Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [249]
The account of the Glomar Explorer operation is based on interviews with former CIA director Colby, then deputy secretary of defense David Packard, two confidential sources at the CIA directly involved, Hughes Tool Company Vice-President Raymond Holliday, and a staff investigator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who reviewed CIA records of the operation. In addition, a copy of the contract between the CIA and the Hughes Tool Company signed by Holliday on November 13, 1970, shows that the first Glomar proposal was sent to Holliday in August 1970, followed by a formal proposal for the “cover aspect of the project” on November 6, 1970.
Both Colby and the Senate investigator confirmed that the CIA considered Maheu a “bad risk” and kept him out of the Glomar dealings. Colby conceded that the CIA had no information of Hughes’s actual condition, and CIA records indicate that the Agency knew only that Hughes was reclusive.
While it has been suggested in recent accounts that Hughes himself neither knew of nor approved the CIA cover arrangement, and that he actually believed the Glomar was engaged in deep-sea mining, Holliday said in an interview that he personally briefed Hughes by telephone and later sent him “a long, detailed memorandum.”
“I was the only one in the company who discussed it with him,” said Holliday. “But Chester Davis and Bill Gay both knew he was aware of it, and some of his aides were also aware of it. I discussed it with him extremely thoroughly, I told him the true mission was the submarine-raising, which is what the CIA told me, and Hughes approved our involvement long before the contract was signed.” Holliday’s account is confirmed by the fact that Davis later sent Hughes a memo referring to the Glomar’s “primary mission” and by the fact that a copy of the Glomar contract was among the documents found in his Acapulco penthouse after he died.
Hughes’s response to the CIA through Holliday was quoted by Holliday in an interview.
While it is impossible to determine how direct a role the Glomar deal played in Maheu’s ouster, Maheu himself later suggested that his refusal to make a CIA alliance for Hughes was a factor, and it is noteworthy that Hughes first mentioned the proxy that would strip Maheu of his power shortly after Holliday first contacted him about the Glomar in August 1970, and that Hughes actually signed the proxy on November 14, 1970, one day after Holliday signed the Glomar contract.
Intertel’s Peloquin detailed his meetings with Davis and Gay in sworn depositions.
The Mormon who retrieved Hughes’s memos from Maheu later recounted the mission in a report to Hughes: “I purposely did not call Bob to tell him I was coming until I was ready to leave (I was there in less than a minute), so he would not have time to plan any other disposition of the papers. He seemed to be in an unhappy mood, and I sensed that he did not like the implication of this action. He asked me the reason behind this, and I gave him some rather vague answer to the effect that you did not want the possibility of your messages being mislaid.”
The final breach between Hughes and Maheu was described by Maheu in a series of interviews and in court testimony, and was also recounted by several of the Mormons. One of the aides later testified in a deposition that “during the latter portion of 1970, Gay directed myself and the other aides to hold messages from Maheu to Mr. Hughes; as a result, messages from Maheu piled up without being delivered to Mr. Hughes. At about the same time, I also observed numerous messages from the other aides criticizing Maheu and suggesting that he was disloyal to Mr. Hughes.”
Hughes’s medical condition just before his departure was described by his physician, Dr. Harold Feikes, in a deposition, and was further detailed in an interview. “I saw Hughes within a few weeks of his leaving Las Vegas,” said Feikes. “His primary problem was pneumonia. He was only mildly ill, and not