1. Howard E Hunt Deathbed Confession

Confessions James Files. In 1994 James files confesses that he had fires the last shot to the Presidents head and goes into detail over the event. DEATHBED CONFESSION. Howard Hunt was a long time CIA agent and is known as one of Nixon's men who burglarized the Watergate Hotel. Howard Hunt was a career CIA officer known for his prolific prose and conservative politics. In 1961, he was a leader of the CIA’s failed effort to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Embittered by what he regarded as JFK’s failure to support the invasion, Hunt wrote a book “Give Us This Day,” which castigated JFK’s Cuba policy as. His new name resembled that of Hank Sturgis, the fictional hero of E. Howard Hunt's 1949 novel, Bimini Run, whose life parallels Frank Sturgis' life from 1942 to 1949 in certain salient respects. Moves to Cuba, joins Castro forces. In 1956 Sturgis moved to Cuba, and went to Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Honduras.

Frank Anthony Sturgis (December 9, 1924 – December 4, 1993), born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the five Watergate burglars whose capture led to the end of the presidency of Richard Nixon.^[1] He served in several branches of the United States military and in the Cuban Revolution of 1958, and worked as an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency.^[2] He was named as one of the men who along with Miami CIA head David Morales, met with E. Howard Hunt, shortly before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

• 5JFK conspiracy allegations

Howard E Hunt Deathbed Confession

Early life and military service[edit]

When still a child, his family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On October 5, 1942, in his senior year of high school, 17-year-old Frank Angelo Fiorini joined the United States Marine Corps and served under Col. 'Red Mike' Merritt A. Edson in the First Marine Raider Battalion in the Pacific Theater during the Second World War.^[3]

'On April 14, 1942, William Donovan, as Coordinator of Information (forerunner of the Office of Strategic Services), activated units charged with gathering intelligence, harassing the Japanese through guerrilla actions, identifying targets for the Army Air Force to bomb, and rescuing downed Allied airmen.'^[4] This was what led to Stilwell's Chinese forces, Wingate's Raiders, Merrill's Marauders, in the war, and Frank got trained in Guerrilla tactics and gathering intelligence which became useful in his later events.^[5]

Honorably discharged as a corporal in 1945, he enrolled at Virginia Polytechnic Institute but left college and joined the Norfolk Police Department on June 5, 1946.^[6] He soon discovered a corrupt payoff system and brought it to the attention of his superiors, who told him to overlook the illegal activities. On October 5, 1946, he had a confrontation with his sergeant and resigned the same day. For the next 18 months, he managed the Havana-Madrid tavern in Norfolk that catered to foreigners, mostly Cuban merchant seamen.^{[citation needed]}

On November 9, 1947, Fiorini joined the United States Naval Reserve at the Norfolk Naval Air Station and learned to fly while still working at the tavern. He was honorably discharged on August 30, 1948, and joined the United States Army the next day. He was sent immediately to West Berlin, where the USSR had closed the land routes during the Berlin Blockade, and he became a member of General Lucius Clay's honor guard. Two weeks after the USSR reopened the land routes on May 11, 1949, Fiorini was honorably discharged. As a Marine Raider, Fiorini had worked behind enemy lines gathering intelligence, and during his Army tenure in Berlin and Heidelberg, he had a top secret clearance and worked in an intelligence unit whose primary target was the Soviet Union. Fiorini started to believe Russia was a threat, and he became a lifelong militant. Returning to Norfolk in 1952, he took a job managing the Cafe Society tavern, then partnered with its owner, Milton Bass, to co-purchase and manage The Top Hat Nightclub in Virginia Beach.^[7]

On September 23, 1952, Frank Fiorini filed a petition in the Circuit Court of the City of Norfolk, Virginia, to change his name to Frank Anthony Sturgis, adopting the surname of his stepfather Ralph Sturgis, whom his mother had married in 1937. His new name resembled that of Hank Sturgis, the fictional hero of E. Howard Hunt's 1949 novel, Bimini Run, whose life parallels Frank Sturgis' life from 1942 to 1949 in certain salient respects.^[8]

Moves to Cuba, joins Castro forces[edit]

In 1956 Sturgis moved to Cuba, and went to Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Honduras. Sturgis moved to Miami in 1957, where the Cuban wife of his uncle Angelo Vona introduced him to former Cuban president Carlos Prio, who joined with other Cubans opposing dictator Fulgencio Batista to plot their return to power. They were sending money to Mexico to support Fidel Castro. Prio asked Sturgis to go to Cuba to join up with Castro and to report back to the exiled powers in Miami, so he went down and met with Castro.^[9] In 1958 he made contact with the Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba at the US Consulate in Santiago. He worked as an undercover agent for the agency with his control officer Sam Jenis. Sturgis also became involved running guns to Cuba, ^[2] along with mobster Santo Trafficante,^[10]and not surprisingly was arrested for illegal possession of arms, but released without charge. In 1959 Sturgis had contact with casinos in Cuba and some say met Lewis McWillie, mobster Traficante's man in Cuba, and the manager of the Tropicana Casino who by his own testimony^[11] was a known acquaintance of Jack Ruby.^[12]

Sturgis met up with Castro and his 400 rebels in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Sturgis offered to train Castro's troops in guerrilla warfare. Castro accepted the offer, but he also had an immediate need for guns and ammunition, so Sturgis became a gunrunner.^[2] Using money from anti-Batista Cuban exiles in Miami and some suspect the CIA, Sturgis purchased boatloads of weapons and ammunition from CIA weapons expert Samuel Cummings' International Armament Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia. Sturgis explained later that he chose to throw in with Castro rather than Prio because Fidel was a soldier, a man of action, whereas Prio was a politician, more a man of words.^[13]

In March 1958, Sturgis opened a training camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where he taught Che Guevara and other 26th of July Movement rebel soldiers guerrilla warfare.^[14] When Castro seized power, Sturgis was part of a rebel firing squad on San Juan Hill on January 11, 1959, that executed 71 of their opponents into an awaiting 40-foot ditch that had been opened with a bulldozer. Afterward, Sturgis was photographed holding a rifle on top of the covered mass grave.^[15]

Castro then appointed Sturgis gambling czar and director of security and intelligence for the air force, in addition to his position as a captain in the 26th of July Movement.^[16] Sturgis went to Miami on June 2, 1959, with Alan McDonald while 'supervising the investigation of several American gamblers with criminal records that operate casinos in Havana.' They requested from Metropolitan Criminal Intelligence Supervisor Frank Kappel information on 'Meyer and Jake Lansky, Joe Silesi aka Joe Rivers and Santos Trafficante,' that was provided to them six days later after the Cuban government sent an official written request.^[17] He was introduced to two men that were transported to Cuba from Venezuela to assist in the organization of the revolution and Frank saw they were clearly communist. He began to sound out those that he knew were anti-communist including Camilo Cienfuegos, as he knew leaders like Raul Castro and Che Guevera were communist, but he was unsure about Fidel Castro. Sturgis defected the following month with Revolutionary Air Force chief Commandant Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz^[18] and they joined the anti-Castro exile opposition.

Sturgis participated with him a few months later in anti-Castro leaflet-dropping raid over Cuba. Sturgis formed the Anti-Communist Brigade which Hans Tanner in his book 'Counter-Revolutionary Agent', says the organization was 'being financed by dispossessed hotel and gambling owners' from Cuba. The Border Patrol in Miami reported that Sturgis was involved in a CIA operation being financed by Sergio Rojas to overthrow Castro. Sturgis also was involved in helping the CIA organize the Bay of Pigs invasion, which he felt JFK was responsible for the failure of. Sturgis recruited 19 year old Marita Lorenz,^[19] who was close to Fidel Castro, and she took CIA pills,^[20] which she hid in her face cream, to poison Castro, but the plot failed.^[21] According to Lorenz, she met Sturgis again before the Kennedy assassination in 1963 with others planning a big event.^[22] Lorenz stated that she joined the Sturgis traveling to Dallas after the meeting.^[22]Lorenz later testified about this Kennedy assassination plot before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). ^[23]

Sturgis was also a member of Operation 40, a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored counterintelligence group composed of Cuban exiles.^[24] The group was formed to seize control of the Cuban government after the Bay of Pigs Invasion.^[25]The operation was concentrating on Cuba and were operating out of Mexico.

Despite his known involvement in numerous CIA sponsored operations including the Bay of Pigs invasion, the 1975 Rockefeller Commission succinctly states that 'Frank Sturgis was not an employee or agent of the CIA either in 1963 or at any other time.'^[26]

Watergate burglary 1972[edit]

On June 17, 1972, Sturgis, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez, Bernard Barker and James W. McCord, Jr. were arrested while installing electronic listening devices in the national Democratic Party campaign offices located at the Watergate office complex in Washington. The phone number of Hunt was found in address books of the burglars. Reporters were able to link the break-in to the White House. The burglars had made an earlier successful entry to the same location several weeks earlier, but returned to fix a malfunctioning device and to photograph more documents. Bob Woodward, a reporter working for the Washington Post was told by a source (Deep Throat) who was employed by the government that senior aides of President Richard Nixon had paid the burglars to obtain information about his political opponents.

Prison and later investigations[edit]

In January 1973, Sturgis, Hunt, Gonzalez, Martinez, Barker, G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord were convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping.

Sturgis was convicted in 1973 with Max Gonzalez and Jerry Buchanan in a federal court in Miami (73-597-CR-CA) of transporting cars stolen in Texas into Mexico.^[27] This prompted Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Acting Regional Director David W. Costa to send a letter to Judge C. Clyde Atkins on March 10, 1975, indicating that Sturgis had been covertly cooperating with the DEA.^[28] Sturgis served 14 months in the minimum security federal prison in Eglin, Florida.

After leaving prison, Sturgis served as a Miami police informant and continued snitching on the anti-Castro activities of Dr. Orlando Bosch.^[29]

St. George's article was published in True magazine in August 1974. Sturgis claims that the Watergate burglars had been instructed to find a particular document in the Democratic Party offices. This was a 'secret memorandum from the Castro government' that included details of CIA covert actions. Sturgis said 'that the Castro government suspected the CIA did not tell the whole truth about these operations even to American political leaders'.^[30] In response to Sturgis' repeated braggadocio to the news media, the CIA issued a public statement on May 30, 1975, indicating that he had never been connected with them 'in any way.'^[31]

In an interview with New York Daily News reporter Paul Meskil on June 20, 1975, Sturgis stated, 'I was a spy. I was involved in assassination plots and conspiracies to overthrow several foreign governments including Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. I smuggled arms and men into Cuba for Castro and against Castro. I broke into intelligence files. I stole and photographed secret documents. That's what spies do.'

Sturgis was denied a pardon by President Jimmy Carter.^[32]

JFK conspiracy allegations[edit]

Sturgis has been the subject of various allegations regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also made claims that other individuals were involved in the assassination of Kennedy.

Early allegations: Sturgis as one of the 'three tramps'[edit]

The Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram photographed three transients under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination of Kennedy.^[33] The men later became known as the 'three tramps'.^[34] According to Vincent Bugliosi, allegations that these men were involved in a conspiracy originated from theorist Richard E. Sprague who compiled the photographs in 1966 and 1967, and subsequently turned them over to Jim Garrison during his investigation of Clay Shaw.^[34] Appearing before a nationwide audience on the December 31, 1968 episode of The Tonight Show, Garrison held up a photo of the three and suggested they were involved in the assassination.^[34] Later, in 1974, assassination researchers Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield compared photographs of the men to people they believed to be suspects involved in a conspiracy and said that two of the men were Watergate burglars Hunt and Sturgis.^[35] Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory helped bring national media attention to the allegations against Hunt and Sturgis in 1975 after obtaining the comparison photographs from Weberman and Canfield.^[35] Immediately after obtaining the photographs, Gregory held a press conference that received considerable coverage and his charges were reported in Rolling Stone and Newsweek.^[35][36][37]

The Rockefeller Commission reported in 1975 that they investigated the allegation that Hunt and Sturgis, on behalf of the CIA, participated in the assassination of Kennedy.^[38] The final report of that commission stated that witnesses who testified that the 'derelicts' bore a resemblance to Hunt or Sturgis 'were not shown to have any qualification in photo identification beyond that possessed by an average layman'.^[39] Their report also stated that FBI Agent Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt, 'a nationally-recognized expert in photoidentification and photoanalysis' with the FBI photographic laboratory, had concluded from photo comparison that none of the men were Hunt or Sturgis.^[40] In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that forensic anthropologists had again analyzed and compared the photographs of the 'tramps' with those of Hunt and Sturgis, as well as with photographs of Thomas Vallee, Daniel Carswell, and Fred Lee Chrisman.^[41] According to the committee, only Chrisman resembled any of the tramps but determined that he was not to be in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination.^[41] In 1992, journalist Mary La Fontaine discovered the November 22, 1963 arrest records that the Dallas Police Department had released in 1989, which named the three men as Gus W. Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John F. Gedney.^[42] According to the arrest reports, the three men were 'taken off a boxcar in the railroad yards right after President Kennedy was shot', detained as 'investigative prisoners', described as unemployed and passing through Dallas, then released four days later.^[42]

Sturgis makes his own allegations[edit]

In 1976, Sturgis claimed that he was assigned to investigate any possible role that Cuban exiles may have played in the assassination of Kennedy.^[43] He stated that his investigation revealed that ten weeks prior to the assassination, Jack Ruby met with Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba to discuss 'the removal of the President' in order to neutralize the threat of invasion by the United States.^[43][44] According to Sturgis, others at the meeting included Raúl Castro, Che Guevara, Ramiro Valdés, and 'an Argentine woman who is believed to have been a Russian KGB agent'.^[43][44] He said that Ruby had also made several trips to Havana in the months before the assassination in order to arrange deals in which arms would be sold to Cuba and in which illegal drugs from Cuba would be smuggled into the United States.^[43] Sturgis also claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the conspiracy, and that other governments either were involved in the conspiracy or knew of the conspiracy.^[43] He said that his investigation did not reveal that Cuban exiles were involved in the assassination.^[43]

Sturgis declined to specifically identify the sources of his information, but noted he said that they included members of the 'anti-Castro Cuban underground'.^[43][44] He further claimed that associates of his involved in intelligence had independently confirmed his report.^[43][44] According to Sturgis, his report was made in early 1964 and that it was given to 'certain American intelligence agencies, including the Senate Internal Security Committee'.^[44] He said that he did not know if it had been forwarded to the Warren Commission.^[43] Similarly, Sturgis said that information about the 1964 reports had been provided to the Rockefeller Commission as well as the Church Committee's intelligence subcommittee chaired by Richard Schweiker, but that he did not know if they received the actual reports.^[43][44]

Sturgis stated he was revealing that he made the reports in order to refute 'the leftist element in the country' who claimed the CIA was involved in the assassination of Kennedy.^[45] Jack Ruby's brother, Earl, responded to the allegations as 'outlandish', 'ridiculous', and 'absolutely false'.^[46][47]

Marita Lorenz: Sturgis with Oswald[edit]

In September 1977, Marita Lorenz told Paul Meskil of the New York Daily News that she met Oswald in the fall of 1963 at an Operation 40safe house in the Little Havana section of Miami.^[22] According to Lorenz, she met him again before the Kennedy assassination in 1963 in the house of Orlando Bosch, with Sturgis, Pedro Luis Díaz Lanz, and two other Cubans present.^[22] She said the men studied Dallas street maps and that she suspected that they were planning on raiding an arsenal.^[22] Lorenz stated that she joined the men traveling to Dallas in two cars and carrying 'rifles and scopes', but flew back to Miami the day after they arrived.^[22] In response to her allegations, Sturgis said he did not recall ever meeting Oswald and reiterated his previous denials of being involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.^[22]

On October 31, 1977, Sturgis was arrested in Lorenz's apartment after Lorenz told police that Sturgis threatened her in an attempt to force her to change her testimony to federal investigators.^[48] In an interview with Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post shortly after he posted bail, Sturgis said that he believed communist agents had pressured Lorenz into making the accusations against him.^[49] Later that week in Manhattan Criminal Court, charges against Sturgis were dropped after the prosecutor told the judge that his office found no evidence of coercion or harassment.^[48] Recapping the series of events, Timothy Crouse of The Village Voice described Sturgis and Lorenz as 'two of the most notoriously unreliable sources in America'.^[50]

Posthumous allegations: Hunt's 'deathbed confession'[edit]

After the death of Hunt in 2007, John Hunt and David Hunt revealed that their father had recorded several claims about himself and others being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.^[51][52] In the April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, John Hunt detailed a number of individuals implicated by his father including Sturgis, as well as Cord Meyer, David Sánchez Morales, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey and an assassin he termed 'French gunman grassy knoll' who many presume was Lucien Sarti.^[52][53] The two sons alleged that their father cut the information from his memoirs, 'American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond', to avoid possible perjury charges.^[51] According to Hunt's widow and other children, the two sons took advantage of Hunt's loss of lucidity by coaching and exploiting him for financial gain.^[51] The Los Angeles Times said they examined the materials offered by the sons to support the story and found them to be 'inconclusive'.^[51]

Portugal, 1980: Camarate Affair[edit]

Sturgis is also linked to the assassination, on December 4, 1980, of Portuguese prime minister Francisco de Sá Carneiro and 6 other people aboard a Cessna aircraft, in what became known as the Camarate affair. He was named by two of his alleged accomplices, Fernando Farinha Simões and José Esteves, in a written confession,^[54] as the person who pressed the button of the detonator to activate the bomb on the plane.

Later life[edit]

In 1979, Sturgis traveled to Angola to help rebels fighting the communist government, which was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, and to teach guerrilla warfare. In 1981 he went to Honduras to train the US backed Contras who were fighting Nicaragua's Sandinista government, which was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union; the Army of El Salvador; and the Honduras death squads. He made a second trip to Angola and trained rebels in the Angolan bush for Holden Roberto. He interacted with Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal. In 1989 he visited Yassir Arafat in Tunis. Arafat shared elements of his peace plan, and Sturgis was debriefed by the CIA on his return.^[55]

In an obituary published December 5, 1993, the New York Times quoted Sturgis' lawyer, Ellis Rubin, as saying that Sturgis died of cancer a week after he was admitted to a veterans hospital in Miami, five days shy of his 69th birthday. It was reported that doctors diagnosed lung cancer that had spread to his kidneys, and that he was survived by a wife, Jan, and a daughter named Autumn.^[1]

Notes[edit]

1. ^ ^ab'Frank A. Sturgis, Is Dead at 68; A Burglar in the Watergate Affair'. The New York Times. New York. December 5, 1993. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
2. ^ ^abcJim Hunt and Bob Risch, Cuba on My Mind: The Secret Lives of Watergate Burglar Frank Sturgis (New York: A Forge Book, December 30, 2009, p. 35.
3. ^Jim Hunt and Bob Risch (2011). Warrior. New York: A Forge Book, pp. 25–26.
4. ^Central Intelligence Agency. Behind Japanese Lines in Burma: The Stuff of Intelligence Legend (2001). Retrieved 30 May 2012.
5. ^Peers, William R. and Dean Brelis. Behind the Burma Road: The Story of America's Most Successful Guerrilla Force. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963, back cover.
6. ^'Frank Fiorini (Sturgis)'. Spartacus Educational. September 1997. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
7. ^Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), pp. 30–44.
8. ^Chapter 19 of the Rockefeller Commission report denied the suggestion that Sturgis took his present name from the Hunt character, or that the name change was associated in any way with Sturgis' knowing Hunt before 1971 or 1972.
9. ^Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 38.
10. ^'Full text of 'Hearing 03-16-77 Trafficante''. archive.org.
11. ^'TESTIMONY OF LEWIS McWILLIE, LAS VEGAS, NEV'. mcadams.posc.mu.edu.
12. ^'The Jack Ruby Connection'. January 31, 2014.
13. ^Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 39.
14. ^Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 43.
15. ^http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/Time-1-26-1959.pdf
16. ^Jim Hunt and Bob Risch, Warrior (New York: A Forge Book, May 2011), p. 57.
17. ^http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sturgis/Fiorini-6-2-1959.pdf
18. ^http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sturgis/Fiorini-7-12-1959.pdf
19. ^Nast, Condé. 'The Story of Marita Lorenz: Mistress, Mother, C.I.A. Informant, and Center of Swirling Conspiracy Theories'. Vanity Fair.
20. ^Paterson, Tony (October 7, 2000). 'The teenager, Castro and the CIA poison plot' – via www.telegraph.co.uk.
21. ^Johnston, Laurie (November 4, 1977). 'Police Studying Arrest of Sturgis, Who Denies Threatening Accuser' – via NYTimes.com.
22. ^ ^abcdefgMeskil, Paul (September 20, 1977). 'Ex-Spy Says She Drove To Dallas With Oswald & Kennedy 'Assassin Squad''(PDF). New York Daily News. New York. p. 5. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
23. ^'JFK: Gaeton Fonzi on Marita Lorenz'.
24. ^Smith, Jr., W. Thomas (2003). '40, Operation'. Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 104. ISBN9781438130187. Retrieved October 5, 2015.
25. ^Bartlett, Charles (May 11, 1961). 'Cuban Terror Unit Barred?'. The Palm Beach Post. Palm Beach, Florida. p. 9. Retrieved May 7, 2015.
26. ^Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States Chapter 19
27. ^http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sturgis/Sturgis-Appeal-1974.pdf
28. ^http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sturgis/Sturgis-DEA-1975.pdf
29. ^http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sturgis/Sturgis-Deposition-1978.pdf
30. ^http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/Watergate/Watergate%20Items%2017131%20to%2017456/Watergate%2017132.pdf
31. ^http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sturgis/Sturgis-CIA-denial-1975.pdf
32. ^'Ehrlichman Seeks a Pardon for Watergate Crimes'. The New York Times. New York. AP. August 15, 1987. Retrieved December 14, 2014.
33. ^Bugliosi, Vincent (2007). Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 930. ISBN978-0-393-04525-3.
34. ^ ^abcBugliosi 2007, p. 930.
35. ^ ^abcBugliosi 2007, p. 931.
36. ^Weberman, Alan J; Canfield, Michael (1992) [1975]. Coup D'Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Revised ed.). San Francisco: Quick American Archives. p. 7. ISBN9780932551108.
37. ^Dallas: new questions and answers, Newsweek, 28 April 1975, pp. 37–38
38. ^'Chapter 19: Allegations Concerning the Assassination of President Kennedy'. Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. June 1975. p. 251.
39. ^Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, p. 256.
40. ^Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, p. 257.
41. ^ ^ab'I.B. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations'. Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. 1979. pp. 91–92.
42. ^ ^abBugliosi 2007, p. 933.
43. ^ ^abcdefghij'Sturgis Says He Gave Report Of Ruby Plotting With Castro'. Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Sarasota, Florida. UPI. July 9, 1976. p. 2E. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
44. ^ ^abcdef'Ex-operative says Ruby met with Castro'. Lawrence Journal-World. Lawrence, Kansas. AP. July 10, 1976. p. 24. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
45. ^'Jack Ruby visited Castro'. Delaware County Daily Times. Chester, Pennsylvania. AP. July 10, 1976. p. 2. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
46. ^'Ruby's Brother Contradicts Story'. Florence Times Tri-Cities Daily. 107 (190). Florence, Alabama. UPI. July 10, 1976. p. 5. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
47. ^'Claim False; Brother of Ruby Says'. The Victoria Advocate. Victoria, Texas. AP. July 12, 1976. p. 7A. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
48. ^ ^ab'Sturgis Charges Dropped'. Observer-Reporter. Washington, Pennsylvania. AP. November 5, 1977. p. A-5. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
49. ^Dunleavy, Steve (November 3, 1977). 'Sturgis' Exclusive Story; Marita Pressured By Reds'(PDF). New York Post. New York. pp. 3, 14. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
50. ^Crouse, Timothy (November 21, 1977). 'Crime and Punishment; Page One Hoax from a Cloak & Dagger Duo'. The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved October 20, 2014.
51. ^ ^abcdWilliams, Carol J. (March 20, 2007). 'Watergate plotter may have a last tale'. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
52. ^ ^abHedegaard, Erik (April 5, 2007). 'The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt'. Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on June 18, 2008.Cite uses deprecated parameter deadurl= (help)
53. ^McAdams, John (2011). 'Too Much Evidence of Conspiracy'. JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy. Washington, DC: Potomac Books. p. 189. ISBN9781597974899. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
54. ^Carvalho, Frederico Duarte (2012). Camarate: Sá Carneiro e as armas para o Irão. Lisbon: Editorial Planeta. ISBN978-9896573430.
55. ^Jim Hunt and Bob Risch (2011). Warrior. New York: A Forge Book, pp. 313–314.

Bibliography[edit]

• Escalante, Fabian (1995). The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959–62. ISBN1-875284-86-9
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. (1978). Robert Kennedy and His Times. ISBN978-0-233-97085-1

External links[edit]

• Frank Sturgis at Find a Grave

Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007), better known as E. Howard Hunt, was an American intelligence officer and published author of 73 books. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Along with G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon administration 'plumbers', a team of operatives charged with identifying government sources of national security information 'leaks' to outside parties. Hunt and Liddy plotted the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations for the Nixon administration. In the ensuing Watergate scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping, eventually serving 33 months in prison.

• 3CIA and anti-Castro efforts
• 6JFK conspiracy allegations

Early life and career[edit]

Hunt was born in Hamburg, New York,^[1] United States, the son of Ethel Jean (Totterdale) and Everette Howard Hunt Sr., an attorney and Republican Party official. He graduated from Hamburg High School in 1936^[2] and Brown University in 1940. During World War II, Hunt served in the U.S. Navy on the destroyer USS Mayo, the United States Army Air Corps, and finally, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in China.^[3]

Author[edit]

Hunt was a prolific author.^[4] During and after the war, he wrote several novels under his own name, including East of Farewell (1942), Limit of Darkness (1944), Stranger in Town (1947), Bimini Run (1949), and The Violent Ones (1950) . He also wrote, 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. Some of his writings found parallels in his espionage and Watergate experiences.^[5]

CIA and anti-Castro efforts[edit]

Warner Bros. had just bought rights to Hunt's novel Bimini Run when he joined the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) in October 1949 as a covert action officer specializing in political action and influence, in what later came to be called the CIA's Special Activities Division.^[6] The CIA was the successor organization of the OSS.

According to David Talbot, 'Howard Hunt prided himself on being part of the CIA’s upper tier. But that’s not how he was viewed at the top of the agency. Hunt liked to brag that he had family connections to Wild Bill Donovan himself, who had admitted him into the OSS, the original roundtable of American intelligence. But it turned out that Hunt’s father was a lobbyist in upstate New York to whom Donovan owed a favor, not a fellow Wall Street lawyer. Everyone knew Hunt was a writer, but they also knew he was no Ian Fleming. To the Georgetown set, there would always be something low-rent about men like Hunt—as well as William Harvey and David Morales. The CIA was a cold hierarchy. Men like this would never be invited for lunch with Allen Dulles at the Alibi Club or to play tennis with Dick Helms at the Chevy Chase Club. These men were indispensable—until they became expendable.'^[7]

Mexico, Guatemala, Japan, Uruguay and Cuba[edit]

Hunt became the OPC Station Chief in Mexico City in 1950, and recruited and supervised William F. Buckley Jr., who worked in Hunt's OPC Station in Mexico during the period 1951–1952. Buckley and Hunt remained lifelong friends and Buckley became godfather to Hunt's first three children.^[8]

In Mexico, Hunt helped lay the framework for Operation PBFORTUNE, later renamed Operation PBSUCCESS, the successful covert operation to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz, the democratically-elected president of Guatemala. Hunt was assigned as Chief of Covert Action in Japan. He afterwards served as Chief of Station in Uruguay from 1957 through 1960 (where he was noted by American diplomatic contemporary Samuel F. Hart for controversial working methods). When the CIA released Hunt's personnel file, his time at Uruguay is (REDACTED). In 1998,the CIA released a (SECRET) document that was captured by the wiretaps Hunt set up while he was the COS of Uruguay. The secret document was a cable regarding Dandol Dianzi reporting 'something of great importance to the nation'. The intercepted phone call between Dianzi and the embassy was on November 20, 1963, two days before JFK was assassinated. The cable was sent to the White House. To this date, there is no mention of Dandol Dianzi, and Argentinian. While Hunt was stationed in Montevideo, he had people working for him at his home and CIA cut-outs from Argentina. It is unclear if Dianzi worked for Hunt. Neither the CIA nor the FBI has any reports on Dianzi.^[9] Hunt was subsequently 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 pro-American Puppet state to take over Cuba.^[10] The failure of the invasion temporarily damaged his career.

Hunt was undeniably bitter about what he perceived as President John F. Kennedy's lack of commitment in attacking and overthrowing the government of Cuba.^[11] 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 José Martí, then moved shamefacedly into the shadows and hoped the Cuban issue would simply melt away.'

Executive Assistant to DCI Allen Dulles[edit]

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Hunt was reassigned as Executive Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen W. Dulles.^[12] While Hunt was working on Brigade 2506, he helped Dulles write The Craft of Intelligence (1959).^[13]

Other work and association with G. Gordon Liddy[edit]

After President John F. Kennedy fired Dulles in 1961 for the Bay of Pigs failure, Hunt served as the first Chief of Covert Action for the Domestic Operations Division (DODS) from 1962 to 1964.

Hunt told The New York Times in 1974 that he spent about four years working for DODS, 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 in the US, 'did seem to violate the intent of the agency's charter.'^[14]

In 1964, DCI John A. McCone directed Hunt to take a special assignment as a Non-Official Cover (NOC) officer in Madrid, Spain, tasked to create the American answer to Ian Fleming'sBritish MI-6James Bond novel series. While assigned in Spain, Hunt was covered as a recently retired U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officer (FSO) who had moved his family to Spain in order to write the first installment of the 9-novel Peter Ward series, On Hazardous Duty (1965).

After a year and a half in Spain, Hunt returned to his assignment at DODS. Following a brief tenure on the Special Activities Staff of the Western European Division, he became Chief of Covert Action for the region (while remaining based in the Washington metropolitan area) in July 1968. Hunt was lauded for his 'sagacity, balance and imagination', and received the second-highest rating of Strong (signifying 'performance... characterized by exceptional proficiency') in a performance review from the Division's Chief of Operations in April 1969. However, this was downgraded to the third-highest rating of Adequate in an amendment from the Division's Deputy Chief, who recognized Hunt's 'broad experience' but opined that 'a series of personal and taxing problems' had 'tended to dull his cutting edge.'^[15] Hunt would later maintain that he 'had been stigmatized by the Bay of Pigs', and had come to terms with the fact that he 'would not get promoted too much higher.'^[16]

In these final years of Hunt's CIA service, he began to cultivate new contacts in 'society and the business world.'^[16] While serving as vice president of the Brown University Club of Washington, he befriended and commenced a strong association with the organization's president, former congressional aide Charles Colson, who soon began working on Richard Nixon's presidential campaign.^[17] Hunt retired from the CIA at the pay grade of GS-15, Step 8^[18] on April 30, 1970.

White House service[edit]

Immediately following his retirement, he went to work for the Robert R. Mullen Company, which cooperated with the CIA; H. R. 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 that was apparently unknown to Haldeman while he worked in the White House.^[19] Through CIA's Project QKENCHANT, Hunt obtained a Covert Security Approval to handle the firm's affairs during Mullen's absence from Washington.^[20][21] The following year, he was hired as a consultant by Colson, by now Nixon's public liaison director, and joined the White House Special Investigations Unit.^[3]

Having neglected to elect survivorship benefits for his wife upon retiring from the CIA, Hunt raised the possibility of returning to active duty for a short period of time in exchange for activating the benefits upon his proposed second retirement in a May 5, 1972 letter to CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston. (An April 1971 request to retroactively amend his election was rebuffed by the agency.) However, Houston advised Hunt in his May 16 response that this 'would be in violation of the spirit of the CIA Retirement Act'.^[18]

Watergate and related scandals[edit]

Hunt's first assignment for the White House was a covert operation to break into the Los Angeles office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, Lewis J. Fielding.^[22] In July 1971, Fielding had refused a request from the Federal Bureau of Investigation for psychiatric data on Ellsberg.^[23] Hunt and Liddy cased the building in late August.^[24] The burglary, on September 3, 1971, was not detected, but no Ellsberg files were found.^[25]

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.^[19] Hunt sought and used CIA disguises and other equipment for the project.^[26] This mission eventually proved unsuccessful, with little if any useful information uncovered by Hunt.^[19]

Hunt's White House duties included assassinations-related disinformation. In September 1971, Hunt forged and offered to a Life magazine reporter two 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, Ngô Đình Nhu.^[27] 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.'^[28]

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.^[29]

Hunt organized the bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office building.^[30] Hunt and fellow operative G. Gordon Liddy, along with the five burglars arrested at the Watergate, were indicted on federal charges three months later.

Hunt put pressure on the White House and the Committee to Re-Elect the President for cash payments to cover legal fees, family support, and expenses, for himself and his fellow burglars. Key Nixon figures, including Haldeman, Charles Colson, Herbert W. Kalmbach, John Mitchell, Fred LaRue, and John Dean eventually became entangled in the payoff schemes, and large amounts of money were passed to Hunt and his accomplices, to try to ensure their silence at the trial, by pleading guilty to avoid prosecutors' questions, and afterwards.^[31] Tenacious media, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, eventually used investigative journalism to break open the payoff scheme, and published many articles that proved to be the beginning of the end for the cover-up. Prosecutors had to follow up once the media reported. Hunt also pressured Colson, Dean, and John Ehrlichman to ask Nixon for clemency in sentencing, and eventual presidential pardons for himself and his cronies; this eventually helped to implicate and snare those higher up.^[32]

Hunt's wife, Dorothy, was killed in the December 8, 1972 plane crash of United AirlinesFlight 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.^[33] Over $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt's handbag in the wreckage.^[34]

Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison at Federal Correctional Complex, Allenwood and the low-security Federal Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, on a conspiracy charge, arriving at the latter institution on April 25, 1975.^[35] While at Allenwood, he suffered a mild stroke.^[36] Hunt said he was bitter that he was sent to prison while Nixon was allowed to resign while avoiding prosecution for any crimes he may have committed; later, Nixon was fully pardoned in September 1974 by incoming President Gerald Ford. Hunt eventually applied for a presidential pardon but was turned down by Ronald Reagan in 1983.^[37]

JFK conspiracy allegations[edit]

Hunt supported the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.^[38]

Early allegations: Hunt as one of the 'three tramps'[edit]

The Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram photographed three transients under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination of Kennedy.^[39] The men later became known as the 'three tramps'. According to Vincent Bugliosi, allegations that these men were involved in a conspiracy originated from theorist Richard E. Sprague who compiled the photographs in 1966 and 1967, and subsequently turned them over to Jim Garrison during his investigation of Clay Shaw. Appearing before a nationwide audience on the December 31, 1968, episode of The Tonight Show, Garrison held up a photo of the three and suggested they were involved in the assassination.^[40]

Later, in 1974, assassination researchers Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield compared photographs of the men to people they believed to be suspects involved in a conspiracy and said that two of the men were Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory helped bring national media attention to the allegations against Hunt and Sturgis in 1975 after obtaining the comparison photographs from Weberman and Canfield.^[41] Immediately after obtaining the photographs, Gregory held a press conference that received considerable coverage and his charges were reported in Rolling Stone and Newsweek.^[41][42]

The Rockefeller Commission reported in 1975 that they investigated the allegation that Hunt and Sturgis, on behalf of the CIA, participated in the assassination of Kennedy.^[43] The final report of that commission stated that witnesses who testified that the 'derelicts' bore a resemblance to Hunt or Sturgis 'were not shown to have any qualifications in photo identification beyond that possessed by an average layman'.^[44] Their report also stated that FBI Agent Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt, 'a nationally-recognized expert in photoidentification and photoanalysis' with the FBI photographic laboratory, had concluded from photo comparison that none of the men was Hunt or Sturgis.^[45]

In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that forensic anthropologists had again analyzed and compared the photographs of the 'tramps' with those of Hunt and Sturgis, as well as with photographs of Thomas Vallee, Daniel Carswell, and Fred Lee Chrisman.^[46] According to the Committee, only Chrisman resembled any of the tramps, but determined that he was not to be in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination.^[46]

In 1992, journalist Mary La Fontaine discovered the November 22, 1963 arrest records that the Dallas Police Department had released in 1989, which named the three men as Gus W. Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John F. Gedney. According to the arrest reports, the three men were 'taken off a boxcar in the railroad yards right after President Kennedy was shot', detained as 'investigative prisoners', described as unemployed and passing through Dallas, then released four days later.^[47]

Compulsive Spy and Coup d'Etat in America[edit]

In 1973, Viking Press published Tad Szulc's book about Hunt's career titled Compulsive Spy.^[48] Szulc, a former correspondent for The New York Times, claimed unnamed CIA sources told him that Hunt, working with Rolando Cubela Secades, had a role in coordinating the assassination of Castro for an aborted second invasion of Cuba.^[48] In one passage, he also stated that Hunt was the acting chief of the CIA station in Mexico City in 1963 while Lee Harvey Oswald was there.^{[49][50][nb 1]}

The Rockefeller Commission's June 1975 report stated that they investigated allegations that the CIA, including Hunt, may have had contact with Oswald or Jack Ruby.^[52] According to the Commission, one 'witness testified that E. Howard Hunt was Acting Chief of a CIA Station in Mexico City in 1963, implying that he could have had contact with Oswald when Oswald visited Mexico City in September 1963.'^[53] Their report stated that there was 'no credible evidence' of CIA involvement in the assassination and noted: 'At no time was [Hunt] ever the Chief, or Acting Chief, of a CIA Station in Mexico City.^[53]

Released in the Fall of 1975 after the Rockefeller Commission's report, Weberman and Canfield's book Coup d'Etat in America reiterated Szulc's allegation.^{[50][nb 2]} In July 1976, Hunt filed a $2.5 million libel suit against the authors, as well as the book's publishers and editor.^[54] According to Ellis Rubin, Hunt's attorney who filed the suit in a Miami federal court, the book said that Hunt took part in the assassination of Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.^[54]

As part of his suit, Hunt filed a legal action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in September 1978 requesting that Szulc be cited for contempt if he refused to divulge his sources. Three months earlier, Szulc stated in a deposition that he refused to name his sources due to 'the professional confidentiality of sources' and 'journalistic privilege'. Rubin stated that knowing the source of the allegation that Hunt was in Mexico City in 1963 was important because Szulc's passage 'is what everybody uses as an authority... he's cited in everything written on E. Howard Hunt'. He added that rumors that Hunt was involved in the Kennedy assassination might be put to end if Szulc's source was revealed.^[49] Stating that Hunt had not provided a sufficient reason to override Szulc's First Amendment rights to protect the confidentiality of his sources, United States District JudgeAlbert Vickers Bryan Jr. ruled in favor of Szulc.^[50]

Libel suit: Liberty Lobby and The Spotlight[edit]

On November 3, 1978, Hunt gave a security-classified deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He denied knowledge of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy. (The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) released the deposition in February 1996.)^[55] 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.'^[56] 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 six days later in the Sunday edition of The News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware.^[57] 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.^[58]

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.^[59] Hunt prevailed and was awarded $650,000 damages. In 1983, however, the case was overturned on appeal because of error in jury instructions.^[60] In a second trial, held in 1985, Mark Lane made an issue of Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination.^[61] 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.^[62] Lane claimed he convinced the jury that Hunt was a JFK assassination conspirator, but some 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.'^[63] Lane outlined his theory about Hunt's and the CIA's role in Kennedy's murder in a 1991 book, Plausible Denial.^[64]

Mitrokhin Archive[edit]

Former KGB archivistVasili Mitrokhin indicated in 1999 that Hunt was made part of a fabricated conspiracy theory disseminated by a Soviet 'active measures' program designed to discredit the CIA and the United States.^[65][66] According to Mitrokhin, the KGB created a forged letter from Oswald to Hunt implying that the two were linked as conspirators, then forwarded copies of it to 'three of the most active conspiracy buffs' in 1975.^[65] Mitrokhin indicated that the photocopies were accompanied by a fake cover letter from an anonymous source alleging that the original had been given to FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley and was apparently being suppressed.^[65]

'Deathbed confession' of involvement in Kennedy assassination[edit]

After Hunt's death, Howard St. John Hunt and David Hunt stated that their father had recorded several claims about himself and others being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.^[3][67] Notes and audio recordings were made. In the April 5, 2007, issue of Rolling Stone, St. John Hunt detailed a number of individuals purported to be implicated by his father, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Cord Meyer, David Phillips, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, Antonio Veciana, William Harvey, and an assassin he termed 'French gunman grassy knoll' who many presume was Lucien Sarti.^[3][68]

The two sons alleged that their father cut the information from his memoirs to avoid possible perjury charges. According to Hunt's widow and other children, the two sons took advantage of Hunt's loss of lucidity by coaching and exploiting him for financial gain and furthermore falsified accounts of Hunt's supposed confession. The Los Angeles Times said they examined the materials offered by the sons to support the story and found them to be 'inconclusive'.^[67]

American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond[edit]

Hunt's memoir, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond, was ghost-written by Greg Aunapu and published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2007.^[69] According to the Hunt Literary Estate, Hunt had intended to write an update to his 1974 autobiography Undercover and supplement this edition with post-9/11 reflections, but by the time he had embarked on the project, he was too ill to continue. This prompted John Wiley & Sons to search for and hire a ghost writer to write the book in its entirety. According to St. John Hunt, it was he who suggested to his father the idea of a memoir to reveal what he knew about the Kennedy assassination, but the Hunt Literary Estate refutes this as scurrilous.^[67]Scott Waxman was Hunt's literary agent on the book.^[70]

The foreword to American Spy was written by William F. Buckley Jr. According to Buckley, he was asked through an intermediary to write the introduction but declined after he found that the manuscript contained material 'that suggested transgressions of the highest order, including a hint that LBJ might have had a hand in the plot to assassinate President Kennedy.' He stated that the work 'was clearly ghostwritten', and eventually agreed to write an introduction focusing on his early friendship with Hunt after he received a revised manuscript 'with the loony grassy-knoll bits chiseled out'.^[71]

Publishers Weekly called American Spy a 'breezy, unrepentant memoir' and described it as a 'nostalgic memoir [that] breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field'.^[72]Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times said it was 'a bitter and self-pitying memoir' and 'offers a rather standard account of how men of his generation became involved in intelligence work'.^[73] Referencing the book's title, Tim Weiner of The New York Times wrote: 'American Spy is presented as a 'secret history,' a double-barreled misrepresentation. There are no real secrets in this book. As history it is bunk.' Weiner said that the author's examination of the Kennedy assassination was the low-point of the book, indicating that Hunt pretended to take various conspiracy theories, including the involvement of former President Johnson, seriously. He concluded his review describing it as a work 'in a long tradition of arrant nonsense' and 'a book to shun'.^[74]

Joseph C. Goulden of The Washington Times described it as a 'true mess of a book' and dismissed Hunt's allegations against Johnson as 'fantasy'. However, none of the aforementioned critics of the book addressed why Lyndon Johnson flew to Johnson City Texas on November 20, 1963 and gave Melvin Winters two Belgian made guns. Goulden summarized his review: 'I wish now that I had not read this pathetic book. Avoid it.'^[75]

Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Daniel Schorr said 'Hunt tells most of his Watergate venture fairly straight'.^[76] Contrasting this opinion, Politico's James Rosen described the chapters regarding Watergate as the '[m]ost problematic' and wrote: 'There are numerous factual errors – misspelled names, wrong dates, phantom participants in meetings, fictitious orders given – and the authors never substantively address, only pause occasionally to demean, the vast scholarly literature that has arisen in the last two decades to explain the central mystery of Watergate.'^[77] Rosen's review was not entirely negative and he indicated that the book 'succeeds in taking readers beyond the caricatures and conspiracy theories to preserve the valuable memory of Hunt as he really was: passionate patriot; committed Cold Warrior; a lover of fine food, wine and women; incurable intriguer, wicked wit and superb storyteller.'^[77] Dennis Lythgoe of Deseret News said '[t]he writing style is awkward and often embarrassing', but that 'the book as a whole is a fascinating look into the mind of one of the major Watergate figures'.^[78] In National Review, Mark Riebling praised American Spy as 'the only autobiography I know of that convincingly conveys what it was like to be an American spy.'^[79]The Boston Globe writer Martin Nolan called it 'admirable and important' and said that Hunt 'presents a livelier, tabloid version of the 1970s'. According to Nolan: 'It is the best moment-by-moment depiction of the June 17, 1972, burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters I have ever read.'^[80]

Later life and death[edit]

Following his release from prison in 1978, Hunt lived in Biscayne Park, Florida.^[81] He continued his writing career (publishing nearly twenty spy thrillers between 1980 and 2000) and raised two sons, Austin and Hollis, with his second wife, schoolteacher Laura Martin.^[82][83]

On January 23, 2007, he died of pneumonia in Miami, Florida.^[1][84] He is buried in Prospect Lawn Cemetery in his hometown of Hamburg, New York.^[85]

In the media[edit]

A fictionalized account of Hunt's role in the Bay of Pigs operation appears in Norman Mailer's 1991 novel Harlot's Ghost. He was portrayed by Ed Harris in the 1995 biopic Nixon. Canadian journalist David Giammarco interviewed Hunt for the December 2000 issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine.^[86] He later wrote the foreword to Giammarco's book For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films (ECW Press, 2002).

Books[edit]

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 Giammarco; 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. (2007)

Novels published as Howard Hunt or E. Howard Hunt:

• East of Farewell (1942)
• 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)
• One for the Road (1954)
• Be My Victim (1956)
• Murder on the rocks: an original novel (1957)
• House on Q Street (1959)
• Murder on Her Mind (1960)
• End of a Stripper (1960)
• Mistress to Murder (1960)
• Calypso Caper (1961)
• Angel Eyes (1961)
• Curtains for a Lover (1962)
• My Body (1962)

As P. S. Donoghue:

• Dublin Affair (1988)
• Sarkov Confession: a novel (1989)
• Evil Time (1992)

As David St. John

• Festival for Spies
• The Towers of Silence
• Return from Vorkuta (1965)
• The Venus Probe (1966)
• On Hazardous Duty (1966)
• One of Our Agents is Missing (1967)
• 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 (1954)

Notes[edit]

1. ^Szulc wrote: 'As I mentioned above, Hunt spent August and September 1963 in Mexico City in charge of the CIA station there.'^[51]
2. ^Weberman and Canfield wrote: 'According to former Times reporter Tad Szulc, Howard Hunt just happened to be CIA station chief in Mexico City in August–September 1963.'

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abWeiner, Tim (January 24, 2007). 'E. Howard Hunt, Agent Who Organized Botched Watergate Break-In, Dies at 88'. The New York Times. Retrieved July 7, 2015.
2. ^Szulc, Compulsive Spy, p 56.
3. ^ ^abcdHedegaard, Erik (April 5, 2007). 'The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt'. Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on June 18, 2008.Cite uses deprecated parameter deadurl= (help)
4. ^Bookfinder.com. (February 5, 2013)
5. ^https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/weekinreview/28vinci.html
6. ^Safe For Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA, John Prados, 2006 page xxii
7. ^https://www.salon.com/2015/11/22/inside_the_plot_to_kill_jfk_the_secret_story_of_the_cia_and_what_really_happened_in_dallas/
8. ^William F. Buckley Jr. (January 26, 2007), 'Howard Hunt, RIP'Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine. Buckley describes their early friendship in Mexico in his introduction to Hunt's posthumously-published memoir, American Spy.
9. ^Tim Weiner, Obituary: E. Howard Hunt, Agent Who Organized Botched Watergate Break-In, Dies at 88, New York Times, 24 January 2007 [1]
10. ^Tad Szulc, Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (New York: Viking, 1974), 78.
11. ^Rosenberg, Carol (June 28, 2001). Plotter of Bay of Pigs, Watergate conspirator: 'File and forget' Castro.Miami Herald
12. ^HSCA Deposition (November 3, 1978), Part II, p. 6:10–17
13. ^Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 95
14. ^Seymour M. Hersh, 'Hunt Tells of Early Work For a CIA Domestic Unit,' New York Times (December 31, 1974), p. 1, col. 6.
15. ^https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10194-10023.pdf
16. ^ ^abhttps://books.google.com/books?id=96UjNz1lBV4C&pg=PA157
17. ^Hunt, Give Us This Day, 13–14
18. ^ ^abhttp://www.privateintelligence.us/dock/Jewels/E_Howard_Hunt_CIA_Internal_Paper.pdf
19. ^ ^abcThe Ends of Power, by H. R. Haldeman with Joseph DiMona, 1978
20. ^https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000904662.pdf
21. ^'ARRB REQUEST: CIA-IR-06, QKENCHANT'. Central Intelligence Agency. 1996-05-14. p. 3. Archived from the original(gif) on 2012-03-08. Retrieved 2010-06-11.Cite uses deprecated parameter deadurl= (help)
22. ^Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 128
23. ^Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 127
24. ^Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 130
25. ^Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 131
26. ^Marjorie Hunter, 'Colson Confirms Backing Kennedy Inquiry but Denies Knowing of Hunt's CIA Aid,' New York Times (June 30, 1973), p. 15. NYT archives > https://www.nytimes.com/1973/06/30/archives/colson-confirms-backingkennedy-inquiry-but-denies-knowing-of-hunts.html
27. ^Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 134–135.
28. ^David E. Rosenbaum, 'Hunt Says He Fabricated Cables on Diem to Link Kennedy to Killing of a Catholic; Testifies Colson Sought To Alienate Democrats,' New York Times (September 25, 1973), p. 28.
29. ^Molotsky, Irvin (December 7, 1992). Article Says Nixon Schemed to Tie Foe to Wallace Attack. '[T]he agent picked for the mission was E. Howard Hunt.' The New York Times
30. ^Reynolds, Tim. 'Watergate Figure E. Howard Hunt Dies.' Associated Press. January 23, 2007.
31. ^Blind Ambition, by John Dean, New York, 1976, Simon & Schuster
32. ^All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, New York, 1974, Simon & Schuster
33. ^NTSB reportArchived June 20, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
34. ^CNN Live Today, 'Deadly Plane Skid in Chicago' Aired December 9, 2005.
35. ^Braxton, Sheila, 'Hunt Arrives at Eglin – 'Equal Treatment' Is All He Asks', Playground Daily News, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, Sunday 27 April 1975, Volume 30, Number 68, page 1A.
36. ^Colson, Charles (1976). link to .> Born Again .<. p. 247.
37. ^Ira R. Allen (May 14, 1983). 'President Reagan Denied Pardons last month to E. Howard...'UPI. Retrieved May 25, 2016.
38. ^Mabe, Chauncey (April 12, 1992). 'Plumber Sailor, Author Spy'. Sun-Sentinel. Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Retrieved August 16, 2014.
39. ^Bugliosi, Vincent (2007). Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 930. ISBN0-393-04525-0.
40. ^Bugliosi 2007, p. 930.
41. ^ ^abBugliosi 2007, p. 931.
42. ^Weberman, Alan J; Canfield, Michael (1992) [1975]. Coup D'Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Revised ed.). San Francisco: Quick American Archives. p. 7. ISBN9780932551108.
43. ^'Chapter 19: Allegations Concerning the Assassination of President Kennedy'. Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. June 1975. p. 251.
44. ^Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, p. 256.
45. ^Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, p. 257.
46. ^ ^ab'I.B. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations'. Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. 1979. pp. 91–92.
47. ^Bugliosi 2007, p. 933.
48. ^ ^abCheshire, Maxine (October 7, 1973). 'New Book Places Hunt In Second Bay Of Pigs Plot'. The Blade. Toledo, Ohio. p. C3. Retrieved April 12, 2015.
49. ^ ^abSeaberry, Jane (September 6, 1978). 'Hunt Sues to Obtain Data Linking Him to Assassination'(PDF). The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. p. A6. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
50. ^ ^abc'Source Ruling Goes Against Hunt'. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 52 (83). Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. AP. November 4, 1978. p. 10. Retrieved April 13, 2015.
51. ^Szulc, Tad (1974). Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt. Viking Press. p. 99. ISBN9780670235469.
52. ^Report to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, pp. 267-269.
53. ^ ^abReport to the President by Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, Chapter 19 1975, pp. 269.
54. ^ ^ab'Hunt files libel suit over death charges'. The Miami News. Miami. AP. July 29, 1976. p. 4A. Retrieved August 16, 2014.
55. ^HSCA Deposition (November 3, 1978)
56. ^Victor Marchetti, 'CIA to Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying,' The Spotlight (August 14, 1978)
57. ^Trento, Joe; Powers, Jacquie (August 28, 1978). 'Was Howard Hunt in Dallas the Day JFK Died?'(PDF). Sunday News Journal. 4 (34). p. A-1.
58. ^Knuth, Magen. 'E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis: Were Watergate Conspirators Also JFK Assassins?'. Retrieved May 6, 2015.
59. ^Hunt v. Marchetti, 824 F.2d 916 (11th Cir. 1987). 'In arguing that the stipulation should be binding on retrial, Hunt attempts to characterize the statements of the Liberty Lobby attorney as stipulating to the fact that Hunt was not in Dallas on the day of the Kennedy assassination. The statements, however, are more accurately viewed as a stipulation that the question of Hunt's alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested at trial. They thus served merely to narrow the factual issues in dispute.' Id. at 917–18 (citations omitted).
60. ^Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, 720 F.2d 631 (11th Cir. 1983). 'Libel Award for Howard Hunt overturned by appeals court,' New York Times (December 4, 1983).
61. ^Hunt v. Marchetti, 824 F.2d 916 (11th Cir. 1987). 'Hunt was aware throughout discovery prior to the retrial that Liberty Lobby intended to make Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination an issue on retrial.' Id. at 928.
62. ^Hunt v. Marchetti, 824 F.2d 916 (11th Cir. 1987). 'The jury on retrial rendered a verdict for Liberty Lobby. We affirm.' Id. at 918.
63. ^John McAdams, 'Implausible Assertions'
64. ^Isaacs, Jeremy (1997). Cold War: Howard Hunt interview excerptsArchived November 6, 2007, at the Wayback Machine and full transcript. CNN
65. ^ ^abcAndrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili (2001) [1999]. 'Fourteen: Political Warfare (Active Measures and the Main Political Adversary)'. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. New York: Basic Books. pp. 225–230. ISBN978-0-465-00312-9.
66. ^Trahair, Richard C. S.; Miller, Robert L. (2009) [2004]. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations (First paperback / Revised ed.). New York: Enigma Books. pp. 188–190. ISBN978-1-929631-75-9.
67. ^ ^abcWilliams, Carol J. (March 20, 2007). 'Watergate plotter may have a last tale'. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
68. ^McAdams, John (2011). 'Too Much Evidence of Conspiracy'. JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books. p. 189. ISBN9781597974899. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
69. ^Reed, Christopher (January 25, 2007). E Howard Hunt obituary.The Guardian
70. ^Minzesheimer, Bob (June 1, 2005). ''Deep Throat': Source of additional books?'. USA Today. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
71. ^Buckley Jr., William F. (January 26, 2007). 'Howard Hunt, R.I.P.'National Review. New York. Universal Press Syndicate. Archived from the original on July 22, 2012. Retrieved January 5, 2013.Cite uses deprecated parameter deadurl= (help)
72. ^Publishers Weekly (February 5, 2007). 'American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond'. publishersweekly.com. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
73. ^Rutten, Tim (February 28, 2007). 'Book Review: Hunt, ever a true believer – in himself'. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
74. ^Weiner, Tim (May 13, 2007). 'Watergate Warrior'. The New York Times. New York. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
75. ^Goulden, Joseph C. (April 7, 2007). 'E. Howard Hunt's 'memoir' and its glitches'. The Washington Times. Washington, D.C. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
76. ^Schorr, Daniel (February 16, 2007). 'Remembering Watergate's field commander'. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
77. ^ ^abRosen, James (February 6, 2007). 'Howard Hunt's Final Mission'. politico.com. Politico. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
78. ^Lythgoe, Dennis (March 11, 2007). 'Book review: CIA spy tells his side of the Watergate story'. Deseret News. Salt Lake City. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
79. ^Riebling, Mark (April 30, 2007). 'His Long War'(PDF). National Review. p. 46. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
80. ^Nolan, Martin (May 6, 2007). 'Secret service How the machinations of two unlikely allies defined – and deformed – an era'. The Boston Globe. Boston. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
81. ^Bardach, A.L. (October 6, 2004). Scavenger Hunt.Archived 2005-05-25 at the Wayback Machineslate.com
82. ^https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/24/obituaries/24hunt.html
83. ^https://www.politico.com/story/2007/02/howard-hunts-final-mission-002649
84. ^Cornwell, Rupert (January 25, 2007). E. Howard Hunt obituary.Archived 2007-05-24 at the Wayback MachineThe Independent
85. ^Prospect Lawn Cemetery. 'History Of Prospect Lawn Cemetery'. Hamburg, New York: Prospect Lawn Cemetery. Retrieved January 2, 2013.
86. ^Cigar AficionadoArchived 2006-09-02 at the Wayback Machine, November/December 2000

External links[edit]

• Interview with Slate
• '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 Vidal 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)
• E. Howard Hunt on IMDb
• Deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978) – released in 1996
• E. Howard Hunt at Find a Grave