The account of the nerve gas dumping was drawn from press reports, confirmed by Defense Department records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. These records also show that one of the options presented to the president was exploding the gas at the Nevada Test Site.
In addition to contacting Rebozo through Danner, Maheu also attempted to halt the gas through O’Brien’s associate Claude DeSautels. “Maheu called at seven in the morning, which was four or five A.M. in Las Vegas,” recalled DeSautels in an interview. “I said, ‘My God, what are you doing up at this hour?’ and he said, The old man saw the eleven o’clock news last night and saw the trains and told me to stop them.’ And I said, ‘Bob! How can I stop the train?’ I knew the president had approved it, the secretary of defense had ordered it, and the surgeon general had testified that it was safe. And Maheu said, ‘Well, stop it!’ So I called some people at the Pentagon, and I called Maheu back and said, ‘There’s no way to stop those trains, they’re already rolling.’ And Maheu said, ‘I knew you couldn’t stop it, but now at least I have something to tell the old man.’”
The account of Danner’s delivery to Rebozo of the second $50,000 from Hughes on July 3, 1970, was based on Danner’s sworn testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee and confirmed by Rebozo’s own Senate testimony. “When I delivered the money to him,” said Danner, “he slid it out of the large manila envelope and counted the bundles, and thanked me. The delivery made at San Clemente was in his room in the presidential compound. He laid the bundles out on the bed and counted them, he put them back in the envelope and put them in his handbag…. He took me into the president’s office and the three of us sat there and chatted for possibly ten or fifteen minutes.”
Rebozo testified that he put the $50,000 in his safe-deposit box along with a letter instructing that it be turned over to the finance chairman of the 1972 campaign, but he also testified that he later destroyed that letter and held on to the money himself until the IRS came after him in 1973.
Danner’s daily diary submitted to the Senate Watergate Committee confirms that he contacted Rebozo through the White House on August 8, 1970, the day after Hughes discovered the nerve gas. “I relayed to him Hughes’s fears that this dumping might lead to catastrophic results,” testified Danner.
Defense Department and AEC records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act confirm that Nixon rejected the option of exploding the nerve gas in Nevada and approved the alternative of dumping it in the Atlantic near the Bahamas.
Bennett recounted Gay’s contacting him and his own contact with Colson in an interview with staff investigators of the Senate Watergate Committee. Davis’s role in the injunction through his legal associate Lea is revealed in memos both Maheu and the Mormons sent Hughes, which also establish his contact with Governor Kirk. The account of court proceedings was drawn from press reports.
Gate logs maintained by the Marine Corps confirm that Rebozo was at Camp David with Nixon the weekend of August 15–16, 1970, as Maheu told Hughes.
The account of the Glomar Explorer operation is based on interviews with former CIA director Colby, then deputy secretary of defense David Packard, two confidential sources at the CIA directly involved, Hughes Tool Company Vice-President Raymond Holliday, and a staff investigator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who reviewed CIA records of the operation. In addition, a copy of the contract between the CIA and the Hughes Tool Company signed by Holliday on November 13, 1970, shows that the first Glomar proposal was sent to Holliday in August 1970, followed by a formal proposal for the “cover aspect of the project” on November 6, 1970.
Both Colby and the Senate investigator confirmed that the CIA considered Maheu a “bad risk” and kept him out of the Glomar dealings. Colby conceded that the CIA had no information of Hughes’s actual condition, and CIA records indicate that the Agency knew only that Hughes was reclusive.
While it has been suggested in recent accounts that Hughes himself neither knew of nor approved the CIA cover arrangement, and that he actually believed the Glomar was engaged in deep-sea mining, Holliday said in an interview that he personally briefed Hughes by telephone and later sent him “a long, detailed memorandum.”
“I was the only one in the company who discussed it with him,” said Holliday. “But Chester Davis and Bill Gay both knew he was aware of it, and some of his aides were also aware of it. I discussed it with him extremely thoroughly, I told him the true mission was the submarine-raising, which is what the CIA told me, and Hughes approved our involvement long before the contract was signed.” Holliday’s account is confirmed by the fact that Davis later sent Hughes a memo referring to the Glomar’s “primary mission” and by the fact that a copy of the Glomar contract was among the documents found in his Acapulco penthouse after he died.
Hughes’s response to the CIA through Holliday was quoted by Holliday in an interview.
While it is impossible to determine how direct a role the Glomar deal played in Maheu’s ouster, Maheu himself later suggested that his refusal to make a CIA alliance for Hughes was a factor, and it is noteworthy that Hughes first mentioned the proxy that would strip Maheu of his power shortly after Holliday first contacted him about the Glomar in August 1970, and that Hughes actually signed the proxy on November 14, 1970, one day after Holliday signed the Glomar contract.
Intertel’s Peloquin detailed his meetings with Davis and Gay in sworn depositions.
The Mormon who retrieved Hughes’s memos from Maheu later recounted the mission in a report to Hughes: “I purposely did not call Bob to tell him I was coming until I was ready to leave (I was there in less than a minute), so he would not have time to plan any other disposition of the papers. He seemed to be in an unhappy mood, and I sensed that he did not like the implication of this action. He asked me the reason behind this, and I gave him some rather vague answer to the effect that you did not want the possibility of your messages being mislaid.”
The final breach between Hughes and Maheu was described by Maheu in a series of interviews and in court testimony, and was also recounted by several of the Mormons. One of the aides later testified in a deposition that “during the latter portion of 1970, Gay directed myself and the other aides to hold messages from Maheu to Mr. Hughes; as a result, messages from Maheu piled up without being delivered to Mr. Hughes. At about the same time, I also observed numerous messages from the other aides criticizing Maheu and suggesting that he was disloyal to Mr. Hughes.”
Hughes’s medical condition just before his departure was described by his physician, Dr. Harold Feikes, in a deposition, and was further detailed in an interview. “I saw Hughes within a few weeks of his leaving Las Vegas,” said Feikes. “His primary problem was pneumonia. He was only mildly ill, and not really anemic. His blood count was close to normal. But he wanted more transfusions.” Hughes’s demand for the blood was quoted by Feikes.
Maheu sent Davis a telegram on November 6, 1970, firing him from the TWA case. The Hughes Tool Company directors revoked Maheu’s authority over the TWA case on November 12, 1970.
One of the Mormons who was present when Hughes signed the proxy ousting Maheu later described the scene in court testimony.