E. Howard Hunt
Encyclopedia
Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007) was an American
intelligence officer
and writer
. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. Hunt, with G. Gordon Liddy
and others, was one of the Nixon White House "plumbers
" — a secret team of operatives charged with fixing "leaks." Hunt, along with Liddy, engineered the first Watergate burglary, and other undercover operations for Nixon. In the ensuing Watergate Scandal
, Hunt was convicted of burglary
, conspiracy
and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison.
, United States
, of English
and Welsh
descent. An alumnus of Nichols School
in Buffalo, New York
and a 1940 graduate of Brown University
, Hunt during World War II
served in the U.S. Navy
on the destroyer USS Mayo
, United States Army Air Forces
, and finally, the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) which he worked for in China
. During and after the war, he also wrote several novels under his own name — East of Farewell (1942), Limit of Darkness (1944), Stranger in Town (1947), Bimini Run (1949) (with a hero named "Hank Sturgis"), and The Violent Ones (1950) — and, more famously, several spy and hardboiled
novels under an array of pseudonyms, including Robert Dietrich, Gordon Davis and David St. John. Hunt won a Guggenheim Fellowship
for his writing in 1946.
had just bought rights to Hunt's novel Bimini Run when he joined the CIA in October 1949 as a political action specialist, in what came to be called their Special Activities Division
. The CIA was the successor organization of the OSS. Hunt became station chief in Mexico City
in 1950, and supervised William F. Buckley, Jr.
, who worked for the CIA in Mexico
during the period 1951–1952. Buckley and Hunt remained lifelong friends.
In Mexico, Hunt helped devise Operation PBSUCCESS
, the covert plan to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala
. Following assignments in Japan
and as station chief in Uruguay
, Hunt was given the assignment of forging Cuban exile
leaders in the United States into a broadly representative government-in-exile that would, after the Bay of Pigs Invasion
, form a provisional government to take over Cuba
. The failure of the invasion damaged his career.
After the Bay of Pigs, Hunt became a personal assistant to Allen Dulles. Tad Szulc
states that Hunt was asked to assist Dulles in writing a book, The Craft of Intelligence, that Dulles wrote following his involuntary retirement as CIA head in 1961. The book was published in 1963.
Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he had served as the first Chief of Covert Action for the CIA's Domestic Operations Division. He told the New York Times in 1974 that he spent about four years working for the division, beginning shortly after it was set up, by the Kennedy Administration in 1962, over the "strenuous opposition" of Richard Helms
and Thomas H. Karamessines
. He said that the division was assembled shortly after the Bay of Pigs operation, and that "many men connected with that failure were shunted into the new domestic unit." He said that some of his projects from 1962 to 1966, which dealt largely with the subsidizing and manipulation of news and publishing organizations, "did seem to violate the intent of the agency's charter."
According to Tad Szulc
, Hunt was assigned to temporary duty as the acting CIA station chief in Mexico City for the period of August and September 1963, at the time of Lee Harvey Oswald
's alleged visit there. In his 1978 testimony, however, Hunt denied having been in Mexico at all between 1961 and 1970.
Hunt was undeniably bitter about what he perceived as President John F. Kennedy
's lack of commitment in overturning the Fidel Castro
regime. In his semi-fictional autobiography, Give Us This Day, he wrote: "The Kennedy administration yielded Castro all the excuse he needed to gain a tighter grip on the island of Jose Marti
, then moved shamefacedly into the shadows and hoped the Cuban issue would simply melt away."
Disillusioned, he retired from the CIA on May 1, 1970, and went to work for the Robert R. Mullen Company
, which cooperated with the CIA; Bob Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff to President Nixon, wrote in 1978 that the Mullen Company was in fact a CIA front company, a fact which was apparently unknown to Haldeman while he worked in the White House. Hunt obtained a Covert Security Approval to handle the firm's affairs during Mullen's absence from Washington. The following year, he was hired by Charles Colson
, chief counsel to President Richard Nixon
, and joined the President's Special Investigations Unit (alias White House Plumbers
).
Hunt's first assignment for the White House was a covert operation to break into the Los Angeles
office of Daniel Ellsberg
's psychiatrist
, Dr. Lewis J. Fielding. In July 1971, Fielding had refused an FBI request for psychiatric data on Ellsberg. Hunt and Liddy cased the building in late August. The burglary, on September 3, 1971, was not detected, but no Ellsberg files were found.
Also in the summer of 1971, Colson authorized Hunt to travel to New England
to seek potentially scandalous information on Senator Edward Kennedy
, specifically pertaining to the Chappaquiddick incident and to Kennedy's possible extramarital affairs. Hunt sought and used CIA disguises and other equipment for the project. This mission eventually proved unsuccessful, with little if any useful information uncovered by Hunt.
Hunt's White House duties included assassinations-related disinformation
. In September 1971, Hunt forged and offered to a Life
magazine reporter top-secret U.S. State Department cables designed to prove that President Kennedy had personally and specifically ordered the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem
and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu
. Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he had fabricated the cables to show a link between President Kennedy and the assassination of Diem, a Catholic
, to estrange Catholic voters from the Democratic Party, after Colson suggested he "might be able to improve upon the record."
According to Seymour Hersh
, writing in The New Yorker
, Nixon White House tapes show that after presidential candidate George Wallace
was shot on May 15, 1972, Nixon and Colson agreed to send Hunt to the Milwaukee home of the gunman, Arthur Bremer
, to place McGovern
presidential campaign material there. The intention was to link Bremer with the Democrats. Hersh writes that, in a taped conversation, "Nixon is energized and excited by what seems to be the ultimate political dirty trick: the FBI and the Milwaukee police will be convinced, and will tell the world, that the attempted assassination of Wallace had its roots in left-wing Democratic politics." Hunt did not make the trip, however, because the FBI had moved too quickly to seal Bremer's apartment and place it under police guard.
Hunt organized the bugging of the Democratic National Committee
at the Watergate office building.
A few days after the break-in, Nixon was recorded saying, to H. R. Haldeman
, "This fellow Hunt, he knows too damn much."
Hunt and fellow operative G. Gordon Liddy
, along with the five arrested at the Watergate, were indicted on federal charges three months later.
Hunt's wife, Dorothy
, was killed in the December 8, 1972 plane crash of United Airlines
Flight 553
in Chicago. Congress
, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), and the National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB) investigated the crash, and found it to be an accident caused by crew error. Over $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt's handbag in the wreckage.
Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison at the low-security Federal Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base
, Florida, on a conspiracy charge, and said he was bitter that he was sent to jail while Nixon was allowed to resign while avoiding prosecution for any crimes he may have committed, and was later fully pardoned in September, 1974, by incoming President Gerald Ford
.
, was published late in 1973. In the book's foreword, he commented on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as follows:
On November 3, 1978, Hunt gave a security-classified deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). The Assassination Records Review Board
(ARRB) released the deposition in February 1996. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. They came to this conclusion because of a recording of the assassination from a Dallas Police officers mic that was stuck on the ON position. The scientific acoustical evidence establishes a 95% high probability that there was a second gunman, besides Oswald, in the infamous grassy knoll area. The Committee could not determine who the gunman was and what the extent of the conspiracy was. In 2005, an article in Science & Justice by Ralph Linsker, Richard Garwin, Herman Chernoff, Paul Horowitz, and Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr. re-analyzed the acoustic synchronization evidence, supporting the NAS report's finding that the sounds alleged to be gunshots occurred about a minute after the assassination.
Two newspaper articles published a few months before the deposition stated that a 1966 CIA memo linking Hunt to the assassination of President Kennedy had recently been provided to the HSCA. The first article, by Victor Marchetti
—author of the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974)—appeared in the Liberty Lobby
newspaper The Spotlight
on August 14, 1978. According to Marchetti, the memo said in essence, "Some day we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963." He also wrote that Hunt, Frank Sturgis
, and Gerry Patrick Hemming
would soon be implicated in a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy
.
The second article, by Joseph J. Trento and Jacquie Powers, appeared in the Wilmington, Delaware
Sunday News Journal six days later. It alleged that the purported memo was initialed by Richard Helms
and James Angleton and showed that, shortly after Helms and Angleton were elevated to their highest positions in the CIA, they discussed the fact that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination and that his presence there had to be kept secret. However, nobody has been able to produce this supposed memo, and the
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
determined that Hunt had been in Washington, D.C.
on the day of the assassination.
Hunt sued Liberty Lobby—but not the Sunday News Journal—for libel
. Liberty Lobby stipulated, in this first trial, that the question of Hunt's alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested. Hunt prevailed and was awarded $650,000 damages. In 1983, however, the case was overturned on appeal because of error in jury instructions. In a second trial, held in 1985, Mark Lane
made an issue of Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination. Lane successfully defended Liberty Lobby by producing evidence suggesting that Hunt had been in Dallas. He used depositions from David Atlee Phillips
, Richard Helms
, G. Gordon Liddy
, Stansfield Turner
, and Marita Lorenz
, plus a cross-examination
of Hunt. On retrial, the jury rendered a verdict for Liberty Lobby. In spite of Lane's claim that he convinced the jury that Hunt was a JFK assassination conspirator, most of the jurors who were interviewed by the media said they disregarded the conspiracy theory and judged the case (according to the judge's jury instructions) on whether the article was published with "reckless disregard for the truth." Lane outlined his theory about Hunt's and the CIA's role in Kennedy's murder in a 1991 book, Plausible Denial.
Some people that believe JFK was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy have suggested that two of the three tramps that marched through Dealey Plaza
in the wake of the assassination to be Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis
, although several other men, Charles Harrelson
for example, were also identified as tramps. The mystery was thought to be solved in the early 1990s when researcher Mary LaFontaine discovered documents identifying the men as Harold Doyle, John Forester Gedney, and Gus W. Abrams. Both the F.B.I. and independent researchers confirmed the identifications.
The Mitrokhin Archive
by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin
, on the evidence supplied by Mitrokhin's transcribed versions of Top Secret KGB
files, alleges that the Soviet Union
was principal in falsely connecting E. Howard Hunt to the Kennedy Assassination. Those allegations contradict the House Select Committee on Assassinations final report. The Committee concluded that there was no evidence to prove Soviet Union/KGB involvement. Mitrokhin alleges, for example, that the KGB
recruited and provided secret financial support for Mark Lane
and other conspiracy theorist authors, including Carl Aldo Marzani and Joachim Joesten.
Hunt was also the addressee of a letter, purportedly from Oswald, dated two weeks before the assassination. Andrew and Mitrokhin
state that the letter was a hoax, carefully created by the KGB
to implicate Hunt and the CIA, based upon a belief that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination. The letter was accepted as genuine by Oswald's widow and left the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978) unable to verify or discredit its authenticity. Eventually it appeared in the American press, though some assumed the "Mr. Hunt" to whom it was addressed to be the oil magnate H. L. Hunt
, whom the Kremlin first suspected of plotting the assassination.
Hunt was a prolific author, primarily of spy novels. He lived in Biscayne Park, Florida
.
A fictionalized account of Hunt's role in the Bay of Pigs
operation appears in Norman Mailer
's 1991 novel Harlot's Ghost
.
Canadian journalist David Giammarco
interviewed Hunt for the December 2000 issue of Cigar Aficionado
magazine. Writing later in Controversy magazine, Giammarco related an interview with a "former high-ranking CIA officer" in Miami who was "intrinsically involved in the CIA's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 and the many plots to kill Castro." The subject, whose description closely resembles Hunt's, is not identified by name. However, the individual reportedly told Giammarco that "he would confess to his part in the JFK assassination for a price tag of $14 million." E. Howard Hunt also wrote the foreword to Giammarco's book For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films (ECW Press, 2002).
, Cord Meyer
, Frank Sturgis
, David Morales
, William Harvey
, a French gunman
, Lucien Sarti
, who worked for the Mafia
, and Lyndon B. Johnson
.
Hunt died on January 23, 2007 in Miami
, Florida
of pneumonia
and is buried in Prospect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, New York
. Hunt's memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond was published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2007.
Novels published as Howard Hunt or E. Howard Hunt:
As Robert Dietrich:
As P. S. Donoghue:
As David St. John
As Gordon Davis:
As John Baxter:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
intelligence officer
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. Hunt, with G. Gordon Liddy
G. Gordon Liddy
George Gordon Liddy was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed from July–September 1971, during Richard Nixon's presidency. Separately, along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the Watergate burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in...
and others, was one of the Nixon White House "plumbers
White House Plumbers
The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, were a covert White House Special Investigations Unit established July 24, 1971 during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop the leaking of classified information to the news media...
" — a secret team of operatives charged with fixing "leaks." Hunt, along with Liddy, engineered the first Watergate burglary, and other undercover operations for Nixon. In the ensuing Watergate Scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
, Hunt was convicted of burglary
Burglary
Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...
, conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison.
Early life and career
Hunt was born in Hamburg, New YorkHamburg (town), New York
Hamburg is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 56,259.The Town of Hamburg is on the western border of the county and is south of Buffalo, New York. Hamburg is one of the "Southtowns" in Erie County...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, of English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
and Welsh
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
descent. An alumnus of Nichols School
Nichols School
Nichols School is a private, non-denominational, co-educational college-preparatory day school located in Buffalo, New York, USA. The average enrollment is 570 students with an average Upper School grade/class size of 98 students...
in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
and a 1940 graduate of Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, Hunt during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
served in the U.S. Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
on the destroyer USS Mayo
USS Mayo (DD-422)
USS Mayo was a Benson-class destroyer in the United States Navy during World War II. She was named for Admiral Henry Thomas Mayo....
, United States Army Air Forces
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II, and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force....
, and finally, the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
(OSS) which he worked for in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
. During and after the war, he also wrote several novels under his own name — East of Farewell (1942), Limit of Darkness (1944), Stranger in Town (1947), Bimini Run (1949) (with a hero named "Hank Sturgis"), and The Violent Ones (1950) — and, more famously, several spy and hardboiled
Hardboiled
Hardboiled crime fiction is a literary style, most commonly associated with detective stories, distinguished by the unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex. The style was pioneered by Carroll John Daly in the mid-1920s, popularized by Dashiell Hammett over the course of the decade, and refined...
novels under an array of pseudonyms, including Robert Dietrich, Gordon Davis and David St. John. Hunt won a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
for his writing in 1946.
CIA and anti-Castro efforts
Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
had just bought rights to Hunt's novel Bimini Run when he joined the CIA in October 1949 as a political action specialist, in what came to be called their Special Activities Division
Special Activities Division
The Special Activities Division is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service responsible for covert operations known as "special activities"...
. The CIA was the successor organization of the OSS. Hunt became station chief in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
in 1950, and supervised William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
, who worked for the CIA in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
during the period 1951–1952. Buckley and Hunt remained lifelong friends.
In Mexico, Hunt helped devise Operation PBSUCCESS
Operation PBSUCCESS
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala....
, the covert plan to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
. Following assignments in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and as station chief in Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, Hunt was given the assignment of forging Cuban exile
Cuban exile
The term "Cuban exile" refers to the many Cubans who have sought alternative political or economic conditions outside the island, dating back to the Ten Years' War and the struggle for Cuban independence during the 19th century...
leaders in the United States into a broadly representative government-in-exile that would, after the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
, form a provisional government to take over Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
. The failure of the invasion damaged his career.
After the Bay of Pigs, Hunt became a personal assistant to Allen Dulles. Tad Szulc
Tad Szulc
Tadeusz Witold Szulc was a reporter and writer of non-fiction books.-Life:Szulc was born in Warsaw, the son of Seweryn and Janina Baruch Szulc. He attended school in Switzerland. In 1940 he emigrated from Poland to join his family in Brazil...
states that Hunt was asked to assist Dulles in writing a book, The Craft of Intelligence, that Dulles wrote following his involuntary retirement as CIA head in 1961. The book was published in 1963.
Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he had served as the first Chief of Covert Action for the CIA's Domestic Operations Division. He told the New York Times in 1974 that he spent about four years working for the division, beginning shortly after it was set up, by the Kennedy Administration in 1962, over the "strenuous opposition" of Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
and Thomas H. Karamessines
Thomas Karamessines
Thomas H. Karamessines was the Deputy Director for Plans of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency from July 31, 1967 until February 27, 1973. Karamessines was actively involved in the Agency's Project FUBELT to undermine the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende....
. He said that the division was assembled shortly after the Bay of Pigs operation, and that "many men connected with that failure were shunted into the new domestic unit." He said that some of his projects from 1962 to 1966, which dealt largely with the subsidizing and manipulation of news and publishing organizations, "did seem to violate the intent of the agency's charter."
According to Tad Szulc
Tad Szulc
Tadeusz Witold Szulc was a reporter and writer of non-fiction books.-Life:Szulc was born in Warsaw, the son of Seweryn and Janina Baruch Szulc. He attended school in Switzerland. In 1940 he emigrated from Poland to join his family in Brazil...
, Hunt was assigned to temporary duty as the acting CIA station chief in Mexico City for the period of August and September 1963, at the time of Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
's alleged visit there. In his 1978 testimony, however, Hunt denied having been in Mexico at all between 1961 and 1970.
Hunt was undeniably bitter about what he perceived as President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
's lack of commitment in overturning the Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
regime. In his semi-fictional autobiography, Give Us This Day, he wrote: "The Kennedy administration yielded Castro all the excuse he needed to gain a tighter grip on the island of Jose Marti
José Martí
José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...
, then moved shamefacedly into the shadows and hoped the Cuban issue would simply melt away."
Disillusioned, he retired from the CIA on May 1, 1970, and went to work for the Robert R. Mullen Company
Robert Mullen Company
Robert Mullen Company is a public relations company in Washington DC. This was founded in 1952 by Robert R. Mullen, who was a campaign press secretary for Dwight D. Eisenhower and information director for the Marshall Plan...
, which cooperated with the CIA; Bob Haldeman, White House Chief of Staff to President Nixon, wrote in 1978 that the Mullen Company was in fact a CIA front company, a fact which was apparently unknown to Haldeman while he worked in the White House. Hunt obtained a Covert Security Approval to handle the firm's affairs during Mullen's absence from Washington. The following year, he was hired by Charles Colson
Charles Colson
Charles Wendell "Chuck" Colson is a Christian leader, cultural commentator, and former Special Counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973....
, chief counsel to President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, and joined the President's Special Investigations Unit (alias White House Plumbers
White House Plumbers
The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, were a covert White House Special Investigations Unit established July 24, 1971 during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop the leaking of classified information to the news media...
).
Watergate
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
office of Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, PhD, is a former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War,...
's psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, Dr. Lewis J. Fielding. In July 1971, Fielding had refused an FBI request for psychiatric data on Ellsberg. Hunt and Liddy cased the building in late August. The burglary, on September 3, 1971, was not detected, but no Ellsberg files were found.
Also in the summer of 1971, Colson authorized Hunt to travel to New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
to seek potentially scandalous information on Senator Edward Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...
, specifically pertaining to the Chappaquiddick incident and to Kennedy's possible extramarital affairs. Hunt sought and used CIA disguises and other equipment for the project. This mission eventually proved unsuccessful, with little if any useful information uncovered by Hunt.
Hunt's White House duties included assassinations-related disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
. In September 1971, Hunt forged and offered to a Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine reporter top-secret U.S. State Department cables designed to prove that President Kennedy had personally and specifically ordered the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngô Ðình Nhu was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Ðình Diệm. Nhu was widely regarded as the architect of the Ngô family's nepotistic and autocratic rule over South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963...
. Hunt told the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he had fabricated the cables to show a link between President Kennedy and the assassination of Diem, a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
, to estrange Catholic voters from the Democratic Party, after Colson suggested he "might be able to improve upon the record."
According to Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh
Seymour Myron Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters...
, writing in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Nixon White House tapes show that after presidential candidate George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...
was shot on May 15, 1972, Nixon and Colson agreed to send Hunt to the Milwaukee home of the gunman, Arthur Bremer
Arthur Bremer
Arthur Herman Bremer is an American convicted for an assassination attempt on U.S. Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace on May 15, 1972 in Laurel, Maryland, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life...
, to place McGovern
George McGovern
George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....
presidential campaign material there. The intention was to link Bremer with the Democrats. Hersh writes that, in a taped conversation, "Nixon is energized and excited by what seems to be the ultimate political dirty trick: the FBI and the Milwaukee police will be convinced, and will tell the world, that the attempted assassination of Wallace had its roots in left-wing Democratic politics." Hunt did not make the trip, however, because the FBI had moved too quickly to seal Bremer's apartment and place it under police guard.
Hunt organized the bugging of the Democratic National Committee
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee is the principal organization governing the United States Democratic Party on a day to day basis. While it is responsible for overseeing the process of writing a platform every four years, the DNC's central focus is on campaign and political activity in support...
at the Watergate office building.
A few days after the break-in, Nixon was recorded saying, to H. R. Haldeman
H. R. Haldeman
Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and for his role in events leading to the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate scandal – for which he was found guilty of conspiracy...
, "This fellow Hunt, he knows too damn much."
[V]ery bad, to have this fellow Hunt, ah, you know, ah, it's, he, he knows too damn much and he was involved, we happen to know that. And that it gets out that the whole, this is all involved in the Cuban thing, that it's a fiasco, and it's going to make the FB, ah CIA look bad, it's going to make Hunt look bad, and it's likely to blow the whole, uh, Bay of Pigs thing which we think would be very unfortunate for CIA and for the country at this time, and for American foreign policy, and he just better tough it and lay it on them.
Hunt and fellow operative G. Gordon Liddy
G. Gordon Liddy
George Gordon Liddy was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed from July–September 1971, during Richard Nixon's presidency. Separately, along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the Watergate burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in...
, along with the five arrested at the Watergate, were indicted on federal charges three months later.
Hunt's wife, Dorothy
Dorothy Hunt
Dorothy Wetzel Day Goutiere Hunt was an American employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. Hunt was the first wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt...
, was killed in the December 8, 1972 plane crash of United Airlines
United Airlines
United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees (which includes the entire holding company United Continental...
Flight 553
United Airlines Flight 553
United Airlines Flight 553 was a Boeing 737-222 that crashed on approach to Chicago Midway International Airport at 2:28 p.m. CST, on December 8, 1972. After the crew was told to go around and abort their first landing attempt on runway 31L at Midway Airport, the aircraft struck trees and then...
in Chicago. Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI), and the National Transportation Safety Board
National Transportation Safety Board
The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and incidents, certain types of highway crashes, ship and marine...
(NTSB) investigated the crash, and found it to be an accident caused by crew error. Over $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt's handbag in the wreckage.
Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison at the low-security Federal Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base
Eglin Air Force Base
Eglin Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located approximately 3 miles southwest of Valparaiso, Florida in Okaloosa County....
, Florida, on a conspiracy charge, and said he was bitter that he was sent to jail while Nixon was allowed to resign while avoiding prosecution for any crimes he may have committed, and was later fully pardoned in September, 1974, by incoming President Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
.
Later life
Give Us This Day, Hunt's book on the Bay of Pigs InvasionBay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
, was published late in 1973. In the book's foreword, he commented on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as follows:
Once again it became fashionable to hold the city of Dallas collectively responsible for his murder. Still, and let this not be forgotten, Lee Harvey Oswald was a partisan of Fidel Castro, and an admitted Marxist who made desperate efforts to join the Red Revolution in Havana. In the end, he was an activist for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. But for Castro and the Bay of Pigs disaster there would have been no such "Committee." And perhaps no assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald.
On November 3, 1978, Hunt gave a security-classified deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). The Assassination Records Review Board
Assassination Records Review Board
The Assassination Records Review Board was created as a result of an act passed by the US Congress in 1992, entitled the "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act." The Act mandated the gathering and release of all US Government records related to the Assassination of John F....
(ARRB) released the deposition in February 1996. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. They came to this conclusion because of a recording of the assassination from a Dallas Police officers mic that was stuck on the ON position. The scientific acoustical evidence establishes a 95% high probability that there was a second gunman, besides Oswald, in the infamous grassy knoll area. The Committee could not determine who the gunman was and what the extent of the conspiracy was. In 2005, an article in Science & Justice by Ralph Linsker, Richard Garwin, Herman Chernoff, Paul Horowitz, and Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr. re-analyzed the acoustic synchronization evidence, supporting the NAS report's finding that the sounds alleged to be gunshots occurred about a minute after the assassination.
Two newspaper articles published a few months before the deposition stated that a 1966 CIA memo linking Hunt to the assassination of President Kennedy had recently been provided to the HSCA. The first article, by Victor Marchetti
Victor Marchetti
Victor Marchetti is a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a prominent paleoconservative critic of the United States Intelligence Community and the Israel lobby in the United States....
—author of the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974)—appeared in the Liberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby
Liberty Lobby was an American political advocacy organization founded in 1958 that went bankrupt in 2001. It was founded by Willis Carto. In their own words,-Antisemitic world-view:...
newspaper The Spotlight
The Spotlight
The Spotlight was a weekly newspaper in the United States, published in Washington, D.C. from September 1975 to July 2001 by the now-defunct Liberty Lobby...
on August 14, 1978. According to Marchetti, the memo said in essence, "Some day we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963." He also wrote that Hunt, Frank Sturgis
Frank Sturgis
Frank Anthony Sturgis , born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the Watergate burglars.-Early Life and Military Service:...
, and Gerry Patrick Hemming
Gerry Patrick Hemming
Gerald Patrick "Gerry" Hemming, Jr. was a former U.S. Marine, mercenary and Central Intelligence Agency operative associated with attacks against on Cuba in the 1960s.-Early background:One of eleven children, Hemming born in Los Angeles, California on March 1, 1937...
would soon be implicated in a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
.
The second article, by Joseph J. Trento and Jacquie Powers, appeared in the Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...
Sunday News Journal six days later. It alleged that the purported memo was initialed by Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
and James Angleton and showed that, shortly after Helms and Angleton were elevated to their highest positions in the CIA, they discussed the fact that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination and that his presence there had to be kept secret. However, nobody has been able to produce this supposed memo, and the
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
determined that Hunt had been in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
on the day of the assassination.
Hunt sued Liberty Lobby—but not the Sunday News Journal—for libel
Slander and libel
Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander , and libel —is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image...
. Liberty Lobby stipulated, in this first trial, that the question of Hunt's alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested. Hunt prevailed and was awarded $650,000 damages. In 1983, however, the case was overturned on appeal because of error in jury instructions. In a second trial, held in 1985, Mark Lane
Mark Lane (author)
Mark Lane is an American lawyer who has written many books, including Rush to Judgment, one of two major books published in the immediate wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination that questioned the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Another book, Plausible Denial, published in 1991, continued...
made an issue of Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination. Lane successfully defended Liberty Lobby by producing evidence suggesting that Hunt had been in Dallas. He used depositions from David Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips was a Central Intelligence Agency officer for 25 years, one of a handful of people to receive the Career Intelligence Medal. He rose to become the CIA's chief of all operations in the Western hemisphere...
, Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, G. Gordon Liddy
G. Gordon Liddy
George Gordon Liddy was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed from July–September 1971, during Richard Nixon's presidency. Separately, along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the Watergate burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in...
, Stansfield Turner
Stansfield Turner
Stansfield M. Turner is a retired Admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence. He is currently a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy....
, and Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz is a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life. She later had a child with the Venezuelan former dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.In the 1970s she testified regarding the John F...
, plus a cross-examination
Cross-examination
In law, cross-examination is the interrogation of a witness called by one's opponent. It is preceded by direct examination and may be followed by a redirect .- Variations by Jurisdiction :In...
of Hunt. On retrial, the jury rendered a verdict for Liberty Lobby. In spite of Lane's claim that he convinced the jury that Hunt was a JFK assassination conspirator, most of the jurors who were interviewed by the media said they disregarded the conspiracy theory and judged the case (according to the judge's jury instructions) on whether the article was published with "reckless disregard for the truth." Lane outlined his theory about Hunt's and the CIA's role in Kennedy's murder in a 1991 book, Plausible Denial.
Some people that believe JFK was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy have suggested that two of the three tramps that marched through Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza , in the historic West End district of downtown Dallas, Texas , is the location of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
in the wake of the assassination to be Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis
Frank Sturgis
Frank Anthony Sturgis , born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the Watergate burglars.-Early Life and Military Service:...
, although several other men, Charles Harrelson
Charles Harrelson
Charles Voyde Harrelson was an American organized crime figure who was convicted of assassinating federal judge John H. Wood, Jr., the first federal judge killed in the 20th century...
for example, were also identified as tramps. The mystery was thought to be solved in the early 1990s when researcher Mary LaFontaine discovered documents identifying the men as Harold Doyle, John Forester Gedney, and Gus W. Abrams. Both the F.B.I. and independent researchers confirmed the identifications.
The Mitrokhin Archive
Mitrokhin Archive
The Mitrokhin Archive is a collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate...
by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin was a Major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and co-author with Christopher Andrew of The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, a massive account of Soviet intelligence...
, on the evidence supplied by Mitrokhin's transcribed versions of Top Secret KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
files, alleges that the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was principal in falsely connecting E. Howard Hunt to the Kennedy Assassination. Those allegations contradict the House Select Committee on Assassinations final report. The Committee concluded that there was no evidence to prove Soviet Union/KGB involvement. Mitrokhin alleges, for example, that the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
recruited and provided secret financial support for Mark Lane
Mark Lane (author)
Mark Lane is an American lawyer who has written many books, including Rush to Judgment, one of two major books published in the immediate wake of the John F. Kennedy assassination that questioned the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Another book, Plausible Denial, published in 1991, continued...
and other conspiracy theorist authors, including Carl Aldo Marzani and Joachim Joesten.
Hunt was also the addressee of a letter, purportedly from Oswald, dated two weeks before the assassination. Andrew and Mitrokhin
Vasili Mitrokhin
Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin was a Major and senior archivist for the Soviet Union's foreign intelligence service, the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, and co-author with Christopher Andrew of The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West, a massive account of Soviet intelligence...
state that the letter was a hoax, carefully created by the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
to implicate Hunt and the CIA, based upon a belief that Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the assassination. The letter was accepted as genuine by Oswald's widow and left the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978) unable to verify or discredit its authenticity. Eventually it appeared in the American press, though some assumed the "Mr. Hunt" to whom it was addressed to be the oil magnate H. L. Hunt
H. L. Hunt
Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, Jr. , known throughout his life as "H. L. Hunt," was a Texas oil tycoon and conservative activist. He built one of the world's largest fortunes by trading poker winnings for oil rights, ultimately securing title to much of the East Texas Oil Field, one of the world's very...
, whom the Kremlin first suspected of plotting the assassination.
Hunt was a prolific author, primarily of spy novels. He lived in Biscayne Park, Florida
Biscayne Park, Florida
Biscayne Park is a village in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The population was 3,269 at the 2000 census. Biscayne Park was developed in the 1920's by Arthur Griffing. The area was annexed by the city of Miami in 1925 but with the arrival of the Great Depression Miami gave up...
.
A fictionalized account of Hunt's role in the Bay of Pigs
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
operation appears in Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
's 1991 novel Harlot's Ghost
Harlot's Ghost
Harlot's Ghost , a fictional chronicle of the Central Intelligence Agency by Norman Mailer. The characters are a mixture of real people and fictional figures.-Summary:...
.
Canadian journalist David Giammarco
David Giammarco
David Giammarco is a Canadian-born television personality, actor, journalist, and author of the book For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films.-Background:...
interviewed Hunt for the December 2000 issue of Cigar Aficionado
Cigar Aficionado
Cigar Aficionado is an American magazine that is dedicated to the world of cigars. Published since September 1992, the magazine is known for its articles about different brands of cigars worldwide, and for the celebrities that have appeared on its cover. It is also noted for its opposition to the...
magazine. Writing later in Controversy magazine, Giammarco related an interview with a "former high-ranking CIA officer" in Miami who was "intrinsically involved in the CIA's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 and the many plots to kill Castro." The subject, whose description closely resembles Hunt's, is not identified by name. However, the individual reportedly told Giammarco that "he would confess to his part in the JFK assassination for a price tag of $14 million." E. Howard Hunt also wrote the foreword to Giammarco's book For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films (ECW Press, 2002).
JFK conspiracy allegations and death
During the last few years and months of Hunt's life, he made several claims about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as reported by his son Saint John Hunt. In audio recordings, discussions and writings, Hunt said (according to his son) that he and several others were involved in a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. He said the codename the conspirators gave for the operation was "The Big Event." The other alleged conspirators included David PhillipsDavid Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips was a Central Intelligence Agency officer for 25 years, one of a handful of people to receive the Career Intelligence Medal. He rose to become the CIA's chief of all operations in the Western hemisphere...
, Cord Meyer
Cord Meyer
Cord Meyer, Jr. was an American Central Intelligence Agency official.-Early life:Meyer's father, Cord Meyer Sr., was a diplomat and former real estate developer. His grandfather, also called Cord Meyer, was a property developer and a chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee. He was...
, Frank Sturgis
Frank Sturgis
Frank Anthony Sturgis , born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the Watergate burglars.-Early Life and Military Service:...
, David Morales
David Sánchez Morales
David Sánchez Morales was a Central Intelligence Agency operative who worked in Cuba.-Biographical highlights:...
, William Harvey
William King Harvey
William King "Bill" Harvey was a Central Intelligence Agency officer, best known for his role in Operation Mongoose. He was known as "America's James Bond."...
, a French gunman
Charles Rogers (murder suspect)
Charles Rogers, was a United States geologist, pilot, and suspected murderer....
, Lucien Sarti
Lucien Sarti
Lucien Sarti was a drug trafficker and killer-for-hire involved in the infamous French Connection heroin network. He was named on the television series The Men Who Killed Kennedy, as well as in a deathbed confession by former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, as one of the men who shot at U.S. President...
, who worked for the Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
, and Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
.
Hunt died on January 23, 2007 in Miami
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
of pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
and is buried in Prospect Lawn Cemetery, Hamburg, New York
Hamburg (town), New York
Hamburg is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 56,259.The Town of Hamburg is on the western border of the county and is south of Buffalo, New York. Hamburg is one of the "Southtowns" in Erie County...
. Hunt's memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond was published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2007.
Books
Nonfiction- Give Us This Day: The Inside Story of the CIA and the Bay of Pigs Invasion—by One of Its Key Organizers (1973)
- Undercover: memoirs of an American secret agent / by E. Howard Hunt (1974)
- For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films / by David GiammarcoDavid GiammarcoDavid Giammarco is a Canadian-born television personality, actor, journalist, and author of the book For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films.-Background:...
; foreword by E. Howard Hunt (2002) - American spy: my secret history in the CIA, Watergate, and beyond / E. Howard Hunt; with Greg Aunapu; foreword by William F. Buckley, Jr.William F. Buckley, Jr.William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
(2007)
Novels published as Howard Hunt or E. Howard Hunt:
- East of Farewell (1943)
- Limit of darkness, a novel by Howard Hunt (1944)
- Stranger in town (1947)
- Calculated risk: a play / by Howard Hunt (1948)
- Maelstrom / Howard Hunt (1948)
- Bimini run / by Howard Hunt (1949)
- The Violent Ones (1950)
- Berlin ending; a novel of discovery (1973)
- Hargrave deception / E. Howard Hunt (1980)
- Gaza intercept / E. Howard Hunt (1981)
- Cozumel / E. Howard Hunt (1985)
- Kremlin conspiracy / E. Howard Hunt (1985)
- Guadalajara / E. Howard Hunt (1990)
- Murder in State / E. Howard Hunt (1990)
- Body count / E. Howard Hunt (1992)
- Chinese Red / by E. Howard Hunt (1992)
- Mazatlán / E. Howard Hunt (1993) (lists former pseudonym P. S. Donoghue on cover)
- Ixtapa / E. Howard Hunt (1994)
- Islamorada / E. Howard Hunt (1995)
- Paris edge / E. Howard Hunt (1995)
- Izmir / E. Howard Hunt (1996)
- Dragon teeth: a novel / by E. Howard Hunt (1997)
- Guilty knowledge / E. Howard Hunt (1999)
- Sonora / E. Howard Hunt. (2000)
As Robert Dietrich:
- Cheat (1954)
- Be My Victim (1956)
- Murder on the rocks: an original novel (1957)
As P. S. Donoghue:
- Dublin Affair (1988)
- Sarkov Confession: a novel (1989)
- Evil Time (1992)
As David St. John
- Hazardous Duty (1966)
- Mongol Mask (1968)
- Sorcerers (1969)
- Diabolus (1971)
- Coven (1972)
As Gordon Davis:
- I Came to Kill (1953)
- House Dick (1961)
- Counterfeit Kill (1963)
- Ring Around Rosy (1964)
- Where Murder Waits (1965)
As John Baxter:
- A Foreign Affair
External links
- "Howard Hunt's Final Mission" — Review of American Spy by James Rosen in The Politico (February 7, 2007)
- "The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt" 1973 review by Gore VidalGore VidalGore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
in the New York Review of Books - "Literary Agent" Review essay by Rachel Donadio in the New York Times Sunday Book Review (February 18, 2007)
- Obituary and bibliography of Hunt's novels
- Video of Nixon discussing Hunt in the Watergate tapes
- Deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978) — Released in 1996
- Hunt's Ties to JFK & Nixon
- "Howard Hunt and the JFK Assassination" — Discussion of the 1978 Spotlight and Sunday News Journal articles
- "If This Is Hunt Are There Any Other Photos?" — Discussion of proposal identifying Hunt in photographs of Dealey Plaza