"At the height of his wealth, power, and invisibility, the world's richest and most secretive man kept what amounted to a diary. The billionaire commanded his empire by correspondence, scrawling thousands of handwritten memos to unseen henchmen. It was the only time Howard Hughes risked writing down his orders, plans, thoughts, fears, and desires. Hughes claimed the papers were so sensitive - "the very most confidential, almost sacred information as to my innermost activities" - that not even his most trusted aides or executives were allowed to keep the messages he sent them. But in the early-morning hours of June 5, 1974, unknown burglars staged a daring break-in at Hughes's supposedly impregnable headquarters and escaped with all the confidential files. Despite a top-secret FBI investigation and a million-dollar CIA buyback bid, none of the stolen secret papers were ever found - until investigative reporter Michael Drosnin cracked the case." "In Citizen Hughes, Drosnin reveals the true story of the great Hughes heist - and of the real Howard Hughes. Based on nearly ten thousand never-before-published documents, more than three thousand in Hughes's own handwriting, Citizen Hughes is more than a biography, or even an unwilling autobiography. It is a record of the secret history of our times."--BOOK JACKET.