BLACK PRESIDENT, Chapter 37. Nixon frets about Howard Hughes' dirty $ and Watergate. JFK's 10-year-old sons, John and Jackson Little, discuss 'Great Expectations.'

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CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

January 14, 1971

As Airforce One roared off the runway, President Nixon watched the ground below him recede as if by magic. Airborne, the chills and fears returned. He couldn’t get his mind off the Hughes money. The scandal over the $200,000 his brother had received from the reclusive billionaire had cost Richard Nixon the election of 1960, and he knew he was now in danger of being damaged once again. With Maheu fired and out of the loop, and Hughes himself in the Bahamas, there was a real risk that someone (who?) would leak the fact of the recent $100,000 Bebe Rebozo had stashed in a safe-deposit box for him.

Reading the Los Angeles Times that morning before departing from San Clemente, Nixon had seen a headline that almost paralyzed him. Maheu was suing Hughes for fifty million dollars. Nixon was aware of the memos Hughes wrote daily, knew that they’d be dragged into court. What if the wrong page saw the light? It wasn’t really just $100,000, but two payments of $50,000. Two separate bribes. Undoubtedly there was a memo somewhere that made mention of Hughes’ order to this effect, and Bebe’s name would appear.

Nixon called a steward over. “Whiskey, Samuel.” Samuel had never heard the word “Thanks” and didn’t expect it on that day either. But he noticed that his boss, the President of the United States, looked more edgy and drawn than usual.

Nixon couldn’t switch thoughts away from Larry O’Brien either. That fucker had run Kennedy’s campaign in 1960, had beaten his ass, and now Nixon had learned that he, O’Brien, was on a Hughes retainer as well. If he could only get him caught in the wringer, reveal him, before O’Brien turned the tables and leaked word about the Nixon-Hughes connection. The guy had to be nailed, and soon! Back in his office, Nixon reached Bob Halderman on the phone.

“You’ve got to get O’Brien, Bob, get him with his hands dirty,” he said. ( The words were recorded onto Watergate tape #13).

“Take him down, before those Demos get any more ammo against us. This is top priority. Maheu is outta the picture, so I trust you can contact Howard and Frank... so...and then........a......”

The tape recording became spotty and distorted, cutting out before the end of the conversation. A listener would have heard the men refer to Watergate for the first time, that being the name of the building where O’Brien, “unpaid” chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), had his offices. Nixon was sure that there was some evidence there, in O’Brien’s desk or safe. If Nixon could obtain some incriminating materials then he could keep the Hughes connection buried for good. But nothing could have prepared Nixon for the shock of reading Jack Anderson’s newspaper column of August 6, 1971

Howard Hughes directed his former factotum, Robert Maheu, to help Richard Nixon win the presidency “under our sponsorshp and supervision.” Maheu allegedly siphoned off $100,000 from the Silver Slipper, a Hughes gambling emporium, for Nixon’s campaign. The money was delivered by Richard Danner, a Hughes exec., to Bebe Rebozo, a Nixon confident.

Nixon was furious, bracing himself for the obvious results – impeachment or worse. When Rebozo called he explained how Anderson told him, “Don’t deny it. I’ve seen a Howard Hughes memo detailing this in every respect.” So the President waited, believing his presidency and re-election campaign would end on this horrible note. But after four weeks there was no follow-up, no other shoe falling, nothing.

***

June 17, 1972

John Little complained about the summer heat, but his brother Jackson kept his thoughts to himself, as usual. Jackson had decided to finish reading Great Expectations, a large book that some fifth- graders had begun in school. Most of his classmates had given up on it as soon as vacation hit, but Jackson was a good reader and found solace in reading about the lives of other people. The old woman, Miss Haversham, was sad a lot, sort of like his own Grandmother, Dee Dee. And the book said Haversham had a white wedding dress that she liked to wear all the time. He liked to wear his green shirt almost every day too, so he saw nothing particularly wrong with that.

The young woman, Estella, was mean. She would tease Pip alot. He knew a girl at school like that, Molly Daniels, who teased him, always making fun of his clothes or shoes, sometimes even calling him “double-head.” Most kids didn’t tease the brothers about being identical, but a few bad apples couldn’t resist the obvious targeting. If the verbal abuse got to be too much, Jackson could always depend on John to jump in and scare the agressor away.

Jackson enjoyed reading about the two boys in the story, seeing how they argued about trifles, went on adventures, argued some more – just like he did with his brother. Jackson liked the part about Pip going to a big city and having “great expectations.” Expectations were certainly something great to have, he reflected. As he read on, experiencing the Pip character growing older with each turn of the page, he learned that the boy made a new friend. Jackson, himself, wanted to go to exciting places and meet new people.

After his mother tucked him in that night, left the twins to their darkened room, Jackson whispered to his brother, “You asleep?”

“No,” John answered, with a drowsy edge to his voice. “But I’m tired.”

“You remember Miss Haversham? She burned up in her party dress.” Jackson hoped this dramatic update would get his twin’s attention.”

“She did? Where’d the fire come from?” John had stopped reading the dauntingly thick book early on.

“Her birthday cake,” answered Jackson, adding, “She shudda blown out more candles.”

Jackson heard no response from his brother so he asked the main question on his mind. “Do you want to come to London with me sometime. It’s in England. I want to go to a really big city someday.” The excitement was evident in his voice.

John had run himself hard that afternoon, in the playground across the block from their tenement house, and was too tired to keep the conversation going for long. But he tried to be nice to his big brother, who was older by fifteen minutes.

“I want to go a million places...and Disneyland,” answered John. After a short pause he added, wearily “And I want mommy and daddy to take us.

“That’s all. Can’t say no more.” John rolled over against the cool pillow and stared at the half- light coming in through the shade. He was sound asleep in two minutes.

***

Staring at the untaped lock, Jack Sturgis was temporarily dumbfounded. Yeah, it was late and yeah he’d been drinking a little, but to forget to tape the lock when he had secured all the others was, he knew, a major lapse. He quickly took out the roll of 2-inch gaffers’ and yanked off a couple inches, securing the door jam and rejoining the rest of the men. The Cubans were busy in

O’Brien’s office, removing files one by one and snapping pictures. That was designed to keep them busy, at least until he could locate the Charlie’s Chatter list, an accounting of which congressmen and senators had bedded high-paid call girls. The document was most likely in the main desk or safe. At team leader Howard Hunt’s instructions, McCord was trying to crack the safe using sound- sensitive electronic earphones. Hunt kept his “need-to-know” information to himself. Nixon had personally directed him to return with some real dirt on O’Brien, either in the form of a $50,000 marker from Howard Hughes, or the actual cash itself.

Somehow, anyhow! Nixon had exclaimed to Hunt. Nixon desperately needed a bargaining chip, to make O’Brien think twice before playing his dark card. So, while the Cubans chased a red herring, McCord spun the dials and listened for the tumblers to drop into place. The trick was to wrench open the desk without being too obvious, Sturgis reminded himself. Liddy and Magruder had warned that a tell-tale mark on the wood would not be acceptable. Go delicate, they had insisted, and so he did.

Using a slim-jim car tool for setting spark plugs, Sturgis slipped the .09 metal tab between the lock and the jam and started wiggling. He was amazed that just that minor exertion made his forehead break out into a sweat. Looking across the way, he suddenly caught the off-on strobes of light blinking from the command post in Building A. They’re talking to Liddy or someone, Sturgis thought. Oh well. Keep the focus. No more faulty taped doors or screw-ups, please.

Security guard Frank Wills had walked the corridors innumerable times during his six months as an employee at Watergate. And it had been just about as monotonous as one could imagine. The time that he had vacationed in Las Vegas with his wife, Ruth, and son Jr., Wills had taken one look at the hotel with its long hallways and endless, evenly-spaced doors, and had been rudely thrown back to his day-job responsibilities. The main thing was to not fall asleep, or forget to punch the timeclock. And writing a log entry every hour

about the state of things (always the same...) was crucial to managing such a large complex.

Around 1:30AM Wills caught sight of a piece of tape protruding from a doorway on level-five. He took a close look, investigated it for a few moments, then pulled it off with a quick jerk and let the door close to its naturally locked position. What was somebody thinking? he thought to himself as he continued down the hall. Then he spotted another taped door, done just like the one leading to the stairwell. He undid that one too, let it close properly, walked down a flight and saw yet another taped door on level-four. Descended to level-three – one more!

After he removed the tape from each door jam he had surprisingly found himself excited about something for the very first time in months. Who had left the trail? Were there others? The last taped door jam he found before calling the police had been between the underground parking garage and level-one. Within minutes, Wills was surrounded by a force of fifteen officers, heading up to the fifth floor. By 2:40AM, five burglars had been arrested, including three Cubans, Sturgis, and McCord of the CIA.

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