NOAH DIETRICH
Nixon’s brother Donald Nixon was a notoriously poor businessman and was in financial difficulties. The Vice President asked the Howard Hughes attorney if a loan could be arranged for brother Donald. Nixon told Dietrich that “My family comes ahead of my political career.” The $25,000 loan was arranged and “laundered” by coming from Frank Waters, a Hughes attorney to Nixon’s mother who in turn gave the money to Donald. He promptly spent it all and 2 weeks later Don’s business went under. No quid pro quo has ever been proved, although see Howard Hughes’ quotation.
Noah Dietrich was an American businessman, who was the chief executive officer of the Howard Hughes business empire from 1925 to 1957. (Even though these dates have been recorded as the official period of employment, Noah Dietrich continued to oversee and make executive decisions for the Hughes industries as late as 1970.) According to his own memoirs, he left the Hughes operation over a dispute involving putting more of his income on a capital gains basis. The manuscript of his eventual memoir, Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes, may have been a key, if inadvertent, source of novelist Clifford Irving's infamous fake autobiography of Hughes.
