“He was a great patriot.”
Authenticity Report
As stated in the Author’s Note, this book is based primarily on nearly ten thousand Hughes documents stolen from his Romaine Street headquarters on June 5, 1974.
The authenticity of these documents was conclusively established by proof of their origins—clear evidence that the handwritten and typewritten originals I personally photographed and photocopied were the same documents removed from Hughes’s penthouse in Las Vegas, taken to Romaine, and finally stolen in the break-in.
Their authenticity was further confirmed by seven years of research—extensive cross-checking of the content against information never made public as well as known facts—and finally through a series of handwriting, typewriting, and other tests performed by the nation’s two leading experts, Ordway Hilton, the man who proved Clifford Irving a fraud on behalf of the Hughes organization, and John J. Harris, the man who proved Melvin Dummar’s “Mormon Will” a forgery on behalf of the Hughes estate. Both independently authenticated the Romaine documents.
Provenance: Shortly after Hughes left Las Vegas on Thanksgiving eve 1970, a team of his aides led by Kay Glenn, managing director of Romaine, cleaned out his penthouse suite on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn, taking all the documents from both his bedroom and his aides’ office in the living room.
“I put everything into transfer cases,” Glenn later testified in a sworn deposition. “All of his communications to people, everybody’s communications to him. I removed them to Romaine Street. Everything was taken to Romaine.”
At the time of the June 5, 1974, break-in, the documents were assembled in a second-floor conference room upon the orders of Hughes’s chief counsel, Chester Davis, who according to both FBI and CIA reports said that they were being indexed there for his review in connection with pending litigation. This was confirmed by a secretary in charge of the indexing.
One of the burglars—my source for the documents, the man identified in the Introduction as the Pro—told me in a series of interviews that he removed the documents from the conference room, took them directly to his home, transferred them into steamer trunks, put the trunks into storage for a few months, and then sealed them into a wall for almost two years. No other person saw, touched, or had custody of the documents from the time they were stolen until my source removed them from the wall and showed them to me.
My source had detailed knowledge of the break-in only one of the burglars could have had, information verified in part by confidential police, FBI and CIA records, as well as facts unknown to the authorities confirmed by my own investigation.
Years after I first saw the stolen papers, which had never been made public in any form, xerox copies of several hundred of the same documents were filed in several court cases by the Hughes organization in connection with estate litigation. Obviously, the Hughes organization could not have had photocopies of any of these documents unless they had once had the originals.
Finally, index slips attached to several of the stolen documents were traced back to an IBM typewriter at Romaine used in the indexing under way at the time of the burglary. Typing on the file slips was compared to a known sample from the same typewriter and found to be identical. The known sample was verified by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Handwriting and Typewriting Tests: The two leading authorities on Hughes’s handwriting—Hilton, past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and Harris, past president of the Society of Questioned Document Examiners—both examined memos chosen at random from the material in my possession, and found them authentic.
Hilton examined both originals and photographs of the longhand Hughes memos, comparing them to exemplars of Hughes’s handwriting from three sources—a three-page Hughes memo filed in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, a collection of Hughes memos filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco by the SEC (which Hughes himself identified as his own in a sworn statement), and another group of Hughes memos filed in Federal District Court in Los Angeles by Robert Maheu. All the exemplars were determined to be authentic in judicial proceedings.
“From an examination of each of the documents,” Hilton concluded, “and a comparison of them with the known handwriting of Howard Hughes, I am of the definite opinion that all of the documents in question were written by Hughes.”
Harris also examined both originals and photographs of the memos—more than a hundred pages of Hughes’s handwriting—comparing them to exemplars from two sources: the Maheu lawsuit, and several hundred Hughes memos filed in the “Mormon Will” case in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas. All the exemplars were determined authentic in judicial proceedings.
“I am of the firm opinion that all of the documents I examined were written by Howard Hughes,” declared Harris.
One of the originals examined by both Harris and Hilton was a four-page handwritten memo identical to a photocopy filed in the Maheu case. Both found the xerox to be a copy of the original in my possession.
“I performed a series of tests including a line-by-line comparison of the two documents,” reported Hilton. “I am convinced that the four-page original letter was the source of the photocopy at hand, and not the converse.”
In addition, Hilton examined originals of typewritten documents sent to Hughes—memos dictated by telephone to his Mormons and typed on a machine in his sealed penthouse suite—comparing them to similar memos surrendered under subpoena by the Hughes organization and filed by the SEC in federal court.
Hilton found that both the court exemplars and the documents in my possession were typed on an IBM Selectric, and that identifying characteristics in the typewriting established “a very strong likelihood that each set originated at the same source.” Hilton also found that the manufacture dates of the typing paper—as determined by a code in the watermarks—was in all cases consistent with the dates of the memos.
Finally, Hilton identified the index slips attached to several Hughes memos as coming from a typewriter at Romaine. “A number of these slips were typewritten on the same typewriter as the one used to prepare the known sample,” he concluded in his report, after comparing the originals in my possession to an exemplar verified by the LAPD and filed in court.
In addition, the documents I obtained included verifiable letterhead correspondence, invoices, memos on Summa Corp. stationary, handwritten letters from both insiders and outsiders dealing with Hughes, hotel bills, travel records, and a notarized affidavit from one of Hughes’s personal physicians.
Fact-Checking: Through more than seven years spent writing and researching this book, I checked the information the documents contain by interviewing hundreds of persons with direct knowledge of the events described, reviewing voluminous court files, and obtaining all other available records.
In all instances where corroborating evidence was available, the information in the documents was confirmed by unpublished data as well as known facts. A case in point: dates and places of meetings between Nixon confidant Bebe Rebozo and Hughes representatives chronicled in the memos were corroborated by Senate Watergate Committee records never made public. Other events known only to those present are also accurately described in the memos. For example, a secret meeting between Maheu and Lyndon Johnson recounted in one memo is confirmed in detail by papers on file at the LBJ Library. Those government files also contain a typewritten copy of the letter Hughes sent Johnson, the handwritten original of which is among the documents in my possession. Even Hughes’s accounts of television shows were confirmed by videotapes and/or transcripts I obtained—including the “Dating Game” show that caused him to drop his attempt to buy ABC.