Was E. Howard Hunt's "Big Event" Confession A Hoax?

[Denny Zartman]

I'm not doubting James DiEugenio or Larry Hancock, two researchers I respect and to whom I will defer. They say they're not at liberty to discuss the details, so I don't feel comfortable pressing them for more information or making guesses even though I still don't fully understand.

The fact that there's still legal sensitivity right this minute regarding Hunt's JFK assassination confession, even though Hunt's been dead for over a decade, speaks for itself.

[Larry Hancock]

Kirk,  strictly in reference to my own observation and knowledge the first part of  your summation would be correct.  Since the latter part would be pure speculation on my part I'm not going to comment on that.  My own thoughts and reasoning in regard to the Hunt "confession" are in SWHT/2010 and have nothing to do with this incident so I will leave them to stand on their own. 

[Kirk Gallaway]

4 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Kirk,  strictly in reference to my own observation and knowledge the first part of  your summation would be correct.  Since the latter part would be pure speculation on my part I'm not going to comment on that.  My own thoughts and reasoning in regard to the Hunt "confession" are in SWHT/2010 and have nothing to do with this incident so I will leave them to stand on their own. 

Larry, I want to get your take on it, so I went to your site and see that your blogs go back only to Dec. 2011. So I registered. Can you direct me to your comments in 2010?

I realize it wasn't you who couldn't resist letting us know that he had "inside information" about this . It was Jim. And I understand that neither of you may want to reveal the whole story in respect to the person, who I would suspect tried to hard to please his audience and couldn't substantiate his facts to the degree that he was fearful of facing reprisals.

But the way this is now. It really invites more questions than it answers. What's unclear to me is,what was his fear?  Who would he see reprisals from?  Hunt did not die a rich man. His family outside of St. John wanted to disown him for his alleged confession and so would welcome the discrediting an account from their Father that tarnishes their family's name and will forever place him as a conspirator in the JFKA, and St.John has no money to speak of, and would not be feared.

His alleged co-conspirators and their families, of course would welcome such a repudiation,, as well as any alleged ongoing government "deep state" conspiracy for those  would believe in that. So who would he be afraid of?

[Larry Hancock]

Kirk, sorry but you really are not going to get any more detail from me rather than my personal statement that the individual in question had more than enough facts and history to substantiate his remarks.  You will just have to take that assurance...or not, your choice.

As to my remarks on Hunt, they are in the 2010 edition of my book SWHT...and were developed entirely separately given the total lack of corroboration for Hunt's purported confession and generally the silliness of it in regard to his known history and that of the individuals he mentioned....one point being that Morales was actually on record in an internal memo that Hunt was a loud mouth and never could be trusted not to compromise security.  For that matter even Hecksher had generated very negative memos about Hunt in 1963 - anybody who thinks Hunt was trusted among the real covert operators really has an incomplete picture of Hunt.

Having said that, Hunt talked to everybody he could, picked up lots of gossip-  with his main Cuban source being Artime. It would certainly not surprise me if he, as many within select parts of the Cuban community in Miami, did not hear gossip about the broad outlines of what had gone down in Dallas.

[Denny Zartman]

43 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

anybody who thinks Hunt was trusted among the real covert operators really has an incomplete picture of Hunt.

But Hunt was trusted enough by high level covert operators to be included the Watergate break in nine years later, wasn't he? I have a hard time understanding how someone who was part of the Plumbers wouldn't be considered a "real" covert operator.

[Douglas Caddy]

18 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

But Hunt was trusted enough by high level covert operators to be included the Watergate break in nine years later, wasn't he? I have a hard time understanding how someone who was part of the Plumbers wouldn't be considered a "real" covert operator.

Exactly. Precisely. Don't forget that it was Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, who personally placed Howard Hunt in the Robert Mullen Company in 1970, which had been incorporated by the CIA in 1959 and was a CIA front. Helms proudly kept Hunt's published books on display in his CIA office. Charles Colson sponsored Hunt to join the White House staff. Once there Hunt sent reports on a regular basis to Helms as to what he had learned about developments inside the White House. As Howard once told me, gathering information is what the CIA does. It is its purpose. 

[James DiEugenio]

From just what  Larry and I have said, you can put the picture together.

In the Rolling Stone article, it was said that Costner offered Hunt five million to talk and he turned it down.

Now, if you know anything about the movie business, who on earth would offer someone five million dollars to appear in a documentary?  A pretty good budget for a documentary would be two million total--for everything.

How many documentaries make anywhere near the money to justify that kind of initial investment?  For that matter, how many documentaries even get shown in theaters?  Because to make that kind of money back, it would almost have to have a theatrical release. Costner has been in the movie business for over 30 years, do you think he would be that dumb?  I don't.

The other point was that what Hunt originally said in private differed from what he later said in public.

What more do you need?

But as Larry has said, even on its own terms, taken at face value, does what Hunt later said make any sense to anyone who knows something about him and they way the CIA works and the actual elements of the assassination? To me it does not, and I think Larry concluded the same thing for different reasons.  Cord Meyer?  He was a newspaper propaganda guy.  Hunt obviously threw him in there to spice it up due to the controversy about his ex wife.  

There is a lot of really good information about people like Hunt and Phillips out there.  And I used much of it in the second edition of Destiny Betrayed.  Personally, I do not like to see people like Joe being snookered by what is false info, whether it be The Torbitt Document,  Ultimate Sacrifice, Judy Baker or Barr McClellan. I think anyone who has been in this field for awhile and understands what happened to some degree probably feels that way.

Edited December 30, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[David Andrews]

Denny - I can't prove it, of course, but I don't doubt that Hunt was involved in Dallas.  I only doubt his CT "confession."

Nixon was afraid of Hunt's reputed ties to Dallas, and tried to play Hunt against Helms to get the Watergate investigation quashed.  That was a mistake that brought all three players down, though Helms had the softest landing, and a continuing covert role in a newly-opening political sphere (pre-revolutionary Iran).

The period between Dallas and Watergate was a watershed in Hunt's life.  Dulles died, and Hunt was no longer a cultivated and protected protege of the old guard.  In "retirement," Helms may have put Hunt out there against Nixon, but Helms was only too happy to cut Hunt and his wife loose, and leave them unfunded and unprotected.  What Hunt did for the Enterprise in Guatemala, and tried to do for it in Cuba and Miami, was shelved as ancient history. 

Dulles fostered his career (no pun intended), but Hunt never got a office on the higher floors at Foggy Bottom or Langley.  Helms made him a plumber for Nixon, an expendable role that predisposed Hunt to bring himself down with Nixon.

Edited December 30, 2018 by David Andrews

[Kirk Gallaway]

Jim says,

The other point was that what Hunt originally said in private differed from what he later said in public.

What more do you need?

What more do we need?  1)Well let's start with what did he say in private as opposed to what he said in public.

I expressed here many times including last week that i thought Cord Meyer was a throw in to link to LBJ. But I've never heard you say that Jim. But Ok.

2) We could also use more information as to your beliefs, Jim. You got to lengths to exclude only Cord Meyer, tell me your hunches about the other cast of characters Hunt named, namely Harvey, Phillips, Sturgis, Morales. 3) If not any of these suspects, Do you believe any of what Hunt says?

Don't make this like pulling teeth, Jim. What do you got?

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Watergate was a covert operation of the Huston Plan. Nixon developed the Huston Plan in cooperation with Tom Huston who was a former military intelligence officer before he joined Nixon's White House staff. (Huston had been a founder of Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, which was how I first met him.)  When John Dean was fired or resigned in April 1973 he took the White House copy of the Huston Plan and delivered it to Chief Judge John Sirica, who sealed it in the court record where it has sat immune from subpoena for all these years. Sirica was an integral part of the Huston Plan, having appointed the federal judges to the "illegal" pre-FISA court that convened at 1 a.m. as the occasion demanded in a secret courtroom several stories underneath an apartment house in the Georgetown section of Washington (four blocks from where I lived.) There is a good chance that Watergate via the Huston Plan and the "illegal" pre-FISA court will emerge in the coming weeks as a major issue in the wrap-up of the Mueller investigation of Trump.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Douglas Caddy

[James DiEugenio]

Kirk:

Let me go through this step  by step, because it seems you are having cognitive deficiencies.  

I have a quite credible source on this matter, who i must defer to for legal and journalistic reasons that anyone in this business of writing would understand.  

Now, my argument above was made up of two keystones.  First, that the Rolling Stone article was nonsense and I explained why. Many people have referred to that article as if it were an accurate rendition. It was not.

The other part was that what Hunt said in private did not match what he said in public.  Which, with anyone, would be a warning sign.

But for Kirk, does he say: Well thanks Jim I was not aware of those two things which negatively impact the story.

Heck no.  He now wants to know what the original story was.  Even though I previously said I could not say certain things for the above specific reasons.  

Per the third point, my take on what happened, and how Hunt was involved, is in my book, Destiny Betrayed, the second edition.  I talked a lot about Hunt and Phillips there. And I described what I thought their roles in the plot were.

[James DiEugenio]

Let me explain why I think Hunt should have been a person of interest in any real inquiry into the JFK murder.

1.  Hunt was part of the action arm of the CIA which Dulles established once he became director.  As Larry has shown, he was not just a part of the Arbenz overthrow, he likely was a part of assembling the death lists there.

2. He was a part of the Bay of Pigs operation in both the political aspect, and reportedly was at least knowledgeable about Operation Forty. 

3. After the Bay of Pigs capsized, he was very angry about the whole thing and blamed it on the Kennedys.

4. During the Taylor Commission, the White House inquiry into the Bay of Pigs, Hunt was working for Allen Dulles to defend him against Bobby Kennedy's prosecutorial attacks.

5. Hunt and Dulles were convinced that because of RFK, Dulles would be fired for the operation's failure.  Those two then schemed with reporter Charles Murphy to get out a preemptive attack in Fortune Magazine, beginning the whole mythology of the canceled D Day air strikes, thus blaming the failure on JFK.

6. Hunt was a part of the writing of Dulles' book, The Craft of Intelligence.

7.Hunt was also detailed to the Domestic Operations Division, in which the CIA was breaking its charter and doing bizarre operations in the USA. 

8. Hunt's covert security approval in the sixties and early seventies was the same as Clay Shaw's, QK ENCHANT.

9. During sworn testimony at a civil trial, even with  CIA help, Hunt had a difficult time explaining where he was on the day JFK was killed.

10. According to a friend of Angleton's, an author who talked to him many times, Angleton penned a memo to Helms saying the CIA had to devise a cover story for Hunt being in Dallas the day JFK was murdered.

In Destiny Betrayed, I mention all of these in greater detail.

Edited December 31, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

From a defunct website:

"Angleton's 1966 Memo to Helms re Hunt's Presence in Dallas" by Joseph Trento & Jacquie Powers

Sunday News Journal — August 20, 1978

<quote on>

A secret CIA memorandum says that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered and that top agency officials plotted to cover up Hunt’s presence there.

Some CIA sources speculate that Hunt thought he was assigned by higher-ups to arrange the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Sources say Hunt, convicted in the Watergate conspiracy in 1974, was acting chief of the CIA station in Mexico City in the weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination. Oswald was in Mexico City, and met with two Soviet KGB agents at the Russian Embassy there immediately before leaving for Dallas, according to the official Warren Commission report.

The 1966 secret memo, now in the hands of the House assassination committee, places Hunt in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963.

Richard M. Helms, former CIA director, and James Angleton, former counterintelligence chief, initialed the memo according to investigators who made the information available to the Sunday News Journal.

<quote off>

 

[Joe Bauer]

Jim D, your post above highlights Hunt's high level involvement and engagement with some of the highest ranking members of the CIA. At least until Watergate.

When Doug Caddy was initially called in to help the Watergate team that was caught, he obviously had some dealings with Hunt.  Did Doug get the feeling that Hunt was not respected that highly by the other Watergate Plumbers? That at that time he was considered a big mouth of sorts?

Does Doug Caddy believe Hunt's "Big Event" confession? Didn't Doug also say that Hunt inferred to him over a Chinese dinner or lunch one evening ( or day? ) that the ET situation had something to do with JFK's assassination?

I'm trying to figure out when Hunt's reputation became so diminished as another poster has mentioned and considered in deflating Hunt's end of life JFK big event confession story.

William F. Buckley Jr. sure seemed to admire Hunt. He worked with him in Mexico City. He was a Godfather to his son.

In the May, 10th,1974 episode of Buckley's TV show "Firing Line", Buckley bent over backwards to provide Hunt with national audience exposure to promote himself as a super-patriot who was being wronged by the press and the Agency for his Watergate involvement. Buckley threw Hunt softball questions that were clearly designed to give Hunt openings to explain himself in this way.

Just some aspects to Hunt to consider.

I don't think I am being snookered into strongly believing Hunts JFK "Big Event" confession story.

I have just never seen or read enough real discussion and debate about the confession and I always wanted to hear others with high credibility share their thoughts on it.

Appreciatively, this thread is providing me with more information and views on the confession than I have seen before.

Hunt's throwing Cord Meyer's name into the mix could be fictional, but he then throws in the names of very serious minded and powerful JFK haters such as Harvey, Morales, Sturgis, etc.

I never considered LBJ as a ruthless murder ordering crook because of what Barr McClellan wrote.

I felt LBJ was this way from all the factual information out there besides Barr McClellan's account.

More sources besides McClellan related LBJ was this ruthless. ( Remember Nixon's cryptic statement inferring LBJ being willing to kill to be president?")

LBJ's relationship with convicted murderer Mac Wallace ( who I think most agree seems the most likely suspect in Henry Marshall's murder ) is just another factual aspect to LBJ that indicates to me he could very well have been a part of the JFK assassination.

I don't think The Rolling Stone article on Hunt and his son and Costner was a total sham.

The background story of Hunt's character as seen through the eyes of his son St. John rings true to me.  Hunt was obviously totally intoxicated and full of himself and his "James Bond" power and position and income position for many years. But, clearly, the last years of Hunt's life he was very bitter, very broke, and probably vengeful as many here have said. 

Like Jim D. says, the important truth here is that Hunt probably was involved in some way with the JFK event.

 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2018 by Joe Bauer

[Larry Hancock]

I know its not nice to throw cold water on these conversations but it would be really good for those interested to look at the actual details of Hunt's career, at his personnel file and at the real facts about his assignments - beginning with his being fired after running the Mexico City station for only a brief time in its earliest days though his later assignments (which were all political action - translation, meeting with CIA supported exiles, revolutionaries, etc and handing out funding), to his essentially kicking himself out of the Cuba project at the last minute because he could not get along with certain exile leader's politics - all the way to the way he actually handled his team under Nixon, before and at Watergate. Hunt did have friends at the top if the CIA...who admired his spy fiction and thought it was good for the agency.  He had also been part of the earliest cadre and gained much of his reputation from riding along with the work of Phillips, Hecksher and Morales in Guatemala and PBSUCCESS.

Then a good look at the AMWORLD files circa 1963 and later and see how the real operators like Morales and Hecksher were irate about Hunt was reasserting himself with Artime and was using Artime to try and get himself back into mainstream projects....and finally, read Eugenio Martinez articles on how Hunt recruited him and ran the Nixon related burglaries and get a feel for the quality of Hunt's actual  covert tradecraft.

In other words, get the full picture....then decide if David Morales would invite Hunt to a motel room in Miami (a motel Hunt could never name on a date he could not name) and offer him an invitation into a plot to kill the president and then just let Hunt take a pass and walk away...before the assassination). 

Edited December 31, 2018 by Larry Hancock