The Black Book and the Mob: The Untold Story of the Control of Nevada's Casinos

4. A Savior Comes to Babylon

4 A Savior Comes to Babylon The mid-1960s brought the eccentric Howard Hughes to Las Vegas . His presence was like a miracle. He immediately bought several casinos that were thought to have been controlled by organized crime. Some of these had been owned by Moe Dalitz and his partners, though Hughes is said to have thereafter enlisted Dalitz's advice on Desert Inn operations and to have wanted his involvement in decisions regarding "other deals" that he had been considering.! And there were indeed other deals. By April of 1968, Hughes had acquired six major casinos on the Strip-the Desert Inn, the Sands, the Castaways, the Frontier, the Landmark, and the Silver Slipper. He had become the state's largest employer , owning a quarter of the business done in Las Vegas and contributing a seventh of the state revenues.2 Because Hughes was believed to have obtained his fortune honestly, he was trusted by the regulators and increased public confidence in the legitimacy of gaming. Several transcripts of regulatory meetings pertaining to his properties reflect the esteem in which he was held and the deference shown him by the regulators. "Desperately anxious to keep him in Nevada, the state waived most of the mandated investigative procedures necessary for licensure." 3 Also, because Hughes bought hotels and casinos that were thought to have been under mob influence, there was the perception that the underworld no longer posed a serious threat to the industry. Indeed, it has been suggested that the eastern mobs sold their Las Vegas interests to Howard Hughes.4 With Hughes now in town, presumably regulators felt little need to 53 Copyrighted Material THE EARLY PERIOD OF NEVADA GAMBLING activate the Black Book. But just what do we know about this man who went to such great lengths to avoid social contact and to keep his life secret? Billionaire Howard Hughes died in 1976 at the age of 70 on a plane from Acapulco to Houston, Texas-a victim of malnutrition , gross neglect, and drug abuse.5 For the last 15 years of his life, he lived in blackened rooms and complete secrecy. The regulators of the Nevada gaming industry, as well as the general public, were unaware of the many bizarre aspects of Hughes's life because of the elaborate "secrecy machine" that he had constructed t6 guard his privacy. James Phelan, who chronicled how Hughes maintained his invisibility and fostered a myth of his sanity and control over his business empire, wrote: In the everyday world, a recluse who cowers naked amid self-neglect in his bedroom is called insane. A billionaire who thus flees the world is termed eccentric. The charade was played out by ... [Hughes's] aides for fifteen years. It succeeded because the truth about Hughes was confined to a tight, taciturn little group and because Hughef.. had stretches of lucidity when his mask of sanity stayed in place. (p.43) Born in 1905, Hughes inherited the Hughes Tool Company from his father, which proved to be the basis of his wealth. He used these monies to make movies and to build a major international air transportation company, Trans World Airlines. These business machinations were the large part of his public image. But Hughes also was the beneficiary of government contracts and favors amounting to $6 billion, sometimes secured by cash, and he escaped any accounting of his transactions in court or by governmental or regulatory agencies (pp. xii, 75, 187-1f:9). His personal life was equally unknown (pp. 24-43). Though a legendary womanizer in the 1940s and 1950s, he maintained residences for women he never visited, and was completely without female companionship for the last 10 years of his life. Dunng this time, he lived a Spartan-like existence as a hypochondriac and drug addict, prone to compulsive meticulousness and obsessive cleanliness. On Thanksgiving Day in 1966, Hughes moved un~een to the penthouse of the Desert Inn, where he lived for the next four 54 Copyrighted Material A Savior Comes to Babylon years. At the time, he was embroiled in a complicated and expensive legal battle over alleged mismanagement of TWA that had forced the sale of his $546 million interest in the airlines and resulted in a $145 million default judgment against him by the court (pp. 49, 56). To organize the "counterintelligence" necessary to keep him out of court, Hughes hired Bob Maheu, who...