Nixon was determined to get the inside story on the Vegas recluse.
So now as he planned his moon-walk dinner, the president plotted a more daring and devious maneuver. He invited Hughes to the party—knowing full well that the billionaire had not appeared in public for more than a decade—and used that invitation as a pretext to run a routine “name check” on his hidden benefactor through the FBI.
J. Edgar Hoover personally reported back to the president on August 13, the day of the big dinner. His report was truly astounding.
Howard Hughes, said the FBI director, was “a ruthless, unscrupulous individual who at times acted like a ‘screwball paranoiac’ to the extent that he, Hughes, might be capable of anything, including murder.”
Including murder. It was an alarming description of a man with whom the president was about to make a dangerous deal, especially since Nixon had no way of knowing that the incredible characterization was based solely on the claims of a disgruntled Hughes executive who had turned informer almost twenty years earlier. The report had Hoover’s imprimatur, and Nixon was both in fear and awe of the director (“He’s got files on everybody, God damn it!”).
In any event, the intelligence didn’t stop Nixon. He went right ahead conspiring with Rebozo to collect the promised hundred-thousand-dollar payoff.
Still, the FBI report had to come as something of a shock to the president. But it was nothing compared to the shock about to hit Howard Hughes.
On September 10, 1969, Maheu, now in exile for his own unauthorized attendance at the moon dinner, called Hughes from Vancouver with disturbing news—the AEC was about to announce a new Nevada blast, and a big one.
Maheu tried to put the best face on the first major nuclear test of the Nixon administration. It was less than a megaton, and the really big bombs would be exploded in Alaska, just as the president had promised.
Hughes was not appeased. “I am very disturbed about the blast you mention,” he wrote, in a memo to be read long-distance to his banished lieutenant. “I have told you many times that there is nothing magic about the megaton measure.
“I am truly worried about what you tell me today,” he continued, not yet aware of the true magnitude of the impending explosion.
“I note what you say about the importance of being on the ground, ‘at the scene of activity,’ as you put it,” he told Maheu, who was attempting to use the bomb threat as his ticket back to Las Vegas. “Well, Bob, until we pull out every last stop in trying to block this explosion, I am sure Washington is the scene of activity, and I wish you would depart for there tonite, staging a campaign to marshall every last organization or individual opposed to these explosions, and to bring to bear on the AEC the very strongest, all-out, concerted effort you can possibly organize, in a final fight to the very last ditch.
“I want you to burn up all of your blue chip stamps, all the favors you have coming, and every last little bit of pressure you can bring together in one intense, extreme, final drive to determine, once and for all, whether I make any further investments in Nevada or not.
“Bob, I want you to go all the way on this and spare no expense.”
Maheu was reluctant to go to the brink. Nixon had already granted Hughes a private test-ban treaty, this new blast did not violate its terms, and it seemed futile to press for further concessions in national nuclear policy.
“Howard, we have made every conceiveable appeal to the Vice-President and to the President,” replied Maheu, urging restraint.
“One of the reasons that the President was so anxious to establish direct contact between you and Kissinger relative to the ABM was so that the doctor could reveal to you top security information reflecting the necessity of detonating a few more blasts under the megaton range, and also to explain that the megaton plus blasts would not be continued in Nevada as a result of your efforts.
“We have never lost sight of the ultimate goal of complete stoppage, but in the meantime, Howard, it becomes a pretty difficult task to tell the President of the United States and the Vice-President, that they are lying when they tell us that, although they have honored many of our requests, this specific test is mandatory to the national security of our country.
“I am afraid that if we push them they might well proceed gung ho, even with megaton plus shots,” warned Maheu. “After all, Howard, I am sure that in the last analysis, they couldn’t care less whether we make one more investment in Nevada or divest ourselves of those already made.”
Hughes, however, was hardly ready to back down. Eyeball to eyeball with Nixon, he would not blink, although for the moment he seemed more eager to battle his own chief of staff.
“You have not given me any explanation of the need for this explosion,” Hughes complained. “I know nothing of all the reasons why the test is necessary to the defense of the country. Why haven’t you given me this info which you obviously received thru your White House contacts?
“Bob,” he continued, his anger mounting, “I am not stupid enough to think Nixon gives a damn about my plans in Nevada, and, if you have any desire to see a better relationship between you and me, I would sincerely appreciate you restraining your periodic impulse to voice some sarcastic, salty comment such as this one….
“I dont think you are so far from the mark as to believe seriously that I am dumb enough to think the President would care what I do here, so Bob, I can only assume you have some other purpose in making such an insulting remark.
“So, it must have been in an effort to irritate me. If that was the purpose, you succeeded.”
Having vented his spleen, Hughes got back to the bomb, and once more ordered Maheu to Washington.
“Anyway, Bob, whatever is done, and I have not asked you to tell anybody he was a lyar, whatever is done, I will feel better about it if you do it from Washington,” he insisted. “Please proceed there without delay.”
Further resistance was futile. Maheu had Danner contact Rebozo, who suggested that they work things out at the ambassadorial level, inviting the Hughes emissaries to the compound he shared with the president in Key Biscayne.
By the next morning, as Maheu prepared to leave for the Florida White House, Hughes had discovered the full dimensions of his nuclear peril. This was not merely another blast but a full-blown holocaust.
“Bob,” he wrote in a wildly shaken scrawl, “I have been up all nite and am very anxious to know that you are on the way before I go to sleep.
“This test is a megaton for all practical purposes,” he continued in words writ large with fear, anger, and exhaustion, “so I cannot see how you can view this test as being other than a complete defeat and a complete waste of all your efforts.
“The difference between 900,000 and a million is so slight it simply falls under the heading of the degree of pregnancy. I just cannot see any difference.”
Maheu left Vancouver, stopping in Las Vegas to pick up Danner, and they flew out to Miami together in a private Hughes jet. Danner had with him a zippered case. Inside was a manila envelope, containing $50,000, ten bundles of hundred-dollar bills he had retrieved from the cashier’s cage at the Frontier casino earlier that morning. It was the money Maheu had secured for Nixon back in 1968, now finally to be delivered as the first half of the $100,000 Hughes had promised the president.
Early on the evening of September 11, the two envoys arrived in Miami. Before driving out to Key Biscayne, Maheu checked in with the penthouse. Hughes was in a frenzy.
“I am more grateful than I can tell you that you are there,” he wrote in a memo for his Mormons to read to Maheu.