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

[Joe Bauer]

On 12/31/2018 at 6:07 AM, Larry Hancock said:

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). 

This is the kind of deeper research input I was hoping to see regards E. Howard Hunt to help determine the validity of his end of life "Big Event" confession.

However, no matter how much Hunt's stature, influence and credibility were diminished in his later years, he was still enough of a major covert action historical figure ( and in direct contact with the highest level ones ) in the 50's through 60's time period you feel compelled to at least contemplate his confession, especially considering it's Earth shaking guilty parties revelation.

Yes, Hunt's tale of being asked to join a JFK plot in a cheap Miami motel room by Morales ( I thought it was Sturgis?) with Hunt begging off does sound cheap spy novel ridiculous.

Several other aspects of his "Big Event" confession also seem contrived in the area of Hunt's decision to not be a direct participant and his being shocked when he heard JFK had actually been killed? Please.

I wish I had the years it would take to study all the research to be able to say with earned credibility that I knew the full picture.

 

Edited January 4, 2019 by Joe Bauer

[Mark Lawson]

9 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

I never considered LBJ as a ruthless murder[er] 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.

Taking a detour regarding LBJ, the following account, never previously published, comes from a now-dearly-departed friend who lived near Johnson City, Texas.  Here is what he wrote to me, after reading The Outfit Killed JFK, a 2010 PLAYBOY article by Hillel Levin::

Thanks for sending this. It is quite good and I was unaware of its publication. I will say it dovetails with pretty much everything else of a credible nature that I have learned about the incident over the years; two of which I will offer up here as they would not be accessible to the general public.

The first is the recollections of my closest friend, E. [who] spent his adult life in one form of law enforcement or criminal justice or the other. At the time JFK was shot he was on the Ft. Worth PD. He reports that there was not a cop in the DFW area that had any doubts that Ruby was "mobbed up." Hell, most of them hung out after hours at his strip club. Given that knowledge, they were amazed that a known criminal would just waltz into the Dallas cop shop while the alleged killer of the President was being transported. Many of the cops in both cities were, according to Earl, pretty skeptical about the "official story," given who Jack liked to play with.

The second is much, much closer to home. From the earliest days of LBJ's political career (stuffing the ballot boxes of Duvall County to get into the US House), he had a close friend and collaborator: nominally his "business manager," named A. W. Moursund. A. W. became a very powerful man in Blanco County, TX (LBJ's home) and well beyond. That was due, in no small part, to LBJ giving him back-room control over his greatest political plum - the Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC).  A. W. was extremely smart - street smart - and a very credible, if dishonest, attorney. He was also exceptionally ruthless. In addition to being referred to as LBJ's "bag man" (with sound justification) he was also an enforcer. It has been persistently rumored (even now that he has been dead for going on 10 years) that he was "mobbed up." As far as I am concerned, he was and the final confirmation of that came to me through a woman of some 80 + years and her daughter. The older woman was, until her recent death, a well respected member of the ranching tradition in this area. Her daughter had, for a period of time, worked in Moursund's insurance companies, one of four businesses he built on a PEC foundation. Both women reported to me, and at different times, how private planes would frequently arrive at the Moursund's private strip. The daughter would be detailed to go pick up the visitors from Chicago, Detroit, Vegas and New Orleans. The men who would deplane were straight from central casting - large men in black shirts with white ties, a bulge under the left armpit and pushed over noses. So, it is pretty clear that LBJ - even if sly enough to keep a degree of separation through A.W. - certainly had easy access to the mob and they to him.

------------------------------

"... I don't know if the Mob did it, but I doubt it.  From my experience as a committee investigator and, later, as a team leader, I know that the Committee's investigation was simply not adequate enough to produce any firm conclusions about the nature of the conspiracy. To give the impression that it was, is a deception...." - From The Last Investigation, by Gaeton Fonzi.

Many thanks to Linda Minor for providing the following Web link:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70663920

My late friend Dave, and the two people he cites, above, must have been referring to the grandson of the above-referenced A. W.: Albert Wadel Moursund III, who lived between 1919 and 2002:

"Graduate of University of Texas School of Law, admitted to Bar of Texas in 1941. Served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and opened his law practice in Johnson City, Texas, after the war. Elected to Texas House of Representatives for two terms (1948-1952). Lifelong friend, business associate, counselor and advisor to President Lyndon B Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. Married to Mary Allen Moore Moursund for 60 years."

Above from:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7700683/albert-wadel-moursund

[David Andrews]

"... I don't know if the Mob did it, but I doubt it.  From my experience as a committee investigator and, later, as a team leader, I know that the Committee's investigation was simply not adequate enough to produce any firm conclusions about the nature of the conspiracy. To give the impression that it was, is a deception...." - From The Last Investigation, by Gaeton Fonzi.

A country that had just finished interning Japanese citizens in wartime wouldn't extirpate its organized crime syndicates.  The value judgments made here signify...what, exactly?

Edited December 31, 2018 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

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). 

Larry, you are one of the most necessary people here.

[James DiEugenio]

Joe, 

My point about bringing in Cord Meyer was to show what Hunt's true intent was.  I could have easily brought up Hunt's use of LBJ also.

If you did not read my review of Joan Mellen's book on the alleged LBJ/Mac Wallace tie, then please do:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mellen-joan-faustian-bargains

Howard Hunt threw together some popular names in the field and placed them in a Waring blender for people to chew on.  The fact that none of them makes much sense placed together, or the fact that someone as low on the food chain as Sturgis would ask someone as close to Allen Dulles as Hunt was to join in this ad hoc conspiracy, this shows that Hunt was in essence playing marbles. At our expense. When you add in the facts of the ersatz five million dollar offer, and that this info clashes with the original info, then its time to close shop and move on.  

I suggest we all do so. 

 

 

Edited December 31, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Cory Santos]

30 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Joe, 

My point about bringing in Cord Meyer was to show what Hunt's true intent was.  I could have easily brought up Hunt's use of LBJ also.

If you did not read my review of Joan Mellen's book on the alleged LBJ/Mac Wallace tie, then please do:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mellen-joan-faustian-bargains

Howard Hunt threw together some popular names in the field and placed them in a Waring blender for people to chew on.  The fact that none of them makes much sense placed together, or the fact that someone as low on the food chain as Sturgis would ask someone as close to Allen Dulles as Hunt was to join in this ad hoc conspiracy, this shows that Hunt was in essence playing marbles. At our expense. When you add in the facts of the ersatz five million dollar offer, and that this info clashes with the original info, then its time to close shop and move on.  

I suggest we all do so. 

 

 

I have had concerns too about it.  The biggest concern is he names names but gives no facts as to how or why it happened.  He just uses names everyone has heard of.  Unless the full transcript have not been released, from what I have heard, I would question it.

[James DiEugenio]

I would disagree with Larry on a couple of points.

Unless you read Shane O'Sullivan's new book on Watergate, you will not know how close Hunt was to Helms.  I was not aware of that.  I mean, how many CIA officers are close to both of the longest serving directors at that time?

Secondly, if you read Jim Hougan's landmark book on Watergate Secret Agenda, you will get a whole new take on that caper, quite different than the traditional Woodward/Bernstein version.  Once you read that, then the shenanigans by Hunt and McCord do not seem to be what they appear.  

But the fact that the two men lied about knowing each other before CREEP is important.  This is why Hougan begins his book with a chapter called "Of Hunt and McCord".  And he ends it with the final break in.  

[Douglas Caddy]

I believe Helms and Hunt, both longtime skilled covert operators, realized that once Nixon became President there arose the opportunity for Hunt to join the White House staff as the CIA's eyes and ears. This could not be done if Hunt were an active CIA officer. So Hunt "retired" and Helms placed him in the Mullen Company, which was a cloaked CIA front entity. This is where I met Hunt when he joined the Mullen staff six months after General Foods Corporation, my employer, had transferred me to Washington in 1969 to be its Washington Representative but to work out of the Mullen Company for the first year. I was not informed that the Mullen Company was a CIA front entity and did not learn of this until later in the Watergate case.

Once onboard the Mullen Company staff, Hunt slowly began to lobby his friend and fellow alumnus of Brown University, Charles (Chuck) Colson, a member of Nixon's inner circle, to join the White House staff. It was just the right time to do so because Nixon and Kissinger were gravely concerned about detrimental leaks from inside the White House and Hunt could be helpful because of his intelligence background in ferreting out the leakers. So the White House Plumbers unit was formed and Hunt became a member of it along with Gordon Liddy. (At Hunt's request I wrote a letter of employment recommendation in his behalf to the White House.)

Once on the White House staff Hunt regularly sent reports to Helms of what he learned about developments inside the White House and in the Nixon Administration. This worked out well for Helms and the CIA until Watergate broke. Up until then Helms' and Hunt's early covert planning to get Hunt on the White House staff had paid off handsomely.

A lot is still not known about Watergate, especially about the all important Huston Plan. Nixon was forced to resign because of the fear of the key intelligence and law enforcement agencies that their roles in Huston Plan would become public if he did not do so. In some ways Watergate rivals the JFK assassination with its many twists and turns and hidden history.

 

Edited January 1, 2019 by Douglas Caddy

[David Andrews]

The regard of Helms for Hunt is hard to believe, considering that of all involved in Watergate, Hunt fared the worst in personal damage, financial loss, and irrecoverable reputation.  This for a burglary that was probably blown in to the police by Hunt's own agency. 

Doug, I forget: did you know Hunt after prison?  How did he speak of Helms?

[Joe Bauer]

Jim, looking at the Hunt "Big Event" confession through more informed eyes, it does seem like it was a contrived tale.

There would be tons of deeper information about the planning of such an action and the roles the main characters he mentions would have played, and Hunt would have known at least some of this information.

I am much more inclined now to dismiss Hunt's confession.

Even so, there is so much more to know about E. Howard Hunt.

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

4 hours ago, David Andrews said:

The regard of Helms for Hunt is hard to believe, considering that of all involved in Watergate, Hunt fared the worst in personal damage, financial loss, and irrecoverable reputation.  This for a burglary that was probably blown in to the police by Hunt's own agency. 

Doug, I forget: did you know Hunt after prison?  How did he speak of Helms?

The last time I saw Hunt was in 1975 just before he entered prison when we had dinner in Washington.  I had no contact with him while he was in prison and in the years afterward our contact was sporadic through letters sent via USPS. At no time during this period did the topic of Helms come up.

As a professional CIA agent Howard came to understand that his contact with Helms and with others CIA key personnel that he had known for many years was ended by Watergate. The preservation of the CIA and of its reputation was paramount and Watergate had made Howard radioactive. The Church Committee hearings in 1975-76 posed a serious threat to the CIA. I have often wondered how James McCord viewed the fallout of Watergate as it affected the CIA as one of the primary reasons he gave for writing Judge Sirica in March 1973 to expose the cover-up was his fear for the future of the CIA. His letter opened the floodgates of criticism of the CIA and of investigations into its operations.

[W. Niederhut]

Question for the experts here.

For some reason, I had the impression that Hunt and McCord had deliberately botched the Watergate burglary in order to help Helms and the Company put Nixon over a barrel.

Is this not what happened?

As I recall, someone had scared Nixon BEFORE the 1972 election, (and the Watergate burglary) by hinting that Larry O'Brien and the DNC had possession of some damning information about Nixon (?) and the "Bay of Pigs thing."  I may have read that story in a dubious source-- Roger Stone's book, Nixon's Secrets.

And, BTW, hasn't Bob Woodward-- who played such a crucial role in bringing Nixon down-- always been a CIA-affiliated journalist?  The guy graduated from Yale, and worked in Naval Intelligence prior to being hired by Ben Bradlee at WaPo.

 

 

Edited January 1, 2019 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Joe.  Glad you concluded that.

 

WN:

IMO, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that McCord and Hunt infiltrated the Plumbers and although ostensibly working for CREEP, were actually really working for the CIA.

The last chapter of Hougan's watershed book is a very precise and insightful analysis of the final Watergate break in.  No one had ever done that before.  It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the entry was sabotaged.  I won't go into all the specifics, but Hougan makes a solid case for that tenet.

As per Woodward, I think that its pretty clear today that he was and is an establishment guy who was close to both the CIA and the Pentagon.  I also have concluded that he is still prevaricating about the identity of Deep Throat.  Just read the appendix to the book by the late Pat Gray (finished by his son) entitled  In Nixon's Web.  

[Mark Lawson]

Since a criminal organization called the CIA continues to figure prominently in this discussion, I will here throw a name against the wall, to see if it sticks.  I did not know James O. Deiser personally, but a good friend of mine did.

Deiser claimed to have served in various capacities as a low-level CIA asset, and was in the process of writing a book about his experiences; but in a suspicious burglary of his home, the only item taken was the computer on which the lone copy of his manuscript was contained.  Deiser attributed the break-in and theft to the CIA.

In any event, sometime prior to Deiser's death in 2012, he penned a note to a mutual friend of my friend, regarding four DVDs that Deiser had passed along to him, containing thinly veiled "fiction" describing some of Deiser's past exploits.  I do not know what became of the DVDs, but their original hand-written cover note is still in the possession of my good friend.  My scan of the document is too large to post here in its entirety, but here is a snippet of it, followed by my textual transcription of the entire note:

D----,

More than I care to say I was offered to bid on a contract to take out people the (Company) wanted dead.

I never bid on even one, but others must have because the people ended up dead shortly after the bid notice was made.

Now Our government admits to "training" and "planning" hits, but [denies] any were carried out.

Every one of these four DVDs are based on Facts but had to be claimed to be fiction as the government would never let them out for any one to see.

Also just the thought that "Maybe" they were true will put fear in many people and cause them to think that "They" might be next on some hit list.

I never Assassinated anyone, but I did train others in how to prevent assassinations, and looking back to the late 1960s and what happened in Chile that put "Our Man" Pinochet in power in the 70s I see now that tho I did not pull the trigger, people I trained did.

No one can play in mud and not feel muddy afterward, and I sure feel muddy over that one!

These DVDs are Based on fact - even if the writers did take some liberties in writing the story's [sic], it happened!

J.

--------------------------

All that I have been able to find online about Deiser, so far, is this brief obituary:

http://www.whitefuneralhome.org/obituary/1881782

Strictly FWIIW....  ML

Edited January 1, 2019 by Mark Lawson
Typo

[Kirk Gallaway]

On 12/31/2018 at 6:07 AM, Larry Hancock said:

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). 

Larry, respectfully I appreciate your work  involved in coming to this conclusion, and my take from you is that  Hunt is a big mouthed,  bungling, CIA hack. Yet still 10 years after the assassination, he  manages to elevate himself to the White House. You don't have to go back in history to see that people ascend to high executive and high advisory positions who are completely unfit.

Obviously you and Jim have in essence dedicated a good part of your time, effort, just your life pursuing this national tragedy, than I ever will, and I respect that.

 

I have no idea if Hunt is completely shooting in the dark  in the last years of his life  to partially get revenge for his treatment and  using the most current juicy revelations. to spice up his story in order to support his son's future life.

.

Jim I asked you this.

We could also use more information as to your beliefs, Jim. You go to lengths to exclude only Cord Meyer, tell me your hunches about the other cast of characters Hunt named, namely Harvey, Phillips, Sturgis, Morales.

 

The fact that  you distanced yourself from this and are non committal, to in my thinking this very central  question,  I interpret is that you're stymied about this issue. Which is fine.

 

Jim Quote

Howard Hunt threw together some popular names in the field and placed them in a Waring blender for people to chew on.  The fact that none of them makes much sense placed together,

 

Jim, you're saying this  surprised me. I could not agree with you less. This operational cast of characters ( Harvey,Phillips, Sturgis, Morales) is not at all disparate or wacky.

 

Hunt quote in the first 30 seconds of his video presentation: "What is important in the story is that we backtracked the chain of command up through the Cord Meyer(?)and laying the doings at the doorstep of LBJ"

Notice his slip up, "through the Cord Meyer" as if he's just some sort of appendage in the story to link to LBJ.

 

The addition of Cord Meyer to LBJ  can easily be explained, as I've conjectured for years now with no real support  from anyone here. Meyer is the operational link to LBJ, which in my speculation is a planned diversion from Daddy,  the Agency, Dulles, (though honestly I think you have to take in account his health to have carried this out at this stage of his life and may have been done in his name.) Angleton, Helms,  though possibly he just distanced himself and looked the other way and speculated others.

 

It can explained as a limited hang out, with a diversion at the end, much like the alleged Castro- Russian involvement in the assassination itself, with an expectation of the same results, where the principals end up protected. Hunt gets a measure of revenge and takes care of his son. He is willing to be a historically infamous, (which is true in any case) because he has no remorse, thinks JFK was a security threat and either thinks more people should become aware of that, or is willing to be remembered as perhaps a historically misguided individual who at least was a patriot..

 

I don't know that any of this is true, but only that it can easily be explained.

 

Hunt's  cast of characters (Harvey, Phillips, Sturgis and Morales) really is JFK Assassination, CIA Rogue Conspiracy 1a.