Age of Secrets
 | |
| Author | Gerald Bellett |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biography |
| Publisher | Las Vegas Free Press |
Publication date | 2015 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 350 |
| ISBN | 978-1-936759-40-8 |
Age of Secrets: The Conspiracy that Toppled Richard Nixon and the Hidden Death of Howard Hughes is a biography on Howard Hughes personal advisor, and former U.S. Senate Candidate, John H. Meier and written by newspaper reporter Gerald Bellett. The book argues that Meier was one of the people who played a role in affecting President Richard Nixon's resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It also details how Meier was apparently pursued for 20 years by the CIA, the Hughes organization, as well as Nixon sympathizers. The book includes an excerpt from John Meier's diary on his knowledge regarding the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination.
Critical Comments
New York Times Bestselling Author Jim Hougan provided the following Critical Comments for Age of Secrets.
“John Meier’s story is really interesting and, I believe, important. I’ve spent a number of years studying the American cryptocracy and there is no question in my mind that Meier is dead-right when he says that the CIA was running the Hughes empire. So, too, with Intertel. I was the first journalist to write about the firm (in Harper’s), and it’s apparent to me, as it is to Meier, that its business plan was drawn up in Langley.
That said, this is complicated stuff. The way I see it, American politics from 1954-74 is a continuum defined by the struggle between the Richard Nixon apparat and the Kennedy machine, with the Howard Hughes empire serving as a fulcrum in what amounted to a secret war for the country’s soul. CIA spooks, mobsters on three coasts and a coven of Texas oligarchs built the “magic box”. *
John Meier’s story is a fungible one in the sense that it could serve as the basis for a rock-’em-sock-’em tv series, motion picture or documentary about the Deep State. By that, I mean the cryptocracy that has evolved since the Cold War along a political continuum defined by assassination, surveillance and cover-up.
The Howard Hughes organization, with its ties to Texas oil, Las Vegas gambling, Hollywood and the CIA was the secret fulcrum of that continuum, mediating a political struggle that, by turns, saw the Kennedy’s devastated by murder and the Nixon camp destroyed by what looks, increasingly, like a soft coup d’etat. In this, John Meier was a Zelig-like figure, at once a witness and a participant, so well-connected - and so deeply involved - that it could only have ended in exile or a grave.
The focal point of that tale, from which everything else proceeds, is obviously the secret war for the Hughes empire.
If it were a film, it would be as exciting as The Bourne Identity, and I think it would pull in the same audience (and for many of the same reasons) that both The Bourne Identity and JFK did.”