E. Howard Hunt
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| Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. | |
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| Born | October 9, 1918 Hamburg, New York, USA |
| Died | January 23, 2007 Miami, Florida, USA |
| Charge(s) | Conspiracy, burglary, illegal wiretapping |
| Penalty | 33 month imprisonment |
| Status | Deceased |
| Occupation | CIA agent, author |
| Spouse | Dorothy Louise Wetzel, Laura E. Martin |
| Parents | Everette Howard Hunt Sr. and Ethel Jean Totterdale |
Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. (October 9, 1918 - January 23, 2007) was an American author and spy. He worked for the CIA and later the White House under President Richard Nixon. Hunt, with G. Gordon Liddy and others, was one of the White House's "plumbers" — a secret team of operatives charged with fixing "leaks". Information disclosures had proved an embarrassment to the Nixon administration when defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg sent a series of documents, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, to The New York Times.
Hunt, along with Liddy, engineered the first Watergate burglary. In the ensuing Watergate Scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison.
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[edit] Early life and career
Hunt was born in Hamburg, New York, United States. A 1940 graduate of Brown University, Hunt during World War II served in the U.S. Navy, United States Army Air Forces, and finally, the Office of Strategic Services. 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), and The Violent Ones (1950) and, more famously, several spy novels under an array of pseudonyms, including Robert Dietrich, Gordon Davies and David St. John.
[edit] CIA and anti-Castro efforts
Warner Bros. had just bought Bimini Run when Hunt joined the CIA in 1949. He became station chief in Mexico City in 1950. He brought along fellow rookie officer William F. Buckley Jr., working within the Mexican student movement. Buckley and Hunt remained life-long friends.
There, Hunt helped devise Operation PBSUCCESS, the covert plan to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala. Following assignments in Japan and Uruguay, Hunt was assigned to create a provisional government to take over after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The failure of that project damaged his career.
Hunt was undeniably bitter about what he saw as President Kennedy's lack of spine in overturning the 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." (p.13-14)
Disillusioned, he retired from the CIA in 1970.
[edit] Watergate
- Main article: Watergate scandal
Hunt organized the bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office building and was also found to be responsible for a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.[1]
A few days after the break-in, Nixon was recorded saying "This fellow Hunt, he knows too damn much."[2]
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 F.B.I., and the NTSB investigated the crash, and found it to be an accident caused by crew error.[3] Over $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt's handbag in the wreckage.[4]
Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison on a conspiracy charge, and said he was bitter that he was sent to jail while Nixon was allowed to resign.
[edit] Later life
In 1981, Hunt was awarded $650,000 in a libel lawsuit against Liberty Lobby, after it published an article by Victor Marchetti in its newspaper The Spotlight accusing Hunt of involvement in the conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. However, this decision was overturned on appeal, with Mark Lane successfully defending Liberty Lobby. Lane outlined his theory about Hunt's and the CIA's role in Kennedy's murder in a 1991 book, Plausible Denial.
Hunt was a prolific author, primarily of spy novels. He declared bankruptcy in 1995 and 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.
Hunt died on January 23, 2007 in Miami, Florida of pneumonia. His memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond is to be published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2007.
[edit] Post-Mortem JFK Conspiracy Allegations
The April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone contained an extensive exposé on Mr. Hunt, based in large part on an interview with his eldest son St. John, and Hunt's alleged "deathbed" confessions of his supposed knowledge and indirect complicity in the JFK assassination. Among other things, the article claims that Hunt, in hand-written notes and a voice recording to St. John, implicated Lyndon B. Johnson and CIA operator Cord Meyer as the key players in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
[edit] References
- ^ Reynolds, Tim (January 23, 2007). Watergate Figure E. Howard Hunt Dies. Associated Press
- ^ Weiner, Tim (January 24, 2007). E. Howard Hunt, Agent Who Organized Botched Watergate Break-In, Dies at 88. The New York Times
- ^ NTSB report
- ^ CNN Live Today, "Deadly Plane Skid in Chicago" Aired December 9, 2005.
[edit] External links
- Slate interview
- CNN interview
- interview
- Video of Nixon discussing Hunt in the Watergate tapes
- 'File and forget' Castro - The Miami Herald
- E. Howard Hunt at the Internet Movie Database
- Guardian, UK obituary
- The Independent, UK obituary
- 20 Secrets of an Infamous Dead Spy
Categories: American spies | Cold War spies | People of the Central Intelligence Agency | Watergate-break-in team members | American criminals | American spy fiction writers | American military personnel of World War II | Brown University alumni | John F. Kennedy assassination | People from Buffalo, New York | Deaths by pneumonia | 1918 births | 2007 deaths
