Maheu and Meier both thought that an emaciated Hughes was carried out by Intertel agents, who sent a decoy caravan of limousines to the Las Vegas airport while Hughes was taken to Nellis Air Force Base and flown away in a Lockheed Jet Star. (According to an account in Look by Benjamin Schemmer, editor of The Armed Forces Journal, Hughes was on a stretcher when he was loaded on the plane, and the flight crew that departed from Nellis was told. “Your life depends on your not looking to the rear.”) The decoy trick is the same one that Maheu used on the cross-country train trip to Boston and back. The Mormons had learned the method and done it again, alerting celebrity ‘news’ magazine Time to sneak exclusive pictures. Meier believed whatever was happening, Hughes was not in control.
11/25/1970