directly to Hughes and gave a detailed account of the conversation. However, White House files and Hughes’s own memos and interviews with his aides make it clear that the billionaire never called or talked to Johnson.
The account of the president’s general mental state at the time was drawn from Doris Kearns’s Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (Signet, 1977, pp. 324–40 and 358), and was confirmed by several White House aides. Johnson’s activities and mood on the day he received Hughes’s letter were recalled by aides and detailed by his daily diary and other White House documents. His remark about King Olav was quoted by Merle Miller, Lyndon (G. P. Putnam, 1980, p. 552).
Noah Dietrich recalled Hughes’s early financial support of Johnson in a series of interviews and also described LBJ’s visits to the Hughes Tool Company. “I dealt directly with him; he was a close personal friend of mine,” said Dietrich. “He was in my office many times, way back when he was a young