| did not see the ad, but destiny acted as though | had answered it, when | was contacted by Murray Chotiner for Herman Perry, vice president of the Bank of America. Perry later became vice president of the Western Tube Corporation, a CIA front located in the Whittier Bank of America building. But now he wanted to know only if | was a Republican and if | was available. My responses were both affirmative. It was Perry who brought me out for an extremely brief meeting with Howard Hughes. Hughes was handsome, dynamic, self-assured. Somehow he had seen the FBI dossier on me, which had apparently been compiled when | applied for a position with the Bureau after graduating law school. Oddly enough, | had never heard back from the FBI directly. “Nixon,” he addressed me, “you have a magnificent political future ahead. You will be able to steer your ship independently. But always keep it in a tiny compartment of your mind that you do not own the ocean. | do.” | never saw Howard Hughes face to face again. kok OF The seeds of my distrust of the Justice Department were sown in 1948 during the Alger Hiss case. Those people just sat on each other’ s HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015095