When last the subject came up, in Plumbers on the Weekend, sometime last week, as I recall, we were recounting the glorious halcyon days of Watergate. Ah, them were such golden pond times, what with the mad bomber in the White House and all them skunk-eyed varmints with them heavily Hitlerian names, like Ehrlichman and Haldeman and Kleindienst and Martinez and--well, okay, maybe not Martinez. Anyhoo haw hey, thems was fine times, cause back in them thar days a fella could convince hisself that the criminal justice system worked on all levels, or that fetching concepts like right and wrong applied to all members of society, lessen he was a minority or rich, in the former case meanin that he was gonna surely get his ass kicked and in the latter that he might be forced to take tennis lessons against his will. Ah, but all this ruminatin is makin me fairly nostalgiac, so we's best be gettin on with yon tale of yore and lore and a pinch of gore. Best I recollect, we were countin down the President's men, the ones who went to what they used to call jail for doin things a kid would have been smart enough to avoid.
Bud Krogh, John Ehrlichman's deputy, served a little time, such was his commitment to Nixon.
Fred LaRue was an adviser to John Mitchell, raised hush money for the burglars, and was suspected of endorsing Mitchell's approval of the Watergate break-ins.
Herbert Porter was the assistant to Jeb Stuart Magruder. He was also a USC Mafia graduate, something he shared with Press Secretary Ron Zeigler, Dwight Chapin, Gordon Strachan and Donald Segretti. Porter moved into the Nixon camp as a result of the arrangements he made for the Tricky One's 1968 Phoenix speech (the one where Nixon referred to anti-war demonstrators as "violent thugs"). Clean-cut weasel rat who developed a conscience when it was obvious that he would be fond guilty.
Donald Segretti served as a freelance saboteur for the Nixon campaign. USC typhoid case who completed the true believer mold by moving from the far left to the far right because it seemed politically expedient.
Maurice Stans was Nixon's Secretary of Commerce. He plead guilty to five charges of campaign finance law violations (three involving his record keepings and two involving illegal contributions from Robert Vesco).
Tony Ulasewicz was the White House private detective. He received illegal income from Herbert Kalmbach and was found guilty of filing fraudulent income tax returns for two consecutive years.
E. Howard Hunt was far and away the most interesting of all the Watergate convicts. Hunt's history deserves some elaboration. Born October 9, 1918, in Hamburg, New York, he graduated from Brown University in 1940, Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in English Literature. He thereafter enlisted in the National Officers Training Program. Hunt was injured during World War II and soon became a correspondent for Life magazine. He later joined the Army Air Force and through connections there, worked for the Officers Strategic Services where he performed sabotage against the Japanese. After a brief and unsatisfying stint in the motion picture industry, Hunt became the press aide to the European Director of the Marshall Plan. By 1948 his anti-communist paranoia had brought him to the happy attention of the CIA. He claims to have worked for them from 1949 until 1970. During this period he was quite active, in 1950 serving as Chief of Station in Mexico City and in 1954 participating in the violent overthrow of the Arbenz government, a coup d'etat that permitted a dictatorship to seize control of Guatemala. Spring-boarding from his success in one Latin American country, he served with the anti-Castro exiles in Brigade 2506's failed attempt to overthrow the Cuban government. For the remainder of his life, Hunt continued to blame the failures of the mission on what he disingenuously and mistakenly perceived as John Kennedy's refusal to provide air support.
Such counterrevolutionary activities are preamble to testimony by Maria Lorenz, a woman who performed work for both the CIA and the FBI. According to her testimony in Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, the day before JFK's assassination, she witnessed Hunt--whom she knew as Eduardo--paying future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis a sum of money in Dallas, a sum intended to finance the murder and facilitate the escape. Lorenz testified that Sturgis admitted his participation as well as that of Hunt as paymaster. The witness did not dissemble on cross-examination and Hunt ultimately lost his defamation suit against the far right Liberty Lobby.
In case the reader is unfamiliar with the man whose working alias ran the narrow gamut between Eduardo and Ed Warren, here is a list of deeds for which Mr. Hunt has been credited:
This list is no doubt incomplete. As of this writing, Mr. Hunt remains dead and has therefore paid for the crimes for which his guilt has been determined. Child molesters freed after serving proscribed sentences have done the same. The advantage Hunt maintained over monolithic industrialists and sex offenders is that he convinced many people--including himself--that his behavior was all for the greater good. For instance, Hunt maintained that his various nefarious attempts to disrupt american political elections only served to reveal the true nature of the opposition party, thereby allowing the American people to make an informed choice. Of course, this defense ignores a crucial distinction. Hunt's methods for providing revelations about political opponents were, first, covert to avoid interference in execution, hidden after the fact to avoid prosecution, and finally subject to plausible deniability to avoid conviction.
Hunt's activities from the time of the Kennedy assassination through 1970 have been muted. But his operations after joining the Nixon White House are well documented. One such operation was a campaign against Daniel Ellsberg and his attorney Lawrence Boudin. The operation involved performing a covert psychological evaluation of Ellsberg, ghostwriting news articles about him, and burglarizing the offices of his psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding. When the compulsive spy wasn't discrediting private citizens, he was falsifying State Department cables to show that Kennedy has ordered the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem and showed the forgeries to Bill Lambert of Time-Life, purporting them to be valid. According to Gordon Liddy, around this same time, as part of Operation Gemstone, he and Hunt propagated allegations against the wife of candidate Ed Muskie, forged a letter from Muskie referring to Canadians as "canucks" and planned the firebombing of the Brookings Institute.
In a marvelous interview with David Giammarco in 1999, Hunt remained unrepentant. "You know, I once heard from a fellow who worked for me, a retired colonel, who said 'There's a feeling around here that you let the Agency down, and that you're responsible for the disfavor in which the Agency is held by the general public.' If anything, the Agency owes me an apology because they were the ones who revealed my covert connection, after thirty years of building up a cover."
Regarding his involvement in the original By of Pigs fiasco, Hunt admits, "I went to Cuba a couple months before and talked to people in all walks of life. And I concluded that any invasion force could not expect any assistance from the Cuban people."
"History will be a lot less kind to me than it's been to Richard Nixon," Hunt concludes. "My caption will read: Watergate burglar dies at 80-plus. He was implicated in the Kennedy assassination."
Bud Krogh, John Ehrlichman's deputy, served a little time, such was his commitment to Nixon.
Fred LaRue was an adviser to John Mitchell, raised hush money for the burglars, and was suspected of endorsing Mitchell's approval of the Watergate break-ins.
Herbert Porter was the assistant to Jeb Stuart Magruder. He was also a USC Mafia graduate, something he shared with Press Secretary Ron Zeigler, Dwight Chapin, Gordon Strachan and Donald Segretti. Porter moved into the Nixon camp as a result of the arrangements he made for the Tricky One's 1968 Phoenix speech (the one where Nixon referred to anti-war demonstrators as "violent thugs"). Clean-cut weasel rat who developed a conscience when it was obvious that he would be fond guilty.
Donald Segretti served as a freelance saboteur for the Nixon campaign. USC typhoid case who completed the true believer mold by moving from the far left to the far right because it seemed politically expedient.
Maurice Stans was Nixon's Secretary of Commerce. He plead guilty to five charges of campaign finance law violations (three involving his record keepings and two involving illegal contributions from Robert Vesco).
Tony Ulasewicz was the White House private detective. He received illegal income from Herbert Kalmbach and was found guilty of filing fraudulent income tax returns for two consecutive years.
E. Howard Hunt was far and away the most interesting of all the Watergate convicts. Hunt's history deserves some elaboration. Born October 9, 1918, in Hamburg, New York, he graduated from Brown University in 1940, Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in English Literature. He thereafter enlisted in the National Officers Training Program. Hunt was injured during World War II and soon became a correspondent for Life magazine. He later joined the Army Air Force and through connections there, worked for the Officers Strategic Services where he performed sabotage against the Japanese. After a brief and unsatisfying stint in the motion picture industry, Hunt became the press aide to the European Director of the Marshall Plan. By 1948 his anti-communist paranoia had brought him to the happy attention of the CIA. He claims to have worked for them from 1949 until 1970. During this period he was quite active, in 1950 serving as Chief of Station in Mexico City and in 1954 participating in the violent overthrow of the Arbenz government, a coup d'etat that permitted a dictatorship to seize control of Guatemala. Spring-boarding from his success in one Latin American country, he served with the anti-Castro exiles in Brigade 2506's failed attempt to overthrow the Cuban government. For the remainder of his life, Hunt continued to blame the failures of the mission on what he disingenuously and mistakenly perceived as John Kennedy's refusal to provide air support.
Such counterrevolutionary activities are preamble to testimony by Maria Lorenz, a woman who performed work for both the CIA and the FBI. According to her testimony in Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, the day before JFK's assassination, she witnessed Hunt--whom she knew as Eduardo--paying future Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis a sum of money in Dallas, a sum intended to finance the murder and facilitate the escape. Lorenz testified that Sturgis admitted his participation as well as that of Hunt as paymaster. The witness did not dissemble on cross-examination and Hunt ultimately lost his defamation suit against the far right Liberty Lobby.
In case the reader is unfamiliar with the man whose working alias ran the narrow gamut between Eduardo and Ed Warren, here is a list of deeds for which Mr. Hunt has been credited:
- Recruiter and organizer in the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Guatemala;
- Participant-coordinator of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs;
- Paymaster in a domestic assassination;
- Employee of the CIA while pretending to do public relations for an Agency front, the Robert J. Mullen Company;
- Author of a forged cable stating that President John Kennedy had authorized the murder of South Vietnamese President Diem;
- White House employee empowered to gather intelligence on Senator Ted Kennedy's involvement in the Chappaquidick affair;
- Co-conspirator in the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist;
- Co-conspirator with Gordon Liddy in plot to murder columnist Jack Anderson;
- Asset in plan to firebomb the Brookings institute;
- Inducer to commit perjury in the Dita Beard-ITT scandal;
- Would-be pimp in attempt to enlist prostitutes to seduce secrets from opponents at political conventions;
- Conspirator in the Watergate burglaries;
- Blackmailer to the President of the United States;
- Suspected author of pro-McGovern literature found in apartment of would-be assassin Arthur Bremer.
This list is no doubt incomplete. As of this writing, Mr. Hunt remains dead and has therefore paid for the crimes for which his guilt has been determined. Child molesters freed after serving proscribed sentences have done the same. The advantage Hunt maintained over monolithic industrialists and sex offenders is that he convinced many people--including himself--that his behavior was all for the greater good. For instance, Hunt maintained that his various nefarious attempts to disrupt american political elections only served to reveal the true nature of the opposition party, thereby allowing the American people to make an informed choice. Of course, this defense ignores a crucial distinction. Hunt's methods for providing revelations about political opponents were, first, covert to avoid interference in execution, hidden after the fact to avoid prosecution, and finally subject to plausible deniability to avoid conviction.
Hunt's activities from the time of the Kennedy assassination through 1970 have been muted. But his operations after joining the Nixon White House are well documented. One such operation was a campaign against Daniel Ellsberg and his attorney Lawrence Boudin. The operation involved performing a covert psychological evaluation of Ellsberg, ghostwriting news articles about him, and burglarizing the offices of his psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding. When the compulsive spy wasn't discrediting private citizens, he was falsifying State Department cables to show that Kennedy has ordered the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem and showed the forgeries to Bill Lambert of Time-Life, purporting them to be valid. According to Gordon Liddy, around this same time, as part of Operation Gemstone, he and Hunt propagated allegations against the wife of candidate Ed Muskie, forged a letter from Muskie referring to Canadians as "canucks" and planned the firebombing of the Brookings Institute.
In a marvelous interview with David Giammarco in 1999, Hunt remained unrepentant. "You know, I once heard from a fellow who worked for me, a retired colonel, who said 'There's a feeling around here that you let the Agency down, and that you're responsible for the disfavor in which the Agency is held by the general public.' If anything, the Agency owes me an apology because they were the ones who revealed my covert connection, after thirty years of building up a cover."
Regarding his involvement in the original By of Pigs fiasco, Hunt admits, "I went to Cuba a couple months before and talked to people in all walks of life. And I concluded that any invasion force could not expect any assistance from the Cuban people."
"History will be a lot less kind to me than it's been to Richard Nixon," Hunt concludes. "My caption will read: Watergate burglar dies at 80-plus. He was implicated in the Kennedy assassination."
2 comments:
Phil,
Excellent blog, especially about that scumbag Howard Hunt! I too read that fascinating interview with Howard Hunt - aka "Eduardo" - that journalist David Giammarco published in Cigar Aficianado. Hunt revealed things that he probably shouldn't have, and I think Giammarco knows alot more than he published about the JFK assassination and Watergate.
From other things I've read, I think Giammarco was walking a thin line in that article, hinting at bigger things while still also trying to protect the old man in some way given they were friends. Even as a journalist, I think Giammarco was being somewhat compassionate and save Hunt from indicting himself, because from what I've heard from historians, Hunt confided in Giammarco things he never told anyone. And apparently it goes much deeper into Dallas and Watergate.
Maybe Giammarco will finally break his silence about Howard Hunt, because I'm 99% sure there are much uglier and darker secrets the Canadian journalist didn't dare speak of while Hunt the evil spook was still alive. Maybe they had a quid pro quo gentleman's agreement which Giammarco has abided by...but I know Hunt trusted Giammarco and wrote the forward to his book back in 2002. But why God let someone as evil as Howard Hunt walk the planet as long as he did, I'll never know.
Ryan B.
Ryan, thank you for the compliment. . . and the information. Your insight is intriguing and your comments are appreciated. Please stay in touch.
--Phil
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