Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President by Fulsom Don

Author:Fulsom, Don [Fulsom, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2012-01-30T22:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

WATERGATE: WHAT SECRETS WAS NIXON SEEKING?

Early in the 1968 campaign, power-hungry, episodically nutty billionaire Howard Hughes—in a lucid moment and non-nuanced memo—stated his determination to elect a president “of our choosing … who will be deeply indebted, and who will recognize his indebtedness.” Expressing his willingness “to go beyond all limitations on this,” Hughes stressed the need for his candidate to know “the facts of political life.” Leaving little doubt about his own choice, the eccentric but brilliant hermit added, “If we select Nixon, then he, I know for sure knows the facts of life.”1

The memo suggests Hughes believed that Nixon could be bought and used. Indeed, he already knew that from previous underhanded dealings with his favorite corrupt politician. Yet one hefty post-presidential cash “bribe” or “gift” or “donation” from Hughes to Nixon might well have played a key role in the president’s eventual undoing.

In fact, in the annals of disastrous U.S. political payoffs, nothing is ever likely to top Hughes’s $100,000 gift to the president. That’s because Nixon’s subsequent paranoia over the suspected illegal contribution led, in large measure, to the Watergate burglary and its cover-up—which, of course, ultimately forced Nixon to evacuate the White House just steps ahead of an eviction notice in August 1974.

In the early years of Nixon’s presidency, Hughes secretly gave Nixon the soon-to-be controversial $100,000. The money was skimmed from a Hughes gambling casino in Las Vegas, “siphoned like a sip of champagne from the Silver Slipper,” according to a later account by columnist Jack Anderson.2

The two-installment payoff—to curry government favor for Hughes’s gambling and airline businesses—was earmarked for the president’s personal use. Nixon coveted the money—actively and repeatedly seeking it—after learning that his 1968 Democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, had received a similar under-the-table “political donation” from Hughes.3

Once a daring pilot, an aircraft inventor (the Spruce Goose), a handsome starlet-dating Hollywood producer, and a business genius, Hughes now lived alone at The Desert Inn in Las Vegas. Nixon’s primary financial angel had become a ninety-pound, narcotics-addicted shut-in who refused to cut his hair, beard, fingernails or toenails. Yet he remained levelheaded enough to want the next president in his hip pocket. And he bragged to aide Robert Maheu, “Bob, remember that there is no person in the world that I can’t either buy or destroy.”4

Chief Senate Watergate Committee investigator Terry Lenzner later said if the Hughes $100,000 “had gone to a legitimate political campaign, it would have been perfectly appropriate and okay. This, however, was a bribe, in effect, through (Bebe) Rebozo to the president.”5

Just how does one of the nation’s richest men buy influence from its most powerful? In the shadows, and through middlemen—yet under swaying palms at resortlike seaside settings. Best of all, under the protective umbrella of the United States Secret Service.

On September 10, 1969, Hughes’s top two lieutenants Robert Maheu and Richard Danner delivered the first $50,000 installment to Rebozo—Nixon’s bosom buddy since at least 1950. The president’s genial Cuban-American pal accepted a manila envelope stuffed with crisp hundred-dollar bills.

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