Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [240]
9 Camelot
Interviews with at least a dozen persons who knew either Joseph P. Kennedy or Hughes during their early days in Hollywood turned up no indication that they ever dealt with each other, ever came into conflict, or even met. Kennedy’s mistress in those years, Gloria Swanson, said that she could not recall him even mentioning Hughes. Noah Dietrich, who joined Hughes shortly after he arrived in Hollywood in 1925 and handled the business end of his moviemaking, said he was certain Hughes never dealt with Kennedy.
Information on Joe Kennedy’s background was drawn from Richard Whalen, The Founding Father (Signet, 1966), as was the “pants pressers” quote (p. 80).
Pierre Salinger confirmed his solicitation of Hughes money for the RFK campaign in a letter: “Steve Smith, who was raising money for the campaign, asked if I might have some special contacts who would help. I met Mr. Maheu in Las Vegas. He did not immediately pledge a contribution, but during the Oregon primary he called me in Portland to say that Mr. Hughes would give the campaign $25,000. After the death of Robert Kennedy, I received a call from Mr. Maheu telling me the contribution would still be made. I reported that to Steve Smith.”
FBI Director Hoover reported Bobby Kennedy’s revelation of the Castro plot in a memo dated May 10, 1962: “He stated he had been advised by CIA that CIA had hired Maheu to approach Giancana with a proposition of paying $150,000 to hire some gunmen to go into Cuba to kill Castro. I expressed astonishment at this in view of the bad reputation of Maheu and the horrible judgment in using a man of Giancana’s background for such a project. The attorney general shared the same views.” Less than three months earlier, Hoover had ended John Kennedy’s White House affair with Giancana’s mistress Campbell by bringing a report on her to the president, according to the Senate Select Committee on Assassinations.
Bobby Kennedy’s fears that the Castro plot had led to the assassination of his brother were reported by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in Robert Kennedy and His Times (Houghton Mifflin, 1978, pp. 615–16). According to Kennedy aide Walter Sheridan, Bobby asked CIA Director John McCone, “Did the CIA kill my brother?”
Kennedy called Nixon’s Hughes scandal a “decisive factor” in the 1960 election in a New York Times interview reported November 13, 1960. Justice Department files leaked to the Times January 24, 1972, revealed that as attorney general Kennedy considered criminal prosecution of Hughes, Nixon, and members of Nixon’s family over the “loan.”
The scene of Hughes watching RFK assassination reports is based on his own memos, on interviews with his aides, and on television videotapes. Teddy Kennedy’s eulogy is quoted from press reports of the funeral rites.
O’Brien’s “long, sad, emotional journey” on the RFK funeral train is recounted in his No Final Victories (Doubleday, 1974, pp. 245–46) and was further detailed in interviews. “After the funeral services,” he wrote, “I went home and remained there for several days. It was a mood I had never known before. Following President Kennedy’s assassination I had been swept along by Lyndon Johnson, but now I had nothing to do and nothing I wanted to do.”
Maheu told the Senate Watergate Committee that Hughes ordered him to hire O’Brien within minutes of Bobby’s death, but that he “had the decency to wait some time” before making contact. Maheu finally reached O’Brien on June 28, 1968.
O’Brien described his job negotiations with Maheu in his book (pp. 255–56) and in interviews. “Suddenly Bobby was dead and I had nowhere to go,” he said. “There’s a cold reality that sets in, and it’s very simple. I had to earn a living.” But after being shown a copy of the memo Hughes wrote the night that Bobby died, O’Brien added, “Now you make me wonder whether I’d forsaken everything to go to work for a bum like Howard Hughes.”
O’Brien discussed his work for Hughes in two four-hour taped interviews, but claimed not to recall many matters detailed in Maheu’s