“And if that subpeona is ever issued, all hell will not help me then. If we attempt to have the subpeona withdrawn in a red-hot controversy like this, I will lose every shred of stature that I may possess in this country, and everybody will charge that I bought the subpeona off.
“You are not the one who may be dragged out of bed and subjected to embarrassment, public disfavor, and disparagement.
“I want something done about this.”
Maheu killed the subpoena threat in Washington, but he could do nothing to halt the relentless countdown in Nevada.
As his battle against the bomb entered its final days, the frantic recluse, sleepless in his penthouse bunker, wavered between fevered extremes, one moment gripped by visions of doom, the next worried that the explosion would prove anticlimactic.
“I am positive this blast is not going to leave any visible damage whatever,” he fretted. “The dam is not going to break, and the movement of ground and buildings is bound to be less than people expect after all of the dire predictions we have been making.
“I can just see the newspaper interviews after the blast: ‘Why, I hardly noticed it at all!’ ‘I stood there waiting for the earth to come to an end, and all of a sudden it was all over. I hardly felt it at all!’
“Then they will have pictures of the dam with a caption: ‘The same old dam!’ ‘No cracks at all! Not even one little crack!’”
Those fools, those blind fools. The bombing would, of course, be awful. Every bit as horrible as Hughes had ever dreamed. It was just that it might not have the visible effects ordinary people could see, only the hidden impact apparent to him alone.
“I am afraid our stock is going to fall after that blast,” wrote Hughes, now distraught over the anticipated dud. “We are going to look like the old lady alarmists of all time.”
Precisely. It was a question of potency. Hughes had come to identify so completely with his feared rival, the bomb, that he could now no more accept a fizzle than a holocaust. If he failed to block the impending blast, not only would his fears be ridiculed—even as he suffered its unseen horrors—but his own invisible power would be deemed as feeble as the bomb’s.
“If the explosion goes ahead, we will simply be chalked up as a failure,” wrote Hughes. “It will simply be said that we do alright on small issues, but when the chips are really down, like the Bomb-test, then the hair on our balls is simply not long enough to accomplish a winning result.
“So, that makes it even more important than ever that we leave no stone unturned in our efforts to stop it.”
With just forty-eight hours to go before the doomsday detonation, ambassadors from the Hughes empire descended on the nation’s capital, talking tough with the AEC, conspiring with the vice-president, seeking an audience with the commander in chief.
“I suppose you know I have not been to sleep at all,” scribbled the exhausted recluse. “So, I am going to wait up now until we hear something.”
All day Wednesday and into the predawn hours of Thursday, Hughes continued his grim vigil, frantically maneuvering to block the blast still scheduled for Friday morning.
“I am no peacenik and I dont want to champion that cause,” he wrote. “I just want to delay this blast long enough to bring some really heavy pressure to bear in Washington so we can obtain a 90 day delay in this one explosion. I dont care to scuttle the whole program, I only want the 90 days.”
The news from Washington, however, was bleak. “There is no way we can get even a one day delay from the AEC,” reported Maheu. “The only way this can be accomplished is at the White House. Now is the time to bring in another force.”
Another force? Hughes was in no mood to find a new emissary, to send another hat-in-hand diplomat to Washington. He was through with go-betweens. He was through with peace talks. He would handle the final bomb offensive himself, and he would use his own ultimate weapon.
For the past nine days, Hughes had played many roles—mad prophet, naked general, movement leader—but here again he would deal with his bomb obsession the way he dealt with all other matters: by looking for someone to bribe.
“We must find a way to close them down,” he wrote as the moment of doom neared.
“So, how do we acquire enough political strength to accomplish something like this? Well, there is only one way I know, and fortunately this is an election year.”
He would not, like the peaceniks or the old ban-the-bomb crowd, reject America and take to the streets. He would embrace America and buy nuclear peace. Unique in the annals of corruption, Hughes would try to bribe the government to do what was right.
But now, just one day before the big blast, Hughes would make one last appeal to reason. At T-minus-24 and counting, he would personally take his plea to the man who had his finger on the button.
At the zero hour, it would be Howard Hughes and Lyndon Johnson alone at the summit.
7
Mr. President
“Mr. President,” wrote Hughes. The time had come for direct action. Sovereign to sovereign.
It was in the odd predawn hours of Thursday, April 25, 1968. At first light the next day, the most powerful underground nuclear explosion in history was set to be detonated. One hundred miles from ground zero, “physically very ill and emotionally reduced to a nervous wreck,” the exhausted billionaire remained determined to block the scheduled blast. He had just over twenty-four hours. And there was only one man who could still halt the relentless countdown.
So now, in sleepless terror, Howard Hughes drafted his letter to Lyndon Baines Johnson, the president of the United States.
“You may not remember it,” he began, “but years ago when you were in the Senate, you and I were acquainted, not intimately, but enough so that you would have recognized my name.”
Restrained. Dignified. Tactful. No need to mention the nature of their relationship. Johnson would remember.
“So, when you became President,” Hughes continued, “I was strongly tempted to communicate with you, as one occasion after another developed in which I urgently needed your help….
“However, I decided you were too busy for me to disturb you for anything with a purely selfish purpose.”
Right. Put it all on a higher plane.
“Now, something has occurred that only you can alter from its present course.
“Based upon my personal promise that independent scientists and technicians have definite evidence, and can obtain more, demonstrating the risk and uncertainty to the health of the citizens of Southern Nevada, if the megaton-plus nuclear explosion is detonated tomorrow morning, will you grant even a brief postponement of this explosion to permit my representatives to come to Washington and lay before whomever you designate the urgent, impelling reasons why we feel a 90 day postponement is needed?”
A bit vague, perhaps, but surely there was no need to name the scientists or cite the evidence. Hughes was offering his “personal promise.” And armed with an absolute certainty of the claimed danger—the “definite evidence” was in the pit of his stomach—the billionaire now barreled ahead.
“I am certainly no peacenik,” he declared. “My feelings have been well known through the years to be far to the right of center.
“It is not my purpose to impede the defense program in any way, and I can positively prove that if my appeal is heeded”—he started to write “it will have no deliterious effect,” then decided on a more positive approach—“the nuclear test program will proceed more rapidly than at present.”