Words From a Wicked Woman

Watergate conspirator, former CIA operative and author E. Howard Hunt died in Miami Tuesday after a long bout with pneumonia. He was 88. Most of this blog’s readers weren’t even born when five men Hunt hired broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the posh Washington, D.C. Watergate Towers apartment, hotel and office complex in 1972, let alone remember the hearings and scandals that followed. Consequently, Hunt is a complete unknown to most of the generation that grew up with computers, video games and cable television. But I am here to say that I remember him and he was a really nice man.

I was 10-years-old when the Watergate break-in took place. I would have to wait 10 more years until I met the man who was at the beginning of the largest political scandal to ever take place in the United States. It was 1982 and I was in my last year at Kent State University. I’d gotten involved with a student group called the “All-Campus Programming Board” the prior year through their Concert Committee and had been chosen as one of three people responsible for producing rock concerts attended by people from all over Northeastern Ohio. The two big ones that year were The Clash and comedian Robin Williams. (No, he wasn’t a rocker then any more than he is now. He just happened to fall under our purview.) The three of us were pretty darn good at our various jobs–Chris was the production manager; Joe actually booked the shows; and I handled publicity–so it wasn’t unusual for the other board chairs to ask us for help with their programming too. Vince, (a pseudonym because I can’t remember his real name), the guy who booked speakers had scheduled E. Howard Hunt as the first speaker that year and had asked if I’d help him with publicity for the engagement. That lead to me helping him during the actual event.

I seem to remember spotting them even before I sat down at the ballroom entrance: two guys in their late-20s or early-30s, clean cut, medium height, medium build, medium hair color, dark trench coats and mirrored sunglasses. At a school full of teenagers and young adults in jeans, sweatshirts and long hair, they stood out like sore thumbs. A few minutes later, after the crowd had thinned, they come up to the table where I was taking tickets to Hunt’s lecture, smiled and showed their badges. They were FBI agents there to attend the event. Only 20-years-old then, it was the first time I’d been confronted by federal authorities. And yes, they did have guns, although they were only a slight bulge under their coats. I admit it, I was impressed, even though I was a young cynic about anything having to do with the government. I may have only been a pre-teen during Watergate, but I’d learned early on to never trust the Feds. (Does anyone remember COINTELPRO?) It didn’t help that Ronald Reagan was president. Knowing a bit of Hunt’s history, it wasn’t difficult to determine why they were there and why they’d taken a place in the shadows in the back of the ballroom.

I was first introduced to Hunt a few minutes before he was to take the stage. It may be a trick of memory, but I could swear that he had some other men with him that remind me now of bodyguards or some such. I could be wrong about that. What I am sure I do remember is how well he was received. One of the more than 80 books he’d write over his lifetime had just been published, though I’m not sure whether it was Hargrave Deception (1980) or Gaza Intercept (1981), and many in the audience were familiar with his work as a novelist. Of course, fiction was the last thing they had on their minds, but Hunt repeatedly demurred when asked about anything having to do with Watergate or national security, citing legal obstacles. Yeah, I bet those legal obstacles were Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum sitting in the back of the room.

Hunt was the real deal. This man truly did have facts locked in his head that would have been highly embarrassing to the U.S. He was instrumental in planning the Bay of Pigs invasion and overthrowing a few governments in Central and South America. Conspiracy theorists have long held that he played an integral part in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, claiming that he was photographed in Dallas on November 22, 1963 although Hunt maintained that he was in Washington that day. Furthermore, it has always been believed that Hunt knew more than he’d ever say about the events of June 17, 1972 when Bernard Barker, Virgilio González, Eugenio Martínez, James McCord, Jr. and Frank Sturgis (collectively known as the “plumbers”) were caught by a night watchman burglarizing the DNC offices. Add to that his supervision with then-fellow CIA operative G. Gordon Liddy of the burglary of Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist and it is not difficult to see why the government wanted Hunt to keep his mouth shut. He’d spent 33 months of what was originally a 35-year sentence in 13 different federal prisons. He was a father and grandfather by the time he lectured at Kent and I’m sure he had no desire to see the inside of a prison again. He was well aware that the government had eyes on him, at the very least.

After the lecture ended and the audience left, there was only Hunt, Vince and the few remaining people who had worked on the event, including me, left in the ballroom. Some people had copies of books he’d written and asked him to autograph them. Most of us hung around because we knew we were in the presence of history. To be sure, this was a man who had betrayed everything this country was supposed to stand for. However, none of us doubted that he’d done what he did because the president of the United States had asked him to and he was a true-blue patriot. I may have been cynical about the government, and generally thought of patriotism as an outmoded and foolish idea, but I had to admire the man. There was something about him I can’t explain. He was charming, for certain. However, I also got the impression that he had been betrayed by the people he’d trusted most–including Richard Nixon. In the end, he’d done this country a favor by precipitating that man’s downfall. If I thought Reagan was evil, Nixon was more so. We, as a country, were much better off without him. For all the things Hunt had done while in the employ of the federal government, he was a tired old man when I saw him that night. He spoke of his children and grandchildren and it was easy to see him laughing and playing with them. He wasn’t some right-wing über-spook. He was simply Mr. Hunt, private citizen, no better and no worse than anyone else in his mid- to late-60s, though maybe appearing a bit worse for wear. (The picture that accompanies this article was taken around the same time I met him.) When he raised his tired bones to leave, along with his handlers, I was sorry the conversation he’d struck up with us was over. He was a highly intelligent, literate and affable person. I always like speaking with people who fit that description. That this person was also a historic figure just added to his appeal.

In researching this article, I was reacquainted with things I already knew and information that wasn’t available to me in 1982. Hunt kept a very close eye on politics throughout his life. His website has some notes on current events and figures from recent history. He didn’t think much of Colin Powell or Madeline Albright, for example, and had zero sympathy for Gitmo detainees or Arabs in general whom he felt attempted to shaft us through OPEC at every opportunity. In short, Hunt was a ravenous hawk. No great surprise there. As much as I may disagree with his politics, I cannot get the image and impression of him as loving, doting grandfather out of my mind. To me, that’s what he will forever be. He didn’t have to treat us youngsters with great respect and patience as he did at Kent. He could easily have given a perfunctory greeting, given his lecture and politely excused himself. Believe me, it’s been done before. He didn’t do that. He was genuinely interested in our thoughts and feelings, spending a good hour with us after the lecture and questions from the audience were over. Although I don’t remember the substance of most of the conversation, I do remember that he made us laugh along with him.

A sentence on Hunt’s web site mentions that he’d been ill in bed for quite some time at the writing. There was no date, but I wonder if he was then ill with the pneumonia that subsequently killed him. He was old and had lived a good and interesting life, though there were definitely difficult times. His first wife, Dorothy, was killed in a plane crash in 1972. The timing was so suspicious that there were three different investigations by the FBI, Congress and the National Transportation Safety Board. It is widely believed that Dorothy knew a great deal about events before and shortly after the Watergate break-in, making her death highly fortuitous for some in Washington. Now, her husband is with her. I wish him godspeed. He was a really nice man.

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