The account of the president’s general mental state at the time was drawn from Doris Kearns’s Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (Signet, 1977, pp. 324–40 and 358), and was confirmed by several White House aides. Johnson’s activities and mood on the day he received Hughes’s letter were recalled by aides and detailed by his daily diary and other White House documents. His remark about King Olav was quoted by Merle Miller, Lyndon (G. P. Putnam, 1980, p. 552).
Noah Dietrich recalled Hughes’s early financial support of Johnson in a series of interviews and also described LBJ’s visits to the Hughes Tool Company. “I dealt directly with him; he was a close personal friend of mine,” said Dietrich. “He was in my office many times, way back when he was a young upstart congressman. Johnson asked for the billboards, but I think the money—five thousand dollars a year—was on Hughes’s initiative. He wanted to buy political influence.” Dietrich also said that Hughes may have met with Johnson in a Los Angeles hotel room but could not recall the details. “He was running for some office and we gave him some financial support, but I’m not absolutely sure Howard saw him.”
A Hughes lawyer told an associate he handled a cash contribution to Johnson in 1960, but claimed that he did not recall the amount. The attorney said that LBJ regularly received funds from Hughes. Maheu stated in a deposition that he channeled Hughes money to candidates Johnson designated.
Sawyer’s meeting with the president is confirmed by files at the LBJ Library. The call to Watson about Hughes’s offer to back Humphrey in return for blocking the bomb test is transcribed in a memo dated April 24, 1968. Johnson’s mobilization of his White House staff to deal with Hughes is detailed in numerous documents and was confirmed in interviews with Johnson’s aides. The Rostow and Seaborg reports were obtained from the LBJ Library.
Press aide Tom Johnson recalled the president showing him Hughes’s letter late on the night before the blast. “So many things were coming in to the president, I can’t imagine how many pieces of paper a day, but certainly rarely a day without a hundred or two hundred, but that one really struck the president because of the name on it, Howard Hughes. That set it apart from everything else.”
Hughes’s sleepless vigil is recounted in his own memos and was also recalled by two of his Mormons.
Clark Clifford confirmed in an interview that Hughes personally retained him in 1950. Hughes was mistaken in writing that Clifford had been under retainer for twenty-five years. Clifford denied that he was personally involved in blocking the helicopter probe and lobbying the tax law but admitted that his law firm did assist Hughes on both matters.
Johnson awoke at nine A.M. E.S.T. on April 26 to find the report from Hornig waiting; it was marked “sent for delivery to the president’s bedroom at 8:50 A.M.” and was immediately handed to Johnson by his personal aide Jim Jones.
Hughes’s reaction to the blast was described by an aide who was present. The impact of the explosion in the world beyond was detailed in AEC records and press reports.
Johnson’s letter to Hughes was obtained from the LBJ Library. Files there show that the president had Seaborg draft a reply, then ordered at least three rewrites by his staff, and had the final version reviewed by national security advisor Rostow. Before sending it to Hughes, Johnson had an aide show the letter to Hughes’s lawyer Finney to get his okay.
Maheu’s phone conversations with Hughes just before his meeting with Johnson were recounted by Maheu in a sworn deposition. The president’s March 1967 discovery of the Castro plot was described by one of his aides, recounted in 1975 reports of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and detailed by a staff investigator of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. An April 4, 1967, FBI report by the Bureau’s White House liaison Cartha DeLoach stated: “Marvin Watson called me late last night and stated that the president had told him that he was now convinced that there was a plot in connection with the [Kennedy] assassination. Watson stated the president felt that CIA had had something to do with this plot. Watson requested any further information we could furnish in this connection. I reminded Watson that the director had sent over to the White House some weeks back all the information in our possession in connection with CIA’s attempts to use former agent Robert Maheu in contacts with Sam Giancana and other hoodlums, relative to fostering a plot to assassinate Castro.” Among the reports Hoover had sent Johnson was one that described Maheu as a “shady character” whose detective agency “has business dealings with a number of foreign governments and has frequently been engaged in wiretapping,” and the director also charged that Maheu’s “ethics and trustworthiness have been ‘questionable.’”
Hughes’s order of a million-dollar bribe was described by Maheu in a sworn deposition.
Maheu’s visit to the LBJ Ranch was recounted in a memo to Hughes, described by two White House aides who were present, and detailed in the president’s daily diary.
White House Appointments Secretary Jim Jones said in an interview that Johnson told him Maheu had offered him money, and that the president had told Maheu “to stick it up his ass.” Press aide Tom Johnson, who was also at the ranch that day, said that the president told him Maheu had asked him to halt the bomb tests, and that he later heard from other members of the White House staff that Maheu had offered a donation to the LBJ Library, which the president angrily refused.
Arthur Krim refused an interview request but in a letter confirmed that Johnson asked him to arrange the Hughes library donation and that Krim met with Maheu in Las Vegas in an attempt to get it.
Maheu reported in an interview Hughes’s refusal to make the contribution.
8 Poor Hubert
The account of Humphrey’s speech was drawn from press reports and television videotapes. On Election Day 1968, Humphrey vividly described his chronic lack of campaign funds in his diary: “I’ve climbed that damn ladder of politics, and every step has been rough. I wonder what it would have been like with money enough. That top rung is never going to be mine.” The quote is from Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man (Doubleday, 1976, p. 4), an autobiography in which he also revealed his haunting memories of his 1960 loss to JFK (p. 207).
Humphrey received $91,691 in illegal corporate funds from the Associated Milk Producers, Inc., in 1968, according to a Senate Watergate Committee report. Dwayne Andreas was indicted in 1973 by the Watergate special prosecutor for giving Humphrey’s 1968 campaign an illegal corporate “loan” of $100,000.
In the wake of these Watergate revelations, Humphrey told the New York Times (October 13, 1974): “Campaign financing is a curse. It’s the most demeaning, disgusting, disenchanting, debilitating experience of a politician’s life. I just can’t tell you how much I hate it. But when you are desperate, there are things you just have to do.”
Humphrey lost to Nixon in 1968 by less than 500,000 votes. He spent about $5 million on the race, Nixon at least $20 million.
Humphrey’s arrangement of the Sawyer-Johnson meeting was recounted by Maheu in a report to Hughes and confirmed by files at the LBJ Library. His arrangement of the Sawyer-AEC meeting is reported in an AEC memo dated April 24, 1968. His earlier attempts to plead Hughes’s case with Johnson were described by White House Chief of Staff Watson in an interview.