RB,
I've never read a satisfactory explanation of why the Hughes loan was ever made. There's a internal memo written by Hughes dating from the late 60s with ramblings about how the loan somehow gave Hughes a handle on Nixon, but no one ever really had a handle on Dick Nixon.
Hughes was undoubtedly insane, functionally insane, but truly insane. He would require a huge "payoff" to even think about cooperating in any manner with federal officials in their investigation of the loan. However, even if Donald is successfully prosecuted, I don't believe that the prosecution will be able to prove that Hughes' loan to Donald effected Dick's performance in the vice-president's office. Both Hughes and Nixon were too canny for that.
The Justice investigation was already seen at the time as persecution by the Kennedy brothers and interference in the California gubernatorial race. People forget that the 1960 election results were as contentious as those 2000 and there is excellent evidence that both national parties stole the vote in several states. Nixon's decision not to challenge the results will be discussed by historians for centuries as there most likely was no one reason but rather a constantly shifting mix of them. The upshot was that a significant section of the population firmly believed the Kennedy family had stolen the White House and that colored their perspective of JFK up until Oswald made him a martyr(1).
A federal prosecution of Donald and Hannah, whether successful or not, would be viewed in many quarters as further proof of a Kennedy vendetta against Nixon. As you noted in another thread, Nixon some sort of gift for "ju jitsu" in these matters. He'd neatly flip the investigation and prosecution into political capital, perhaps not enough to win the governor's race but political capital nonetheless.
Assuming Donald and Hannah are prosecuted, whatever the outcome, and assuming Nixon still loses the gubernatorial race, the fact that the Hughes loan is now out in the open could very change history out of all recognition. You see, there's a good suggestion that the Plumbers didn't break into the DNC's Watergate offices looking for information about the DNC. They may have been looking for information about the Hughes loan. It goes like this...
- In 1971, Donald Nixon, who made Billy Carter look like a genius, is stumbling around looking for "intelligence" to help Dick's reelection campaign.
- The DNC realizes that Donald is a perfect way to pass misinformation directly to the highest levels of the Nixon campaign.
- A man named Meier who worked for Humphrey tells Donald that Hughes was claiming he had a handle on Nixon thanks to information regarding the loan.
- Meier further adds that a man named Larry O'Brien has the pertinent documents which would back up Hughes' claims.
- Larry O'Brien, oddly enough, is both a Hughes employee and the Democratic Party Chairman.
- The misinformation is passed along as planned and Nixon orders the break-in.
- The Plumbers burgle O'Brien's office in the DNC office in the Watergate building in order to install wiretaps and find out about the loan.
- Feces hits the rotary ventilation device.
IF a prosecution over the Hughes loan takes place in 1961-62 and
IF the Watergate break-in had more to do with the Hughes loan than anything else,
THEN the Hughes loan being old news by 1972 means there will be no break-in that year either.
Regards,
Bill
1 - AMC has a delightful series called
Mad Men set in the early 60s which has garnered a lot of critical and popular attention. I've read comments regarding the show in which people expressed amazement at the characters' dismissive and insulting references to JFK. The script seemed jarring to them because they only really remember "Camelot" and the "martyr" rather than the real man.