Of the four Nevada state senators who voted to kill the fair-housing bill, at least two received Hughes money from the Silver Slipper slush fund—James Slattery got $2,500 and James Gibson got $1,500. In a memo to Hughes, Maheu claimed a connection: “I do not claim one iota of credit for the foresight you had when you instructed me to make political contributions to ‘worthy’ public servants…. When I mentioned that Bell had been successful in killing the fair housing bill, please believe me that I had no intent to delete any of the credit which is due to your foresight. Without ‘our friends’ we would not have had a prayer.”
Bell, who described himself as a close personal friend of Laxalt’s, refused in an interview to comment on Maheu’s report that Laxalt “delivered to Tom the critical vote which enabled Bell to kill it [the fair-housing bill] in committee.” As mentioned earlier, Laxalt himself refused repeated requests for an interview.
My account of the October 1969 Las Vegas race riot was drawn from local and national press reports.
Sammy Davis, Jr., could not be reached for comment on Maheu’s claim that he promised Hughes “no damage would ever come to you from ‘his people.’”
6 Armageddon
The scene of Hughes discovering the impending bomb blast was recounted by an aide who was on duty in the next room. “I had seen the headline, and was watching to see how he would react,” said the Mormon. “We were all waiting for the explosion—not from the bomb, but from the boss.”
The AEC announcement of the “Boxcar” blast is quoted from local press reports. Emphasis was added to the final lines to reflect Hughes’s reaction to the warning that the impact would be greater on “upper stories of high buildings.”
In interviews two of the Mormons who were in the penthouse during a major nuclear test described the impact, and in memos to Hughes several of the aides filed after-action reports.
There is now no doubt that Hughes was right about the dangers of nuclear testing. A presidential panel reported in November 1968 that megaton-level underground blasts might trigger major earthquakes (see chapter 8, this page), and in December 1970 a huge radioactive leak from an underground test forced the AEC to admit that at least sixteen other blasts had spewed radiation beyond the test site, and that the Nevada Test Site itself was “unfit for public use for the forseeable future” due to extensive ground contamination.
Moreover, the forced release of suppressed government records recently revealed that as early as 1953 the AEC knew that above-ground nuclear tests exposed large parts of Nevada and Utah to lethal fall-out, yet continued the tests for ten years and publicly claimed they were entirely safe. In May 1984, in the first of several hundred lawsuits filed on behalf of 375 victims of the test program, a federal judge ruled that the fall-out caused ten cancer deaths.
Hughes was even right about the sheep. Not only had the Utah flock been killed by a March 1968 biological weapons test, but fifteen years earlier, in 1953, more than four thousand Nevada sheep died downwind of the nuclear test site, having absorbed a thousand times the radiation thought safe for humans. It was the first clear evidence of the danger, but the government lied, claimed the sheep had died of natural causes, and continued the blasts.
Accounts of the “Boxcar” operation, of all the other nuclear tests, and of the Nevada Test Site are based on AEC documents, government films of the explosions, interviews with AEC officials, and contemporaneous press reports.
The account of the AEC’s fears about Hughes and his impact on the test program is based on records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The government’s concern about Hughes was so great that his ban-the-bomb campaign generated almost a thousand AEC reports during his four years in Las Vegas.
Hughes’s call to Laxalt and the governor’s call to the AEC demanding that the tests be moved to Alaska are recounted in AEC reports dated February 8 and 9, 1968. AEC records reveal that Laxalt intervened on Hughes’s behalf on at least two other occasions, June 13, 1967, and January 11, 1969.
Senator Gravel’s suggestion that the nuclear tests be moved to Alaska is noted in an April 15, 1969, AEC report, as is his appearance on KLAS-TV. In an interview, Gravel admitted that Hughes flew him to Las Vegas and that he had a complimentary suite at a Hughes hotel; while he denied receiving Hughes money, he said he did expect a campaign contribution.
The subpoena threat came from Congressman Craig Hosmer, a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy who later became a lobbyist for the nuclear power industry. Maheu said he killed the subpoena through committee chairman Senator Chet Hollifield: “You will be happy to know that we have been in touch with Holifield…. He guarantees that whatever may happen in the fight with the AEC such a subpoena will definitely not be forthcoming.”
In the final days before the “Boxcar” blast, Hughes sent three ambassadors to Washington. Gillis Long, at the time a former congressman from Louisiana, now chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, lobbied the AEC. Grant Sawyer, former governor of Nevada, met with Vice-President Humphrey. Lloyd Hand, an intimate of Johnson’s who had recently resigned as White House chief of protocol, tried to get in to see the president. Ultimately Humphrey arranged for Sawyer to see Johnson instead.
7 Mr. President
The scene of Hughes writing his letter to Johnson was described by an aide who was present and also established by Hughes’s own memos. Attorney Finney hand-delivered a copy of the letter to White House special counsel Larry Temple, who forwarded it to National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, who sent it to the president at 7:50 P.M. on April 25, 1968, according to documents on file at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.
The president’s daily diary shows that White House Chief of Staff Marvin Watson was in the Oval Office when Johnson received the letter. Watson claimed in an interview not to recall the incident. But another member of the White House staff said Watson that same day told him Johnson’s reaction: “Who the fuck does Howard Hughes think he is?!” A third aide, Devier Pierson, recalls the president saying something similar to him: “Who the hell does Howard Hughes think he is that he can dictate nuclear policy?”
AEC Chairman Seaborg confirmed in an interview that Johnson withheld approval of the bomb test until the last minute, and his account is verified by documents at the LBJ Library. “I remember that the question of whether we should go ahead with ‘Boxcar’ was under consideration up to the very end,” said Seaborg. “I don’t remember President Johnson, in holding the test in abeyance, relating it specifically to Hughes, but I do recall that the president was more than a bit concerned by the Hughes protest, because of the potential political impact of Hughes. He talked to me about it at least two or three times.”
Several White House aides recalled Johnson showing them Hughes’s letter. Special Counsel Pierson said: “There was almost a sovereign-to-sovereign-like quality to the exchange. I think Johnson viewed it as an irritation, and made some caustic comment, but he was also intrigued, fascinated by the direct approach that Hughes had made. And he certainly got very involved in handling it, and stayed involved.” White House speech writer Harry McPherson said the president told him Hughes had also telephoned the Oval Office: “Johnson told me that Hughes himself had called, and had gotten his secretary on the line and asked to speak to Johnson. When told that the president was not available he dictated very rapidly a rather long memorandum. And I recall Johnson saying he was quite impressed by the logical and forceful case that Hughes had made.” By the time LBJ told the story to another White House aide a few days later, he claimed to have actually talked directly to Hughes and gave a detailed account of the conversation. However, White House files and Hughes’s own memos and interviews with his aides make it clear that the billionaire never called or talked to Johnson.