Howard Hunt's new book, "American Spy"

[Douglas Caddy]

Watergate Warrior

By TIM WEINER

May 13, 2007

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/re...fBook%20Reviews

AMERICAN SPY

My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond.

By E. Howard Hunt with Greg Aunapu. Foreword by William F. Buckley Jr.

Illustrated. 340 pp. John Wiley & Sons. $25.95.

Howard Hunt, who died in January at the age of 88, was among the last living members of the clandestine service created as part of the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1940s. Hunt wanted to believe he fit the popular image of the C.I.A.’s founders — the American aristocrats, the tough young veterans of the last good war, the daring amateurs who set out to save the world.

Hunt, it turned out, was among the worst of them. He was a xxxx, a thief and a con man — all admirable qualities for C.I.A. officers who served overseas during the cold war, aspiring to the British definition of a diplomat: a gentleman who lies for his country abroad. Fine when Hunt was station chief in Uruguay. Dangerous when put to work in Washington.

Hunt burned out after two decades at the agency. One night in 1972, his old boss, Richard Helms, the director of central intelligence under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, picked up his bedside phone to hear that the recently retired Hunt was mixed up with a botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. This scene, the beginning of the end of Nixon’s presidency, opens Helms’s posthumously published autobiography. For suspense, it beats any of the countless thrillers Hunt wrote. And it has the benefit of being true, which brings us, unfortunately, to the book at hand.

Hunt channeled his creativity into fair-to-middling spy novels and, later, a self-pitying Watergate memoir. He was better when he made things up. “American Spy,” written with Greg Aunapu, is presented as a “secret history,” a double-barreled misrepresentation. There are no real secrets in this book. As history it is bunk.

The old hands at the C.I.A.’s publications review board, who maintain the agency’s memory hole, must have had a mordant chuckle over “American Spy,” and connoisseurs of literary crimes and misdemeanors will find much to savor here. Hunt describes a foreign president’s wife as “the true power behind the thrown.” He makes Dwight Eisenhower president in 1950, at the start of the Korean War, instead of 1953, at its end. He mangles the names of, among others, the leaders of Iran and Nicaragua. He also identifies Mark Felt, a k a Deep Throat, as Howard Felt — a howler calling for a psychiatrist as well as an editor. The publishers of this book seem to have received an impossible last draft, handed it to a book doctor and closed their eyes.

The low point — and there is strong competition — comes when the author examines the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hunt was falsely linked to the killing by conspiracy buffs, and this chapter can be read only as a twisted form of bitter revenge. He exhumes worm-eaten theories linking C.I.A. officers and their Cuban agents to the case and pretends to take them seriously. Then, with a straight face, he purports to put Lyndon B. Johnson’s finger on the trigger.

“Having Kennedy liquidated,” Hunt writes, “could have been a very tempting and logical move on Johnson’s part,” for “if he wanted to get rid of the president, he had the ability to do so by corrupting different people in the C.I.A. ... L.B.J. had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas.” Had enough?

Hunt closes by arguing that “the C.I.A. needs to clandestinely produce television programs, movies and electronic games” to recruit talented young Americans, citing Fox’s “24” as a model. Great idea — get me Rupert Murdoch! He wants “the PlayStation generation” to revive “the principals and ideals” — sigh — of the C.I.A.’s founding fathers, to go “back to the heart and souls of the ‘daring amateurs.’ ”

This comes from the man who helped bungle both the Bay of Pigs and the Watergate break-in. It is not sound counsel.

Far more mythology than history has been written about the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of those myths have been produced by C.I.A. officers — starting with Allen Dulles, director of central intelligence under Eisenhower and Kennedy — who constructed fables of derring-do and sold them to publishers and presidents alike. The legends, thanks in part to novels and movies, never die. They hold that a golden age of American intelligence was followed by a long assault on the agency by bleeding hearts, that a revitalized C.I.A. won the cold war under Ronald Reagan and that a new generation of spies now stands tall as America’s first line of defense. This is self-deception. It lands the agency — and the nation — in deep trouble every decade or so.

E. Howard Hunt’s work is in a long tradition of arrant nonsense. In short, this is a book to shun. It is a small blessing that its author has been spared the burden of answering for its publication.

Tim Weiner, a reporter for The Times, is the author of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the C.I.A.,” to be published in August.

[Pat Speer]

I hate to say it, Doug, but I'm shocked. The New York Times, at so late a point in the game, allows a writer whose written a book on the CIA, for which he almost certainly made contact with the agency, to write the review of Hunt's book? And they allow him to dismiss it out of hand as a deliberate lie? HOW INSULTING! For one, Weiner did not know Hunt and has no idea if he was lying or not! For two, Hunt does not say in his book that LBJ planned the assassination. Hunt says that he suspects a conspiracy,based on both Oswald's background and his inability to fire the shots, and that IF there'd been a conspiracy he thinks it likely LBJ was involved. It seems obvious to me that this Weiner is deliberately trashing Hunt's book as a way of cutting into the credibility of St John's "confession." The two are separate events, in my opinion.

Those hearing Mockingbirds in the night will have a field day with this review. How absolutely IDIOTIC!

Watergate Warrior

By TIM WEINER

May 13, 2007

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/re...fBook%20Reviews

AMERICAN SPY

My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond.

By E. Howard Hunt with Greg Aunapu. Foreword by William F. Buckley Jr.

Illustrated. 340 pp. John Wiley & Sons. $25.95.

Howard Hunt, who died in January at the age of 88, was among the last living members of the clandestine service created as part of the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1940s. Hunt wanted to believe he fit the popular image of the C.I.A.’s founders — the American aristocrats, the tough young veterans of the last good war, the daring amateurs who set out to save the world.

Hunt, it turned out, was among the worst of them. He was a xxxx, a thief and a con man — all admirable qualities for C.I.A. officers who served overseas during the cold war, aspiring to the British definition of a diplomat: a gentleman who lies for his country abroad. Fine when Hunt was station chief in Uruguay. Dangerous when put to work in Washington.

Hunt burned out after two decades at the agency. One night in 1972, his old boss, Richard Helms, the director of central intelligence under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, picked up his bedside phone to hear that the recently retired Hunt was mixed up with a botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. This scene, the beginning of the end of Nixon’s presidency, opens Helms’s posthumously published autobiography. For suspense, it beats any of the countless thrillers Hunt wrote. And it has the benefit of being true, which brings us, unfortunately, to the book at hand.

Hunt channeled his creativity into fair-to-middling spy novels and, later, a self-pitying Watergate memoir. He was better when he made things up. “American Spy,” written with Greg Aunapu, is presented as a “secret history,” a double-barreled misrepresentation. There are no real secrets in this book. As history it is bunk.

The old hands at the C.I.A.’s publications review board, who maintain the agency’s memory hole, must have had a mordant chuckle over “American Spy,” and connoisseurs of literary crimes and misdemeanors will find much to savor here. Hunt describes a foreign president’s wife as “the true power behind the thrown.” He makes Dwight Eisenhower president in 1950, at the start of the Korean War, instead of 1953, at its end. He mangles the names of, among others, the leaders of Iran and Nicaragua. He also identifies Mark Felt, a k a Deep Throat, as Howard Felt — a howler calling for a psychiatrist as well as an editor. The publishers of this book seem to have received an impossible last draft, handed it to a book doctor and closed their eyes.

The low point — and there is strong competition — comes when the author examines the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hunt was falsely linked to the killing by conspiracy buffs, and this chapter can be read only as a twisted form of bitter revenge. He exhumes worm-eaten theories linking C.I.A. officers and their Cuban agents to the case and pretends to take them seriously. Then, with a straight face, he purports to put Lyndon B. Johnson’s finger on the trigger.

“Having Kennedy liquidated,” Hunt writes, “could have been a very tempting and logical move on Johnson’s part,” for “if he wanted to get rid of the president, he had the ability to do so by corrupting different people in the C.I.A. ... L.B.J. had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas.” Had enough?

Hunt closes by arguing that “the C.I.A. needs to clandestinely produce television programs, movies and electronic games” to recruit talented young Americans, citing Fox’s “24” as a model. Great idea — get me Rupert Murdoch! He wants “the PlayStation generation” to revive “the principals and ideals” — sigh — of the C.I.A.’s founding fathers, to go “back to the heart and souls of the ‘daring amateurs.’ ”

This comes from the man who helped bungle both the Bay of Pigs and the Watergate break-in. It is not sound counsel.

Far more mythology than history has been written about the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of those myths have been produced by C.I.A. officers — starting with Allen Dulles, director of central intelligence under Eisenhower and Kennedy — who constructed fables of derring-do and sold them to publishers and presidents alike. The legends, thanks in part to novels and movies, never die. They hold that a golden age of American intelligence was followed by a long assault on the agency by bleeding hearts, that a revitalized C.I.A. won the cold war under Ronald Reagan and that a new generation of spies now stands tall as America’s first line of defense. This is self-deception. It lands the agency — and the nation — in deep trouble every decade or so.

E. Howard Hunt’s work is in a long tradition of arrant nonsense. In short, this is a book to shun. It is a small blessing that its author has been spared the burden of answering for its publication.

Tim Weiner, a reporter for The Times, is the author of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the C.I.A.,” to be published in August.

[Douglas Caddy]

I hate to say it, Doug, but I'm shocked. The New York Times, at so late a point in the game, allows a writer whose written a book on the CIA, for which he almost certainly made contact with the agency, to write the review of Hunt's book? And they allow him to dismiss it out of hand as a deliberate lie? HOW INSULTING! For one, Weiner did not know Hunt and has no idea if he was lying or not! For two, Hunt does not say in his book that LBJ planned the assassination. Hunt says that he suspects a conspiracy,based on both Oswald's background and his inability to fire the shots, and that IF there'd been a conspiracy he thinks it likely LBJ was involved. It seems obvious to me that this Weiner is deliberately trashing Hunt's book as a way of cutting into the credibility of St John's "confession." The two are separate events, in my opinion.

Those hearing Mockingbirds in the night will have a field day with this review. How absolutely IDIOTIC!

Watergate Warrior

By TIM WEINER

May 13, 2007

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/re...fBook%20Reviews

AMERICAN SPY

My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond.

By E. Howard Hunt with Greg Aunapu. Foreword by William F. Buckley Jr.

Illustrated. 340 pp. John Wiley & Sons. $25.95.

Howard Hunt, who died in January at the age of 88, was among the last living members of the clandestine service created as part of the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1940s. Hunt wanted to believe he fit the popular image of the C.I.A.’s founders — the American aristocrats, the tough young veterans of the last good war, the daring amateurs who set out to save the world.

Hunt, it turned out, was among the worst of them. He was a xxxx, a thief and a con man — all admirable qualities for C.I.A. officers who served overseas during the cold war, aspiring to the British definition of a diplomat: a gentleman who lies for his country abroad. Fine when Hunt was station chief in Uruguay. Dangerous when put to work in Washington.

Hunt burned out after two decades at the agency. One night in 1972, his old boss, Richard Helms, the director of central intelligence under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, picked up his bedside phone to hear that the recently retired Hunt was mixed up with a botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. This scene, the beginning of the end of Nixon’s presidency, opens Helms’s posthumously published autobiography. For suspense, it beats any of the countless thrillers Hunt wrote. And it has the benefit of being true, which brings us, unfortunately, to the book at hand.

Hunt channeled his creativity into fair-to-middling spy novels and, later, a self-pitying Watergate memoir. He was better when he made things up. “American Spy,” written with Greg Aunapu, is presented as a “secret history,” a double-barreled misrepresentation. There are no real secrets in this book. As history it is bunk.

The old hands at the C.I.A.’s publications review board, who maintain the agency’s memory hole, must have had a mordant chuckle over “American Spy,” and connoisseurs of literary crimes and misdemeanors will find much to savor here. Hunt describes a foreign president’s wife as “the true power behind the thrown.” He makes Dwight Eisenhower president in 1950, at the start of the Korean War, instead of 1953, at its end. He mangles the names of, among others, the leaders of Iran and Nicaragua. He also identifies Mark Felt, a k a Deep Throat, as Howard Felt — a howler calling for a psychiatrist as well as an editor. The publishers of this book seem to have received an impossible last draft, handed it to a book doctor and closed their eyes.

The low point — and there is strong competition — comes when the author examines the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hunt was falsely linked to the killing by conspiracy buffs, and this chapter can be read only as a twisted form of bitter revenge. He exhumes worm-eaten theories linking C.I.A. officers and their Cuban agents to the case and pretends to take them seriously. Then, with a straight face, he purports to put Lyndon B. Johnson’s finger on the trigger.

“Having Kennedy liquidated,” Hunt writes, “could have been a very tempting and logical move on Johnson’s part,” for “if he wanted to get rid of the president, he had the ability to do so by corrupting different people in the C.I.A. ... L.B.J. had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas.” Had enough?

Hunt closes by arguing that “the C.I.A. needs to clandestinely produce television programs, movies and electronic games” to recruit talented young Americans, citing Fox’s “24” as a model. Great idea — get me Rupert Murdoch! He wants “the PlayStation generation” to revive “the principals and ideals” — sigh — of the C.I.A.’s founding fathers, to go “back to the heart and souls of the ‘daring amateurs.’ ”

This comes from the man who helped bungle both the Bay of Pigs and the Watergate break-in. It is not sound counsel.

Far more mythology than history has been written about the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of those myths have been produced by C.I.A. officers — starting with Allen Dulles, director of central intelligence under Eisenhower and Kennedy — who constructed fables of derring-do and sold them to publishers and presidents alike. The legends, thanks in part to novels and movies, never die. They hold that a golden age of American intelligence was followed by a long assault on the agency by bleeding hearts, that a revitalized C.I.A. won the cold war under Ronald Reagan and that a new generation of spies now stands tall as America’s first line of defense. This is self-deception. It lands the agency — and the nation — in deep trouble every decade or so.

E. Howard Hunt’s work is in a long tradition of arrant nonsense. In short, this is a book to shun. It is a small blessing that its author has been spared the burden of answering for its publication.

Tim Weiner, a reporter for The Times, is the author of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the C.I.A.,” to be published in August.

Pat: I agree with you. Weiner overplayed his hand as a book critic by allowing his bias to be self-evident, and thus undercutting any credibility that his review might have.

-- Doug

[Guest John Gillespie]

Watergate Warrior

By TIM WEINER

May 13, 2007

The New York Times Sunday Book Review

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/books/re...fBook%20Reviews

AMERICAN SPY

My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond.

By E. Howard Hunt with Greg Aunapu. Foreword by William F. Buckley Jr.

Illustrated. 340 pp. John Wiley & Sons. $25.95.

Howard Hunt, who died in January at the age of 88, was among the last living members of the clandestine service created as part of the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1940s. Hunt wanted to believe he fit the popular image of the C.I.A.’s founders — the American aristocrats, the tough young veterans of the last good war, the daring amateurs who set out to save the world.

Hunt, it turned out, was among the worst of them. He was a xxxx, a thief and a con man — all admirable qualities for C.I.A. officers who served overseas during the cold war, aspiring to the British definition of a diplomat: a gentleman who lies for his country abroad. Fine when Hunt was station chief in Uruguay. Dangerous when put to work in Washington.

Hunt burned out after two decades at the agency. One night in 1972, his old boss, Richard Helms, the director of central intelligence under Presidents Johnson and Nixon, picked up his bedside phone to hear that the recently retired Hunt was mixed up with a botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. This scene, the beginning of the end of Nixon’s presidency, opens Helms’s posthumously published autobiography. For suspense, it beats any of the countless thrillers Hunt wrote. And it has the benefit of being true, which brings us, unfortunately, to the book at hand.

Hunt channeled his creativity into fair-to-middling spy novels and, later, a self-pitying Watergate memoir. He was better when he made things up. “American Spy,” written with Greg Aunapu, is presented as a “secret history,” a double-barreled misrepresentation. There are no real secrets in this book. As history it is bunk.

The old hands at the C.I.A.’s publications review board, who maintain the agency’s memory hole, must have had a mordant chuckle over “American Spy,” and connoisseurs of literary crimes and misdemeanors will find much to savor here. Hunt describes a foreign president’s wife as “the true power behind the thrown.” He makes Dwight Eisenhower president in 1950, at the start of the Korean War, instead of 1953, at its end. He mangles the names of, among others, the leaders of Iran and Nicaragua. He also identifies Mark Felt, a k a Deep Throat, as Howard Felt — a howler calling for a psychiatrist as well as an editor. The publishers of this book seem to have received an impossible last draft, handed it to a book doctor and closed their eyes.

The low point — and there is strong competition — comes when the author examines the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Hunt was falsely linked to the killing by conspiracy buffs, and this chapter can be read only as a twisted form of bitter revenge. He exhumes worm-eaten theories linking C.I.A. officers and their Cuban agents to the case and pretends to take them seriously. Then, with a straight face, he purports to put Lyndon B. Johnson’s finger on the trigger.

“Having Kennedy liquidated,” Hunt writes, “could have been a very tempting and logical move on Johnson’s part,” for “if he wanted to get rid of the president, he had the ability to do so by corrupting different people in the C.I.A. ... L.B.J. had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas.” Had enough?

Hunt closes by arguing that “the C.I.A. needs to clandestinely produce television programs, movies and electronic games” to recruit talented young Americans, citing Fox’s “24” as a model. Great idea — get me Rupert Murdoch! He wants “the PlayStation generation” to revive “the principals and ideals” — sigh — of the C.I.A.’s founding fathers, to go “back to the heart and souls of the ‘daring amateurs.’ ”

This comes from the man who helped bungle both the Bay of Pigs and the Watergate break-in. It is not sound counsel.

Far more mythology than history has been written about the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of those myths have been produced by C.I.A. officers — starting with Allen Dulles, director of central intelligence under Eisenhower and Kennedy — who constructed fables of derring-do and sold them to publishers and presidents alike. The legends, thanks in part to novels and movies, never die. They hold that a golden age of American intelligence was followed by a long assault on the agency by bleeding hearts, that a revitalized C.I.A. won the cold war under Ronald Reagan and that a new generation of spies now stands tall as America’s first line of defense. This is self-deception. It lands the agency — and the nation — in deep trouble every decade or so.

E. Howard Hunt’s work is in a long tradition of arrant nonsense. In short, this is a book to shun. It is a small blessing that its author has been spared the burden of answering for its publication.

Tim Weiner, a reporter for The Times, is the author of “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the C.I.A.,” to be published in August.

____________________________________________________

ALERT: St John Hunt is on with Alex Jones http://www.infowars.com/listen.html RIGHT NOW.....

Edited May 14, 2007 by John Gillespie