Robert Maheu was born in
Waterville, Maine, in 1918. After graduating from the College of the
Holy Cross, Worcester, in 1940, he joined the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. During the Second World
War he posed as a German sympathizer.
In 1947 Maheu established
his own investigative company. Maheu also worked for the Central
Intelligence Agency.
He was later to admit "The CIA was my first steady client, giving
me `cut-out' assignments (those jobs in which the agency could not
officially be involved)." This work brought him into contact
with Howard Hughes and in the late 1950s
worked for him on a freelance basis. This included intimidating would
be blackmailers and obtaining information on business rivals.
In
1960 Richard
Bissell and
Allen W. Dulles decided to work with
the Mafia in a plot to assassinate Fidel
Castro. Maheu was employed by the CIA
to organize the conspiracy. The advantage of employing the Mafia for
this work is that it provided CIA with a credible cover story. The
Mafia were known to be angry with Castro for closing down their profitable
brothels and casinos in Cuba. If the assassins were killed or captured
the media would accept that the Mafia were working on their own.
In August 1960, Colonel
Sheffield Edwards contacted Maheu. As
Maheu explained in 1995: "In the winter of 1959-60, however,
the CIA still thought it could pull off the invasion (of Cuba). But
it thought the odds might be better if the plan went one step further
- the murder of Fidel Castro. All the Company needed was someone to
do the dirty work for it. Professional killers. A gangland-style hit."
Maheu offered the contract
to Johnny Rosell. He in turn arranged
for a meeting on 11th October, 1960, between Maheu and two leading
mobsters, Santo
Trafficante
and Sam
Giancana. As Maheu pointed out, "both were among the ten
most powerful Mafia members" in America. Maheu
told the mobsters that the CIA was willing to pay $150,000 to have
Castro killed.
On 12th March, 1961, Maheu
arranged for CIA operative, Jim O'Connell, to meet Roselli, Trafficante
and Giancana at the Fontainebleau Hotel. During the meeting O'Connell
gave poison pills and $10,000 to Rosselli to be used against Fidel
Castro.
Maheu
began full-time work for Howard
Hughes in
1966. He moved to Las Vegas where he ran Hughes's casinos. Maheu explained
later what his role was in the operation: "When
he came here, he wanted to tie up all the property on the Strip to
develop it properly. He didn't want it to be honky-tonk or like Coney
Island. Hughes was a catalyst in the city cleaning up its act."
After losing his job with Howard Hughes
in 1970 Maheu eastablished a new company in Las Vegas called Robert
A. Maheu and Associates. In 1993 Maheu published the book,
Next to Hughes.
Robert A. Maheu (right) with
two business associates.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Mark Fisher, Howard
Hughes (April, 2003)
As
fantastically wealthy manipulators go, Howard R. Hughes was king.
The billionaire's Midas touch had less to do with his fabled technical
and financial genius than with endless secret deals and covert political
bribes. "I can but any man in the world," Hughes liked to
boast. Indeed, Hughes's conspiratorial authority stemmed from his
ability - and eager inclination purchase loyalty from anyone, including
the president of the United States, in a position to advance his,
well, idiosyncratic designs.
Everything
about Hughes was larger than life, including his paradoxical legend.
Heir to a Houston fortune based on a drill bit patent that revolutionized
oil mining, the dashing young Hughes captured the American imagination
during the Great Depression years. Cowboy aviator, Hollywood playboy,
patriotic military contractor, maverick financier, Hughes was a comic
book hero whose can-do exploits knew no limits. Later in life, as
his eccentricities metastasized into madness, the darker portrait
emerged: the stringy-haired old man, a real lunatic with a mortal
fear of germs holed up in a penthouse hermitage.
Throughout
his life, Hughes's obsession with control expressed itself in a mania
for espionage and spookery, especially as it applied to nurturing
his substantial neuroses. However, despite his seeming omnipresence
in the eye of many a stormy conspiracy, Hughes was just as manipulated
by others. Known to spooks as the "Stockholder," Hughes
fronted for CIA covert operations, sometimes unknowingly; Hughes,
the demented shut-in, saw his empire manipulated by remote control.
We
join the Hughes saga during the late 1950s, with the arrival of the
shadowy and some sleazy Robert Maheu, fountainhead of many real and
imagined Hughes conspiracies. In the fifties, Hughes hired Maheu to
intimidate would-be blackmailers and spy on dozens of Hollywood starlets
toward whom Hughes felt possessive. Maheu was a former FBI man whose
private security firm fronted for the CIA on ultra-sensitive (read:
illegal) missions. By the time he became Hughes's private spook, Maheu
already had impressive credentials supervising contract kidnappings
for the CIA and acting as the Agency's literal pimp, hiring prostitutes
to service foreign dignitaries and their peculiar sexual appetites.
Maheu's most notorious CIA job was a go-between in a failed 1960 plot
to assassinate Fidel Castro, which recruited the Mafia to do the "hit."
Friendly with the darndest folks, Maheu enlisted the aid of Vegas
mobster John Roselli ("Uncle Johnny" to Maheu's children),
Chicago godfather Sam "Momo"
Giancana, and powerful Florida mob boss Santos Trafficante. Apparently,
Hughes had no involvement in Maheu's freelance CIA work but delighted
in the spook's exploits and connections, which only enhanced the billionaire's
reputation and influence. (According to journalist Jim Hougan, Maheu
informed Hughes of his efforts on behalf of the CIA to kill Castro.)
By some accounts, however, the Stockholder was the Agency's largest
contractor. In dedicating his resources to the CIA, though, Hughes
wasn't guided entirely by selfless motives. During the late sixties,
he asked Maheu to offer his empire to Agency as a CIA front. At the
time the Hughes fortune was threatened by major legal trouble the
beleaguered billionaire hoped to deflect the nettlesome litigation
with a "national security shield".
(2)
Robert Maheu, Next to Hughes (1992)
In the winter of 1959-60,
however, the CIA still thought it could pull off the invasion (of
Cuba). But it thought the odds might be better if the plan went one
step further - the murder of Fidel Castro. All the Company needed
was someone to do the dirty work for it. Professional killers. A gangland-style
hit.
It was then that the CIA
conceived the notion to let the mobsters do it themselves. They'd
had a grudge against Castro ever since he'd forced them out of the
Havana casinos. It was even rumored that Meyer Lansky had put a million-dollar
bounty on Castro's head. CIA Director Alien Dulles passed the ball
to his deputy director, Richard Bissell. Bissell handed off to the
CIA security chief. Colonel Sheffield Edwards. And then I received
the call...
Though I'm no saint, I
am a religious man, and I knew that the CIA was talking about murder.
O'Connell and Edwards contended that it was a war - a just war. They
said it was necessary to protect the country. They used the analogy
of World War II: if we had known the exact bunker that Hitler was
in during the war, we wouldn't have hesitated to kill the bastard.
The CIA felt exactly the same way about Castro. If Fidel, his brother
Raul, and Che Guevara were assassinated, thousands of lives might
be saved.
But in my mind, justified
or not, I would still have blood on my hands. I had to think about
it. The deal carried a pretty big price tag. I kept thinking about
my family. What kind of danger would it put them in? If anything went
wrong, I was the fall guy, caught between protecting the government
and protecting the mob, two armed camps that could crush me like a
bug....
Rosselli's first response
was laughter. "Me? You want me to get involved with Uncle Sam?
The Feds are tailing me wherever I go. They go to my shirtmaker to
see if I'm buying things with cash. They go to my tailor to see if
I'm using cash there. They're always trying to get something on me.
Bob, are you sure you're talking to the right guy?"
When I finally convinced
Rosselli that I was serious, very serious, he sat staring at me, tapping
his fingers nervously on the table. I didn't want to pull any punches
with the man, so I was totally up-front about the conditions of the
deal.
"It's up to you to
pick whom you want, but it's got to be set up so that Uncle Sam isn't
involved - ever. If anyone connects you with the U.S. government,
I will deny it," I told him. "If you say Bob Maheu brought
you into this, that I was your contact man, I'll say you're off your
rocker, you're lying, you're trying to save your hide. I'll swear
by everything holy that I don't know what in hell you're talking about."
Rosselli hesitated at first,
but then agreed. Many people have speculated that Johnny was looking
for an eventual deal with the government, or some sort of big payoff.
The truth, as corny as it may sound, is that down deep he thought
it was his "patriotic" duty.
Understand that the world
was quite different then. The Cold War was raging. Only months before,
Francis Gary Powers had been shot down while flying his U-2 reconnaissance
plane over the Soviet Union. The relationship between Washington and
Moscow was at an all-time low, with Soviet Premier Khrushchev going
so far as to openly call President Eisenhower a liar on several occasions.
Once the decision was
made, it didn't take Rosselli long to put his plan into motion. On
October 11, 1960, we took off for what would be the first of many
trips to Miami. We booked ourselves into the Kenilworth Hotel, selected
because Arthur Godfrey did his TV show from there. In Miami, Johnny
introduced me to two men who would help us - "Sam Gold"
and "Joe." Sam was Johnny's backup man; Joe would be our
direct contact in Cuba. These weren't ordinary mob lackeys. Johnny
didn't bother to tell me that "Sam" was Sam Giancana, his
boss within the Mafia and the chief of its gigantic Chicago operation.
Or that "Joe" was Santos Trafficante, former syndicate chief
in Havana, and the most powerful Mafia man in the South.
I later learned that Johnny
didn't just need a little help from these men, he needed their okay.
Trafficante was necessary to get Castro because he had the connections
inside Cuba, and Giancana was necessary to get Trafficante, because
Trafficante had the stature of a "Godfather," and only a
man of equal stature - like Giancana - could approach him for help.
Johnny couldn't do it on his own. Both were among the ten most powerful
Mafia members - a fact I learned only after seeing their pictures
in a magazine soon after meeting them.
(3)
Jack
Anderson, Peace,
War and Politics: An Eyewitness Account (1999)
The CIA's Sheffield
Edwards was supposed to make the contact with the underworld. He approached
a former FBI agent and CIA operative, Robert
Maheu, who moved at the subterranean level of politics. Maheu knew
his way around the shady side of Las Vegas; he had been recruited
by billionaire Howard Hughes to oversee his Las Vegas casinos. Happily,
Hughes was a friend who owed me a favor. Intermediaries persuaded
Maheu to confide in me. He confirmed that the CIA had asked him to
sound out the Mafia, strictly off the record, about a contract to
hit Fidel Castro. Maheu had taken the request straight to Johnny Rosselli.
Rosselli had a reputation
inside the mob as a patriot; he was quite willing to kill for his
country. But as he told me, there was an etiquette to be followed
in these matters. Santo Trafficante was the godfather-in-exile of
Cuba after Castro chased out the mob. Rosselli couldn't even tiptoe
through Trafficante's territory without permission, and he couldn't
approach Trafficante without a proper introduction. So Rosselli prevailed
upon his boss in Chicago, Sam "Momo" Giancana, to attend
to the protocol. Since Giancana had godfather status, he could solicit
Trafficante's help to eliminate Castro. The project appealed to Giancana
who had commiserated with other dons over the loss of casino revenues
in Havana. Killing Castro for the government would settle some old
scores for the mob, and it would put Uncle Sam in the debt of the
Mafia.
Maheu had been ordered
to keep a tight lid on the involvement of the US government. The CIA
was ready with a cover story that the Castro hit had been arranged
by disgruntled American businessmen who had been bounced out of their
Cuban enterprises by Castro.
On September 25, I960,
Maheu brought two CIA agents to a suite at the Fountainebleau Hotel
on Miami Beach. Rosselli delivered two sinister mystery men whom he
introduced only as Sicilians named "Sam" and "Joe."
In fact, they were two of the Mafia's most notorious godfathers, Sam
Giancana and Santo Trafficante, both on the FBI's ten-most-wanted
list. They discussed the terms of Castro's demise, with Giancana suggesting
that the usual mob method of a quick bullet to the head be eschewed
in favor of something more delicate, like poison.
The wily Giancana was
less interested in bumping off Castro than in scoring points with
the federal government, and he intended to call in as many chips as
he could before the game was over.
(4)
Spruce Goose, Flight-Line
Online ( 2004)
When
America entered the second world war our geographic isolation from
the areas of conflict gave us a distinct advantage over our enemies.
The technology of the time simply made it too difficult for those
fighting against us to mount serious action against our homeland.
In the end, this advantage left us the time and manufacturing power
to smother our foes with an unending supply of the materials necessary
to wage war. But we also had to overcome the vast distances, we had
to find ways to safely deliver these materials, and men to use them,
to the areas of conflict around the world. At the time, ships were
the only way to get the job done and the men doing it were finding
that it was very dangerous work! Shipyards across America were at
full production but enemy submarines were sinking the critical vessels
nearly as fast as they could be built. Something had to be done.
The idea for the HK-1 flying
boat came from Henry Kaiser... Head of one of the largest shipbuilding
firms of the time, Kaiser thought a ship that could fly over the danger
might be the answer. Howard Hughes was known as an innovator in aircraft
construction and design. These two men, both legends in their own
time, would launch the venture to build the huge craft. (Originally
three were to be built. ) The new plane's official name bore the initials
of the principals in the project HK-1.... But to most of us it's always
just been "Spruce Goose".
The huge plane would be
made primarily of wood, saving materials critical to the war effort.
The difficulties creating such a large airframe made of wood were
unknown at the beginning of construction and would prove to be many.
The final product is a tribute to the efforts of the team in overcoming
the problems they faced. A structure made of lumber was created that,
even on close inspection, bears little resemblance to any form of
wood! Hughes would prove to be a demanding taskmaster during the period
of development and construction. His attention to detail and insistence
everything on the new plane be nearly perfect, was largely responsible
for both the beauty of the finished product and it's not being ready
to fly until after the war had ended.
The timing of completion
and final cost brought Hughes and the project under the critical eye
of the post-war congress, one Senator grudgingly referring to the
plane as "The flying lumberyard". Howard Hughes was called
to Washington D.C. to defend both the project and himself. During
a break in the hearings, he flew back to California to conduct a test
on the "Goose", it was during this test the accidental flight
took place. This event, whether intended or not, put a halt to critics
of the project and served as the finale for this gigantic aircraft
...... the project was dead. Though his feathers had been ruffled
by the intense questioning he had endured, the flight had vindicated
Hughes and the project. The HK-1, which by now would be known forever
as the "Spruce Goose", was put into storage . It remained
hidden from public view, carefully preserved, until after Howard Robard
Hughes death in April of 1976.
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