Michael Drosnin - Citizen Hughes

Its been two decades since this book first revealed the truth about the worlds most secretive man, Howard Hughes. It is now out again with a new Hughes movie, The Aviator.

In that time two things have been proven beyond any doubt. First, that the nearly 10,000 documents on which this book is based are real. They are the papers Howard Hughes sent and received, the handwritten notes he wrote from hiding to his unseen henchmen. It was the way the billionaire hermit ruled his empire.

The papers were stolen from Hughes headquarters on June 5, 1974. A million-dollar buyback bid from the CIA and an FBI investigation failed. I tracked down the burglars two years later. We made a dealI would keep their identity secret if they gave me the stolen Hughes documents.

After this book was published, the man who received most of the Hughes memos, his righthand man, Robert Maheu, confirmed the authenticity of the documents on ABC and NBC television news shows. And one of the few who had direct contact with Hughes, Roy Crawford, the aide who delivered the memos from Hughes to Maheu, also confirmed the documents were genuine on the ABC news magazine 20/20.

It was indisputable proof that two top handwriting expertsOrdway Hilton, who exposed Clifford Irvings famous hoax autobiography of Hughes as a fraud, and John J. Harris, who proved Melvin Dummars Mormon Will a forgerywere right: These handwritten Hughes documents were authentic.

So this book is proven to be the one true account of Hughes from the only reliable sourceHoward himself.

A second fact proven true after this book was originally publishedHughes really did try to buy the government of the United States, and instead helped bring it down.

Just last year, PBS broadcast a documentary in which a key Watergate conspirator, Jeb Magruder, said on camera that he heard President Richard Nixon personally order the break-in that led to his resignation two years later.

According to Magruder, who passed on Nixons orders to the burglars, the President directed his attorney general, John Mitchell, to send the Plumbers, his dirty-tricks squad, into Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Some questioned why Magruder waited so long to tell the truth. In fact, he did not. Magruder told me the same story, on background, two decades before (see ). Now that he has made it public, I can reveal it.

And Magruder also told me the Presidents motiveto cover up $100,000 in hidden cash Nixon received from Hughes.

In a real sense, this book is the story of two break-ins, the one that brought down a President, and the other that revealed the truth about Hughes. The White House at first dismissed Watergate as a third-rate burglary. No one said that about the June 5, 1974, break-in at Howard Hughes headquarters in Hollywood.

No one called it a third-rate burglary. There was no need tono one got caught. Besides, a nation still transfixed by Watergate hardly noticed the June 5, 1974, break-in at 7000 Romaine Street in Hollywood.

The target, a hulking block-long two-story building, looked like an abandoned warehouse. It had no name. But for a quarter-century 7000 Romaine was the nerve center of a vast secret empire. It belonged to Howard Hughes.

The burglars were not only after his money but also his secrets. At the height of his wealth, power, and invisibility, the phantom billionaire commanded his empire by correspondence, scrawling his orders in thousands of handwritten memos, hearing back from his henchmen in memos dictated to his aides, dealing with outsiders only through the Romaine switchboard, which kept verbatim transcripts of all incoming calls.

And the Romaine vaults safeguarded all those memos, all those transcripts, all of Hughess personal and corporate files, all the secrets of a mystery man who was known to have dealings with the CIA, the Mafia, and the White House and whose hidden empire seemed to reach everywhere.

The fortresslike steel-and-concrete building was said to be impregnable. Published accounts detailed a fail-safe security system that included laser-beam surveillance, X-ray detection devices, and electronic alarms to alert a private army before anyone could even get near the burglarproof safes. Entry was by appointment only, and few outsiders were ever allowed through the four-combination, pushbutton-lock doors.

But in the early morning hours of June 5, 1974, persons unknown managed to get in uninvited. No alarms blared, because there was no working alarm system. No private army opened fire, because there was no private army. Romaine was a Hollywood faade, protected only by a single unarmed security guard.

The guard, Mike Davis, had just completed his rounds outside the building. It was 12:45 A.M.

As I opened a side door, he would later tell the police, someone came from behind and jammed a hard object into my back. I never actually saw a gun. I just assumed they were armed. I knew I wasnt.

Lets go, were going in, Davis said the burglars ordered, pushing him ahead of them. They told the guard to lie facedown on the floor. Blindfolded and gagged, his wrists taped cross-handed, Davis said he saw nothing but thought he heard four men, the two who came up behind him and two more who arrived soon after, dragging in a two-tank acetylene torch on a clattering steel dolly.

He heard them send a lookout upstairs, where the only other person in the building was manning the switchboard in a soundproof room and didnt hear a thing.

If the doors are open, you can hear a pin drop, explained the oblivious operator, Harry Watson. If theyre closed, you could drop a bomb and I wouldnt hear it. That night my doors were closed and I wouldnt have heard a tank come through.

The burglars took their time, moving through the maze of offices in the sprawling building as if they had a treasure map. According to Davis, they first led him straight to Kay Glenns office. Glenn was managing director of Romaine and chief deputy to Bill Gay, one of three top executives who ran the Hughes empire through its holding company, Summa Corporation. There the burglars peeled open a safe in the top drawer of a filing cabinet, removing thousands in cash and unidentified documents.

At the same time, Davis said he heard the pop and crackle of a blowtorch. Directly across the hall, the safecrackers burned a gaping hole through the steel doors of a walk-in vault. Looky here, this is it! the guard heard one exclaim.

Before they were finished, the burglars had torched another large safe, pried open three smaller ones, and ransacked several offices, including that of Nadine Henley, Hughess longtime personal secretary and a member of Summas ruling triumverate.

Finally, Davis said, the intruders marched him upstairs and entered a second-floor conference room where the billionaires personal files had been assembled at the orders of his general counsel, Chester Davis, the third member of Summas top command.