Hughes’s memo was a diatribe of lost innocence.
He had taken the high road in his letter to Johnson, offered a reasoned and restrained case pleading the dangers and uncertainties of unchecked nuclear testing. And the president had ignored his plea, dismissed him as a fool or a skinflint, and pocketed a payoff.
Well, no one would ever catch Howard Hughes napping again. No more romantic illusions for him. He had seen the light.
“You see, Bob, some people feel I have unlimited power and absolutely no scrupples,” he explained to his veteran bagman and fixer. “You and I know this is not true, but they dont know it….”
So be it. From now on, Hughes would do what was expected of him, and he would bring the bombing to an end.
“I urge what I have urged from the beginning: Down to earth, brass tacks, bargaining with the A.E.C. and the White House—in Washington,…” he wrote.
“I urge we get down off the soap box and quit trying to make over the morals of the world and focus on a bought and paid for compromise settlement of this issue.
“I feel we may find that, at a price we can afford, we can buy a settlement….”
The president’s perfidy had given Hughes some very definite ideas about where such a settlement could be bought.
“I think you should try to determine who is the real, honest-to-God, bagman at the White House,” he urged Maheu. “And please dont be frightened away by the enormity of the thought. I have known for a number of years that the White House under this particular Democratic administration is just as crooked as it can be. Now, I dont know whom you have to approach, but there is somebody, take my word for it.”
Finally, in a casual postscript to his somewhat chilling memo, Hughes took the true measure of the man he had tried to reach by honest reason.
“P.S. One thing I should have told you, in connection with my assumption that the Pres. may have waited the two weeks to hear from me on some kind of a hard-cash, adult, basis. I should tell you that I have done this kind of business with him before. So, he wears no awe-inspiring robe of virtue with me. I gave him some critically needed funds when he was in the Senate. He remembers this as he spoke of it to Finney. This is why he may very realistically have waited the two weeks for me to send somebody to him before he replied or took a stand. Anyway, I think this is one very plausible explanation of everything, including the hostillity when he did write….”
Plausible or not, Hughes was now convinced that he must put his relationship with Johnson back on a “hard cash, adult, basis.” After all the hope that Hughes had placed in his masterful letter, Johnson’s rejection of his earnest appeal had a cataclysmic impact. It marked a turning point in Hughes’s approach to politics and politicians in general. It removed his last remaining inhibitions to use his private wealth to buy public power. Eventually, it would convulse the entire nation.
“Now,” concluded Hughes, in a classic expression of free-enterprise morality, “I think there is a market-place, somewhere, where the things we want can be bought or sold, and I urge that instead of spending any more time begging for a free hand-out, we find the right place, and the right people and buy what we want.”
Hughes clearly believed that Johnson was one of the right people. As for the right place, it turned out to be not the White House but the LBJ Ranch. And the right amount, Hughes figured, was $1 million.
It was Maheu who first suggested the approach. Three months after the bomb test, in a memo to the penthouse, he inquired, “As long as I am going to be in Washington next week—what do you think of my calling on the President as your personal representative? It might buy us insurance on the AEC program as well as the Stardust. I could tell him that you are interested in his future plans and want to help him in any way possible. His answer might prove to be very interesting—indeed.”
By the time Maheu proposed the parley, Hughes had become enmeshed in a battle with the Justice Department over his plans to acquire yet another major hotel-casino, the Stardust. Justice had moved to block the deal the same day the “Boxcar” blast was announced and despite pressure from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman James Eastland, both of Nevada’s senators, and Governor Laxalt, Attorney General Ramsey Clark refused to allow the recluse to continue his Las Vegas Monopoly game.
Now Maheu was heading to Washington for a showdown with antitrust chief Edwin Zimmerman and hoped to meet with the president as well—to buy some insurance. The trip was less than a complete success. Zimmerman curtly informed Maheu that the Stardust deal was “a cut-and-dried violation of the Clayton Act.” As for getting to Johnson, he was ailing and had left the White House to recuperate at his Texas ranch.
“I strongly suggest we call off this caper and take another look at it six months hence—after the elections,” a subdued Maheu counseled his master.
Hughes, however, was unwilling to wait. “Now, Bob, I realize that if we emerge from the forthcoming election with the kind of political strength we anticipate, there will be no need for a negotiated settlement of this matter,” he replied. “I dont question your ability to win this game on a political basis in an open contest. But I am afraid I will be a nervous wreck by the time it is over.”
Fuming and boiling over the Stardust, in terror of the bomb, Hughes could not wait until Johnson had been replaced by a more pliable president.
And there was one other thing the billionaire wanted. He had already mentioned it in his letter to Johnson, although only as an example of one of the many urgent matters he had been too altruistic to call to the president’s attention.
“The last of these,” Hughes had told Johnson, “was when I undertook the manufacture of a small helicopter for use in Viet Nam. I lost in excess of 1/5 of everything I possess in the world on this one project, purely because the price was miscalculated.
“The loss was far greater than I have ever suffered in my lifetime. The price we collected for these machines was less than the bill of material alone.”
It was true. The billionaire had taken a bath. The loss was not quite so great as he claimed, but it was close to $90 million. There was, however, one aspect of the debacle Hughes failed to mention. The price was not “miscalculated.”
Hughes had intentionally submitted a ridiculously low bid in a plot to corner the market on helicopters vital to the war. But his scheme had backfired when he tried to triple the price and got caught in a messy congressional probe. Now he was stuck with the bill.
Like the war in Vietnam itself, the copter deal, born in deceit, was ending in disaster. Johnson should certainly sympathize.
Still, it was neither his staggering helicopter losses nor the antitrust blockade that really obsessed Hughes. It was the bomb. And having failed to persuade the president, Hughes was now determined to buy him.
Within two weeks of his failed White House mission, Maheu was on his way to the LBJ Ranch, flying there in a private Hughes jet, the full magnitude of his mission still a secret known only to his taciturn boss. “I’m not ready to tell you yet,” said Hughes, sending Maheu off with no further explanation.
Johnson was completely in the dark. So great was the cachet of the name Hughes that the president had agreed to receive his emissary without even being told the purpose of his visit. In the previous two days Johnson had played host to Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, and now, having seen his two potential successors, the president prepared to meet the representative of a third major power.