“The pros feel that the natural person to champion our cause is the Vice President, because of his present position and, more particularly, his candidacy,” Maheu reported to the penthouse. “We feel it is important that he come to this conclusion ‘on his own.’ We, therefore, have the machinery in motion which we hope will cause him to invite me to Washington to plan the strategy.
“In the next 24–48 hours there will be suggestions made to the Vice President. If he reacts as I am hoping and takes the affirmative to work with us on this program, I really believe we will have come a long way.”
It did not take Humphrey long to come to the right decision “on his own.” The very next day he sent word that he was ready, indeed eager to join forces with Hughes. The news came through a member of his family who was already on board.
Robert Andrew Humphrey, one of the vice-president’s three sons, had been hired by Maheu two years earlier as the “mid-western distributor” for Radiarc, Inc., an electronics firm Maheu had purchased as a private investment. The company was not part of the Hughes empire, but its most valuable asset, the junior Humphrey, most definitely seemed to be. He regularly acted as go-between in his father’s dealings with Maheu.
“Bob Humphrey is his dad’s favorite and a very competent young man,” wrote Maheu in a memo on “political assistance” he sent to Hughes. “Any assignment given Bob Humphrey will automatically include the full support and effort of his father, as it has in the past.”
Now the vice-president himself seemed ready to join the team. “Bob contacted me today to advise that his father was very anxious to meet with me concerning the future plans of the AEC,” Maheu reported, adding a few days later that the Humphrey alliance would be cemented in Denver, Colorado.
“Today the Vice President sent word to me that he will be in Denver on this Thursday and would like to meet with me to discuss his strategy to delay and eventually preclude the necessity of the big blasts in Nevada.”
On May 10, 1968, just two weeks after he entered the race, Hubert Humphrey mortgaged his campaign to Howard Hughes. In a late-night meeting in the vice-president’s suite at the Denver Hilton, Maheu would later testify, Humphrey agreed to battle the bomb in return for a promised one-hundred-thousand-dollar contribution, half of it to be paid in cash.
Deeming the joint venture too “candid” to reveal long-distance, Maheu submitted a written report to Hughes the next day: “The following reflects the suggestions and procedures set forth by the Vice-President. He feels we should have two objectives—(a) delay the future plans of these big blasts until (b) the propitious moment at which the Administration will urge that underground testing be added to the Ban Treaty. He pledges his support and that of the Administration.”
This private nuclear-disarmament pact was a real bargain. It would cost Hughes just $400,000. A hundred grand for Humphrey, and $300,000 more to fund an “independent study” by six White House—approved scientists, all known critics of the bomb tests.
“During this program, the Vice-President will work with us very closely and confidentially,” added Maheu. “He is anxious to get your reaction to the above-mentioned plan.”
Hughes reacted with sour impatience. He expected results for his money—not studies—and he was willing to pay well.
“You say: ‘What do you think of Humphries’ program?’” he wrote. “Bob, I am no expert at these things. If I were, we would not have to go to Humphries to start with. Any program is as good or as bad as what he can produce with it—I am certainly nobody to evaluate.
“My position is very simple. You know what we want to accomplish and you know our resources are unlimited. You will have to take it from there. I thought you were satisfied with the results of your trip to Denver.”
The disappointing Denver summit coincided with the opening of the Vietnam peace talks in Paris, which gave Hughes a new idea about how he might more profitably use the presidential candidate he had just acquired.
He would send Humphrey to Paris.
Obviously the vice-president could no longer be trusted to handle his own campaign strategy. Hughes would have to plot it from the penthouse. In fact, he had in mind a ploy so bold and complicated that Humphrey would have to be kept in the dark until after he had completed his assigned mission.
For the rest of the nation, the burning issue of the 1968 election was the war in Vietnam. For Hughes it was the nuclear blasts in Nevada. It was now his inspiration to subtly link the two issues. If all went well, the unwitting Humphrey would emerge a hero, and Hughes would have peace with honor.
“It is just beginning to filter through to me.” Hughes wrote, “that now is the ideal moment for us to persuade Humphries or some other strong voice to come out and make a very inspiring tender of good wishes and felicitations to the just now convening delegates to the peace talks in Paris.
“In this first expression of the prayers of all mankind for the successful conclusion of the talks before the delegates and representatives now convening in Paris, I think it would be wise to omit any reference to the explosions in Nevada.
“However, the man we encourage to deliver this tender of good wishes and the prayers and hopes of all mankind, etc., etc., should be some one we can rely upon to deliver an impassioned plea for postponement of any explosion that may be scheduled. In other words, the man we select for this occasion should not know what we have in mind at all, and we should make sure he says nothing at this time to disclose what is being planned. However, it should be somebody we feel we control sufficiently so that, upon request a little later, he will be calculated to say what we may want him to say.
“This sounds more complicated than it is,” Hughes assured Maheu. “I think you, knowing my devious mind, are pretty well aware [of] what I am thinking about.”
Maheu knew very well what Hughes meant, but he still appeared to place more faith in the Denver plan his master had scorned. Humphrey did not embark for Paris. He seemed, however, to be doing quite well for Hughes in Washington.
So well, in fact, that the Atomic Energy Commission became increasingly alarmed that a Hughes panel of scientists, backed by the vice-president and packed with bomb-test foes, might well derail the agency’s entire Nevada operation.
Soon top AEC officials were exchanging memorandums almost as frequently as Hughes and Maheu, trying to determine if the man who might soon be president of the United States had actually joined with its wealthiest private citizen in an antinuclear alliance.
“I called Col. Hunt in the Vice President’s office to discuss with him rumors we had been hearing in Las Vegas as regards an agreement between the Vice President and the Hughes organization,”reported the agency’s director, Arnold Fritsch. “I indicated to him that while we had this only as a rumor, we were concerned since the high-yield test program involves some vital national security needs.”
When the AEC discovered the rumors were indeed well founded, it first tried to abort the “independent” Hughes study, then, unable to block it, scrambled to remove the panel from the billionaire’s control.
AEC Chairman Seaborg got word to the president. Johnson was angry. He had enough troubles without a new ban-the-bomb crusade to fuel antiwar feeling, and he did not appreciate Hughes’s attempted end run. Besides, Humphrey was hardly being discreet about his dealings with the billionaire. Already it was common knowledge in the White House that the vice-president was getting campaign money from Hughes. Johnson was not merely angry. He was worried.
“Hubert had better keep his pants zipped,” the president told an aide. “He’s going to get caught with his pecker in Hughes’s pocket.”