Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [78]
“It is beginning to look as if the name of the game is ‘Justice Dept. Anti-Trust Pressure,’ ” Hughes fumed. “Without this factor, I think I know fairly well what to do. However, I dont care for the Justice Dept. questionaire. If the ABC affair is not only going to cost me what everyone seems to think is a fair price, but, in addition, is going to cost me submission to this program of harrassment from the Justice Dept., I am afraid I must bow out.”
Yet even as he prepared to throw in the towel, Hughes was also deploying a growing platoon of lawyers, fixers, and bagmen. He considered engaging former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg to handle future legal conflicts in New York and, to deal with the antitrust threat, summoned from Austin, Texas, the president’s own attorney—Johnson intimate Jake Jacobsen, a former White House adviser later to gain notoriety in the Watergate milk-fund scandal.
Now back in fighting trim, Hughes decided there was, perhaps, a solution after all to the “Justice Dept. vendetta.” It was the kind of solution that had worked many times in the past.
“Bob,” he wrote, “I think it is imperative that we make an alliance with Humphries, the White House, Nixon, or McCarthy and agree to supply all-out unlimited support in return for taking this Justice Dept. off my back but now!”
As he swung into the final days of his two-week crusade, Hughes devised a new array of stratagems to meet the stubborn obstacles that threatened to deprive him of his television network. One moment he proposed friendly negotiations with ABC president Leonard Goldenson, the next he threatened to dump all the stock he acquired and force a market collapse.
At one point he considered selling his ABC shares to rival Texas financier James J. Ling, if only as a ploy to convince network management he was the lesser of two evils:
“It seems to me the only hope lies in the remote possibility of persuading Goldenson that he really wont gain anything if he forces me, through threats of personal appearances, etc., to sell out to a Ling or somebody equally tough.
“In fact, if I were Goldenson, I would a damn sight rather cope with yours truly, who wants no part of the glamour that goes with the job—in fact does not really want the job at all—only wants a quiet working arrangement. I would a damned sight rather cope with a Hughes where I could always have a certain advantage in Hughes’ desire not to be forced into public, than I would to cope with a Ling, or a dozen other younger, healthier, more active men who dont shun the spotlite at all—maybe even like it.”
But with ABC still unexpectedly intransigent, the Justice threat unresolved, the FCC outcome uncertain, and yet another day in court ahead, Hughes wavered. Several times he decided to abandon the quest and plotted his extrication quite as feverishly as he had planned his coup. Then he would take heart all over again and scrawl new orders on his legal pad.
By Sunday, July 14, with only hours left before he would have to accept or reject the stock due the next day, Hughes remained mercurial. As Mormons working double-time scurried between typewriter and telephone, the billionaire sent a blizzard of contradictory memos from his penthouse command post, now resigned to defeat, then ready to “collar” the president of the United States. Yes, he would send either top Washington lawyer Tom Finney, a partner in Clark Clifford’s firm, or better yet Larry O’Brien, right into the Oval Office.
“It seems to me, Bob, there is a comparatively easy way to get an immediate answer to the network decision,” he wrote with renewed confidence. “I think such an answer should be obtainable by Mr. O’Brien or Mr. Finney marching in and collaring Johnson or Humphries and saying: ‘Look, my friend, my client Mr. Hughes has initiated the machinery to acquire control of ABC. He has ridden out the first very controversial weeks and is in pretty good shape. He had no idea that there would be as much resistance from Mr. Goldenson. He thought that his interest in ABC would be greeted with cordiallity.…
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