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By remote control, Hughes became a politically powerful ghost. His representatives handed out as much as $250,000 a year to politicians. After moving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 1966, he contributed heavily to the campaign fund of Republican Governor Paul Laxalt, whom Hughes for a time considered pushing for the presidency. Then he became a backer of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, contributing $50,000 to his 1968 presidential campaign.
The CIA Partner
In Las Vegas, Hughes found the ideal money machine from which he drew funds for political contributions. It was the Silver Slipper casino, a gaudy gambling house located opposite Hughes' Desert Inn hideaway, which he leased for $4.5 million. From the Silver Slipper till, Hughes in 1970 withdrew at least $1 million for his personal projects. The money was in small-denomination, old bills, which could not be traced by tax authorities. Thus he could contribute to his favored candidates more than the $3,000 tax-free limit that prevailed until 1972. As the Watergate investigations later disclosed, Hughes in 1970 sent President Nixon $100,000 in hundred-dollar bills, which were given to Charles ("Bebe") Rebozo in two installments in manila envelopes. There has been speculation that the purpose of the Watergate break-in and bugging was to discover how much the Democratic National Committee knew of that secret gift, but federal investigators have been unable to establish the credence of that suspicion.
By no means all the success of Hughes' enterprises stemmed from his special relationship to Washington. Hughes Aircraft, for example, has top-flight managers and an excellent reputation. Even so, a recent Government study shows that although the company produces superior weapons, it also charges very high prices and makes big markups on equipment that it buys from outside suppliers and resells to the Pentagon.
During the past ten years Hughes Aircraft, which relies almost exclusively on Government work, has won nearly $6 billion in Government contracts, most of them on bids for weapons and electronic devices that were not open to competitors. There was also about 6 billion dollars more in secret contracts with the CIA over this period. "The huge contracts made Hughes Aircraft a captive company of the CIA," asserts one former Pentagon official. "Their interests are completely merged."
Howard Hughes was eager to have a link to the CIA, since he believed it would help him fend off other U.S. agencies prying into his taxes and business manipulations. The now defunct Robert R. Mullen & Co., which represented Hughes in Washington, also served as a CIA front and provided cover for agents in Europe and Asia. Mullen's president, Robert Bennett, is now a Summa executive.