Humphrey was not the only candidate to receive Hughes’s support that year, and it was not only the bombing that troubled Hughes. As the 1968 election approached, he was faced with a number of serious, unresolved problems.
His drive to buy up Las Vegas had been stalled by the threatened antitrust action. His once aborted but still cherished plan to acquire the ABC television network needed FCC approval. His move back into the airlines business, through the illegal Air West takeover, would require both CAB and White House clearance. His helicopter deal was ending in disaster, and any chance of salvaging it depended on a new government contract. His TWA legal battle, with $137 million at stake, would come before a Supreme Court reshaped by the new president. A major overhaul of the nation’s tax laws loomed, imperiling the exempt status of his medical foundation. And there was always the Hughes Aircraft Company to consider, a billion-dollar-a-year business almost entirely dependent on defense, CIA, and space-agency contracts.
A man whose affairs were so intimately entwined with those of the federal government simply could not leave the selection of a new chief of state to chance.
“I think we should decide which Presidential candidate we are going to support, and then, I think we should go all the way!” wrote Hughes, completely nonpartisan, determined only to ride with a winner, even if it meant backing every man in the race.
“I feel that if we climb aboard in the all-out manner I have in mind, then either our candidate or the organization of his party will be able and willing to give us some important assistance….
“For example, if we choose Kennedy or Humphries, then the Dem. party chairman and his associates should help us plenty thru the White House.”
Among the Democrats, Humphrey was the obvious choice. For the moment, at least, Hughes saw Bobby Kennedy only as a card to be played in a cynical game that would further entrap the needy vice-president.
“Bob,” wrote Hughes, spinning his scenario, “I am wondering if we should not sit down with Humphries and tell him I have been propositioned by Kennedy in the most all-out way.”
It was not true. But the lie was certain to scare Humphrey, who did not have ready entree to many other billionaires.
“That I feel I can only sponsor one man in a truely important way,” Hughes continued, feeding lines to his henchman to feed to the vice-president. “[T]hat I am willing to risk offending Kennedy and agree to give the most unlimited support to Humphries—not just in Nevada—but on a basis that should provide far more than he ever contemplated for the entire country.”
Yes, that should do it. First spook Humphrey with the spectre of a Hughes-Kennedy alliance, then offer to underwrite his entire presidential campaign.
“Then,” concluded the spider, finishing his web, “I think we have to tell him what we want. If he is indifferent, then I think we should go to work on Kennedy without a moments delay.”
Humphrey was not indifferent. Even before he had officially entered the race, the vice-president had been doing the billionaire’s bidding. He arranged the preblast Sawyer-Johnson parley, also pressured a very reluctant AEC commissioner to meet with Hughes’s emissary (“the request was so strongly put that he agreed to the meeting,” noted an agency report), pushed for a ninety-day moratorium on “Boxcar” at Maheu’s urging, and as early as 1967 had tried to plead the billionaire’s bomb case with Johnson, only to be turned away by White House Chief of Staff Marvin Watson, who guarded the door to the Oval Office.
Hughes looked on the vice-president as his man in Johnson’s White House and tried to influence the recalcitrant commander in chief through his more obliging lieutenant.
“The only way I can see to motivate Johnson,” he declared before attempting to bribe the president directly, “would be through a meaningful offer of assistance to Humphries, who is, I understand, Johnson[’s] designee.”
“There is one man who can accomplish our objective thru Johnson—and that man is H.H.H.,” wrote Hughes on another occasion. “Why dont we get word to him on a basis of absolute secrecy that is really, really reliable that we will give him immediately full unlimited support for his campaign to enter the White House if he will just take this one on for us?”
Hughes expected a return on his investment and was not always satisfied with Humphrey’s performance. What the billionaire apparently did not know was that Johnson had only contempt for his vice-president, gave him no power, and in fact enjoyed tormenting him in the cruelest, crudest ways.
The pattern had been established early, in their Senate years. Johnson, then majority leader, would regularly grab Hubert by his lapels, give him his orders, and send him on his way by kicking him in the shins. Hard. Indeed, Humphrey still had scars on his legs, and they were nothing to the scars LBJ later inflicted.
Once he invited his vice-president down to his ranch, then decided that Humphrey should go horseback riding dressed up like a cowboy He pulled out an outfit that dwarfed his sidekick, complete with a ten-gallon hat that fell over his ears, and put him on the meanest horse at the ranch. Finally, he called in the White House press corps to snap pictures of Hubert looking like a circus clown in mortal terror.
With Humphrey the heir apparent, Johnson continued the torment. Asked by a reporter for a comment on his candidate, LBJ replied, “He cries too much.” Pressed further, Johnson snapped, “That’s it—he cries too much.”
And even now, as a presidential candidate, Humphrey remained quite firmly under LBJ’s thumb.
At one point during the campaign, Maheu called Humphrey, and when an aide relayed his message, the vice-president exploded in impotent rage. “Goddamnit, tell Hughes to call the president of the United States, not me,” the candidate stood up and shouted. “Just tell him this: right now I couldn’t get a pothole fixed on Pennsylvania Avenue, much less have them stop atomic testing in the desert. Have him call Lyndon Johnson.”
Still, Hughes continued to find missions for his man, often speaking of the vice-president as if he were just another employee. “I feel we must start a negotiation with the AEC, just as if we were negotiating a business deal,” he wrote. “I think we can go thru Humphries….”
“Please advise Humphries that the AEC shot off a 200 kilo test yesterday and did not even extend the courtesy of telling us about it,” he complained on another occasion. “Under these circumstances I wish Humphries would try to get a statement from the AEC as to their future plans….”
And when Hughes finally decided to contact Johnson directly, he considered using the vice-president as his messenger boy: “You know I am perfectly willing to write a short personal message to Johnson, which we could ask Humphries to deliver—hand deliver—to Johnson.”
When LBJ rejected his bomb plea, the billionaire seemed to hold the hapless vice-president at least partly responsible.
“He should have more influence on the present administration than anyone else,” wrote Hughes, still chafing over Johnson’s two-week delay in replying to his letter. “But if he is doing anything at all for us, why should the President have gone out of his way to rub it in? This certainly does not sound as if Humphries or anybody has put in even a kind word.”
Johnson’s maddening intransigence, however, only intensified the billionaire’s determination to replace him with a more pliable president.
Barely a week after Humphrey launched his campaign, Maheu launched the Hughes campaign. Soon the two drives would merge.