In January 1970, Richard Danner, who knew John Mitchell well from Nixon’s 1968 campaign, initiated a series of secret meetings with the new attorney general.
Neither McLaren nor anybody else from the antitrust division was invited. The Dunes deal would be handled informally, just between friends.
By February 26, after his second session with Mitchell, Danner had good news. Maheu relayed it to the penthouse. “Howard,” he wrote, “you will be pleased to know that Danner had a very pleasant and friendly meeting with the Attorney General who sends you his gratitude for all of your cooperation. He indicated that he could see no reason why we should not move forward with the purchase of the Dunes.”
A few days later, on March 9, the news was even better. “Howard,” reported Maheu, “it is our move to make on the Dunes. Danner had a long talk today with the Attorney General. He all but gave final approval today, but he wants the last say to emanate from the anti-trust division.”
Mitchell called in McLaren for the first time on March 12. He told his deputy he was “inclined to go along with Hughes’s purchase of the Dunes.” McLaren was not so inclined. He immediately informed Mitchell that it would violate antitrust laws, that approval of the deal would be “entirely inconsistent with the Justice Department’s earlier refusal to approve Hughes’s purchase of the Stardust.”
That kind of contrary attitude would eventually incur Nixon’s wrath. “I want something clearly understood,” the president later raged in a taped conversation. “And if it’s not understood, McLaren’s ass is to be out within one hour. I do not want him to run around prosecuting people, raising hell about conglomerates, stirring things up. Is that clear? I’d rather have him out anyway. I don’t like the son of a bitch.”
In the Hughes case, however, Nixon’s rage was not required. John Mitchell simply ignored his antitrust chief.
Just after noon on March 19, the attorney general again met secretly with Danner. He gave Hughes a green light on the Dunes deal. “We see no problem,” Mitchell told Hughes’s emissary. “Why don’t you go ahead.” There were no records kept. It was just a handshake deal.
The approval was a signal victory for Hughes. He had won a complete reversal of Justice policy, he had broken the antitrust blockade, he was finally free to expand his Nevada empire, to buy the rest of Las Vegas.
But the triumph meant nothing to Hughes. Nothing at all. It came just as a new megaton blast was announced in Nevada.
An atmosphere of terminal crisis gripped both the penthouse and the White House during Holy Week in 1970.
Howard Hughes learned of the impending blast on the same day in March that Richard Nixon got news of a coup in Cambodia. That coup, and the simultaneous failure of peace talks with Hanoi, started the president on a bloody course that led to the invasion of Cambodia, the murders at Kent State, and the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, events that shocked the nation.
But it was the Easter bombing of Nevada that shocked Hughes and sealed Nixon’s fate. Oddly enough, instead it almost brought them together.
Robert Maheu was in New York City, when news of the blast first hit Hughes, meeting with the executive committee of Air West to finally close that fraudulent deal.
“Howard,” he wrote, “I am firmly convinced that only the President of the United States can stop this next blast.”
Hughes’s response was immediate.
He called Maheu out from the New York meeting and had him call back the penthouse from a pay phone. Then Hughes gave Maheu his mission: he was to proceed directly to Key Biscayne and there offer Bebe Rebozo one million dollars for Richard Nixon—if the president would halt the bomb test.
Maheu flew down to Washington, picked up Richard Danner (who had just closed the Dunes deal with John Mitchell), and the two went together to the Florida White House.
Maheu would later claim that he never offered the million-dollar bribe, which he and Hughes code-named the “Big Caper” in their telephone conversations that week.
If Maheu and Hughes had their “Big Caper,” Nixon had long been enamored of the “Big Play,” a bold move that he often used to cut through some tangled crisis.
While Maheu held back on the bribe, Rebozo tried out Nixon’s “Big Play” in his first meeting with Hughes’s emissaries on March 21. It was a three-option plan, one alternative being a Camp David summit meeting between Howard Hughes and the president.
Maheu reported the dramatic offer to the penthouse.
“Danner and I have just left our friend after 8 hours of solid and serious conference with innumerable phone calls back to the east,” he informed the billionaire, apparently referring to calls between Rebozo and Nixon.
“Now, Howard, we have three alternatives which have been offered to us and it is imperative time-wise that we choose one of the three:
“1—Kissinger is prepared to fly to Las Vegas and have a similar meeting as that which they were hoping would take place many, many months ago.
“2—Although the President does not feel that he should go to Las Vegas at this particular time, he is prepared to meet with you at a moment’s notice, preferably at some place like Camp David.
“3—They will guarantee that this one is very definitely the last big one.”
Hughes was no more willing to see the president than he was to see Kissinger. Instead he pushed Maheu to make the million-dollar bribe.
Maheu resisted for three days. Finally, he at least pretended to give in and reported a failed attempt to buy nuclear peace.
“Howard, under very relaxed and comfortable conditions, I tried on the ‘Big Caper’ per our telephonic conversation of yesterday,” he told Hughes. “There is no doubt as to the trust and confidence which was clearly enunciated, however it was made very clear that because of the national defense aspects, which they so wanted to explain to you, it was categorically impossible to do anything in this particular instance.”
Hughes was devastated.
“Please pull out every last stop to delay or cancel this test,” he pleaded.
“I do not trust their promises so the commitment that this would be the last test is not too important.
“Please push the Holy Week aspect and every other similar angle in every way,” he continued, now reduced to trading on religious sentiment.
“I am relying on you. This is truly an all-out, end of the road necessity.”
Rebozo kept pressing Hughes to meet with Nixon.
“He suggests a conference which could be set up so that you and the President, backed up by Kissinger, and you by your scientists, take place immediately, because of the shortage of time before the scheduled blast,” Maheu urged.
“Howard, you have to believe that it becomes increasingly difficult for Rebozo, the President, and even Kissinger to understand the impossibility of having a personal interview with you.
“They truly cannot understand why you will not meet with the President himself.”
But Hughes could not leave his penthouse seclusion.
Perhaps if Howard Hughes and Richard Nixon had been able to meet they could have worked out the president’s “Big Play” and the billionaire’s “Big Caper,” made the big deal their agents could not make for them. Perhaps they could have consummated their long, arm’s-length affair, thus avoiding national cataclysm.
But it was not to be. The Camp David summit died stillborn, and with it the million-dollar deal.
At eleven A.M. on Thursday, March 26, 1970, the day before Good Friday, the Easter bombing went forward, the six hundredth nuclear explosion since the beginning of the atomic age, and one of the biggest. Once more the tremors rippled through Las Vegas and shook the naked old man whose hidden dealings with the president were to be the real fallout of the blast.