The Importance of St. John Hunt

[Robert Howard]

You need to get your facts straight, my friend.

Fruge was deposed by the HSCA on April 18, 1978...According to HSCA Vol 10 pages 197-210 “for her part she was to obtain $8,000 from an unidentified source in Dallas and proceed with the two men to Houston to complete a drug deal.

Fruge was deposed, but do you have a deposition from Rose Cheramie?

Fruge's testimony (so far as it relates to Cheramie's story) is pure HEARSAY.

As far as Vernon Bundy goes, you may consider this as a memory refresher.....

Vernon Bundy, confined in the Orleans Parish Prison for parole violation, sent a letter to the presiding judge, Bernard Bagert, concerning the assassination.

He would later testify at the preliminary hearing for Clay Shaw that, as Bundy prepared to give himself a "fix" of heroin on a New Orleans lakefront, he saw Shaw and Oswald together in summer of 1963,

he heard Shaw call the other man "Pete" (Vernon Bundy, Jr., interview at Orleans Parish Prison, with William Gurvich, Charlie Jonau, and Cliency Navarre, March 16, 1967).

Thank you for the memory refresher.

So he saw Shaw and Oswald together, so what? There is no law against two men talking together. If my memory hasn't failed me, the only words he claimed to have heard were "what am I gonna tell her?

If you think this is important evidence, I'll show you a hill of beans that is more important evidence.

That is not the point of my posting. You ignored the salient part of my post regarding the possibility of Hunt meeting Jean Souetre in Madrid, and took shots regarding my alluding to Cherami and Vernon Bundy, your dismissal of Cherami, is in the realm of opinion, while I personally have misgivings about Bundy; but back to the issue of how you treated my post ......

For someone who is ostensibly interested in the facts of the Kennedy assassination, your blatant disregard for the information I posted, which is factual and corroborated with footnotes, gives the impression that as far as you are concerned anyone desiring to add a salient point about E Howard Hunt, has to be someone you like, or is like-minded in their "theories" about the assassination.

I have seen that practice on the Forum, many times and is in my estimation infantile, and reveals an incredible lack of character. In the long run, you reveal more about your own unwillingness to accept additional factual information, than your erstwhile aim of casting abuse upon myself.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

That is not the point of my posting. You ignored the salient part of my post regarding the possibility of Hunt meeting Jean Souetre in Madrid,

So you are complaining that I ignored this bit from your first post?

When you get down to it, one of the biggest questions about E. Howard Hunt is whether he had been to Madrid in 1963, why?

We'll for one thing, according to a source of Dick Russell, Gilbert La Cavelier told Russell that in "March-April 1963," Hunt was in Madrid meeting with Jean Souetre, 1 which becomes all the more interesting when you realize that according to Russell, "On November 28, [1963] Osborne postmarked a letter from Madrid, Spain noting that he planned to return to the United States in about a week." 2

Not to mention the fact that General Charles Willoughby also felt quite at home in Spain, as both an ideological and personal acquaintance of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. It is also interesting that Arthur Wyndham Allen Cowan ostensibly died in Malaga, Spain allegedly on November 10, 1964.

Declassified documents regarding E Howard Hunt are unequivocal in the assertion that Hunt was never in Madrid in 1963, but he did go to Spain after 1964......So Le Cavelier's assertion is pretty important.

I have meant to ask Dick Russell whether he still feels confident about Le Cavelier as a reputable source, all these years later......But I have one of those types of inquiries directed to William Turner about his allegation in his article "The Garrison Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy"

and I am still waiting on that.

I did not comment on this particular passage because I know very little about Howard Hunt's whereabouts either in March 63

or November 64 and have nothing to add -either pro or con - to what you have written on the topic, OK?

In the long run, you reveal more about your own unwillingness to accept additional factual information, than your erstwhile aim of casting abuse upon myself.

Does that mean that every forum member who, like me, failed to respond to the same passage, has the erstwhile aim of casting aspersions upon yourself?

[Guest David Guyatt]

I just ran across this thread and thought I would add a little something that I came up with when the story first made the news.

The Rolling Stone article states that Hunt’s son, St. John Hunt, “had been a meth addict for twenty years, a meth dealer for ten of those years,” and had come to Miami “borrowing money to fly because he was broke.” It was then that he allegedly heard his father's confession about the JFK assassination.

The article continues, “At the moment, Saint doesn’t have a job; his felonies have gotten in the way. He has to borrow money to put gas in his Cutlass. Beach chairs substitute for furniture in the tiny apartment where, until recently, he lived with an ex-girlfriend, herself a reformed meth addict, and two kids, one hers, one theirs.”

“In 2001, on the heels of two drug busts, Saint decided to go straight. With his ex-girlfriend, their daughter and her son, he stayed in a series of shelters.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/138...e_howard_hunt/1

The whole story from "St. John Hunt" was a bunch of garbage, and that's why the story quickly died.

There is the little matter of the tape recording left by Howard Hunt to be played by St. John after his father's death. I knew Howard quite well and I can attest that it is his voice on the recording. So even if one wants to question the credibility of St. John, which I don't, the real story is the actual tape recording of his father's words implicating LBJ and certain named CIA agents in JFK's assassination.

Douglas, forgive me for going off topic slightly, but with your personal knowledge of HH, do you have any insight into his motives for writing the five novels under his pen name David St. John? The subject matter of these 5 books is more than curious I think?

David

No, I can provide no insight into his motives. In the months prior to the Watergate break-in, Hunt had asked me as his attorney to represent him in his dealings with publishers on several books that he was working on. That effort ended, of course, when Watergate broke.

I am not familiar with the curious subject matter of the 5 books that he authored under the pen name David St. John. Could you enlight me on this? I am certain other forum members would be interested in this also.

My apologies. I am referring to only 3 of the 4 titles published by Weybridge & Talley circa 1968-71 (the number 5 I referenced was an error).

The titles are as follows:

The Coven - an occult novel involving satanism and Washington DC(1971).

Diabolus - an occult suspense novel involving black magic and ritual murder(1971).

The Sorcerers - another occult novel set around Voudon human sacrifice (1969)

I had occurred to me that Hunt had simply jumped on the Charles Manson Family murder of Sharon Tate, the new wife (married January 1968) of Polish film-maker Roman Polanski, who's US debut film was Rosemary's Baby (released 1968).

The occult connection of Charles Manson leads to L. Ron Hubbard (a.k.a "Frater H").

But I wonder if this is a bit too pat an explanation...

Edited June 8, 2008 by David Guyatt

[Tony Frank]

But lying about all that stuff would have made his"confession" story a lot less believable.

Right. People who tell lies are not believable, while people who tell the truth ARE believable. You don't have to be rich or even prosperous to tell the truth.

St. John seems to have no fear of telling the truth, regardless of the consequences, which makes him a credible witness.

The idea that Hunt Sr. wanted the truth to be known to the world and that he trusted it to his ne'er-do-well son is preposterous.

If Hunt Jr. lied about his life, people would have quickly discovered that he was a fraud.

Let's say for the sake of argument that it is Hunt Sr.'s voice on the tape. It's anyone's guess why those words are on tape.

"Dad, if you can't give me money to live on, how about this: you're a great story teller and I figure maybe I can try my hand at a writing a book.

"There's always been a line of thinking that there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. How about making up something about your CIA buddies being involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy? That would be a really great novel."

Like I said, the idea that Hunt Sr. would trust his ne'er-do-well son to be the messenger who would deliver the truth to the world about the Kennedy assassination is preposterous.

Edited June 9, 2008 by Tony Frank

[J. Raymond Carroll]

If Hunt Jr. lied about his life, people would have quickly discovered that he was a fraud.

And since he does NOT lie about his life .......?

Your argument seems to be "the only reason he tells the truth is so that people will believe him."

Let's say for the sake of argument that it is Hunt Sr.'s voice on the tape. It's anyone's guess why those words are on tape.

No one who knew Howard Hunt has argued that it is NOT his voice on the tape. You have read Douglas Caddy's post on this thread.

"Dad, if you can't give me money to live on, how about this: you're a great story teller and I figure maybe I can try my hand at a writing a book.

"There's always been a line of thinking that there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. How about making up something about your CIA buddies being involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy? That would be a really great novel."

Do you seriously think you can prove something with this piece of fictional dialog?

The problem with your theory is that, broke as he was, St. John told his story FOR FREE to a reporter from Rolling Stone Magazine.

Like I said, the idea that Hunt Sr. would trust his ne'er-do-well son to be the messenger who would deliver the truth to the world about the Kennedy assassination is preposterous.

Because it does not fit into the theory that Tony Frank is trying to flog to publishers.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

If Vince Palamara suddenly appears as an expert on Hunt watch out. (A joke).

Vince says he was convinced by Bugliosi's book, and the depth of research and documentation etc.

Of course Bugliosi's book says NOTHING about St. John Hunt, so Reclaiming History was already obsolete on publication.

No wonder my local borders was recently selling off copies of RECLAIMING HISTORY at $10 apiece, which I imagine is less than the cost of production.