At the end of 1971, the IRS and the Justice Department—presumably unaware of the depth of the CIA connections to Hughes—sent teams of dozens of volunteer agents into Las Vegas to investigate Hughes-Nevada Operations. The heat was on in Vegas, considering that Intertel, Hughes, IRS, Justice, the CIA and who knew who else were all there spying on one another. According to Hunt’s own Watergate testimony. “It was Mr. Bennett who told me that if I ever got out to Las Vegas, to be very careful even of using a telephone booth there; there was so much electronic surveillance out there that he for one would not even trust a coin phone in Las Vegas.” A minimum of $50,000,000 could not be accounted for right at the outset and all indications were that there were more mysteries where that came from. Spokesmen for the IRS admitted to total bafflement about how business had been conducted in Vegas since Hughes arrived.
11/1/1971