E. Howard Hunt dies

[Ron Ecker]

How many believe that Hunt was "ex-CIA" when he went to work for the Mullen front company and then the White House? (And isn't the White House another front too?)

[Terry Mauro]

How many believe that Hunt was "ex-CIA" when he went to work for the Mullen front company and then the White House? (And isn't the White House another front too?)

***********************************************************

"How many believe that Hunt was "ex-CIA" when he went to work for the Mullen front company and then the White House? (And isn't the White House another front too?)"

Look at it this way, Ron. Working for the CIA is like having a disease like Hepatitis C, that you can never get rid of. You can never state that you "...had Hepatitis C." No, you have Hepatitis C. At least until they come up with a permanent cure for it. Likewise, the analogy, "...I worked for the CIA." No, you work for the CIA. And, always will be under the auspices of the CIA, even after you die, whether you like it, or not. It's on par with selling your soul to the devil, at the proverbial crossroads.

[Guest Mark Valenti]

Look at it this way, Ron. Working for the CIA is like having a disease like Hepatitis C, that you can never get rid of. You can never state that you "...had Hepatitis C." No, you have Hepatitis C. At least until they come up with a permanent cure for it. Likewise, the analogy, "...I worked for the CIA." No, you work for the CIA. And, always will be under the auspices of the CIA, even after you die, whether you like it, or not. It's on par with selling your soul to the devil, at the proverbial crossroads.

I believe some people work for the CIA without ever realizing they work for the CIA.

[Miles Scull]

Look at it this way, Ron. Working for the CIA is like having a disease like Hepatitis C, that you can never get rid of. You can never state that you "...had Hepatitis C." No, you have Hepatitis C. At least until they come up with a permanent cure for it. Likewise, the analogy, "...I worked for the CIA." No, you work for the CIA. And, always will be under the auspices of the CIA, even after you die, whether you like it, or not. It's on par with selling your soul to the devil, at the proverbial crossroads.

I believe some people work for the CIA without ever realizing they work for the CIA.

This is stranger: they have thought that they were working for the CIA, but were actually under KBG handling.

[Terry Mauro]

Look at it this way, Ron. Working for the CIA is like having a disease like Hepatitis C, that you can never get rid of. You can never state that you "...had Hepatitis C." No, you have Hepatitis C. At least until they come up with a permanent cure for it. Likewise, the analogy, "...I worked for the CIA." No, you work for the CIA. And, always will be under the auspices of the CIA, even after you die, whether you like it, or not. It's on par with selling your soul to the devil, at the proverbial crossroads.

I believe some people work for the CIA without ever realizing they work for the CIA.

This is stranger: they have thought that they were working for the CIA, but were actually under KBG handling.

*********************************************************

"I believe some people work for the CIA without ever realizing they work for the CIA."

"This is stranger: they have thought that they were working for the CIA, but were actually under KBG handling."

I think they're known as "conduits" and "assets."

[Douglas Caddy]

I'll bet Nixon has already warned Satan, "That Hunt knows a hell of a lot of things."

Hunt's book as offered by Amazon.com, available Feb. 23rd:

American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond (Hardcover)

by 1. E. Howard Hunt (Author), Greg Aunapu (Author)

List Price: $25.95

Price: $17.13

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Career spy, Watergate conspirator and prolific suspense novelist Hunt (Guilty Knowledge) collaborated with journalist Aunapu (Without a Trace) on this breezy, unrepentant memoir. Hunt (who died recently at 88) recalls the highlights of a long career, from WWII service with the fabled Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—predecessor of the CIA—to a career with the agency itself and a stint as a consultant to the Nixon White House. As a White House operative, Hunt specialized in dirty tricks and break-ins—including the Democratic National Committee's headquarters—and served 33 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He claims to have been a magnet for women, especially models, and shamelessly drops the names of the rich and powerful. He also played a key role in the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation. As for his role in Watergate, he blames his "bulldog loyalty" and concedes only that he and his fellow conspirators did "the wrong things for the right reasons." In a postscript, Hunt urges reforming the beleaguered CIA in the image of the wartime OSS and its "daring amateurs." Hunt's nostalgic memoir breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field. (Apr.)

Book Description

Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house

Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon:

His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more

His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms

His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA

The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroadThe motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office

Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished

The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies

A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in

Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up

Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate.

From the Inside Flap

For three decades, E. Howard Hunt served his nation, first in the U.S. Navy, then in the OSS and CIA, before being hired by President Nixon's staff, for whom he helped plan the infamous Watergate break-in. Now he reveals what he could only hint at in his seventy-plus spy novels: his role in some of the best known and least understood events in the postwar era. And he does so without spin or excuses.

From his early days as an OSS operative in China during World War II, through his decades as a covert cold warrior with the CIA, and on to his fateful years in the Nixon White House, Hunt vividly describes the rigorous training, meticulous planning, and artful deceit that are the meat and potatoes of the espionage game. He offers startling revelations about the CIA's 1954 coup in Guatemala, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, the agency's covert domestic propaganda campaign, and much more.

He also discusses the 1971 break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, reveals his motives for participating in Watergate, even though he thought it was a mistake, and explains why his wife was carrying $10,000 in cash when she died in a plane crash en route to Chicago in 1972. He also reveals that because his daughter failed to follow his directions and dispose of incriminating evidence, he was later able to use these materials and become the star witness against the heads of the Watergate conspiracy.

In the post-Watergate years, Hunt became the focus of numerous conspiracy theories suggesting that he: participated in the JFK assassination; wrote the book by George Wallace's would-be assassin; knew the secret "alternative" motive for breaking into the DNC headquarters. Hunt debunks a number of these accusations and defends himself vigorously against the rest.

Based on audiotape transcripts, interviews, handwritten memos, and documents that Hunt has kept over the years, American Spy takes you behind the scenes to meet all of the Watergate conspirators as you've never seen them before. Destined to provoke many new controversies as it puts others to rest, it is the most memorable memoir you'll read this year.

From the Back Cover

Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house

Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon:

His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more

His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms

His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA

The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroad

The motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office

Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished

The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies

A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in

Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up

Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate.

About the Author

White House "plumber" E. HOWARD HUNT served as a covert operative for the CIA from 1950 until the 1970s, and participated in many of the agency's most secret missions, both abroad and in the United States. He is also the author of more than seventy spy novels.

GREG AUNAPU is a nationally respected journalist, who worked as a freelancer for Time and People magazines for ten years, and has reported for many national news organizations. He is coauthor of two previous books, most recently, Without a Trace.

[Robert Howard]

I'll bet Nixon has already warned Satan, "That Hunt knows a hell of a lot of things."

Hunt's book as offered by Amazon.com, available Feb. 23rd:

American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond (Hardcover)

by 1. E. Howard Hunt (Author), Greg Aunapu (Author)

List Price: $25.95

Price: $17.13

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Career spy, Watergate conspirator and prolific suspense novelist Hunt (Guilty Knowledge) collaborated with journalist Aunapu (Without a Trace) on this breezy, unrepentant memoir. Hunt (who died recently at 88) recalls the highlights of a long career, from WWII service with the fabled Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—predecessor of the CIA—to a career with the agency itself and a stint as a consultant to the Nixon White House. As a White House operative, Hunt specialized in dirty tricks and break-ins—including the Democratic National Committee's headquarters—and served 33 months in federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He claims to have been a magnet for women, especially models, and shamelessly drops the names of the rich and powerful. He also played a key role in the disastrous Bay of Pigs operation. As for his role in Watergate, he blames his "bulldog loyalty" and concedes only that he and his fellow conspirators did "the wrong things for the right reasons." In a postscript, Hunt urges reforming the beleaguered CIA in the image of the wartime OSS and its "daring amateurs." Hunt's nostalgic memoir breaks scant new ground in an already crowded field. (Apr.)

Book Description

Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house

Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon:

His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more

His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms

His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA

The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroadThe motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office

Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished

The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies

A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in

Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up

Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate.

From the Inside Flap

For three decades, E. Howard Hunt served his nation, first in the U.S. Navy, then in the OSS and CIA, before being hired by President Nixon's staff, for whom he helped plan the infamous Watergate break-in. Now he reveals what he could only hint at in his seventy-plus spy novels: his role in some of the best known and least understood events in the postwar era. And he does so without spin or excuses.

From his early days as an OSS operative in China during World War II, through his decades as a covert cold warrior with the CIA, and on to his fateful years in the Nixon White House, Hunt vividly describes the rigorous training, meticulous planning, and artful deceit that are the meat and potatoes of the espionage game. He offers startling revelations about the CIA's 1954 coup in Guatemala, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, the agency's covert domestic propaganda campaign, and much more.

He also discusses the 1971 break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, reveals his motives for participating in Watergate, even though he thought it was a mistake, and explains why his wife was carrying $10,000 in cash when she died in a plane crash en route to Chicago in 1972. He also reveals that because his daughter failed to follow his directions and dispose of incriminating evidence, he was later able to use these materials and become the star witness against the heads of the Watergate conspiracy.

In the post-Watergate years, Hunt became the focus of numerous conspiracy theories suggesting that he: participated in the JFK assassination; wrote the book by George Wallace's would-be assassin; knew the secret "alternative" motive for breaking into the DNC headquarters. Hunt debunks a number of these accusations and defends himself vigorously against the rest.

Based on audiotape transcripts, interviews, handwritten memos, and documents that Hunt has kept over the years, American Spy takes you behind the scenes to meet all of the Watergate conspirators as you've never seen them before. Destined to provoke many new controversies as it puts others to rest, it is the most memorable memoir you'll read this year.

From the Back Cover

Startling revelations from the OSS, the CIA, and the Nixon White house

Think you know everything there is to know about the OSS, the Cold War, the CIA, and Watergate? Think again. In American Spy, one of the key figures in postwar international and political espionage tells all. Former OSS and CIA operative and White House staffer E. Howard Hunt takes you into the covert designs of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon:

His involvement in the CIA coup in Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and more

His work with CIA officials such as Allen Dulles and Richard Helms

His friendship with William F. Buckley Jr., whom Hunt brought into the CIA

The amazing steps the CIA took to manipulate the media in America and abroad

The motives behind the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office

Why the White House "plumbers" were formed and what they accomplished

The truth behind Operation Gemstone, a series of planned black ops activities against Nixon's political enemies

A minute-by-minute account of the Watergate break-in

Previously unreleased details of the post-Watergate cover-up

Complete with documentation from audiotape transcripts, handwritten notes, and official documents, American Spy is must reading for anyone who is fascinated by real-life spy tales, high-stakes politics, and, of course, Watergate.

About the Author

White House "plumber" E. HOWARD HUNT served as a covert operative for the CIA from 1950 until the 1970s, and participated in many of the agency's most secret missions, both abroad and in the United States. He is also the author of more than seventy spy novels.

GREG AUNAPU is a nationally respected journalist, who worked as a freelancer for Time and People magazines for ten years, and has reported for many national news organizations. He is coauthor of two previous books, most recently, Without a Trace.

Although considering the man died recently, the fact that his tome has been pushed forward to March 7, 2007 [that's what a book search while at Border's spit out about a week ago] is not unusual I would say, but I bet there are those who think......"Geez what a wonderful opportunity to do some post "proofing/redacting take your pick" I mean if Uncle Sam felt it was in the Nation's "best interests," what threat would a book company or relatives pose?

Answer......Absolutely None?

I've always thought it would be a good research tool to take the late Mr Hunt's and Frank Fiorini's various testimonies and compare them side by side....an idea for those who live like the proverbial Maytag repairman...so little time so much to do.....

[Douglas Caddy]

I'll bet Nixon has already warned Satan, "That Hunt knows a hell of a lot of things."

February 18, 2007

Essay

Literary Agent

By RACHEL DONADIO

The New York Times Book Review

When E. Howard Hunt died last month at 88, he was remembered as the longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer who helped organize the botched Bay of Pigs invasion and served jail time for orchestrating the Watergate break-in. Less well known is that Hunt was once a promising literary writer.

Like so many in the first wave of C.I.A. men, Hunt, a Brown graduate, worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, then headed to Europe in 1948, where he traveled in the Paris-Vienna orbit of other literary-minded Ivy Leaguers working in government jobs, some covertly. He spent much of the ’50s in Latin America, and left the agency in 1970, having been sidelined in the ’60s after the Bay of Pigs mission went awry. But before all that, while still in his 20s, Hunt published short stories in The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan, then a showcase for serious fiction.

Not exactly on a par with Nabokov and Cheever, whose work was appearing in The New Yorker at the same time, Hunt instead imitated the hard-boiled Hemingwayesque style in vogue in those years. “I thought of the North Atlantic, where I’d rolled around on a tin can for almost a year,” he wrote in “Departure,” a story about soldiers waiting to be sent home from the South Pacific, published in December 1943. “That had been tough, too, but there was always Boston or New York or Norfolk at one end of the line and Reykjavik or Londonderry at the other. At least they were places. Towns, cities, villages with people and pubs and stores and shops and girls who looked like girls you’d seen before.”

Hunt’s first novel, “East of Farewell,” published in 1942, when he was 23, was also a fictionalized account of his time on convoy duty in the North Atlantic. Hunt recalled his surprise when the prestigious publisher Knopf agreed to take it on. “Amazingly to me, the work was quickly accepted,” Hunt wrote in his memoir, “American Spy,” which is scheduled to appear in March. “Reviews were all I could have hoped for, but I couldn’t compete with the real-life war blaring in the newspaper headlines and newsreels. Sales were not good enough to escalate me to full-time author.”

The New York Times reviewer called “East of Farewell” a “crashing start for a new writer.” Critics weren’t so fond of Hunt’s fourth novel, “Bimini Run” (1949), a love triangle set in the Caribbean. The Times found it “lifeless and unexciting,” but it sold 150,000 copies and Warner Brothers bought it for $35,000, a fortune at the time.

In 1946, Hunt had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and had gone to Mexico to write a novel, “Stranger in Town,” which sold well in paperback. That year, two other up-and-coming writers were denied the same fellowship. “The only thing Truman Capote and I have in common was Howard Hunt beat us out for a Guggenheim,” Gore Vidal recalled in an interview. “That sort of summed up my view of prizes and foundation work; they would instinctively go to the one who was least deserving.”

In 1948, Hunt went to Paris to work for the Marshall Plan, ostensibly distributing aid through the Economic Cooperation Administration. There, Hunt crossed paths with another former O.S.S. man, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. In his 2000 memoir, “A Life in the Twentieth Century,” Schlesinger recalled that Hunt had “attracted attention” in the E.C.A. “as a certified published novelist.” “I did not much like him; he seemed on the sneaky side,” Schlesinger wrote. In a recent telephone interview, Schlesinger said he hadn’t read any of Hunt’s books, but reiterated that he found him “a sneaky character.” In his 1974 memoir, “Undercover,” Hunt was similarly dismissive of Schlesinger, seeing him as part of “the E.C.A.’s ambivalent attitude toward Communism.”

Indeed, Hunt’s hard-line views increasingly put him at odds with the more genteel anti-Communist liberalism prevalent within the C.I.A. in those years. It was a stance he shared with William F. Buckley Jr., who joined the C.I.A. after graduating from Yale and worked undercover for Hunt in Mexico City, one of the first agency men posted there in the early years of the cold war. Beyond politics, the two men also shared a taste for good food and wine, often dining at what Hunt said was “then the only good French restaurant in Mexico City.”

In an interview, Buckley recalled that Hunt was remarkably prolific. “He did have a reputation for simply holing up on a Wednesday morning and then finishing the book by the weekend,” Buckley said. “But he never discussed it. That was a completely discrete operation.”

Back in Washington after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Hunt wrote increasingly pulpy, glamorous espionage fantasies, far removed from the drudgery of his actual duties. In a column last month, Buckley recalled that Allen Dulles, then head of the agency, told Hunt — who wrote more than 70 novels — that he could continue to publish his fiction without clearance, as long as he used a pseudonym. (Hunt’s noms de plume included John Baxter, Robert Dietrich and David St. John.) “Hunt handed me his latest book, ‘Catch Me in Zanzibar,’ by Gordon Davis,” Buckley wrote. “I leafed through it and found printed on the last page, ‘You have just finished another novel by Howard Hunt.’ I thought this hilarious. So did Howard. The reaction of Allen Dulles is not recorded.”

It was Hunt’s time working for the C.I.A. in South America — when he helped overthrow the leftist president Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954 and later became station chief in Montevideo, Uruguay — that caught the attention of Norman Mailer, who included a fictionalized portrait of Hunt in “Harlot’s Ghost,” his 1991 novel about the C.I.A. In one scene, Mailer describes a dinner at an agency safe house in Key Biscayne. “I used to engage the place occasionally during the pre-Pigs period, but Howard occupies it now, and demonstrates for me that there are amenities to agency life,” the narrator says. “We had a corkeroo of a repast, polished off with a Château Yquem, served up — I only learn of their existence at this late date — by two contract agency caterers, who shop for special occasions, chef it forth in haute cuisine, and serve it themselves.”

“I found him fascinating,” Mailer said of Hunt in a recent interview. “Not in a large way but as a man of middle rank in intelligence. He was so full of virtues and vices and airs and vanities that I thought he made a marvelous character.”

Vidal called Hunt’s prose “overheated, slightly dizzy.” In a comprehensive analysis of Hunt’s work published in The New York Review of Books in 1973, Vidal introduced the eccentric theory that Hunt might have written the diary that was found in the car of Arthur H. Bremer, the unemployed busboy who in 1972 attempted to assassinate Gov. George Wallace of Alabama. “I was fairly convinced after reading the diaries very carefully when they finally came out that he must have had a hand in them,” Vidal said recently. “I’m still convinced of it. There are similarities in the style.”

Vidal’s essay appeared in the heat of the Watergate scandal. No longer with the C.I.A. — he later said he quit the agency because it “was infested with Democrats,” although by then his C.I.A. career had pretty much run aground — Hunt was working in public relations and still writing novels when he got a call from another Brown alumnus, Charles Colson, then special counsel to President Nixon. Colson recruited Hunt to help wiretap the Democratic National Committee headquarters and organize the break-in.

When the scandal broke, Buckley offered Hunt the services of his personal attorney for his Watergate trial. But in his column, he offered a scathing assessment of his former boss. “Hunt had lived outside the law in the service first of his country, subsequently of President Nixon,” he wrote. Hunt had invented himself through his novels, but even in the largest sense, his fictions were at odds with the truth. In the end, Buckley wrote, “Hunt, the dramatist, didn’t understand that political realities at the highest level transcend the working realities of spy life.”

Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book Review.