E. Howard Hunt, Jr. grew up in a suburb of Buffalo, NY and graduated from Brown University. During WWII, he entered the US Navy and joined the OSS, which later became the CIA.
During the war and for decades thereafter, Hunt wrote novels in his spare time. Most were spy thrillers. Throughout his life he wrote 75 books. None of them were successful. Yet he kept getting published.
Warner Brothers Pictures purchased the rights to one of his books, Bimini Run, in 1949. It was never filmed.
At that time, however, Hunt was recruited into the CIA’s Special Activities Division. His covert job was to influence political activities. His first assignment sent him to Mexico City in 1951.
While there, he hired a new operative - William F. Buckley, Jr. He would go on to be a prominent Conservative TV personality. Hunt and Buckley became friends for life, and Buckley was godfather to Hunt’s children.
Hunt launched an operation that helped overthrow Guatemala’s democratically elected leader.
Years later, he created the cabal of Cuban military exiles who botched the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Hunt’s reputation was nearly destroyed. Yet he somehow kept failing upward.
He remained with the CIA as the first head of the newly formed and controversial Domestic Operations Division. By charter, the CIA isn’t supposed to engage in domestic spying. His duty was to influence American news.
1964: Ian Fleming’s James Bond was extremely popular, and the CIA wanted their own version. So Hunt was tasked with creating an American spy character. He wrote nine novels featuring his spy Peter Ward. The books didn’t catch on.
In 1970, Hunt retired from the CIA. One year later, Charles Colson hired him to work for the Nixon White House.
Nixon’s administration had a covert group called the Special Investigations Unit. The team performed political dirty tricks and became known as the Plumbers Unit.
E. Howard Hunt headed up the group with G. Gordon Liddy.
Their first task was to find dirt on Daniel Ellsberg, the famous Pentagon Papers whistleblower. Hunt and Liddy broke into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in search of damaging information but found nothing incriminating.
Then they went to Massachusetts in search of dirt on Ted Kennedy following the Chappaquiddick affair. Again, they failed.
Nixon hated syndicated newspaper columnist Jack Anderson, so Hunt and Liddy devised an assassination plot against him. They planned to smear his car steering wheel with LSD in the assumption that he would lose control of the vehicle, crash, and die. The crazy plot never materialized, however, because the Plumbers Unit became involved in a historic crime.
Hunt and Liddy plotted the bugging of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.
The Plumbers were discovered and arrested, including G. Gordon Liddy.
Hunt secretly asked members of Nixon’s administration and his re-election committee to pay off him and the Plumbers Unit to maintain their silence. The payments were made. Washington Post reporters followed the money trail. That set off a domino effect that eventually led all the way to the Oval Office.
The Watergate scandal was exposed. As a result, Nixon eventually resigned.
Hunt was arrested for criminal conspiracy for his role in Watergate, and he served prison time.
After his release, he wrote an autobiography that critics panned.
E. Howard Hunt died in 2007 at age 88 and left a history of bungled crimes and bizarre failures.
ALSO:
Unlike Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy’s fame - or infamy - continued for decades. He became a radio talk show celebrity on Sirius XM and was a regular contributor on Fox News. He died in 2021 at age 90.
ALSO:
Both Hunt and Liddy had their prison sentences commuted by, of all people, President Jimmy Carter.
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