And then he told the tale of the big Nixon bribe.
“Mr. Hughes wanted to own the presidents of the United States,” said Maheu, and in the case of Nixon “certain political obligations had to be met.” Half of the hundred-thousand-dollar contribution was in direct payment for Attorney General Mitchell’s waiver of antitrust laws, the handshake deal he made with Danner that allowed Hughes to continue buying up Las Vegas. “Upon the return of Mr. Danner from Washington, D.C.,” said Maheu, “I made available to Mr. Danner the sum of $50,000 for delivery to Mr. Rebozo.”
When news of Maheu’s sworn revelation reached the Senate Watergate Committee, a team of investigators began to explore the hidden transaction, to push into the political world of Howard Hughes, and to find there the world behind Watergate.
The Hughes connection burst into public view on October 10. For the first time, the hundred-thousand-dollar deal was front-page news across the country, and the senators announced that they planned to subpoena Rebozo, the entire Hughes gang, even Hughes himself, haul them all before the committee and question them live on national television.
Staff investigators had already grilled Rebozo in Key Biscayne. In that and subsequent testimony, the Cuban tried to explain why he had kept the money hidden for three years and then returned it.
“I didn’t want to risk even the remotest embarrassment about any Hughes connection with Nixon,” said Rebozo. “I was convinced that it cost the president the 1960 election and didn’t help him in 1962 in California.”
He admitted that he held on to the cash until the IRS came after him, afraid that any public disclosure might destroy Nixon.
“Here was a possibility that we get another Drew Pearson type series about Hughes money, and it goes on and on. It would break him forever.”
Rebozo’s fears were not unfounded. In the days that followed, Nixon’s desperation to hide the Hughes payoff may have led him to take the final fatal step of his presidency—the Saturday Night Massacre.
It was a showdown that could have been avoided. Nixon was about to strike a deal on his White House tapes. He was moving toward a compromise with his respected attorney general, Elliot Richardson, that would bypass the hated special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, and keep the tapes hidden.
Instead of tapes, Nixon would release transcripts authenticated by Senator John Stennis, who was practically stone deaf. No one expected Cox to accept the deal, but Richardson was ready to go along with it, and Nixon was actually hoping that Cox would resign in protest.
Just as the deal was about to go down, however, the specter of the Hughes money apparently spooked Nixon into scuttling it.
On October 18, the day the final details were to be worked out with Richardson, Rebozo suddenly discovered that Cox had joined the Hughes investigation. A friendly IRS agent told him that the special prosecutor had demanded all files on the Hughes $100,000, and that same morning a banner headline in the Miami Herald declared: “COX BEGINS TAX PROBE OF REBOZO.”
Back at the White House, Nixon flew into a rage. “That fucking Harvard professor is out to get me,” he railed. “This proves it.”
The president told Haig that he would not have Cox poking into Bebe’s private affairs, that the Hughes money was none of his damn business. This was a perfect illustration of how Cox was out to get him, Nixon repeated angrily.[14]
For the moment, at least, it seemed that Nixon was more angry about the Hughes-Rebozo probe than about Cox’s relentless pursuit of the tapes. And his hysteria about Hughes immediately began to undermine the carefully wrought “Stennis Compromise.”
Haig called Richardson later that day. Before they even discussed the tapes, Haig let the attorney general know that Nixon would not stand still for a Hughes probe by Cox. The president, he said, didn’t see what the special prosecutor’s charter had to do with Rebozo or Hughes.
Late that night, Haig and Nixon’s lawyers came to see the president. They told him they could still finesse the special prosecutor—force Cox to resign, yet keep Richardson aboard—if only the president would set aside the question of Cox’s future access to tapes. Just leave that open, urged the lawyers; make the deal.
By nightfall, however, Nixon was in no mood for subtle strategies. He had been on the phone with Rebozo, he was furious about Cox’s intrusion into the Hughes affair, and he wanted above all to get rid of the special prosecutor.
No more tapes, said the president. None, period. And Cox would have to agree to that in writing or be fired.
The next day, as Nixon headed for his inevitable showdown, Rebozo flew into Washington and installed himself at the White House for the duration of the siege.
His presence always made Nixon more combative, especially when they were drinking together, and Nixon now began to spend much of his time alone with Rebozo. Haig did not know what they were saying to each other, but he had often before heard the two complain bitterly about the “unfair and unjust persecution” of Bebe over the Hughes money. Clearly it touched a raw nerve.
In a desperate effort to hide that payoff Nixon had already brought himself to the brink of ruin, and now his obsession with Hughes created an atmosphere in the White House that made compromise impossible.
Two days after he learned of the Hughes probe, on Saturday night, October 20, 1973, Nixon fired the special prosecutor. Attorney General Richardson and his chief deputy both resigned. Everyone called it the Saturday Night Massacre.
Within days twenty-two bills had been introduced in Congress calling for Nixon’s impeachment.
Howard Hughes was also about to be called to justice.
It was not only Watergate that was closing in on him but also a side deal he had made with Nixon, his illegal Air West takeover the president had agreed to approve the same day Hughes agreed to give him the hundred-thousand-dollar payoff.
Early on the morning of December 20, Hughes fled London one jump ahead of the law. He boarded a jet borrowed from the Saudi arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi and flew back to the Bahamas, where two floors were reserved and waiting in a Freeport hotel owned by shipping magnate Daniel K. Ludwig.
Hughes had hardly settled in when he was indicted by a Las Vegas grand jury, accused of criminal fraud and stock manipulation in the Air West deal. He faced a possible twelve years in jail.
A fugitive from justice now, he desperately needed sanctuary, and the Bahamas seemed a safe bet. Just a few weeks before he arrived, the islands had refused to extradite another fugitive American financier, the notorious swindler Robert Vesco.
Hughes was taking no chances, however. He had not forgotten how he had been forced to flee the Bahamas in the wake of the Clifford Irving affair, and he was determined to buy off his new protector, Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling.
“Regarding the Honorable P.M.,” Hughes wrote Chester Davis, “I truly admire his courage and the actions he has been brave enough to take.
“I urge you to tell him this: I would like to be of assistance. The question is: how much assistance does he need and how quickly?”
While Hughes dangled dollars in front of Pindling, Chester Davis was unloading the Nixon hundred grand Rebozo had unloaded on him. After resisting for months, he brought the cash under subpoena to the Senate Watergate Committee, opened his briefcase, and angrily dumped the hundred-dollar bills in front of a startled Senator Sam Ervin.
“Here’s the goddamn money,” shouted Davis. “Take it, burn it, do whatever you damn please with it!”
14
In fact, Cox had no personal involvement with the Hughes-Rebozo probe. He told his staff not to discuss