His FBI File was over 2,200 pages long
During the tenure of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI prepared extensive dossiers on nearly all Americans of note, and many of these files are windows into their private lives. Howard Hughes was no exception. Although he was a lifelong patriot, participating in defense and research activities at the behest of the US government, Hughes also associated with individuals deemed by some to be America’s enemies.
As a movie producer and director Hughes supported anti-communist activities and the blacklist, as an industrialist he allowed his businesses to participate in CIA activities, and he was deeply but secretively involved in the Watergate Scandal of the 1970s.
The FBI files have led researchers to surmise that the famous “18-minute gap” of erased material on the Watergate tapes removed from the record references to Howard Hughes. Hughes’s relationship to the Nixon organization dated back to the 1960 presidential campaign, when Richard Nixon’s brother Donald was revealed to have obtained a questionable loan of over $200,000 from Hughes. When Watergate was unraveling as a scandal it was revealed that Hughes had worked secretly with the Democratic National Committee through its Chairman Larry O’Brien.
Their goal was to direct information regarding Nixon’s financial interests with Hughes to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. According to Terry Lenzner, who served as the Senate Watergate Committee’s Chief Investigator, it was Nixon’s desire to know what information the Democrats had on his relationship with Howard Hughes which prompted the break-in at the Watergate Hotel.
Howard Hughes’s will and the numerous frauds and hoaxes which surrounded the final distribution of his estate were worthy of FBI notice as well. One of the most famous is the so-called Mormon Will, which left most of his estate to Hughes Medical Institute and the rest largely to his staff and senior executives. Handwritten, it was supposedly found in a desk at the Church of the Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City.
The will was left with the Church by a gas station attendant named Melvin Dummar who claimed to have rescued Hughes from being stranded – unkempt and seedy in appearance – along the side of a road in 1967. Several days later a man appeared at Dummar’s gas station and presented him with the will. The will left Dummar $156 million. Found to be fraudulent in 1978, Hughes was declared instead to have died intestate. The FBI file contains evidence later uncovered which indicates that Dummar, however improbable, may well have been telling the truth.