“Bob, I dont think you have any idea how I feel about this thing,” he continued in a scrawl that made it quite clear.
“When you first told me about it [the blast], God knows I felt bad enough, but I naturally assumed it was in the so-called ‘Low intermediate yield’ range.
“I had no faintest idea that this bomb was a huge unit comparable in every way to the first two large explosions we fought so bitterly.
“I just cannot understand how under the sun the AEC could have imagined that we would be so utterly stupid and naive as to consider this explosion as being within the limits we had requested to be followed, merely because it may technically be under one full megaton.”
The treaty had been broken. And the president was responsible. Hughes wanted that message delivered in no uncertain terms.
“I wish you would tell Mr. Nixon thru Mr. Rebozo that this is the most outrageous and shocking breach of faith and attempted deception I ever heard of any highly reputed government like the United States attempting to perpetrate against one of their own citizens,” he wrote, furious now that the full extent of Nixon’s betrayal hit him.
“If this is the way the U.S. pays off one of its own citizens, who has given a lifetime of service toward the betterment of the defense system, and contributed countless important advances, plus a half billion dollars in taxes, then how can anyone expect foreign governments to believe our promises.
“I have much more to say,” Hughes concluded, “but will let you get started.”
Maheu absorbed the diatribe, then went directly with Danner to see Rebozo. The president’s friend gave his two guests a guided tour of his newly remodeled ranch house, especially eager to show off an ice-making machine that spewed cubes from the refrigerator door.
Danner handed Rebozo the manila envelope, saying, “Here’s the $50,000, first installment.” The Cuban opened the envelope, shook out the bundles of cash, and counted them. He marked “HH” on a corner of the envelope, then took the money into another room. When he returned, the three men went out to dinner.
Whether Hughes knew that his money had gone to Rebozo, whether he was hoping that it would buy him a nuclear accord with Nixon and approved the delivery despite his anger, is unclear. But he contacted Maheu at the crack of dawn the next day, expecting to get word to the White House.
“What is the plan today?” he demanded. “I just heard the announcement of the President’s planned defense meeting. When do you expect to endeavor to penetrate thru to him in this matter? I am anxious to know in order that I may have as much time as possible in preparation of my material.”
While the billionaire plotted the antibomb campaign on his bedside legal pads in Las Vegas, and Rebozo stashed the Hughes money in a safe-deposit box at the bank he owned in Key Biscayne, Richard Nixon convened his top advisers in Washington for a major review of the war in Vietnam.
The president was frantic, perhaps as frantic as Hughes. He had been elected on a pledge to end the war but had failed to bring peace. Now Nixon huddled with Kissinger secretly plotting a major escalation, a “savage, punishing blow” against North Vietnam, while the same antiwar movement that had toppled Lyndon Johnson threatened to bring Nixon down, massing for a nationwide protest that would culminate with the moratorium march on Washington in October.
Nixon had from the outset of his administration felt himself encircled by enemies; now, as he himself would later put it, he was “reeling under siege.”
Yet even at the peak of crisis, the president did not ignore the billionaire’s bomb protest. Once more, he offered to send Henry Kissinger to Howard Hughes. Maheu transmitted this offer to the penthouse, along with Nixon’s pledge that the scheduled nuclear test posed no danger.
“In all sincerity, Howard,” he wrote, “I truly believe that this is one hell of a concession for the President of the United States to make, since we were given the definite indication that you would become knowledgable of certain top secret information available only to a handful of people in this entire world.”
Again, Maheu assured his boss that the negotiations with Kissinger could be handled by telephone, sparing the recluse a personal confrontation; but the secret peace talks had to be held directly with Hughes.
“I cannot find it within myself to be presumptuous enough to insist that this information be made available to me when it is you to whom they want to talk,” added Maheu. “I am thoroughly convinced that Nixon has a deep-seated respect for you which won’t quit. And also that there are certain things which he cannot entrust to any of your subordinates, unfortunately including me.”
Hughes was not impressed. Again he spurned shuttle diplomacy, once more refusing to receive Kissinger, and this time not in fear but anger.
“I am surprised that you would accept without some resistance the statement of this explosion’s so-called ‘safety,’” he shot back at Maheu, rejecting the president’s assurances.
“As to my listening to Kissinger, the statement that he has things to tell me which cannot be entrusted to your knowledge is an insult, and simply not true.
“As to the contention that this explosion is in some way necessary to maintain our strategic negotiating position, or our military security in respect to Russia, this kind of an argument is just a plain insult to my intelligence.”
Hughes had had it with intermediaries. No more envoys: he would not receive Kissinger, and he did not want Maheu to deal with Rebozo. It was time to go straight to the top.
“Bob, I want you to go all the way on this,” he ordered at dawn the next day, with the dreaded blast now only three days off. “I have written some very carefully drafted comments, and I want this argument made to the President in the very most forceful way.
“I dont want to write a letter as I did to President Johnson, and have it discarded into some dead file,” he noted, bitterly recalling the rejection of his last bomb plea.
“Bob, I want you to request a personal meeting with the President just as quickly as he will grant it.
“I will give you the full text of what I hope you will say before you go into the meeting.”
Having stayed awake all night to plot this bold move, however, Hughes could not wait to begin scripting Maheu for his big White House scene.
“You might tell him,” he added, spinning out lines for delivery to Nixon, “I am deeply, deeply sorry for the shortness of time, but that… I had made my feelings known concerning the testing of large bombs in this area.
“And now, as a complete farce, they plan a test here at Las Vegas which is supposed not to violate the implied agreement they made with you, because it is marginally under one megaton.
“I hope you can find some way of showing this disgraceful trickery to the President as the fraudulent effort to deceive that it really is.
“Bob, I have given a full lifespan of service to this country, and taken very little for my personal pleasure or glorification.
“If I dont rate better than this shoddy treatment, it is pretty sad.”
Maheu accepted the script but rejected the part. It was not that he didn’t like the lines, only that he didn’t think they would play well at the White House. He knew that it was futile to see Nixon. He had known it from the start. But it was pointless to tell that to the frenzied scenarist up in the penthouse. Instead, Maheu insisted that Rebozo was the man to play this part.
Hughes was not convinced. “I am fully confident of Rebozo’s position with the President,” he replied. “I just am fearful he cannot convey the entire story, simply because he does not know it all.”