Paul Rothermel

Paul M. Rothermel Jr. was born on March 24, 1926, in Burton, Texas, attended Blinn College, and took a law degree at the University of Texas in January 1951. He entered the FBI as a special agent on December 11, 1950, and resigned on December 31, 1954, his services rated satisfactory.¹

Hunt Oil

On February 22, 1955, he wrote to J. Edgar Hoover on the letterhead of Hunt Oil Company: "I have become permanently located in Texas and am now associated with the Hunt Oil Company at Dallas." He described H.L. Hunt as one "who, like yourself, has long been a tireless foe of Communism," and thanked the director for an autographed gift. The bureau's later summaries give his title as administrative assistant to Hunt. The press called him chief of security. When an informant told the bureau in December 1961 that Hunt was financing a group called "The Third Party" that "plans to take over the government," and that guns were cached in a house in Dallas, agents interviewed Rothermel, who "knew nothing about it." The Dallas office closed the matter on January 12, 1962, describing the informant as "emotionally unstable."¹²

The Wiretaps

Rothermel resigned on November 15, 1969, and became a business consultant. That November and December and the following January, private detectives placed taps on his telephone and those of other Hunt Oil executives. One of them, Jon Kelly, was arrested by the bureau's Dallas office on January 16, 1970. The bureau recorded: "Rothermel claimed wiretapping was done at the instigation of two sons and a nephew of H.L. Hunt in an effort to obtain information for use in declaring H.L. Hunt incompetent. However, during our investigation, Dallas learned from a private detective firm employed by the Hunts that Rothermel and two other former Hunt employees may have defrauded H.L.H. Products Company, a Hunt enterprise, out of between $8 and $10 million. We conducted no investigation concerning that alleged fraud as there is no Federal investigative interest in that allegation."¹

On February 3, 1970, Cartha DeLoach reported to Clyde Tolson a call from Senator James Eastland, whom the sons of H.L. Hunt had telephoned. They told the senator that they were trying to have their father declared incompetent, that the company had lost about 80 million dollars in several years, and that Rothermel, paid 20,000 dollars a year, lived in a 65,000 dollar house and kept two Cadillacs. In 1971 an intermediary told Senator John Tower that Rothermel believed "some influential individual" had the bureau "bought off" in the case. Rothermel wrote to Tower on April 22 denying that he had said so and praising the investigation, with a copy to Hoover. Kelly and Patrick McCann were convicted and then named Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt as their employers.¹²³