Howard Hunt | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Hunt in September 1973 | |
| Born | Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (1918-10-09)October 9, 1918 Hamburg, New York, U.S. |
| Died | January 23, 2007(2007-01-23) (aged 88) Miami, Florida, U.S. |
| Education | Brown University (BA) |
| Criminal charges | Conspiracy, burglary, illegalwiretapping |
| Criminal penalty | 2.5 to 8 years Paroled after 33 months |
| Spouse(s) | Dorothy Wetzel (died 1972) Laura Martin |
| Children | 4 (with Wetzel) 2 (with Martin) |
| Espionage activity | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Service branch | United States Navy United States Army Air Forces Office of Strategic Services Central Intelligence Agency White House Plumbers |
| Service years | 1940–1945 (Army) 1949–1970 (CIA) |
| Codename |
|
| Operations | 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état Brigade 2506 Watergate scandal |
Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007) was an Americanintelligence officer and author. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in theCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he was a central figure inU.S. regime change in Latin America including the1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the 1961Bay of Pigs Invasion inCuba. Along withG. Gordon Liddy,Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of theNixon administration's so-calledWhite House Plumbers, a team of operatives charged with identifying governmentleaks to outside parties.
Hunt and Liddy plotted the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations for the Nixon administration. In theWatergate scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary,conspiracy, andwiretapping, and was sentenced to 33 months in prison. After his release, Hunt lived inMexico and thenMiami until his death in January 2007. Hunt was the subject of pervasive conspiracy theories regarding theassassination of John F. Kennedy, with his sons taping a disputed deathbed confession.
Hunt was born inHamburg, New York,[1] the son of Ethel Jean (Totterdale) and Everette Howard Hunt Sr., an attorney andRepublican Party official.
He attendedHamburg High School inHamburg, N.Y., where he graduated in 1936 along with fellow classmateHoward J. Osborn.[2][3] He then attendedBrown University, anIvy League university inProvidence, Rhode Island, where he graduated in 1940.
DuringWorld War II, Hunt served in theU.S. Navy on the destroyerUSSMayo and theU.S. Army Air Corps. He also served inChina with theOffice of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to theCentral Intelligence Agency.[4]
Hunt was a prolific author, publishing 73 books during his lifetime.[5] During and after World War II, he wrote several novels under his own name, includingEast of Farewell (1942),Limit of Darkness (1944),Stranger in Town (1947),Maelstrom (1949),Bimini Run (1949), andThe Violent Ones (1950). He also wrotespy andhardboiled novels under an array of pseudonyms, includingRobert Dietrich,Gordon Davis,David St. John, andP. S. Donoghue.
Some parallels exist between Hunt's writings and his experiences during theWatergate scandal and espionage.[6] He continued his writing career after he was released from prison, publishing nearly twenty spy thrillers between 1980 and 2000.[1][7]
In 1946, Hunt was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship for his writing.
Prior to 1949, Hunt served as an officer in the Information Division of theEconomic Cooperation Administration, a predecessor of theMutual Security Agency.[8]
Shortly following the end ofWorld War II, the OSS was disbanded. In 1947, with theCold War emerging and intensifying, the absence of a central intelligence organization was seen as a national security deficiency, and theCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) was formed. In October 1949, just asWarner Bros. acquired the rights to Hunt's novelBimini Run, Hunt joined the CIA'sOffice of Policy Coordination (OPC). He was assigned as acovert action officer specializing in political action and influence in what later came to be the CIA'sSpecial Activities Center.[9]
In 1950, Hunt was appointed OPC Station Chief inMexico City, where he recruited and supervisedWilliam F. Buckley Jr., who worked under Hunt[10] in his OPC Station inMexico from 1951 to 1952. Buckley and Hunt remained lifelong friends, and Buckley became godfather to Hunt's first three children.[11]
InMexico, Hunt helped lay the framework forOperation PBFortune, later renamedOperation PBSuccess, the successful covert operation to overthrowJacobo Árbenz, the democratically elected president ofGuatemala. Hunt would later say, "What we wanted to do was to have a terror campaign, to terrify Arbenz particularly, to terrify his troops, much as the GermanStuka bombers terrified the population of Holland, Belgium and Poland."[12][13]
Hunt was then assigned as Chief of Covert Action inJapan, and later as Chief of Station inUruguay, where he was noted by American diplomatic contemporary Samuel F. Hart for controversial working methods.[1]
Hunt was subsequently assigned responsibility for organizingCuban exile leaders in the United States into a suitably representative government-in-exile that would, after theBay of Pigs Invasion, form a pro-American government that could replaceFidel Castro.[14]
Planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion began during theEisenhower administration, but Hunt was later bitter about what he perceived as PresidentJohn F. Kennedy's lack of commitment to the operation, which was designed to attack and overthrow the Castro government.[15] In his semi-fictional autobiography,Give Us This Day, Hunt wrote, "The Kennedy administration yielded Castro all the excuse he needed to gain a tighter grip on the island ofJosé Martí, then moved shamefacedly into the shadows and hoped the Cuban issue would simply melt away."
In 1959, Hunt helpedCIA DirectorAllen W. Dulles writeThe Craft of Intelligence.[16] The following year, in 1960, Hunt establishedBrigade 2506, a CIA-sponsored group of Cuban exiles formed to attempt the military overthrow of the Castro's government inCuba. The Bay of Pigs invasion commenced on April 17, 1961, but was quickly aborted and viewed as a fiasco. Hunt was then reassigned as executive assistant to Dulles.[17]In 1961, President Kennedy fired Dulles for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
Hunt then served from 1962 to 1964 as the first Chief of Covert Action for the CIA's Domestic Operations Division (DODS).
In 1974, Hunt toldThe New York Times that he worked for DODS for approximately four years, beginning in 1962, shortly after the agency's establishment by the Kennedy administration over the objection ofRichard Helms andThomas H. Karamessines. Hunt 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 dealt largely with subsidizing and manipulating news and publishing organizations in the United States, which he said "did seem to violate the intent of the agency's charter."[18]
In 1964,John A. McCone, then deputy chief of intelligence at the CIA, directed Hunt to take a special assignment as aNon-official cover officer inMadrid, Spain, tasked with creating an American answer toIan Fleming'sBritish MI-6James Bond novel series. While in Spain, Hunt was covered as a recently retiredU.S. State DepartmentForeign Service Officer who moved his family to Spain in order to write the first installment of the nine-novel Peter Ward series,On Hazardous Duty, published in 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 in July 1968, and was based in theWashington metropolitan area. 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 amended review 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."[19]
Hunt later said 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."[20]
In his final years with the CIA, Hunt began to cultivate new contacts in society and the business world.[20] While serving as vice president ofBrown University's club inWashington, D.C., he befriended and commenced a strong association with the organization's president, former congressional aideCharles Colson, who was working onRichard Nixon's presidential campaign.[21]
Hunt retired from the CIA at the pay grade ofGS-15, Step 8[22] on April 30, 1970, at the age of 57.
After retiring from the CIA, Hunt neglected to elect survivorship benefits for his wife. In April 1971, he requested to retroactively amend his election but was rebuffed by the agency. In a May 5, 1972, letter to CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston, 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. Houston advised Hunt in his May 16, 1972, response that this "would be in violation of the spirit of the CIA Retirement Act".[22]
Immediately following his retirement, Hunt went to work for theRobert 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 theWhite House.[23] Through CIA's ProjectQKENCHANT, Hunt obtained a Covert Security Approval to handle the firm's affairs during Mullen's absence from Washington.[24][25]
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In 1971, Colson, who was then director of Nixon'sOffice of Public Liaison, hired Hunt, where he joined theWhite House Special Investigations Unit, specializing in political sabotage.[4]
Hunt's first assignment for theWhite House was a covert operation to break into theLos Angeles office ofDaniel Ellsberg'spsychiatrist, Lewis J. Fielding.[26] In July 1971, Fielding refused a request from theFederal Bureau of Investigation for psychiatric data on Ellsberg.[27] Hunt and Liddy cased the building in late August.[28] The burglary, on September 3, 1971, was not detected, but no Ellsberg files were found.[29]
In the summer of 1971, Colson authorized Hunt to travel toNew England to seek potentially scandalous information on SenatorEdward Kennedy related to theChappaquiddick incident and Kennedy's possible extramarital affairs.[23] Hunt sought and used CIA disguises and other equipment for the project.[30] The mission eventually proved unsuccessful, with little useful information uncovered by Hunt.[23]
Hunt's White House duties included assassination-relateddisinformation. In September 1971, Hunt forged top-secretU.S. State Department cables designed to prove that President Kennedy had personally and specifically ordered the assassination ofSouth Vietnam PresidentNgo Dinh Diem and his brother,Ngô Đình Nhu, during the1963 South Vietnamese coup. He offered the forged documents to aLife magazine reporter.[31] Hunt later told theSenate Watergate Committee in 1973 that he 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."[32]
In 1972, on Colson's orders, Hunt andG. Gordon Liddy were part of an assassination plot targeting journalistJack Anderson.[33] Nixon disliked Anderson because Anderson published a1960 election-eve story about a secret loan fromHoward Hughes to Nixon's brother,[34] which Nixon believed was a factor in his election defeat toJohn F. Kennedy. Hunt and Liddy met with a CIA operative and discussed methods of assassinating Anderson, which included covering Anderson's car steering wheel withLSD to drug him and cause a fatal accident,[4] poisoning his aspirin bottle, and staging a fatal robbery. The assassination plot never materialized because Hunt and Liddy were arrested for their involvement in the Watergate scandal later that year.
Seymour Hersh reported inThe New Yorker that the Nixon White House tapes show that, following the assassination attempt onGeorge Wallace on May 15, 1972, Nixon and Colson agreed to send Hunt to theMilwaukee home of the gunman,Arthur Bremer, to placeMcGovern presidential campaign material there. The intention was to link Bremer with the Democrats. Hersh wrote 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 moved quickly to seal Bremer's apartment and place it under police guard.[35]
In his memoir Hunt reports that the day after the assassination attempt he received a call fromChuck Colson, asking him to break into Bremer's apartment and plant "leftist literature to connect him to the Democrats". Hunt recalls that he was highly sceptical of the plan due to the apartment being guarded by the FBI but investigated the feasibility of it anyway due to Colson's insistence.[36]
Later that year, Hunt organized the bugging of theDemocratic National Committee at theWatergate complex office building.[37] On June 18, 1972, five burglars were arrested by police at the Watergate. Hunt and Liddy were indicted on federal charges three months later.
Hunt put pressure on the White House and theCommittee for the Re-Election of 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, andJohn Dean eventually became entangled in the payoff schemes. Large sums of money were passed to Hunt and his accomplices in an attempt to secure their silence at the trial, by pleading guilty to avoid prosecutors' questions, and afterwards.[38]
The Washington Post andThe New York Times later reported on the payoff scheme, publishing many articles that proved to be the beginning of the end for the cover-up since prosecutors felt obligated to follow up on the media reports. Hunt also pressured Colson, Dean, andJohn Ehrlichman to ask Nixon for clemency in sentencing, and eventual presidential pardons for himself and his Watergate break-in partners, which eventually helped implicate and snare those higher up.[39]
Hunt was sentenced to 30 months to eight years in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal,[40] and spent 33 months in prison atFederal Correctional Complex, Allenwood, and the low-security Federal Prison Camp atEglin Air Force Base, Florida, on a conspiracy charge; he arrived at the Eglin Air Force Base prison on April 25, 1975.[41] While at Allenwood, Hunt suffered a mildstroke.[42]
Hunt supported theWarren Commission's conclusion thatLee Harvey Oswald acted alone in theassassination of John F. Kennedy.[43]
Shortly after theassassination of John F. Kennedy inDallas,The Dallas Morning News, theDallas Times Herald, and theFort Worth Star-Telegram photographed threetransients under police escort near theTexas School Book Depository.[44] The men were later known as thethree tramps.[45]
According toVincent Bugliosi, allegations that these men were involved in a conspiracy originated from theoristRichard E. Sprague who compiled the photographs in 1966 and 1967, and subsequently turned them over toJim Garrison during hisinvestigation of Clay Shaw.[45] Appearing before a nationwide audience on the December 31, 1968, episode ofThe Tonight Show, Garrison held up a photo of the three and suggested they were involved in the assassination.[45]
Several years later, in 1974, assassination researchersAlan 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 Hunt and fellow Watergate conspiratorFrank Sturgis.[46] In 1975, comedian and civil rights activistDick Gregory helped bring national media attention to the allegations against Hunt and Sturgis after obtaining the comparison photographs from Weberman and Canfield.[46] Immediately after obtaining the photographs, Gregory held a press conference that received considerable coverage, including inRolling Stone andNewsweek.[46][47]
In 1975, theU.S. President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, also known as the Rockefeller Commission, investigated the allegation that Hunt and Sturgis, on behalf of the CIA, participated in Kennedy's assassination.[48] The commission's final report stated that witnesses 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".[49] Their report also stated that FBI Agent Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt, "a nationally-recognized expert in photo-identification and photoanalysis" with the FBI photographic laboratory, had concluded from photo comparison that none of the men was Hunt or Sturgis.[50]
In 1979, theU.S. 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 and also with photographs of Thomas Vallee, Daniel Carswell, andFred Crisman.[51] According to the committee, only Crisman resembled any of the tramps, but determined that he was not inDealey Plaza on the day of Kennedy's assassination.[51]
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.[52] 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.[52]
In 1973,Viking Press publishedCompulsive Spy, a book about Hunt's career, byTad Szulc, a former correspondent forThe New York Times.[53] Szulc wrote that unnamed CIA sources told him that Hunt, working withRolando Cubela Secades, had a role in coordinating the assassination of Castro during an aborted second invasion of Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.[53] Szulc wrote that Hunt was the acting chief of the CIA station in Mexico City in 1963 whileLee Harvey Oswald was also in Mexico City.[54][55][nb 1]
In June 1975, theRockefeller Commission investigated allegations that the CIA, including Hunt, may have had contact with Oswald orJack Ruby,[57] concluding that one "witness testified that E. Howard Hunt was Acting Chief of a CIA Station in Mexico City in 1963, implying that hecould have had contact with Oswald when Oswald visited Mexico City in September 1963."[58] The report concluded, however, that there was "no credible evidence" of CIA involvement in the assassination, reporting that, "At no time was [Hunt] ever the Chief, or Acting Chief, of a CIA Station in Mexico City.[58]
Released in the Fall of 1975 after the Rockefeller Commission's report, Weberman and Canfield's bookCoup d'Etat in America reiterated Szulc's allegation.[55][nb 2] In July 1976, Hunt filed a $2.5 million libel suit against the authors and the book's publishers and editor.[59] According toEllis 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.[59]
As part of his suit, Hunt filed alegal action in theUnited States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in September 1978 requesting that Szulc be cited forcontempt if he refused to divulge his sources.[54] 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".[54] Rubin said 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".[54] He added that rumors that Hunt was involved in the Kennedy assassination might be put to end if Szulc's source was revealed.[54] Stating that Hunt had not provided a sufficient reason to override Szulc'sFirst Amendment rights to protect the confidentiality of his sources,Albert Vickers Bryan Jr., the U.S. District Court judge, ruled in favor of Szulc.[55] In 1982, six years after first filing the libel suit, Hunt dropped the suit.[60]
On November 3, 1978, Hunt gave a security-classified deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). He denied knowledge of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy. TheAssassination Records Review Board (ARRB) released the deposition in February 1996.[61] 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, byVictor Marchetti – author of the bookThe CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974) – appeared in theLiberty Lobby newspaperThe 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."[62] He also wrote that Hunt, Frank Sturgis andGerry 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 ofThe News Journal,Wilmington, Delaware.[63] It alleged that the purported memo was initialed byRichard Helms andJames 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 inDallas on the day of theKennedy assassination and that his presence there had to be kept secret. However, nobody has been able to produce this supposed memo, and theUnited States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States determined that Hunt had been inWashington, D.C., on the day of the assassination.[64]
Hunt sued Liberty Lobby – but not theSunday News Journal – forlibel. Liberty Lobby stipulated, in this first trial, that the question of Hunt's alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested.[65] Hunt prevailed and was awarded $650,000 in damages. In 1983, however, the case was overturned on appeal because of error in jury instructions.[66]
In a second trial, held in 1985,Mark Lane made an issue of Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination.[67] Lane successfully defended Liberty Lobby by producing evidence suggesting that Hunt had been in Dallas. He used depositions fromDavid Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms, Liddy,Stansfield Turner andMarita Lorenz, plus across-examination of Hunt. On retrial, the jury rendered a verdict for Liberty Lobby.[68]
Lane claimed he convinced the jury that Hunt was a JFK assassination conspirator. The foreperson of the jury, Leslie Armstrong, told the media that the CIA killed Kennedy and that Hunt was involved, although some of the other 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."[69] Lane outlined his theory about Hunt's and the CIA's role in Kennedy's murder in a 1991 book,Plausible Denial.[70]
Former KGBarchivistVasili 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.[71][72] 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.[71] 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 DirectorClarence M. Kelley and was apparently being suppressed.[71]
According toKerry Thornley, who served with Oswald in the Marine Corps and wrote the biographical bookThe Idle Warriors about him before the assassination of the president (the manuscript was seized during the investigation and was kept as physical evidence for a long time).[73]
Thornley regularly met with a man inNew Orleans known to him as Gary Kirstein, with whom they discussed the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Also, according to Thornley, Kirstein in those years wanted to organize the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and planned to "frame a jailbird for it."[74] In "Confession to Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK by Kerry Thornley as told toSondra London" he said that after Watergate, when photos of Howard Hunt appeared in the media, he found that he was very similar to his acquaintance Kirstein, along with whom they discussed organizing the assassination of the president.[75]
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 John F. Kennedy.[4][76] Notes and audio recordings were made.
In the April 5, 2007, issue ofRolling Stone, St. John Hunt detailed a number of individuals purported to be implicated by his father, includingLyndon B. Johnson,Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, Frank Sturgis,David Morales,Antonio Veciana,William Harvey, and an assassin he termed "French gunman-grassy knoll" who many presume isLucien Sarti.[4][77] The two sons alleged that their father cut the information from his memoirs to avoid possible perjury charges.[76] 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.[76] TheLos Angeles Times said they examined the materials offered by the sons to support the story and found them to be "inconclusive".[76]
Hunt's memoir,American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond,[78] was ghostwritten by Greg Aunapu and published byJohn Wiley & Sons in March 2007.[79]
According to the Hunt Literary Estate, Hunt had intended to write an update to his 1974 autobiographyUndercover 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 disputes this as scurrilous.[76]
The foreword toAmerican Spy was written byWilliam F. Buckley Jr.[80] 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."[80] 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".[80]
Publishers Weekly calledAmerican Spy a "breezy, unrepentant memoir" and described it as a "nostalgic memoir [that] breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field".[81]Tim Rutten of theLos 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".[82]
Referencing the book's title,Tim Weiner ofThe 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."[83] 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.[83] He concluded his review describing it as a work "in a long tradition of arrant nonsense" and "a book to shun".[83] Joseph C. Goulden ofThe Washington Times described it as a "true mess of a book" and dismissed Hunt's allegations against Johnson as "fantasy".[84] Goulden summarized his review: "I wish now that I had not read this pathetic book. Avoid it."[84]
Writing forThe Christian Science Monitor,Daniel Schorr said "Hunt tells most of his Watergate venture fairly straight".[85] 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."[86]
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."[86] Dennis Lythgoe ofDeseret 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".[87] InNational Review,Mark Riebling praisedAmerican Spy as "the only autobiography I know of that convincingly conveys what it was like to be an American spy."[88]
The Boston Globe writerMartin Nolan called it "admirable and important" and said that Hunt "presents a livelier, tabloid version of the 1970s".[89] 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."[89]
Canadian journalistDavid Giammarco interviewed Hunt for the December 2000 issue ofCigar Aficionado magazine.[90] Hunt later wrote the foreword to Giammarco's bookFor Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films (ECW Press, 2002).
Hunt's first wife, Dorothy Louise (née Wetzel) Day Goutiere, was born on April 1, 1920, inDayton, Ohio.[91] Wetzel was a CIA employee inShanghai, and later served as secretary[92] toW. Averell Harriman in Paris during theMarshall Plan. Hunt and Wetzel had four children, including two daughters, Lisa and Kevan, and two sons, Howard St. John and David.[93]
Dorothy Hunt was killed in the December 8, 1972,[94] crash ofUnited Airlines Flight 553 inChicago.Congress, the FBI and theNational Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the crash, and concluded that the crash was caused by accidental crew error.[95]
Some sources have suggested and stated that "much more than"[96] $10,000 in cash was found in Dorothy Hunt's handbag in the wreckage.[97]
Hunt later married teacher Laura Martin, with whom he raised two more children, Austin and Hollis. Following his release from prison, he and Laura moved toGuadalajara, Mexico, where they lived for five years before returning to the United States, where they settled inMiami.[98]
Hunt's involvement in Watergate was featured in the acclaimed 1976 filmAll the President's Men. Hunt was portrayed byEd Harris in the 1995 biopicNixon.[99] In the 2019 filmThe Irishman, Hunt is portrayed by stage actorDaniel Jenkins.[100] In the2022 seriesGaslit, Hunt is portrayed byJ. C. MacKenzie.[101] In the 2023HBOminiseriesWhite House Plumbers, Hunt is played byWoody Harrelson.[102]
A fictionalized account of Hunt's role in the Bay of Pigs operation appears inNorman Mailer's 1991 novelHarlot's Ghost.
On the television seriesThe X-Files, the antagonist known asCigarette Smoking Man (portrayed byWilliam B. Davis) was a shadowy intelligence operative partly modeled on Hunt.[103] The episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", fleshed out the character's backstory as unsuccessful author of mystery/suspense fiction in his spare time. When meeting Lee Harvey Oswald, prior to the JFK assassination, he goes by the alias 'Mr. Hunt.'[104]
On January 23, 2007, Hunt died ofpneumonia inMiami, at age 88.[1][105] He is buried in Prospect Lawn Cemetery in his hometown of Hamburg, New York.[106][107]
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