THE BILLIONAIRE, THE PRO AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403630014-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: March 21, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403630014-4
WALL STREET
The Billionaire, the Pro and the CIA
Yet another book about Howard
Hughes. Now, besides wondering how a
guy as loony as Mr. Hughes was could be
so successful, and why books about him
sell so well, l must also wonder how author
Michael Drosnin got his hands on at least
some of the private, handwritten corre-
spondence that was stolen in 1974 from Mr.
Hughes's corporate office in Los Angeles.
rAt the time of the theft, Mr. Hughes lay
far away in the Bahamas, in one of a
series of hotel suites where for the last
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Bookshelf
"Citizen Hughes"
By Michael Drosnin
P
decade of his life he kept himself fenced
off from the world by a few servants, na-
kid, voluntarily bedridden, preoccupied
quarry was documents, not money, he
turned his gun on his employers and took
the documents, figuring to ransom them.
But an intermediary he approached anony-
mously to seek the ransom called the po-
lice instead. When the ransom message
was finally relayed it was rebuffed. Mr.
Drosnin theorizes that this was because the
secrets contained in the papers seemed
safer from public disclosure while they re-
mained with the thief than if they changed
hands again. Possibly included among
these secrets was evidence that the CIA
had been entrusting the demented Mr.
Hughes with its plans to capture a sunken
Soviet submarine and to use the Mafia to
kill Fidel Castro. No ransom payment was
made, nor was The Pro ever caught.
But where all the government's men
couldn't find The Pro, Mr. Drosnin says
he did, and persuaded him to turn over the
stolen documents for public disclosure.
This leads to the best line in the book.
The Pro asks Mr. Drosnin, "What does
that make me? An investigative thief?"
Mr. Drosnin says "personal problems"
between re
d
l
d th
i
ht
e
ay
e e
g
year
with pumping codeine into himself, bad cause
gerfng subordinates to bribe anyone mi ceipt of the documents and publication of
their paths and insisting that they protect "Citizen Hughes." He denies gossip that
On from germs by using wads of Kleenex the statute of limitations on receiving
ttouch anything that might touch him. stolen property had anything to do with it.
Rr_
^lt is this madness and corruption that Unfortunately, Mr. Drosnin asks us to take
Mr. Drosnin documents in "Citizen a lot of things on faith. The Pro still in-
Hughes" (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 532 silts on being an anonymous source.
pages, $18.95), which he says relies mainly Mr. Drosnin is identified in publicity as
on exclusive material. In an author's note, a former Wall Street Journal reporter. He
he writes: "This book is based primarily turns out to have worked for this newspa-
on nearly ten thousand previously hidden per for eight months in 1970-71, and he and
internal documents . . . all of which were his former supervisors express disdain for
stolen from" Mr. Hughes's headquarters. each other's work habits, though nothing'
This is followed by the most exciting- serious is alleged on either side.
part of the book, the 36-page introduction, Mr. Drosnin's next milestone was a co-
wherein Mr. Drosnin tells of his bizarre caine bust with Abbie Hoffman in 1973. He
and hair-raising chase through Southern, talked himself out of being indicted, saying
he was only on the scene to write a story
California massage parlors and gun-filled for Harper's magazine, whose editor con-
garden apartments, leading to a man he firms this, though no story was ever pub-
calls "The Pro," a safecracker who alleg lished. Then came an assignment for New
edly carried out the raid on the Hughes of- Times magazine to write about the Hughes
fice. The Pro, we are told, had been hired heist, which Mr. Drosnin says led him to
by strangers-maybe the CIA or Nixon op- the 10,000 documents, and "Citizen
eratives, maybe agents of Mr. Hughes Hughes." In three hours in his sparsely
himself truing to hide his own records furnished Soho loft, Mr. Drosnin convinc
from an SEC subpoena. ingly demonstrated that he has a lot of
Hughes-written documents whose only ap-
At any rate, Mr. Drosnin says, when parent source would be the 1974 robbery.
The Pro learned in mid-heist that his This certainly isn't a hoax a la Clifford Ir-
ving, who went to jail a decade ago for
forging Mr. Hughes's handwriting to sell a
bogus Hughes autobiography.
But for all his protestations that almost
everything is new and original, much of
the contents of his book will be familiar to
followers of the Hughes literature. Dozes
of documents, some requoted at length, ap-
peared in the acclaimed 1979 Hughes bi-
ography "Empire" by Donald L. Barlett
and James B. Steele of the Philadelphia In-
quirer.
What may be the book's most sensa-
tional episode-Mr. Hughes's attempt be-
fore Robert Kennedy's body was,cold to
hire away the Kennedy political organiza-
tion-was revealed in Jim Hougan's 1978
book "Spooks" (if not elsewhere), though
Mr. Drosnin does add two memos in
Hughes's actual handwriting.
Responding to questions, Mr. Drosnin
asserts that by his count 90% of his docu-
ment quotations are fresh, though he
agrees he doesn't distinguish in his text
between what is new and what isn't. But
his selection of passages for quotation and
even his paraphrasing at times resemble
that in "Empire." This certainly isn't
enough to constitute plagiarism, but it
seems enough to constitute a debt that Mr.
Drosnin (who says he read "Empire")
ought to acknowledge and doesn't.
"Citizen Hughes" is written in breezy
best-sellerese, and where it repeats mate-
rial in "Empire" it usually edits the mate-
rial down for simplicity. It must be read
with care, however, for the document notes
in the back don't always cover the slam-
bang assertions in the text. The text, for
example. matter-of-factly reports that
President Johnson was "in fact certain
that the CIA had a hand in IJohnl Ken-
nedy's assassination." The note in the back
is of an FBI report of an interview wZ
White House aide Marvin Watson. w o said
Mr. Johnson "felt that the CIA had some-
thing to do with this plot." and wante
more in ormation.. Many assertions have
no clear source in the notes.
Mr. Drosnin's tendency to hype and
overconclude leads to a gross mischarac-
terization of what he has found. He calls
his Hughes documents '14 coldblooded tale
of an entire nation's corruption" and a pic-
ture of "the true nature of power in Amer-
ica." But from everything I've read here
and elsewhere, Howard Hughes seems typ-
ical of absolutely nothing.
Mr. Kwitny is a reporter in the Jour-
nal's New York bureau.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/15: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403630014-4