Maheu, Robert (with Richard Hack). Next to Hughes. New York: Harper
Paperbacks, 1993. 358 pages.
There are two reactions when people think of Howard Hughes. The average
person thinks of Hollywood, the Spruce Goose, Las Vegas, and an old man who
wasted away in a well-guarded suite somewhere, paranoid of germs, who for
decades did not show himself to even his closest aides. Others react by
thinking of the CIA, Mafia, and Watergate connections, and those spooky
Intertel agents. These people tend to be suspicious of all the news stories.
Robert Maheu wrote this book for the average person; either he doesn't know
all that much or he's still not willing to tell. Maheu, who never saw Hughes,
was his Number One wheeler-dealer from the late 1950s until 1970. By that
time Hughes' paranoia played into the hands of other aides, who used his
isolation to manage the information he received and the documents he signed.
They took him out of the country and effectively captured his empire.
Maheu tells about his work for the CIA (he was the CIA-Mafia liaison
for the assassination attempts on Castro), and mentions the Hughes cash
contributions to Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon. His narrative also paints
a fascinating picture of how the powerful get things done by dropping a word
to various well-placed elites. But in the end Maheu sees himself as just
another nice guy who got taken for a ride, and many of his readers will feel
that there's still plenty he'd prefer not to share with commoners like us.
ISBN 0-06-109033-6
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