In a alcohol/cocaine fuddle but with deadly intentions, Howard pointed the gun at Hughes’ head. A struggle ensued a shot rang out. Hughes’ jeep now had a bullet hole it its roof. Howard, the want-to-be James Bond, was overpowered, punched and disarmed.
While Hughes was inside his flat calling the police, Howard broke loose from his young captors, Conrad Hayas and Bob Martinez. The snarling man jumped into his vehicle and sped off. Minutes later police officers John Martinez and Ray Rael arrived at Hughes’ residence.
As the young Santa Feans were explaining to the police officers what had transpired, Howard unbelievably drove back to the scene of the crime and parked his car.
Full of bravado Howard demanded from Hughes his captured pistol. The cosmopolitan man then ordered the police officers to help him retrieve his gun. Howard was arrested on the spot.
In the court of Judge Bruce E. Kaufman, Howard was only charged with felonious aggravated assault. Howard’s bluffs, self-importance, egotistical ways, and perhaps CIA connections, ran roughshod over District Attorney Eloy F. Martinez.
When a person pulls a gun on another person, then aims the weapon at that person’s head and the gun goes off, but the bullet misses the victim, is that scenario not attempted murder?
Howard was convicted of a felony and fined $7,500
If the roles were reversed, Hughes, the son of a Vietnam P.O.W. James Lindburg Hughes, would have been likely charged with a slew of felonies. In a court of law, the young Santa Fean would have probably been found guilty and sentenced to a long stay in prison.
All Hughes can be thankful for is that the Santa Fe judicial system did not indict him on convoluted charges that he had instigated Howard’s attack. Or in the deadly struggle with Howard, the young man had defended himself with too much unwarranted violence.
Howard was released from jail and went to a clinic to get dried out. Prior to this incident, the ex-CIA man had been arrested in Santa Fe for fighting with his wife. How Howard was able to avoid jail time or serious charges is up to debate?
Incredibly, Howard’s history of drug abuse, thefts and murder attempt in Santa Fe, did not register with the watchdogs of the CIA.
Apologists for the CIA rightfully claim that murder charges were not filed against Howard. By this logic, nobody was asleep at the switch, when it came to the CIA watching over possible security leaks. However, the Federal honchos knew that Howard lacked principals, he was a heavy-duty drug abuser and more importantly they failed to reason that addicts will-do whatever it takes to gain money to feed their high.
After the Hughes incident, Howard began entertaining friends at his house in Eldorado in lavish splendor. At these gatherings Howard would impress his pals by showing off his massive gun collection and his thousands of dollars in South African gold Krugerands.
On September 18, 1984, Howard went on vacation to Switzerland and Austria. More trips followed, international and domestic. The suspicious thing about Howard’s vacations, gun collection, and Krugerands, is that the newly arrived Santa Fean only made $33,012 a year.
Where was the Santa Fean getting the money to live like a jet setter? How was Howard able to buy his cocaine, which was a premium drug in the 1980s?
Vitaly Kurchenko, a ranking KGB official defected to the United States on August 1, 1985. His debriefing by the Federal authorities resulted in the CIA being tipped off that Howard was selling secrets to the Soviets. The American intelligence network now knew why their operations in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries were being compromised.
The CIA notified the FBI and Howard was put under surveillance. The Santa Fean’s telephone line was tapped.
The FBI caught a break in where Howard lived. The turncoat’s house at 108 Verano Loop was at the end of a one-exit road loop. The FBI posted an agent in a car at the mouth of the loop. There would be no way Howard would be able to drive away undetected.
The FBI’s task was simple: Do not let Howard escape no matter what. Federal reinforcements were called in, the FBI surveillance teams were billeted at Santa Fe’s Hilton Hotel on Sandoval Street.
On paper Howard was a marked man. There was no way the collaborator could evade the G-Men’s pickets, Howard was checkmated.
Unfortunately when the FBI’s paper tigers met reality, good things happened for bad guy Howard. The Washington authorities decided to sweat Howard. CIA high sheriffs Tom Mills and Barney Malloy informed the traitor he had been found out. Howard was given a choice; he would be treated with a high degree of leniency if he divulged all of his information on the Soviet’s spy network.
If Howard did not cooperate with the Federal agents he would face the full rigors of the law. The penalties would be similar to what the Rosenberg spies of the Manhattan Project faced. The Rosenbergs were put to death in June of 1953, by way of the electric chair.
The CIA brainwaves gave their “Judas” time to think about his future. It was reasoned that the fast living, out of control man would see the hopelessness of his position and become an informer.
In retrospect the CIA should have ordered the FBI to arrest Howard and sequester him in a military stockade. Then again, the agents who ran this case proved themselves not to be the sharpest tools in the shed.
In his house, Howard went over his options with his wife Mary. Howard decided to do what his CIA bosses thought he was incapable of; he formulated an escape plan and acted upon it.
FUMBLE DELUXE
In order to make a successful escape, Howard would have to deceive the agent who was parked in his car at the exit of Verano Loop and the other FBI teams in Santa Fe.
In the parlance of the military, Howard’s escape gambit was considered a “MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.” Due to FBI ineptness, the no-hope endeavor became a “PIECE OF CAKE.”
Between 5:00-6:30 p.m., (records are not precise) on Saturday, September 21, 1985, Howard and wife-Mary, left their house in Eldorado by car. The duo’s destination was Alfonso’s, a fashionable restaurant at 7244 Canyon Road. As of 2011, the property is known as Geronimo’s. Santa Fe oldsters would have known the restaurant as the Gonzalez/Borego House.
Previous to there dinner date, Mary hired sixteen-year old babysitter, Gina Jackson to care for her son Lee. With the infant being watched, the spy’s loyal wife was free to help her husband evade the FBI’s man hunters.
Incredibly, the agent who was posted in his car at the mouth of the loop, did not see the marked-couple in there dark red 1979 Oldsmobile, drive by. Was the G-Man who was trained in surveillance, taking forty winks?
After howard’s escape, the FBI’s honchos told the press that the agent at the Verano Loop checkpoint was a rookie. This explanation was never been expanded upon, as in how Howard and wife were able to motor by undetected?
Why didn’t the FBI have two of their men on sentry duty? Or did they and both sentries failed in their assignment?
Supposedly, the FBI had back-up teams farther down the road and out of sight, but no pursuit order was given by radio, to these teams.
Did these secondary units have a visual on the Howards as they drove by in their 1979 Oldsmobile, or were the agents dependent on the first sentry’s observations?
At the Canyon Road restaurant, Howard and Mary shared a romantic supper together. Near the end of their meal which consisted of sandwiches and mushroom entrees, Mary called her Verano Loop house to check on the babysitter and son. Before Mary and Howard left for the restaurant, infant Lee had begun to throw a tantrum. Perhaps the baby sensed something?
The father and mother spoke to their son over a phone. The twosome thought they were under surveillance inside the restaurant and were not blowing their cover by talking on a public phone, not cell.
El Wrongo! The traitor and his female accomplice were foot