IVIV: Golden Fang/Howard Hughes

[Robin Landseadel]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 8:26 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> Thanks Robin , a rich vein, and much more substantial than my  
> thoughts. But I do like the dentist's drill, oil drill, gold  
> connection. I had never heard the term the Mormon Mob, though I  
> remember that B Goldwater was connected to Vegas, Mormons and the mob.

I'm still looking up data—this is new stuff for me as well. Here's a  
Time article on the Mormon Mob, a group of a few men—nursemaids, really 
—who controlled the quotidian details of Howard Hughes' life towards  
the end of his life:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918528-2,00.html

Another aspect of Howards Hughes to consider—his obsession with  
privacy. That's something TRP could get into on a personal level.

While the Mormon Mob may not be the sort of Sax Rohmer styled  
omnipresent conspiracy that ties the whole room together, the bits and  
pieces I've gleaned on Howard Hughes' years in Vegas demonstrate  
plenty of interfaces with the "traditional" mob via his primary  
assistant and enabler Bob Maheu, ex FBI agent who also did "Deep  
Cover"—read: illegal—operations for the CIA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Maheu

According to this post, Robert Maheu was the man who organized an  
attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro using Mafia hit men:

	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.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmaheu.htm

Again, Robert Maheu enabled Howard Hughes' corporate take-over of Vegas:

	The mark Maheu left on Las Vegas is indelible.

	“Bob Maheu had as much to do with the transformation of Las
	Vegas as practically any other person who called Las Vegas
	home,” said Brian Greenspun, president and editor of the Las
	Vegas Sun.

	“When he came here in 1966, Bob spearheaded Howard
	Hughes’ efforts to buy up a number of mobbed-up hotels on the
	Strip. Only men with Mr. Hughes’ money and vision and Bob
	Maheu’s tenacity could have succeeded in ridding Las Vegas
	of mob influence.”

	That, Greenspun said, led to corporate expansion of the Las
	Vegas Strip, fueled by Wall Street and legitimate banks around
	the world.

	“Without Bob Maheu, Las Vegas would be a very different and a
	far less successful place today,” Greenspun said.

	Margulis, 76, Hughes’ longtime bodyguard, recalled that Maheu
	and Hughes, who never met face to face, would talk for hours
	on the phone.

	“The others in the room got so jealous because Bob was
	Howard’s eyes and ears,” Margulis recalled.

	“They tried to gain Howard’s favor and pitched their ideas to
	him, like banning smoking and the consumption of alcoholic
	beverages in Howard’s casinos. Howard got on the phone with
	 Bob and said, ‘You’re not going to believe what they asked me
	to do now.’”

	Maheu then had to spend hours on Hughes’ behalf arguing
	with the caregivers as to why outlawing smoking and drinking in
	Las Vegas casinos was not a good business move, Margulis
	said.

	Maheu, also on Hughes’ behalf, delivered large sums of cash to
	high-ranking politicians to secure favors. Hughes’ memos to
	Maheu about one cash gift from Hughes to President Richard
	M. Nixon and the subsequent break-in of Sun Publisher Hank
	Greenspun’s office to try to steal those documents became part
	of the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s political demise.

http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2008/08/robert-maheu-dead-at-90.html