The Sins of Robert Maheu

[Pat Speer]

I think Robert Maheu is perhaps the smelliest fish in the whole post WW2 ocean..

Consider:

Maheu investigated the case of an OSS officer accused of killing his superior in Italy during the war. The officer was convicted in Italian courts but the case was thrown out in the U.S. when Maheu's long-time crony Edward Bennett Williams pulled a rabbit out of his hat. That Maheu was able to get a drunken Italian communist to inexplicably confess to the crime may have been a factor.

Maheu was hired to scuttle Ari Onassis's deal with the Saudi's by Ari's brother-in-law and ended up meeting with VP Nixon and convincing the CIA to foot the bill. After wiretapping Ari's phone calls he was able to pressure the Saudi's to back out of the deal.

Maheu made a soft-core porno film featuring lookalikes of Indonesian President Sukarno and a Russian woman. The more-believable frames were distributed in Indonesia to discredit Sukarno. The director of the film???? Bing Crosby.

Maheu was tied to the kidnapping and murder of a Dominican Republic dissident when his company was revealed to have paid for the plane used to fly the man out of the country and he was seen in the company of a Dominican agent. This was within a few years of CIA puppet Carlos Castillo-Armas of Guatemala agreeing to murder dissidents in Guatemala in exchange for financial backing from the Dominican dictator Trujillo. One might wonder then what Maheu or the CIA received in exchange for the death of Galindez (the dissident).

Maheu was the first man the CIA thought of when the idea was brought up of killing Castro in 1960. That one of Maheu's partners was traveling with Richard Nixon on the campaign trail couldn't have had anything to do with it, could it? While ostensibly a middleman and cut-out he quickly blew the CIA's cover with the mob and gave Johnny Rosselli and Sam Giancana blackmail-ability over the CIA, which Rosselli at least tried to use. Maheu himself used his connection to the hits and his relationship to the CIA to evade legal difficulties related to his wiretapping Sam Giancana's girlfriend's room.

The wiretap charges stemmed from Maheu's hiring of men to bug the room of Phyllis McGuire so Sam could tell what she was up to. In what was clearly a cover story to evade prosecution, Maheu told the FBI he was bugging her to see if she was leaking details about the CIA/Mafia hits on Castro. Details she presumably would not have known. He therefore compromised the whole operation to save his butt since he knew Hoover hated the CIA and might very well talk. If Sam had actually been talking to his girlfriend, this again reflects badly on Maheu since it was at his urging that Giancana was brought into the loop as "back-up" to Rosselli. He also told Howard Hughes about the attempts on Castro, in order to get time off from his ongoing operations for Hughes, which included signing beauty queens to exclusive personal contracts.

In Robert F Kennedy and His Times, Arthur Schlesinger recounts that Maheu's buddy Edward Bennett Williams was told about the assassination attempts by Giancana, while Giancana was attempting to engage him as his lawyer for a fight against the Government. When asked by Williams to confirm Giancana's role, Maheu confirmed, thereby giving his buddy Giancana (and his buddy Williams) a shot at blackmailing the government. Some cut-out!

Maheu arranged for Howard Hughes to buy up Las Vegas, rewarding his friends and members of the mob with substantial "finder's fees." Finder's fees went to people such as lawyer Edward P. Morgan, newspaper publisher Hank Greenspun, and Johnny Rosselli.

Maheu's buddy Greenspun printed the first "Bobby tried to kill Castro but it backfired" story some time before the infamous Drew Pearson story.

The Drew Pearson story went to print of course right after Bobby came out against the Vietnam war. Morgan told the story to Pearson a few months earlier. Morgan testified that his source for the story was not Rosselli, but Maheu, and that Maheu had told him so that Morgan could pressure the government to kill an investigation of Maheu's wiretapping.

When James Phelan infiltrated Jim Garrison's office and gained access to documents he thought could blow Garrison's case against Clay Shaw, he turned to a trusted ally, Robert Maheu, to help him make copies of the documents.

Phelan would eventually write a book about Howard Hughes using inside sources, including Maheu. One might wonder then if Phelan's exposure of Garrison wasn't done on behalf of Maheu, and that Maheu paid him back with the book on Hughes. Due to Maheu's long-time relationship to the CIA, and the CIA's interest in the Clay Shaw trial, this is not so far-fetched.

Maheu delivered cash to various political figures on behalf of Hughes, including Richard Nixon. Maheu also hired Larry O'Brien (the future basketball commissioner) to represent Hughes in Washington.

When Hughes fired Maheu, accusing him of conspiring with the mob to rob him blind, O'Brien, who had since become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was also let go. This led the paranoid Nixon to assume that Maheu had told O'Brien about the illegal cash contributions. Howard Hunt, who was, strangely enough, working for both Nixon and Hughes, proposed a joint White House/Hughes break-in into Hank Greenspun's safe to see what kind of dirt Maheu might have given Greenspun. In an attempt to find out exactly what O'Brien knew, some guys broke into the Watergate Hotel and bugged O'Brien's phone. The result: Watergate and the downfall of Richard Nixon. The one man on the scene to escape without prosecution? Lou Russell, a former employee of Maheu's. ( I'm gonna double-check this.)

The lawyer hired by the Democratic Party to keep the break-in in the news and assure the fall of Nixon????? Maheu's buddy Edward Bennett Williams...

Former Warren Commission member Gerald Ford's first pick as the new CIA Director after firing Colby for talking too much--a position eventually handed over to George HW Bush--Edward Bennett Williams.

Jimmy Hoffa's, Richard Helms', and John Connally's attorney??? (All possibly connected to the JFK assassination) Edward Bennett Williams.

And who hired up Robert Kennedy's secretary, Angie Novello, the last person known to have JFK's missing brain, after he was killed? Edward Bennett Williams.

This really makes me scratch my head. Isn't it time someone really digs into Maheu and Williams and their ties to both the CIA and the mob? With their resumes, I continue to view them as top suspects in the JFK assassination.

Edited February 26, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Pat Speer]

I added a few more tidbits on Maheu, namely his helping Giancana out with his buddy EB Williams by confirming Giancana's role in the CIA/mafia hits on Castro, and his role in the Clay Shaw trial.

[James Richards]

Good posts, Pat.

Edward Bennett Williams and Jimmy Hoffa below.

James

Edited February 26, 2005 by James Richards

[Ron Ecker]

I just caught the last part of a 60 Minutes segment tonight, in which it was claimed that Nixon ordered the Watergate break-in to find out if O'Brien knew about a 100,000 dollar contribution from Hughes to Nixon. Maheu was one of those interviewed.

I don't buy possible knowledge of some Hughes money going to Nixon as a reason for the break-in. If Nixon was so afraid that O'Brien had something on him, Nixon would have simply had him bumped off.

I still say that Watergate was all about the call girl ring and John Dean's girlfriend Mo. I think the case for this is strengthened by the fact that 60 Minutes didn't even mention it.

Ron

[Jack White]

Maheu's right-hand man was ex-FBI man Dick Danner. Anybody know anything about him?

In my opinion, I think Maheu/Danner were the govt operatives in charge of eliminating Howard Hughes and taking over his vast assets, and involving "Hughes" in multiple covert schemes. The charade of the "nutty recluse" HH was a CIA invention. He died or was killed years earlier.

Jack

[James Richards]

Maheu's right-hand man was ex-FBI man Dick Danner. Anybody know anything about him? (Jack White)

Hi Jack,

Dick Danner was the former head of the FBI office in Miami. In 1969 he went to work as manager of the Howard Hughes owned Frontier Hotel in Vegas. He also did some counterintelligence work for General Motors against Ralph Nader. Danner was a very close friend of Bebe Rebozo. When Nixon received the so-called secret $100,000 campaign contribution from Howard Hughes, it was Danner who delivered the cash to Rebozo.

FWIW.

James

[Tim Gratz]

I think Ron is right. Interesting that 60 minutes did not even mention the call girl connection, which is well established.

I did not catch the story but I thought the Hughes contribution as a motive for the Watergate operation was "old news" that had been discussed ages ago. At least the alleged Hughes contribution to Nixon is "old news".

Edited February 28, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

I am told there are close connections between Robert Maheu and John Tower.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3326

[Tim Gratz]

One thing that bothered me reading Maheu's memoirs is that he states that he liked Giancana in part because he was an excellent cook. Never mind, of course, that he was a vicious killer so long as he could cook a good steak! This is a man who supposedly was at first troubled by the morality of the proposal to assassinate Castro.

[James Richards]

One thing that bothered me reading Maheu's memoirs is that he states that he liked Giancana in part because he was an excellent cook.  Never mind, of course, that he was a vicious killer so long as he could cook a good steak!  This is a man who supposedly was at first troubled by the morality of the proposal to assassinate Castro.

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Maheu was also supposedly an excellent cook. This image below shows him whipping up a storm in the kitchen. The woman on the right is his daughter.

James

[Pat Speer]

I think Ron is right.  Interesting that 60 minutes did not even mention the call girl connection, which is well established.

I did not catch the story but I thought the Hughes contribution as a motive for the Watergate operation was "old news" that had been discussed ages ago.  At least the alleged Hughes contribution to Nixon is "old news".

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

60 Minutes ran the Hughes connection story to tie in with The Aviator's nomination for Best Picture, and the resulting interest in Hughes.

The call-girl ring as primary motivation for the break-in is absolute nonsense, designed to cast Dean as the disloyal bad guy bringing about the fall of the saintly Richard Nixon. Read the transcripts to the tapes and look at Haldeman's diary--Nixon was paranoid about O'Brien. Look at the record--it is undisputed that Hunt and Liddy had previously discussed breaking into Maheu crony Hank Greenspun's safe, supposedly to find dirt on Muskie, with the help of Hughes security people, who just so happened to have an interest in the other contents of the safe. Furthermore, Hunt , Dean, and Magruder, to this day, insist that the call-girl ring never came up and that they were pressured from above to find out what Larry O'Brien had over at the DNC. Magruder said that Colson told him to go after O'Brien for the "information on the Florida dealings," an obvious reference to Danner and Maheu's pay-offs to Mitchell and Rebozo in Florida. (A separate Watergate investigation found that Danner gave Nixon's 1972 campaign an additional 150k in March 1970 after Mitchell over-rode the anti-trust division of the Justice Department and gave Hughes the okay to buy the Dunes Hotel. Maheu, Danner, and Mitchell all flew to Key Biscayne the next morning.)

Liddy doesn't trust anyone less macho than himself, and the Silent Coup theory appeals to his sense of martyrdom, but he's way off. While the question about the key to Ida Wells' desk has never been answered, as far as I know, it should be pointed out that Gonzalez was a locksmith and could have broken into any desk. Since part of the Silent Coup/'Liddy theory rests on the belief that McCord never actually bugged the DNC, it should be pointed out that in McCord's book, printed years before the development of this theory, he mocks the FBI for failing to find the bugs after the break-in and points out that one was found months later and the other one was not found for almost a year, still operational. It should also be pointed out that a number of people acknowledged the existence of transcripts made from the bugs. If so many people knew about the transcripts and the break-in was not authorized, wouldn't SOMEONE in the loop have asked who authorized the break-in? If the second break-in was the only one not authorized, wouldn't NIXON himself have pointed this out many moons ago? After all, he was ready to believe the CIA was behind it. Why not Dean, and his "pretty wife?"

As for Maheu's faking that Hughes was alive, it should be remembered that Hughes called a press conference via phone to denounce Clifford Irving's fraudulent autobio of himself, and that the members of the press agreed to a man that it was the real Hughes on the phone. In this press conference Hughes called Maheu a thief, and Maheu sued him for libel. Somehow I don't think Maheu would have let himself get tied up in court with the Mormon mafia if he knew that Hughes was really dead. He simply would have black-mailed them.

60 Minutes had it right, fellas.

Edited February 28, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Tim Gratz]

I need to dig out my copy of "Silent Coup" to adequately respond but remember a jury which heard all of the evidence sided with Liddy over Wells.

And Jim Hougan was on to the story in his book "Secret Agenda".

More to come.

Some people of course think there was a direct connection between the assassinatioin and Watergate.

There is no question that the Watergate investigation led to the Church Committee. Indeed, Rosselli was first questioned by counsel for the Watergate Committee. The lawyer doing the questioning was named Terry Lenzer, as I recall.

[Ron Ecker]

Lenzer was also interviewed on the 60 Minutes program, and apparently supports the Hughes money theory.

The details of Ida Wells losing her suit against Liddy for slander about the call girl ring is found in the appendix of Liddy's book When I Was a Kid This Was a Free Country.

Ron

[Tim Gratz]

Did you know that Lenzer represented Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the concocter of the CIA's poisons and other deadly devices?

[Pat Speer]

Lenzer was also interviewed on the 60 Minutes program, and apparently supports the Hughes money theory.

The details of Ida Wells losing her suit against Liddy for slander about the call girl ring is found in the appendix of Liddy's book When I Was a Kid This Was a Free Country.

Ron

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As I recall, she did not lose her suit based on anyone believing Liddy's theory. The case was determined, as I remember, based upon whether or not she was a public figure, and whether she was in any way damaged by his conjecure over whether or not she ran a call-girl ring. I think the Deans had a separate suit which stretched on for years.