Robert Maheu
| Robert Maheu | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Robert Aime Maheu October 30, 1917 Waterville, Maine |
| Died | August 4, 2008 (aged 90) Las Vegas, Nevada |
| Education |
Holy Cross Georgetown University |
Robert Aime Maheu (October 30, 1917 – August 4, 2008) was an American businessman and lawyer, who worked for the FBI and CIA, and as the chief executive of Nevada operations for the industrialist Howard Hughes.
Maheu was born in Waterville, Maine, the son of Christine and Ephrem Maheu, who were of French-Canadian descent. He held degrees from Holy Cross and Georgetown University. In 1941, during his law studies at Georgetown, he was hired by the FBI and worked as a counter-intelligence officer in Europe during World War II. He left the FBI in 1947, becoming a self-employed business owner, consultant and investigator.
Maheu's contract with the Hughes company started in 1955, after Howard Hughes hired him to investigate an alleged suitor of his fiance Jean Peters.
Although Maheu was for years a close confident of Howard Hughes, he never met Hughes face-to-face, as they worked via memo and telephone. He was dismissed in 1970. As part of the struggle to get rid of Maheu, Hughes wrote a manuscript letter to Chester Davis and Bill Gay which was published in facsimile by Life in January 1971; this publication provided Clifford Irving with a sample of Hughes' handwriting which he later used to attempt to forge Hughes' autobiography. Maheu sued Hughes for control of Trans World Airlines and $50 million.
In the conference call on January 7, 1972 in which he denounced Irving's supposed autobiography of him as a hoax, Hughes was also asked why he fired Maheu, to which he replied:
"Because he’s a no-good, dishonest son of a bitch, and he stole me blind. ... you wouldn’t think it could be possible with modern methods of bookkeeping and accounting and so forth for a thing like the Maheu theft to have occurred, but believe me, it did, because the money’s gone and he’s got it."
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