David Denton on E. Howard Hunt's CIA file

[Douglas Caddy]

I just went through the recent release of E. Howard Hunt’s personnel files. For those of you that are not aware, Hunt gained national notoriety for his participation as a member of a “plumbers” unit involved in the Watergate break-in in the 1970s. Previous to that, Hunt had a 20 plus year association to the CIA that ended (technically?) in 1970. Some JFK researchers have found reasons to believe Hunt may have participated in the Dallas affair in some form. In the 1980s, he wo...uld lose a civil suit where the jury, by way of their decision, accepted the notion that Hunt was part of the plot against JFK. He himself, would make a deathbed confession, as reported in 2007, that he was part of the “big event.” After going through his file, that included 11 completely redacted pages, sadly, I have to report that there was nothing “big” to see. The most telling thing about his file may be where particular blank pages occur, because the file appears to be in chronological order. Hunt was obviously a master in propaganda who produced films of that sort in France during his time there. He spoke proficiently in French and Spanish. By 1954, he had taken on the title of “Political Psychological Warfare Officer.” He, like Phillips, spent time operating out of Mexico City. At the time of the assassination, Hunt was posted in D.C. During his career, he was involved in assignments in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Again, like Phillips, he would move back and forth from regular agency employment to contract status, beginning in 1965. An interesting piece of verbiage in his file was a statement to the effect that Hunt was regarded as “re-employable.” This was just before he was sent on a mission apparently to Europe as a contract agent. Although most of his file was filled with positive evaluations, he does receive a downgrade from “strong” to merely “proficient” due to a series of “personal and tax problems beyond his control that would dull his cutting edge just enough to be noticeable.” Ominously, the file appears to be complete through September of 1963, then there is a gap until July, 1964. In that gap, there is ONE completely redacted blank page. It is reasonable to assume that the one missing page might be one of the most significant items still redacted to JFK assassination researchers. Just today, National Archives released 52 pages on Oswald in Mexico City and all but five of them were also blank. Hopefully, President Trump will keep his promise in April of next year of un-redacting most of these things. In the final pages of Hunt’s personnel file, is found a career profile written by Hunt himself. In it, he describes himself as a “regional trouble shooter.” We can still only speculate what exactly he meant by that.
I will be looking at William Harvey’s file next, hopefully I get it done before I got to Dallas next week!
David D
Olney Central College

[David Andrews]

Although most of his file was filled with positive evaluations, he does receive a downgrade from “strong” to merely “proficient” due to a series of “personal and tax problems beyond his control that would dull his cutting edge just enough to be noticeable.”

I know I'm lazy, but what year was Hunt downgraded?  Was he later upgraded?

Edited November 10, 2017 by David Andrews

[David Butler]

45 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Although most of his file was filled with positive evaluations, he does receive a downgrade from “strong” to merely “proficient” due to a series of “personal and tax problems beyond his control that would dull his cutting edge just enough to be noticeable.”

I know I'm lazy, but what year was Hunt downgraded?  Was he later upgraded?

The comment quoted above appears on a report dated 1969

[Douglas Caddy]

I was interviewed by Daniel Liszt of Dark Journalist this week about the Kennedy assassination. The interview will be placed on YouTube on Tuesday.

In the course of the interview Liszt stated that Howard Hunt had an office inside the same building on Camp St. in New Orleans in which had  both Oswald and Guy Banister were listed as having an office(s.) It came as a surprise as I had never heard of this before.

In Gaeton Fonzi's list of Miami witnesses that he wants to interview is Howard Hunt. Fonzi says that among the reasons he wants to interview Hunt is about possible knowledge that Hunt may have about Oswald.

Scroll down the list to E. Howard Hunt on Fonzi's list below to read Fonzi's reasons and then compare these to the CIA file was just released on Hunt, which David Denton found to be lacking real substance.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32262517.pdf

 

 

Edited November 11, 2017 by Douglas Caddy