The ruthless tycoon’s aide reveals the incredible excess, greed, paranoia, and cruelty that ended with his murder — or suicide — off the coast of Spain in November 1991.
Mad Maxwell
It was a damp Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1990 when Robert Maxwell phoned and asked me to come and see him in his apartment. His voice sounded dreadful, heavy with a cold. He wanted to talk about the European, his pet project, which had been on sale for just a couple of weeks. I could tell he wasn’t in a good humor. I had been involved with the European throughout the planning stages, and we had often discussed the matter.
When I went to his tenth-floor apartment, I was shown into his palatial bedroom by one of his Filipino maids. He was lounging on the bed with a large white toweling robe around him and watching television, flicking from channel to channel. He beckoned me to come in and sit down.
As he turned down the volume of the TV, he said, in one of his most solemn voices, a voice he used when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself, “It’s not a very good paper, is it?” pointing dismissively to the European strewn out across the bed and looking at me from under his bushy eyebrows.
“You know you have to have patience with a new paper,” I said, “so why not wait a little before condemning it out of hand? It has to find its feet; you have to give it a chance.”
His only reply to that was a dispirited grunt. He got off the bed and walked to the window overlooking the city. And he went on, talking to himself, not really to me, “Sometimes I don’t know why I go on. Everything I try, people turn against me …. I’ve got no friends, no one I can turn to … no one to share my life with…. Sometimes I think I should just end it all, throw myself out of the window…. I sometimes feel I can’t go on.” And he stood staring out of the window at the gray skies.
After a moment’s silence, and realizing there was nothing I could say to cheer him up, I said, “Would you like a cup of coffee? Because I would love a tea.”
He turned round, the conversation half-forgotten. “Yes, order one.”
It was the only time I ever remember Maxwell referring to suicide, or even mentioning it, and I took it all with a pinch of salt. I dismissed his speech as typical of Maxwell when he was unhappy, miserable, unwell, and feeling sorry for himself. I had seen him on other occasions feeling down, but not as bad as that Sunday afternoon.
I had known Maxwell for five years. I had traveled the world with him, accompanying him in his private Gulfstream jets to 20 or more countries on many visits, taking notes on his behalf during private interviews with world leaders. During those five years, we had spoken nearly every day on the phone, whether he was in Britain or traveling abroad on his own. We had spent hours talking on Saturdays in his office or his apartment at the top of Maxwell House near London’s Holborn Circus.
I was foreign editor of the Daily Mirror and had been since 1976. Maxwell had taken me into his confidence, often discussing the most senior appointments throughout his newspaper empire, including the appointment of editors who, officially, were my seniors.
He told me that I was one of his “very few friends,” someone he could talk to, but I don’t think Maxwell ever had real friends.
Maxwell was always an early riser. He would order his Filipino maids to wake him at 6 A.M., but his personal valet, Simon Grigg, would be expected to be there by that time each morning to wake his employer with a glass of orange juice and a large cup of coffee. Maxwell would usually sleep in an old-fashioned nightshirt bought for him by his ever-loving wife.
“He loved the feeling of privilege that came from controlling an empire from the sun deck of a yacht.”
Often Maxwell was awake and had been so for an hour or more. He hardly ever slept through the night. Usually he would have gone to bed, exhausted after a hard day’s work, by nine o’clock in the evening. After an hour or so’s sleep, he would wake, get up, and restart work, often phoning New York, where it was around 6 P.M. He was also most particular about receiving the next morning’s newspapers as soon as they arrived at the Mirror building. Many were the nights he would get on the phone by 11 P.M. to the Daily Mirror night news desk demanding to know the reason why he had not yet received his papers. And, depending on his mood, he would accept the answer or demand that something be done immediately and his papers sent up that instant, despite the fact that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the poor man to whom he was speaking. Many were the times I heard his voice booming from the news-desk phone as the desk man tried to placate his boss.
After shaving and showering, Maxwell would be dressed by his valet and would then sally forth to start the day. The first-duty receptionist would be at her desk at Maxwell House, sitting immediately outside his office, by 7 A.M., and he would usually start by ordering some phone calls. By 7:30 both Ian and Kevin, Maxwell’s sons, would be in the office, and in trouble if they were not there by that time. A 12- hour day faced them, if not a lot longer. Maxwell would have a 15- or 20-minute meeting with them, discussing the order of the day, and they would wait patiently for their father to finish speaking. Only after he had said everything he wanted to would he look at them with the question “Anything else?” That was their opportunity to raise whatever matters they thought should be dealt with. Often the questions they raised were dismissed by Maxwell with a flick of the hand, and the sons would have to accept that his decision was final.
Maxwell’s favorite habit was ordering his senior executives who ran his business empire to report to him for meetings at the Holborn headquarters, which he, of course, had renamed Maxwell House. They would be asked to attend either early in the morning or afternoon. These men were holding down responsible jobs, most of them paid in excess of £100,000 a year, with generous Christmas bonuses to keep them sweet. And yet he would leave them pacing up and down, waiting outside his office for perhaps two to four hours, until he was ready to see them. It was the most ludicrous situation. On pain of being fired, they were not allowed to leave under any circumstances without his permission, but they could not get in to see him, even for a second, for permission to return later. It was one of Maxwell’s most devilish, and stupid, schemes to show his top men who was the boss. And it happened virtually every day. The executives were understandably furious, but they put up with it. Those exempt from this treatment were his sons, his editors, and a privileged few, such as Joe Haines and myself.
His treatment of these senior men caused major problems for his personal assistant, Andrea Martin, for many believed she held the key to his door and therefore was partly responsible for their frustrating, humiliating experience whenever they were called to see him. There was nothing she could do, primarily because most of the time he was on the phone to various people in various parts of his empire, or the world, and to him those phone calls were more important than the matters he had called his subordinates in to discuss. But his treatment of those executives caused untold bad feeling toward him. He didn’t care a damn!
It was the same with telephone calls. The first hurdle was to get from the telephonist to Andrea, and then to Maxwell. Among those privileged to be put through immediately were his stock-brokers, his merchant bankers, his bankers, people he listed as VIPs, and his editors. For everyone else it was a case of leaving messages and hoping the great man would return their calls. Sometimes people complained of waiting for weeks for a return call.
He would always take telephone calls during meetings and loved to chatter away on the phone to whomever, while those attending the meeting had to sit and wait patiently for him to finish. Sometimes he would pick up his direct line — 3333 — before the telephone receptionist had time to answer it, he so loved receiving phone calls. On other occasions he might pick up the phone at reception if it was ringing while he walked past and answer it himself.
For some reason wrong numbers often came through on his direct line, and he loved to tell the caller that the person they wanted had just joined the army; then he would put down the phone, roaring with laughter. The telephone number of the London Zoo was very similar, and calls would often come through asking questions about the zoo. Maxwell loved that. He would roar like a lion down the phone, and on other occasions he would bark like a dog, then hang up without saying a word. But his favorite trick was to quack like a duck. For some unknown reason, Maxwell loved ducks, and one of the Reichmann brothers — the Canadian property developers of Canary Wharf fame — gave him a small, green, carved-stone duck as a paperweight for his desk. He liked that. It was just one of the little games which he loved to play.
Maxwell would spend days and often weeks paying not the slightest attention to the business affairs he should have dealt with in his capacity as head of a multibillion-pound publishing empire. I remember one occasion in Paris: He read a memo and passed it to me. It was a four-page close-typed memo, and he glanced at it before passing it to me to read. It was a reasoned argument from one of his financial companies why the head of a department should be allowed to hire more staff.
“He wants more staff.” I said.
“I thought so.” Maxwell replied. “I’ve told him a dozen times he can’t.” Then he called to his personal assistant and asked her to get the man on the phone. “Ah, I received your memo,” Maxwell began in a kindly voice, and I heard what I took to be enthusiasm on the other end of the line. Then Maxwell said, “I’ve told you before that you can’t have any more staff, mister. Why are you wasting my time sending me another memo?” I didn’t hear the reply, but Maxwell cut him oft, saying, “You, mister, are a cunt. and you have sent your last memo. See me when I return.” And he put down the phone, giving the man no opportunity to reply.
I didn’t know the man or his job, but I commented, “That was a bit harsh, Bob.”
He turned, looked at me, and said, “He’s a cunt. We don’t need him.”
In his office Maxwell was remarkably fussy. He banned ordinary paper clips because his fingers and thumbs were so big he couldn’t manipulate the pins. They were done away with in favor of plastic ones he found easier to handle. He banned Biros as well, demanding people only use Pentels; and no cover sheets were allowed on any faxes — because they were “a bloody nuisance” and “a waste of paper.”
The number of people waiting outside his office became so large that Maxwell banned them waiting there and ordered double doors to be erected so everyone had to wait in a corridor 20 yards from his office, near the elevators. And the melee in that corridor often seemed like musical chairs, as there were only two seats for the large number of frustrated executives. The only consolation was a water machine. Usually the waiting time was only an hour or so, but some were kept waiting, unable to leave, for more than six hours.
“On pain of being fired, his senior executives were not allowed to leave without Maxwell’s permission, but they couldn’t get in to see him, even for a second, for permission to return later.”
Stephen Clackson recalled being one of those people made to wait with other London Daily News executives during the early morning. He commented, “At that time everyone associated with the L.D.N. was called to the morning meetings, somewhere around 9:30 in the morning. There were not just editorial people, but also production, financial, advertising, marketing-about 16 in all. We might wait ten minutes or more than an hour for Maxwell. People would become agitated and nervous; a couple would tell Maxwell jokes, others would try to impersonate his voice. It was all mortuary humor, all waiting for his arrival, not knowing what he would say or do, not knowing whom he would pick on, but the nervousness increasing as the minutes ticked by.”
“Then Maxwell would come in and sit down, pick up the typed agenda, look at it, and put it on one side. Everyone would have their relative files to go with the agenda, waiting for him to start the meeting. Invariably, however, he would pick on something entirely different, something not on the agenda, some minor, trivial, little point. He always seemed to do that, to find a piece of trivia, go for something insignificant, so he could torture someone, attack someone, make someone at the table feel incompetent.”
“Everyone would then be left in a state of confusion and nervousness, which he would end by telling one or two dreadful jokes which we all laughed at, but only because he was telling the joke and your job might depend on it. Then the phone calls would start and Maxwell would be pressing the intercom, ‘Get me Kissinger’ or ‘Mitterrand’ or ‘Gorbachev,’ and conversations would take place in various languages, which we presumed were carried out to impress.”
“Quite often there would be a stranger none of us had met at the meeting but whom Maxwell had ordered to attend. You soon became aware of why that person had been summoned; the poor man had been brought in for the cabaret. When there was a stranger at the table, you knew he was the victim tor the day, looking so nervous. Maxwell would walk in and say, ‘Which is Mr. So-and-so?’ and the poor man would stand up. Maxwell would move round the table to him and just start laying into the poor man.”
“I remember one man, who had been with a major British company, who had something to do with personnel and had been ordered to send out letters to all employees of Pergamon subsidiaries. Maxwell begins by saying to this man who he has never met before, ‘This letter you have sent out — this is shit, cunt. My old grandmother, who could never speak a work of English, brought up in the mountains of Carpathia, could write better English than this.’ And that was just the start. Maxwell went on for perhaps a minute, reducing the poor man to a wreck. He tried to reply, but Maxwell just ordered him to shut up. ‘You’re not listening to me. Watch my lips when I speak to you!’ he shouted at him.”
“Maxwell then ordered this poor guy to leave the room, go to an adjoining office and write down his job description, and say exactly why he should continue to be employed by Maxwell. And the poor bastard left the room, nearly in tears, to go off and write this letter prior to his execution.”
Clackson went on: “The moment he left the room, everyone round the table was thinking, Phew, thank God that’s over. Thank God it wasn’t me that was the sacrificial lamb, and Maxwell would roar with laughter at his own bullyboy tactics as the man left the room. Then, to lighten the atmosphere, he would tell a dirty joke, perhaps about a female traffic warden being fucked by a camel, and he would get the punch line wrong. And yet despite that, everyone, so relieved at the events of the day, would laugh with him, laugh out loud. It was awful, and inside you felt awful for laughing, for sitting there while Maxwell had monstered some poor innocent. And his meetings went like that. That was no extraordinary meeting. It would be like that perhaps two or three times a week.”
Most of Maxwell’s day was spent in his office or his apartment conducting business. He hated leaving the office, going to meetings or lunches. He always liked to call the shots, he liked to feel he was the most important person in any meeting, and he secured that by demanding people come to see him. And most of the time they did. He did leave his ivory tower to go and see Mrs. Thatcher or Robin Leigh-Pemberton, the former chairman of National Westminster Bank, or indeed the chairmen of any banks that invited him. But that was about all. He wanted to feel like the emperor summoning his advisers and counselors and those who wanted to deal with him.
It didn’t matter what cost was involved in sustaining that image. He would send a Gulfstream overseas, usually in Europe, to bring in a celebrated guest or to impress someone; he would frequently send the helicopter to Heathrow, or anywhere else, to pick up and bring guests to Maxwell House; he would send his Rolls anywhere in the City, the West End, or to embassies to bring visitors back. And he would usually greet them in his most charming manner.
Sometimes there were the most hilarious occasions in Maxwell House when he had invited numbers of people, all totally separate, to attend at the same time. Perhaps the most remarkable was an occasion when I was called in at the last minute to chat with two Japanese gentlemen from one of Japan’s leading newspapers while having lunch in his small, intimate study. Maxwell asked me to go and have some sandwiches with them because he was very pushed and had to attend other lunches.
Champagne was produced, and lovely, delicate smoked salmon and other sandwiches were served by Joseph, who kept running in and out. What I didn’t discover until later was that Maxwell not only had a full lunch for 12 going on in the main dining room, but others were sitting having a small lunch in the drawing room upstairs, while another small delegation was having sandwiches in his office. Maxwell went from room to room, having one course here, another there, a drink in a third; but he kept moving, making apologies all the time to his visitors until the business was completed. I remember him walking into the study as though these two Japanese newspapermen were the only people he wanted to see and talk to. And minutes later, having snaffled three sandwiches which he ate in one bite, he made his apologies and left, returning 20 minutes later for a quiet cup of coffee. In those circumstances Maxwell was a remarkable actor, giving neither his guests nor myself an inkling of the chaos elsewhere.
Maxwell had a knack of being either charming to his staff or dreadful. When he wanted to hire someone, it was amazing the lengths to which he would go to impress that person, that ‘together they could do whatever was needed.’ To that end he would use his plane, his helicopter, or his Rolls — simply to impress. He would offer salaries far in excess of what he needed to offer to let the person believe how important they were to him and how important he believed they were. And people felt flattered, extremely flattered, that this apparent ogre was so sweet, charming, understanding, and generous. The honeymoon period, as everyone who worked for Maxwell described it, might last for an hour, a day, a month, or a year, but it nearly always came to an end. And yet he didn’t seem to like firing people himself, not people to whom he had become close, whom he had invited into his inner circle.
Despite the enormous numbers of hirings and firings, Maxwell sailed on as though nothing mattered in the world except his own personal life. Every half hour throughout the day, Maxwell would be handed something to drink, a glass of orange juice, a large steaming cup of black coffee or tea. And he would get angry if the glass or cup wasn’t removed from his office after ten minutes because he hated to see a dirty cup around the place. From six in the morning that would be his diet, except for lunch, which he invariably ate. But he did try to eat sensibly, to keep to a diet in an effort to get down his enormous weight, which varied between 265 and 310 pounds, depending on whether he had been strict with himself or not. And when he was on a diet, he would try and survive throughout the day on coffee and clear soup.
An hour or so after lunch on most days, Maxwell would need to take a siesta and would retire upstairs to his bedroom, change out of his day clothes into his nightshirt, and go to sleep. He never let on. He hoped it was one of his closely guarded secrets. His secretaries were ordered to tell everyone who called that he was in a business meeting and could not be disturbed. Often he would just go to bed because he was fed up and overtired. Maxwell would sleep soundly for perhaps two or three hours, occasionally waking and calling for Kevin, Ian, Andrea, or one of his personal secretaries to go up and see him, to issue an order, dictate a letter, sort out correspondence, or see the latest faxes.
Maxwell enjoyed his big bed. He often liked to work from his bed, something his secretaries hated because it meant they had to run up and down stairs every five minutes because everything he needed to know about was downstairs and they never knew what papers he would want. It didn’t worry him a jot that he was making life very difficult for his personal staff. Then at about 6 PM., when everyone was ready to go home for the day, Maxwell would arrive downstairs ready and eager to restart work. He would have changed into a fresh shirt and suit. Indeed, most days he changed his shirt three times. That was one reason why he kept a Filipino maid just to wash and iron his clothes and do virtually nothing else!
One major problem Maxwell did suffer from was obesity. As a young man, over six feet tall with a good physique and with his good looks and strong face, he caught the attention of many a young woman. He undoubtedly had character and personality and could ooze charm at will. Even in his forties, he was not overweight. From the age of 50, however, Maxwell began putting on weight at an enormous rate and would sometimes reach 310 pounds.
In public Maxwell was never a big eater, but in private he seemed unable to control his appetite. On one occasion in Sofia, Bulgaria, I remember walking into the kitchen of his suite one morning and watching as he stuffed food into his mouth at an enormous rate, picking up five or six small sandwiches at a time and cramming them into his mouth so that he could hardly chew the food. It was like watching a starving man, driven mad by hunger, unable to control himself as he forced handfuls of food into his mouth. He must have sensed me there, because he turned and saw me standing in the doorway. For a split second, he was like a cornered animal, as though I had caught him thieving. He stood up straight, drew the back of his hand across his bulging mouth, picked up some food, and put it in the refrigerator. I just said “Good morning” and never alluded to the sight again. That single incident revealed the fight Maxwell had with the appetite that he was obviously unable to control.
He was a vain man in every sense of the word. That was why he had his hair — and eyebrows — colored every two weeks by George Wheeler, a former hairdresser at the Savoy, who would come to Maxwell House and spend two hours washing, cutting, and coloring Maxwell’s hair. Officially, it was a closely guarded secret. Hardly anyone saw Maxwell while this operation was going on. I remember being in Exeter when Maxwell was to make a speech the next day and George Wheeler, then in his seventies, was summoned from London. I walked into his small hotel suite that morning and called out, “Bob, I need a word.”
“Everything I try, people turn against me…. I’ve got no friends, no one I can turn to…. Sometimes I think I should end it all, throw myself out of the window.”
Maxwell’s booming voice replied, “You can’t come in, it’s private. If you want to ask me something, stay out there and shout.”
So I did.
Then he said, “Go away.” I knew he was having his hair done but he didn’t want me to know.
His vanity knew no bounds. The only time I ever saw Maxwell panic, and it was always for the same reason, was when he realized he was heading out without his powder puff. He kept it in his jacket pocket, a very ordinary, inexpensive Rimmel powder. For some reason he always thought he had a shiny nose, and I would see him dabbing away at his nose before meeting important people. To carry out his powdering, he would always turn away, embarrassed. And he was too shy to refer to his powder puff by name. He would tap his pocket, realize it wasn’t there, and turn round to Simon or Joseph or his secretary as though in a minor panic. “I haven’t got my, you know,” he would say, and he would turn on his heel and go and fetch it himself rather than have the ignominy of asking aloud for someone to go and fetch his puff. Those who traveled with him all knew his little secret, but no one alluded to it. Sometimes I felt embarrassed for him because he would apply so much powder that it was not only obvious but looked ridiculous, and yet because no one was meant to know, no one would point out that too much powder had been applied.
Sleeplessness was one of Maxwell’s problems, despite the fact that he was often exhausted by the end of the day. There are wonderful stories of people holding long overseas conversations with Maxwell, conversations of the utmost importance, when the person at the other end would suddenly hear grunting and snoring — Maxwell had simply fallen asleep. I witnessed one such incident at about nine one evening in London. There were two or three of us in his drawing room, and his head suddenly slumped back and he began to snore heavily, his mouth wide open, which was not a pretty sight. His son Ian came in, went over to him, and shook him gently: “Come on, Dad, wake up. It’s time for bed.” With a start Maxwell woke up, a little embarrassed, and got up and went to bed.
Frequently when he was alive, and certainly since his death, I have been asked by many people whether I thought Maxwell was genuinely mad, insane, unsound of mind, or suffering from intellectual unbalance. I was not competent to judge such a condition, and yet I have to say that some of his behavior, some of the actions I witnessed, some of his violent mood swings, made me wonder whether he was always of sound mind or whether, occasionally, his reason was undermined or disordered. He certainly suffered from paranoia, a deep suspicion of everyone, including his personal staff, his employees, his fellow directors, if not members of his own family. For the vast majority of the time, however, he was normal, sane, totally in possession of his faculties, and entirely rational.
In the last few years of his life, Maxwell was probably only really happy when he was on his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. To Maxwell his yacht was the culmination of all his life’s endeavors, all the trials and tribulations he had been through to make the millions so that he could buy the boat of his dreams. On board he was far away from his worries, his anxieties, his problems — and yet, whenever he wished, he was in touch with the world through fax or phone.
Most of the time on board, Maxwell would love to disport himself on the top sun deck, where no one could see him, strip down to his swimming trunks, and smother himself with sun cream. In a basket on the deck, he kept about 20 different sun creams. He would help himself to drinks from the fridge in a corridor leading to the gym, which was always stocked with Dom Perignon, pink Krystal champagne, and beer. He took a nefarious delight in spying on other ships with his powerful binoculars, seeing if he could recognize anyone and spot what they were doing.
This was his headquarters during the day, and he loved the feeling of power and privilege that came from controlling his vast empire from the sun deck of his magnificent yacht while he cruised through the Mediterranean or some other blue tropical waters. He would order Andrea Martin to come to the sun deck and sunbathe while taking notes, getting phone calls, and acting as his secretary. All the calls would go through the bridge, and Maxwell adored lying in the sun talking to his minions around the world, slaving away in their offices, helping him earn another million!
On board the Lady Ghislaine, Maxwell became so relaxed he sometimes reverted to what can only be described as his “baby talk.” He would refer to a “swim in the sea” as a “twim in the tea”; he would say “trightened” for “frightened,” “minkey” for “monkey,” “deaded” for “tired,” “lasted” for “lost”; and he called his pockets “sky rockets,” as well as using other such childlike words which he would make up. It was all part of his bizarre behavior pattern when he was off guard.
For some reason Maxwell often loved to substitute “ch” for “sh” when he was indulging in baby talk. For example, he would say “chip” for “ship” when referring to the Lady Ghislaine; he would call “shirts” and “shoes” his “chirts” and “choes”; he would say “chop” for “shop.” Another favorite was to replace “r” with “w” so that he would say “Wussia” for “Russia.”
He did the same with people’s names. He loved making up names for his employees and acquaintances, as well as giving people nicknames and pseudonyms, for those whose identities he wanted to keep secret. For example, he always referred to the black American Democratic politician Jesse Jackson as “Mr. White,” referring in fact to all black people as “white” and laughing when he did so, an example of Maxwell’s odd sense of humor.
But to those back at base, Maxwell was determined to keep up his customary reign of terror. He spent half the day on the telephone calling his lieutenants and his editors, making suggestions, demanding changes, throwing his weight around. On one occasion, after a very good lunch, he phoned his chief of staff, Peter Jay, in Holborn only to find he was out to lunch. When Jay returned his call, Maxwell turned up the heat, demanding to know why he had had the temerity to leave the office without permission when the chairman (Maxwell) was abroad. He demanded Jay write an explanation immediately giving reasons for his absence and fax it to him on the yacht. When he received Jay’s long explanatory note, Maxwell read it, roaring with laughter at what he saw as a huge joke. Then he phoned Jay back and tore into him again, pretending to be furious.
All the time, however, Maxwell was paranoid about security. This was unusual for him, for whenever we traveled overseas, no matter where, he would always say he didn’t need or want any security whatsoever. He was often asked before going to a foreign country, particularly in the Eastern bloc, whether he wanted security, and he always refused it. But on board he was remarkably wary at all times, as though he feared an attack on his life. He ordered his first captain, an Englishman, Mike lnsull, to buy guns which were to be kept on board. In his liking for secrecy, Maxwell always referred to them as “vegetables.” And he ordered lnsull to train the crew in how to use them, “just in case it might be necessary one day.”
Whenever he came on board, Maxwell would ask lnsull, “How many carrots and potatoes have you brought on this trip?”
“He must have sensed me there, because he turned and saw me standing in the doorway. For a split second, he was like a cornered animal as though I has caught him thieving.”
No one was meant to know to what he was referring, but he told Andreato see her reaction to living near possible danger. He would always watch any other ships sailing nearby to check if people were tracking him, and he ordered Andrea never to hold up faxes when she was reading them in· case any nearby ship might have such sophisticated surveillance equipment that they could read the faxes from hundreds of yards away. Nothing revealed Maxwell’s paranoia more than his behavior when on the yacht, but it also revealed his state of mind, and undoubted fear of a possible attack on his life.
Nearly a year after his death, I still think of this extraordinary, larger-than-life man, this bully who could be so charming and minutes later so nasty and vicious, who could treat his wife and family so appallingly and leave thousands of pensioners with not a single penny, yet secretly pay out money to treat hundreds of children from Chernobyl who were suffering the dreadful effects of radiation.
In many ways Maxwell led a courageous life — his war record is testament to that — yet I wonder whether he had the courage to take his own life by silently slipping over the edge of the Lady Ghislaine and swimming until exhaustion overcame him. There was every reason for him to do so, although it was the coward’s way out. Maxwell’s life had been one of courage, bravery, and stoic resilience in the face of daunting obstacles. Yet would Maxwell have been able to face the hatred, the shame, and the humiliation when the world discovered that he had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies, pushing them to the brink of bankruptcy, and plundered his own employees’ pension funds?
I cannot believe that Maxwell fell overboard. It was a calm night; the Atlantic was still. It seems almost inconceivable that he could have simply fallen overboard. There are those, including an Israeli minister, bankers, and brokers, who believe Maxwell was murdered. Throughout my research I have come across influential people who don’t know whether he jumped or was pushed. But very few think it was a genuine accident.
And there is a case, many would insinuate a strong case, to suggest that Maxwell was murdered.
In the last few months of his life, Maxwell had gained two very powerful enemies, either of whom would have murdered him with very little, if any, fear of possible consequences. One was the K.G.B., and the other was the organized-crime syndicate that controlled the distribution of the New York Daily News, the American newspaper he had bought with such jubilation in early 1991.
For decades Maxwell had been involved with the K.G.B., not, as far as is known, as an active agent or in spying activities. But according to K.G.B. sources in Moscow, he acted as a conduit, a banker, “laundering” the K.G.B.’s money outside the Soviet Union. He also acted as an “agent of influence.”
Through his bewildering myriad of companies, stiftungs (tax-free trusts), and secret accounts in Liechtenstein, Maxwell had been “laundering” U.S. dollars on behalf of the K.G.B., taking a rake-off in the process and helping to build a fortune in the Maxwell Foundation in Liechtenstein. And Maxwell was also involved in spiriting money away on behalf of members of the Communist party in 1990, when they saw the writing on the wall.
When senior directors of the K.G.B. in Moscow realized the Soviet Union was close to collapse, they decided it was time to call in their dues. They knew Maxwell had been creaming off a fortune for years with the money provided by Moscow, playing the foreign-exchange market with their money, building substantial funds for himself.
Evidence from Moscow during the spring and summer of 1992 has revealed that Maxwell was “invited” to pay back the money he had been making with the K.G.B.’s funds since the 1970s. It has been impossible to discover how much money was involved, but, according to Moscow, it was “tens of millions of U.S. dollars.” Maxwell earned their enmity during 1991 when he failed to produce what the K.G.B. demanded.
Secondly, there was “the mob.” For years, if not decades, the distribution of the New York Daily News had been controlled by one of America’s organized-crime syndicates, according to newspaper-publishing authorities in New York.
Before Maxwell took over the Daily News in February 1991, Ian Watson, editorial director of the European, accompanied Maxwell to New York for talks with the union leaders whom they were trying to persuade to accept layoffs and cutbacks, prior to buying the paper from the Chicago Tribune Group.
Watson reported later, “After seven of the ten print unions had agreed to the cutbacks, I went to see leaders of the remaining three, who were holding out. I remember most vividly the conversation I had with one union official. He said to me, in a broad Brooklyn accent, ‘Are you a New Yorker?’”
Watson, a proud Scotsman with a strong Scots accent, replied, “No. Why?”
“Do you know New Yorkers? Do you understand them?”
Watson again replied, “No.”
The union boss then said, “If you think you can push us into an agreement, you’ll end up in the East River with your throats slit. All of you.”
Watson commented later, “He was not playacting; he was deadly serious.”
Maxwell was told that the Mafia controlled the entire distribution network of the Daily News, and no employer had been able to break their hold.
However, Maxwell also knew that during the past few years organized-crime syndicates in New York and other major U.S. cities had been on the run as the authorities had decided their power had to be ended. He also realized that the only way he would ever make the Daily News profitable was to cut the work force and introduce new technology, as in the U. K. newspaper industry. And the only way was to see off the Mafia. He asked the Manhattan district attorney’s office to investigate.
That was the reason why in the months prior to his death he became more and more nervous whenever he visited New York. Many people noted his anxiety in the Big Apple, so very different from the swashbuckling, beaming Maxwell who had won the hearts of New Yorkers when he rescued the Daily News only months previously. That was also why, just days before his death, he called in America’s most prestigious security agency and private investigators, Kroll Associates, and held talks with Jules Kroll, the chief executive officer.
“The K.G.B. knew that Maxwell had been a creaming off a fortune for years with the money provided by Moscow, building substantial funds for himself. They “invited” him to pay back the money.”
Maxwell told Kroll he was convinced that there were people out to kill him, to get him, to destroy his life and his business, and asked him to investigate. He named businessmen and political enemies. At the end of the two-hour meeting, Maxwell agreed to compile a memo listing the strange events which had led him to this conclusion. He was never to write that memo. Within a week he was dead.
Finally, just two weeks before his death, there was the explosive story that burst across the newspapers when the highly respected, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Seymour Hersh accused Maxwell and myself in his book The Samson Option of being Mossad agents and dealing in arms for Israel.
In the days and weeks following Maxwell’s death, many claimed that it was his involvement with the Mossad that had led to his death. I don’t believe for a moment that Maxwell was working for the Mossad. He had direct access to Israeli government ministers. Why would Maxwell have bothered talking to the boys in the engine room when he could talk to the officers on the bridge simply by picking up a phone? He was avowedly pro-Israel, and made no pretense of the fact, openly boasting of his involvement in Israel and his business enterprises there.
The world responded to Maxwell’s death with the most remarkable outpourings of praise for the penniless peasant boy from Czechoslovakia who ended his life an alleged billionaire at the head of one of the world’s great media empires. It was ironic that Maxwell should have responded to a journalist who came to compile his obituary with the words, “Go and write God’s obituary first. It will be shorter.”
But the world was fulsome in its praise of Maxwell. Margaret Thatcher, who had called him “one of us,” the greatest compliment Thatcher gave to people, revealed that Maxwell had always kept her informed of what was going on throughout Eastern Europe; Edward Heath talked of his help toward the European cause; Neil Kinnock spoke of Maxwell’s steadfast support of the Labour party and his genuine commitment to the advancement of the British people; John Major believed Maxwell would not want the world to grieve at his death but marvel at his extraordinary life; and Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of Maxwell’s great contribution to the improvement of relations between nations in mass-media management and publishing.
Those early epitaphs were the nearest Maxwell ever came to earning respect. He tried to buy respect by appealing to the common man, saving British football clubs, but most supporters of the clubs he owned ended up booing him. He tried the same tactic with the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Scotland; he hoped to win respect by becoming one of the great media moguls of the twentieth century but didn’t succeed there; and he believed that by promising millions of pounds to charities, he could buy the respect that had eluded him throughout his life.
It was all to change with such lightning speed. His own paper, the Daily Mirror, the paper that had praised Maxwell as “the man who saved the Mirror” and “a soccer savior,” turned against him with a vengeance; other newspapers recorded the legacy of a corrupt man, a bully, a thief, a spy, a fraudster, even a monster. These were not the epitaphs Maxwell would have wanted. Understandably, with the appalling revelations that he had plundered the pension funds, the world turned against him.
Maxwell would sometimes say to me, and to others, “If there is a way back after death, then I will be the one to find it.” If he does find that way, administrators, bankers, policemen, and 30,000 pensioners will be waiting.
There has been rather more written about Ghislaine Maxwell than about her father as of late, for reasons we see no reason to dwell upon. Clearly her father was the story for Penthouse back in 1993, and journalists still wander down Mr. Maxwell’s road now and again today. In our rather more simplified psychological view of the family we will say only this: Too much money can really screw people up. Think what might happen if someone from this world got elected President or something. Yowza.
