Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [243]
The Nixon quote regarding Hughes and O’Brien is from volume 2 of his memoirs (RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Warner, 1978, p. 172).
10 Nixon: The Payoff
Dr. Harold Feikes, a Las Vegas heart specialist who administered the transfusions, described Hughes’s medical condition in a sworn deposition and in two interviews. Feikes said he first saw Hughes early in November 1968 and memos sent to Hughes by his aides establish that it was on Election Day. One of the Mormons recalled Hughes watching TV reports of the election after receiving his transfusion.
“His life was certainly in danger,” said Feikes. “He was anemic enough to be on the verge of congestive heart failure. But even though he was critically ill, he had a very keen understanding of anemia and transfusions. He chose who he was going to take blood from very carefully. His aides said Hughes knew everything about the donors—what they ate, who they slept with, etc., and he only wanted blood from Mormons.”
The description of Nixon’s election watch was drawn from interviews with his aides, from his memoirs, and from Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1968 (Pocket Books, 1970, pp. 484–89). Garment’s quote is also from White (p. 484).
Noah Dietrich confirmed in a series of interviews that Hughes backed Nixon in every race since his first run for Congress in 1946, as did an associate of Hughes’s political lawyer Frank Waters, who handled most of the contributions until 1960. Waters refused comment. Maheu described in court testimony the 1956 covert operation to save Nixon.
Nixon refused two interview requests submitted in writing.
The known Hughes money to Nixon and his family includes the “loan” of $205,000 to brother Donald in 1956 (which was never repaid); $50,000 contributed to the Nixon campaign in 1968; $100,000 in cash secretly passed to Rebozo in 1969 and 1970; and $150,000 to the Nixon campaign in 1972. How much Hughes contributed to Nixon’s other campaigns remains unknown, including the “all-out support” Hughes himself said he gave Nixon in 1960.
The “loan” of $205,000 was detailed by Noah Dietrich in several interviews, and in his book Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes (Fawcett, 1976, pp. 282–87). According to Dietrich, Waters told him that Nixon personally called to request the money—“I’ve been talking to Nixon. His brother Donald is having financial difficulties. The vice-president would like us to help him.”—and that Hughes personally approved the transaction. An associate of Waters confirmed Dietrich’s account.
Nixon later told both his chief of staff, Haldeman, and his confidant Rebozo that the Hughes loan scandal caused his defeats in 1960 and 1962, according to Rebozo’s Senate Watergate Committee testimony and Haldeman in both interviews and his book The Ends of Power (Times Books, 1978, p. 20). Bobby Kennedy also called the Hughes scandal a “decisive factor” in the 1960 election, according to a November 13, 1960, New York Times report. Nixon’s complaints about media coverage of the scandal are quoted from his memoirs, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Warner, 1978, vol. 1, pp. 300–301).
Danner recounted the 1968 Nixon-Rebozo request for Hughes money in sworn testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. Maheu testified that Hughes approved the hundred-thousand-dollar contribution in a telephone conversation and that he withdrew $50,000 from Hughes’s personal bank account on September 9, 1968, arranging to pick up the balance at a later date. Nadine Henley, Hughes’s personal secretary, confirmed Maheu’s account.
The meeting between Danner, Rebozo, and Morgan at Duke Zeibert’s took place on September 11, according