With Morgan out of the picture, Maheu moved to reassure Rebozo that all the old skeletons would remain in the closet. “I can assure you that right now both candidates are very happy with us,” he reported to Hughes. “In addition to material support, we were able last week to kill a recurrence of publicity pertaining to the Don Nixon loan. Humphrey himself issued the instructions to his people not to use this matter and Nixon knows that Humphrey did so at my request.”
But whatever soothing effect Maheu’s coup accomplished was blown when the ubiquitous John Meier appeared with Donald Nixon in tow and announced that they would pass the Hughes money to Rebozo. Called out from a New York meeting with Danner and John Mitchell to take Meier’s call, Rebozo came back apoplectic. Donald was under strict orders to steer clear of campaign money period, not to mention Hughes money. And to make matters worse, Rebozo confused John Meier with Johnny Meyer, the Hughes fixer from an earlier era who became notorious in the “Spruce Goose” Senate hearings.
The potential for another dangerous Hughes scandal seemed to be growing geometrically. Rebozo felt himself surrounded by skeletons. He decided on the spot to wash his hands of the deal.
Maheu was now left with a bundle of cash, but no one to pass it and no one to receive it. He decided to cut through all the confusion and deliver the money himself, directly to Richard Nixon.
He had already made a formal contribution to Nixon’s campaign, $50,000 in checks passed openly through Governor Laxalt a few weeks before the November election. Now, with the election over, Nixon victorious, and the promised secret cash still undelivered, Maheu once more turned to Laxalt. Early in December they flew together in a private Hughes jet to Palm Springs, where Nixon was due to attend a Republican governors’ conference. Laxalt, however, failed to arrange a meeting with the president-elect. Nixon, apparently still nervous about accepting Hughes’s money, at least about accepting it personally, sent word that his schedule prohibited a meeting with Maheu.
One week later, Maheu was down in the Bahamas, conferring with representatives of the incoming administration, and there are indications that he at least tried to pass the money again. A cashier at the Sands casino noted on a fifty-thousand-dollar withdrawal slip dated December 5, 1968: “The money was given to Bob Maheu. I was told he was to give this to President Nixon on Maheu’s trip to the Bahamas.”
So much money was gathered from so many sources—$50,000 from Hughes’s personal bank account early in September, another $50,000 from the account “for Nixon’s deficit” in December, the disputed $50,000 from the Sands a few days later, yet another $50,000 from Hughes’s account in June 1969, and $50,000 more from the cashier’s cage at the Silver Slipper in October 1970—that it is impossible to determine how much money actually reached Nixon.
But it is certain that $100,000 in secret cash, two bundles of hundred-dollar bills from Howard Hughes—still undelivered by the November election, still undelivered by the January inauguration—finally found its way to Bebe Rebozo’s safe-deposit box. Where it came to haunt Richard Nixon.
It was the terrible guilty secret whose feared discovery would drive him to self-destruction—the tell-tale heart of Watergate.
Richard Nixon entered the White House on January 20, 1969, in broad daylight to the cheers of thousands, the duly elected and sworn president of the United States. But trusting no one, fearing everyone, he immediately retreated into isolation behind his palace guard and tried to run the nation like Hughes ran his empire—secretly, from hiding, through a small group of henchmen instilled with the same siege mentality.
It was a government Howard Hughes himself could have created, and one with which he could certainly do business.
“I want to see just how much water we really draw with this Administration after so many years of all-out effort to achieve it,” the billionaire wrote Maheu shortly after the inauguration, eagerly anticipating a good return on his investment.
Even before Nixon actually took office, Maheu began flashing news of early triumphs to the penthouse.
“Nixon has decided on his law partner, John Mitchell, to be Attorney General,” Maheu reported from the Bahamas, where he was hobnobbing with members of the new administration during the transition. “Mitchell is thoroughly acceptable and we have excellent entrees to him, particularly through Bebe Rebozo.
“We have a definite promise that it will not be [Herbert] Brownell or anyone on whom Brownell can exert any influence,” he added, referring to the attorney general under Eisenhower who was now special master in the TWA case and had recently slapped Hughes with the one-hundred-thirty-seven-million-dollar default judgment.
Later, in Washington for the inauguration, Maheu had more good news to report. Things were shaping up quite well at Justice, which for months had blocked Hughes’s bid to buy the rest of Las Vegas. “I am most happy with the new head of the anti-trust division,” Maheu told his boss. “He was our #1 choice from among several very highly qualified candidates whose names were submitted to me well in advance of the appointment.”
The early signs were good, and within a year Hughes would get nearly everything he wanted from Nixon: a green light for his Las Vegas Monopoly game, approval of his illegal reentry into the airline business, a vast increase in his already great cost-plus no-competitive-bidding business with the Pentagon, even an end to federal financing for the dreaded Nevada water project.
But still Hughes was not satisfied.
First there was the Wally Hickel problem. “I sent word to you a couple of days ago that the confirmation of Hickel as Sec. of the Interior would not be consistent with the best interests of my various entities,” Hughes complained to Maheu, although there was no apparent reason for his objection to the former Alaska governor. “I was therefore certainly surprised to note today that he was confirmed.”
In fact, Hughes was displeased with the entire cabinet selection process. “Not one of the Nixon appointees was given to me for consideration and none such nominee was made in my behalf with my approval,” he continued. “I consider this shocking in view of my involvement and dependency upon this Administration. Now to top it off, a new AEC Commissioner has been appointed without any information to me in advance.”
As if that was not sufficiently outrageous, the president was about to reshape the Supreme Court, again without consulting Hughes. “[T]he new Supreme Court Justice to replace Fortas could be the most urgent item before us with the TWA suit coming up,” Hughes wrote Maheu. “You know I have been disappointed in the very meager voice I have had in the consideration of various opointees for cabinet and other lesser administrative posts….
“You remember I told you the sky was the limit in campaign contributions and I really expected, as the result, to have some small chance to propose a few people for consideration for these positions in government, all of which were re-selected as a part of the new incoming administration.
“So, please, please, Bob, let us have some small voice in the selection of the new justice.”
Nixon’s failure to clear his government with Hughes should have prepared the recluse for the next blow, but it caught him by surprise.
“Jesus what next!” he wrote in a fevered scrawl. “The news just announced that now Nixon is going to buy $10,000,000,000 (billion) worth of long range conventional manned bombers.
“Bob, that means Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed, or Convair—nothing for us at all.”
Part of the new military budget was going to someone other than Hughes, and while he became a top-ten defense contractor for the first time under Nixon, having to share the Pentagon with other corporations left him shaken.