Meier, now known to have stolen millions from Hughes, even claimed secret meetings with the president himself. “An analysis of expense vouchers submitted by Meier to Hughes Tool Company,” one IRS report noted, “shows that Meier and his wife accompanied by Donald Nixon and his wife traveled to Washington for consultation with president-elect Richard Nixon on November 21, 1968.”
Ehrlichman kept Nixon informed as the IRS probe zeroed in on the White House. On one such occasion, the president told his domestic-affairs chief the “true story” of the old Hughes “loan” scandal. Nixon, who had personally arranged that entire transaction, now said he had nothing whatever to do with it. He was never even aware that the money had come from Hughes. All he ever knew was that his mother had borrowed some money for his brother from an accountant.
Ehrlichman understood. The president was giving him the official line, rehearsing it, getting ready for the scandal that had cost him the 1960 election to resurface.
Nixon was clearly upset. He railed on and on about his “stupid brother” getting involved all over again with Hughes. Never once did he mention his own $100,000. But Nixon now knew that Rebozo had already been drawn into the IRS investigation. And he had to wonder how long it would be before the revenue agents followed Jack Anderson’s lead and opened up Bebe’s little tin box.
But it was not Bebe or his brother, not Anderson or the IRS, not Maheu or Bennett or Greenspun who triggered the final series of events that led to Nixon’s downfall.
It was Clifford Irving.
Off in Ibiza, the expatriate novelist had been following the lurid story of the struggle for control of the secret Hughes empire. He decided that the billionaire was either dead or disabled—certainly in no shape to make a public appearance—and that gave him an idea. He would concoct his own epic and present it to the world as the autobiography of Howard Hughes.
The coup was announced December 7, 1971. McGraw-Hill said it would soon publish Hughes’s personal memoirs, his true life story as told to Clifford Irving.
It became an immediate worldwide sensation. The Hughes organization branded the book a hoax, but with the billionaire himself unseen and silent, that only added to the hoopla. And nowhere did the book arouse more intense interest than at the White House.
Haldeman told Colson and Dean to find out what was in Irving’s manuscript. Bennett soon made contact, once more pushing a criminal investigation of Maheu, who he was sure had put Irving up to it, supplied inside information on Hughes, and orchestrated the entire caper.
“Is the book hard on Nixon?” asked Dean. “Yes,” replied Bennett, “very hard on Nixon.”
Haldeman started getting FBI reports on the Irving affair directly from J. Edgar Hoover, and finally the White House managed to obtain a copy of the still secret manuscript from a source at McGraw-Hill.
It came as quite a shock. Irving claimed that Hughes had passed $400,000 to Nixon when the latter was vice-president, in return for fixing the TWA case. It was an inspired guess, the $400,000 figure probably not far off the mark.[11] To Nixon it must have looked as if Irving had the real story, and it hardly mattered whether he had it from Maheu or Hughes.
And the imaginative Irving had just begun. Next came his tale of the big double-cross. It was Hughes himself who had sabotaged Nixon in 1960. Angry that Nixon had not come through on TWA, the disgruntled recluse had intentionally leaked the “loan scandal” story to columnist Drew Pearson.
“Nobody was raising a hand to help me,” Irving quoted Hughes as saying. “So I leaked the details to Drew Pearson. I got someone to whisper it into Mr. Pearson’s ear, where to look. Now whether it actually turned the tide of the election or not, I don’t know.”
And there sat Richard Nixon, reading that in the Oval Office—having just bombed his benefactor in Las Vegas and gassed him in the Bahamas—and now holding another $100,000 in secret cash from Howard Hughes.
Friday, January 7, 1972. A day like any other day in the Paradise Island penthouse. Except that on this day Howard Hughes would break more than fifteen years of public silence and speak to the world.
He had been awake since 11:30 the night before, not preparing for his big debut, but sitting in his Barcalounger and watching a spy movie, Funeral in Berlin. He watched it twice in a row, meanwhile picking at a piece of chicken, interrupting his meal and his movie for frequent but futile trips to the bathroom.
At 12:45 P.M., the double feature finally over, Hughes reached down to his black metal box, pulled out a drug bottle, and counted his codeine tablets. He had fifty left. He took eight of the precious white pills, dissolved them in pure bottled spring water, and shot the big fix into his long spindly arm.
He then eased back into his lounge chair, feeling again that wonderful warm rush, and called for a third showing of Funeral in Berlin.
It was 6:45 P.M. when the hopped-up recluse finally reached for his telephone and prepared to meet the press. A month had passed since Clifford Irving made him the unseen center of global attention, and now the mystery man himself was about to speak. Three thousand miles away, at the other end of the line, seven carefully selected reporters waited expectantly in a Hollywood hotel.
The disembodied voice quickly disposed of Irving: “I don’t know him. I never saw him. I never even heard of him until a matter of a few days ago when this thing first came to my attention.”
A few days ago? Where had he been? And by now there was another big question. Was Hughes still alive, did the phantom exist, or was this voice on the phone some imposter?
Most of the press conference was devoted to “identification questions.” At first hesitant, ill at ease, Hughes soon began to enjoy the big quiz game. Off in his isolation booth, not quite sure what these reporters were after, asking all these arcane questions about his past exploits, Hughes nonetheless didn’t wish to be stumped. He did very well on the airplane questions, but missed a lot of easy ones about people.
Sitting there naked, with his hair halfway down his back, and his fingernails protruding, Hughes casually dismissed tales of his bizarre appearance.
“I keep in fair shape,” he replied when asked about his physical condition, and then launched into a lengthy discussion of his daily manicures. “I have always kept my fingernails at a reasonable length,” he said. “I take care of them the same way I always have, the same way I did when I went around the world and at the time of the flight of the flying boat. I cut them with clippers, not with scissors and a nail file the way some people do.”
To the press he promised photos, but when his aides later suggested he actually do it—“you should make every effort to get your hair and nails attended to as soon as possible, and if you can bring yourself to do it, have a photograph taken”—Hughes recoiled in horror.
“This is not a beauty contest,” he scribbled. “I am only required to demonstrate that I am alive and competent.”
But at the press conference, only once did Hughes display any real anger. It was directed not at Clifford Irving, but Robert Maheu. Asked why he had fired his regent, Hughes flew into a rage. “Because he’s a no-good, dishonest son of a bitch, and he stole me blind,” he shouted. “The money’s gone, and he’s got it.”
Almost in passing, toward the end of the three-hour interview, there was a question about his reported dealings with Nixon and Rebozo.
11
Counting the $205,000 “loaned” to Donald, the cost of Maheu’s covert action to crush the “Dump Nixon” movement in 1956, and unreported campaign contributions, including the “all-out support” Hughes secretly gave Nixon in 1960, Irving’s claim of $400,000 was probably just about right. And nobody knew about most of that money. Except Hughes.