Howard Hunt

Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (October 9, 1918 - January 23, 2007) was a CIA officer and prolific spy novelist who participated in two of the most significant CIA covert operations of the Cold War era - the 1954 Guatemalan coup (Operation PBSUCCESS) and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion - before his involvement in the Watergate burglary of June 1972 made him one of the most publicly known CIA officers in American history.¹

Early CIA Career

Hunt graduated from Brown University and served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II before joining the CIA at its founding. He was stationed in Mexico City, Vienna, Tokyo, and Uruguay, developing expertise in political action and propaganda operations. He was also a prolific author of spy fiction under multiple pen names, publishing more than forty novels during his career.

During the early 1950s Hunt worked under Frank Wisner in the Office of Policy Coordination, the CIA's political warfare arm that conducted operations across Europe and Asia against Soviet influence. This experience positioned him for PBSUCCESS.¹

Operation PBSUCCESS

Hunt was assigned to Operation PBSUCCESS in 1953-1954 as chief of political action and propaganda. His primary responsibility was the "Voice of Liberation" - Radio Liberación - the CIA-operated radio station broadcasting from Honduras that fabricated reports of the exile Liberation Army's military successes in Guatemala. The radio campaign was central to the operation's psychological strategy: convincing the Guatemalan military officer corps that Jacobo Arbenz's position was militarily hopeless, inducing the defections that ultimately forced Arbenz's resignation.

Hunt also managed the political exile leadership, working to maintain cohesion among the Guatemalan exile groups that would form the successor government. The experience gave Hunt a model he would attempt to apply in Cuba seven years later.¹

David Atlee Phillips, who worked under Hunt on the Guatemalan operation, found him "friendly, anxious to help me, and considerate," with credentials that "seemed impeccable: Brown University, O.S.S. in China, a successful and prolific writer," and "unusually conservative for a CIA officer." A colleague advised him: "Listen to the music when he sings, but don't pay any attention to his lyrics." Hunt described to him the suicide of the father of President Jacobo Arbenz, who had filled his mouth with water before firing a pistol into it: "Like a bomb. It's the water that does it. Really effective. Whole head is blown off."²

Bay of Pigs

Hunt was assigned as the CIA's political officer for the Bay of Pigs invasion, responsible for the Cuban Revolutionary Council - the exile political organization that would form a provisional government after the expected overthrow of Fidel Castro. He worked with the exile leadership in Miami and later in New York, managing their political expectations and organizational disputes.

The Bay of Pigs was a catastrophic failure, and Hunt's political operation collapsed along with the military operation. The exile political leadership was not told the operation was under way until it had already failed, and Hunt's management of their expectations was blamed by exile leaders for contributing to the political disorder. His role in the operation was not publicly acknowledged.¹

Domestic Operations Division

A CIA security memorandum of 1972 gives Hunt's periods of overt employment as November 1949 to December 1950, November 1953 to January 1954, October 1956 to January 1957, and July 1960 to September 1966. His assistant Elizabeth McIntosh recorded in 1973 that when she returned from an overseas post "Tracy Barnes was setting up the Domestic Operations Division and Mr. Hunt was assigned Chief" of its covert action section, that she worked for him for three years, and that after his tour in Spain he came back as chief of covert action for the Europe division. Thomas Karamessines later distinguished for Senate investigators between the division's concept before and after his own appointment as deputy director for plans.³

The Philadelphia filmmaker R.C. Horsch said in a recorded interview published in 2026 that between 1961 and 1965 he tapped telephones and committed burglaries as a freelance for the Wackenhut Corporation, and that a regular client introduced as "Mr. Smith" was Hunt. The CIA had granted George Wackenhut a covert security approval on November 21, 1961.⁴

The Mullen Company and ITT

Hunt retired on April 30, 1970, and went to work for the Robert R. Mullen Company, a Washington public relations firm that had given cover to agency officers abroad since 1963. The agency's retirement office arranged the introduction and Director Richard Helms wrote a recommendation. Mullen told him of the cover arrangement without authorization, and the Central Cover Staff had him cleared as witting in June 1970. He told the staff in July 1971 that he had been assigned to the White House.⁵

In March 1972, at the direction of Charles Colson, he flew to Denver in a wig and with alias documents supplied by the agency to question the ITT lobbyist Dita Beard in her hospital room. The House subcommittee that examined the agency's part in Watergate listed the visit among the misuses of its assistance. On July 26, 1973, the Watergate special prosecutor's office asked the agency whether it knew of "any intelligence or undercover activities performed by Howard Hunt and/or Gordon Liddy for ITT," of arrangements between ITT and the Mullen firm, or of any employment of the ITT publicist Hal Hendrix. The released reply addresses only the Mullen firm and an ITT office in Coral Gables.⁶

Watergate

By 1971, Hunt had been nominally retired from the CIA and was working as a consultant to the White House under Charles Colson, a senior aide to President Richard Nixon. Nixon's "plumbers" unit - tasked with plugging information leaks and conducting political intelligence operations - recruited Hunt for various activities, including the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in September 1971.

On the night of June 17, 1972, Hunt organized and directed the team that broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington - the burglary that produced five arrests, triggered the Senate investigation and Special Prosecutor investigation, and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in August 1974.

Hunt was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping and sentenced to 35 years, subsequently reduced. He served approximately 33 months in federal prison. His wife Dorothy died in a plane crash in December 1972, with some researchers suggesting the crash was not accidental; the official ruling was that it was an accident.⁷

The Office of Security reported to the inspector general on May 22, 1975, for the Church Committee, that in November 1963 Hunt "was assigned to DDP/CA Staff, Office of the Chief, Headquarters; however, apparently Mr. Hunt had collateral duties with DDP/Domestic Operations Division/Facilities Branch," from November 1961 to February 1965, and that "neither Mr. Hunt nor Mr. McCord were in charge of Mexican operations at the time of the Kennedy assassination."⁸

Helms's secretary Elizabeth Dunlevy testified in 1974 that Hunt "had always been grateful to her for arranging a loan in connection with the terrible financial strain involving his daughter"; the agency's observer noted that Helms had placed the call that produced a loan of about 12,000 dollars.⁹

Kennedy Assassination Statements

In his final years, Hunt made a series of statements about the Kennedy assassination that attracted significant attention. In a 2007 article in Rolling Stone based on a recorded conversation with his son Saint John Hunt, Hunt implicated several CIA figures - including Cord Meyer and David Phillips - as having known about or participated in a conspiracy. Hunt's account was inconsistent across tellings and was disputed by the individuals named; his health had declined severely before the statements were made.

The statements were notable primarily because Hunt was one of the few CIA figures of his era with direct personal knowledge of the Guatemala and Bay of Pigs operations who made any public statement about Kennedy assassination involvement. They were not corroborated by independent evidence.

Hunt died of pneumonia on January 23, 2007, in Miami.¹