The Great Hughes Airlift

The Great Hughes Airlift

For several weeks, Howard Hughes himself had been curiously receding from the affair, while the Clifford Irvings & Co. dominated the scene. Last week the billionaire re-entered the bizarre drama. In an operation only slightly less complicated than the Berlin airlift, he moved his entire headquarters from Paradise Island in the Bahamas to Managua, Nicaragua.

It was widely reported that Hughes left Nassau because the Bahamian government suddenly found that several of his aides--the "Mormon Mafia" --did not have the work permits required of foreigners. Actually, the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, which is conducting a grand jury investigation of the Irving hoax, had issued a subpoena for Hughes to testify. On Valentine's Day, U.S. postal inspectors appeared in Nassau with the summons; federal officials intended to impanel a grand jury in either Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands to hear Hughes --at night, if he so desired. The postal inspectors consulted with Bahamian officials on the best way to penetrate Hughes' elaborate security in order to serve the subpoena.

The Bahamians obliged by arranging to create a commotion over the Hughes aides' work permits, hoping that somehow the subpoena could be served in the confusion. A raiding party of 20 Bahamians--police, immigration agents and others--appeared at the Hughes fastness at 2 a.m. last Tuesday; they got no farther than Hughes' foyer. Stymied, the Bahamians issued an ultimatum that four of Hughes' entourage must leave the country within two hours because they lacked proper work permits.

The plan backfired. Because of suits (totaling more than $400 million) now pending against him in U.S. courts, the one thing that Hughes seems to be determined to avoid at any cost is a court appearance. When some of his aides learned that the Bahamians were acting in order to help U.S. officials, who had summons in hand, Hughes decided to pull up stakes entirely.

No one is certain exactly when he left Nassau. Sources in the Hughes Tool Co. said that he was out of the Britannia Beach Hotel by 8 o'clock the morning of the Bahamian raid. If so, his whereabouts for the next two days is a mystery. Apparently, Hughes boarded a chartered boat for the first stage of his hegira--the 180-mile trip to an unspecified coastal haven somewhere near Miami.

However Hughes traveled, an extensive airlift began on Wednesday night to remove his personal belongings from the ninth-floor suite at the Britannia Beach. Workers loaded three flatbed trucks with his paraphernalia: a refrigerator, a hospital bed with railings, a hospital stand of the kind used to hold aloft blood plasma, six television sets, many cartons of purified water, motorized reclining chairs, numerous pots and pans. Said CBS-TV Producer Don Hewitt, who was vacationing on Nassau and happened to see part of the move: "It didn't look like a rich man's stuff. It looked like Archie Bunker's stuff. There was an old electric stove and electric heater and this sort of cheap-looking vinyl couch."

Six X's. The Hughes impedimenta were trucked to the Nassau airport and loaded aboard a C46 transport that flew to Fort Lauderdale, refueled, then took off for Managua. In all, as many as nine flights were involved in the exodus. A Hughes Tool Co. representative had arranged for a ten-passenger Eastern Airlines Lockheed Jet-Star to be chartered ($2.10 per mile "wet," meaning with fuel and crew) and waiting before dawn Thursday at the Opa-Locka Airport outside Miami. Just before 7 a.m., a Hughes agent ordered the three-man Eastern crew to move away from the plane while the passengers boarded.

After six passengers had climbed aboard, the crew returned to the cockpit and was told: "Don't come back here [to the passenger area]. And file a flight plan for Managua." The flight took 2 hr., 40 min.; crew members were not permitted aft to use the toilet and received cups of coffee passed through me slightly opened door.

When the JetStar landed at Managua's airport, the crew remained in the cockpit as the passengers, all appearing healthy, disembarked and sped away in a cream-colored Mercedes. The flight crew was never certain whom it had carried: although U.S. immigration laws require a passenger manifest for outgoing flights, the list was marked only by six X's.

Little Rumba. Managua seemed an improbable choice for Hughes. In an explanation hastily contrived after Hughes' arrival, President Anastasio Somoza welcomed him for what he implied was a visit to discuss business ventures. The only thing that most Americans--or at least the older generation --know about the sleepy, often steamy Central American city of 300,000, is the insistent little 1946 rumba: "Managua, Nicaragua, is a beautiful town. You buy a hacienda for a few pesos down." A man as obsessive about germs as Hughes could hardly be comforted by the knowledge that outbreaks of polio and bacillary dysentery afflict the republic.

But then, Hughes' oddly hermetic existence changes little, no matter what the local conditions. He and his aides immediately sealed themselves in a 17-room suite that occupies the entire eighth floor of the two-year-old Hotel Inter-Continental Managua, a building shaped like a Mayan temple, on the outskirts of the city. The automatic elevators were immediately readjusted to prevent visitors from getting off at Hughes' floor. Hughes' communications antennas sprouted from the roof. Many Nicaraguans, while delighted with the press attention--reporters flocked in by the dozens--and visions of a Hughes-induced boom, concluded that "the man is loco."

Back in New York City, the case was losing some of its reckless gaiety for the Irvings. Federal authorities arrested Edith Irving and then released her on a $250,000 personal recognizance bond to await a hearing on her possible extradition to face forgery and other charges in Switzerland. New York County District Attorney Frank Hogan was said to be working out a deal with Irving: he would plead guilty to perjury and his wife would confess to conspiracy. The Irvings would promise to repay the $650,000 that McGraw-Hill thought it was paying to Howard Hughes for his autobiography.

The arrangement might suit Irving.

A guilty plea might prevent Mrs. Irving from being extradited. Irving could possibly keep many of the details of his hoax a secret. Then, while serving a prison term, he could write his account of how he did it. That tale might now bring him more money than his original Hughes book ever could have.

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