36 Facts About Howard Hunt

1.

From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, particularly in the United States involvement in regime change in Latin America including the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'etat and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

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2.

Howard Hunt graduated from Hamburg High School in 1936 and Brown University in 1940.

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3.

Howard Hunt was a prolific author, having published 73 books during his lifetime.

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4.

Howard Hunt won a Guggenheim Fellowship for his writing in 1946.

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5.

Howard Hunt continued his writing career after he was released from prison, publishing nearly twenty spy thrillers between 1980 and 2000.

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6.

Howard Hunt was assigned as a covert action officer specializing in political action and influence in what later came to be called the CIA's Special Activities Division.

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7.

Howard Hunt liked to brag that he had family connections to Wild Bill Donovan himself, who had admitted him into the OSS, the original roundtable of American intelligence.

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8.

Everyone knew Howard Hunt was a writer, but they knew he was no Ian Fleming.

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9.

Buckley and Howard Hunt remained lifelong friends, and Buckley became godfather to Howard Hunt's first three children.

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10.

In Mexico, Howard Hunt helped lay the framework for Operation PBFortune, later renamed Operation PBSuccess, the successful covert operation to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically elected president of Guatemala.

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11.

Howard Hunt was given the assignment of forging Cuban exile leaders in the United States into a suitably representative government-in-exile that would, after the Bay of Pigs Invasion, form a pro-American Puppet state intent on taking over Cuba.

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12.

In 1959 Hunt helped CIA Director Allen W Dulles write The Craft of Intelligence.

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13.

The following year Howard Hunt established Brigade 2506, an Agency-sponsored group of Cuban exiles formed to attempt the military overthrow of the Cuban government headed by Fidel Castro.

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14.

In 1964, DCI John A McCone directed Hunt to take a special assignment as a Non-Official Cover officer in Madrid, Spain, tasked to create the American answer to Ian Fleming's British MI-6 James Bond novel series.

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15.

Howard Hunt retired from the CIA at the pay grade of GS-15, Step 8 on April 30,1970.

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16.

In 1971, Howard Hunt was hired as a consultant by Colson, by now director of Nixon's Office of Public Liaison, and joined the White House Special Investigations Unit, specializing in political sabotage.

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17.

Howard Hunt sought and used CIA disguises and other equipment for the project.

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18.

In September 1971, Howard Hunt forged and offered to a Life magazine reporter two top-secret US State Department cables designed to prove that President Kennedy had personally and specifically ordered the assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Ðinh Nhu, during the 1963 South Vietnamese coup.

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19.

Howard Hunt organized the bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office building.

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20.

Howard Hunt put pressure on the White House and the Committee to Re-Elect the President for cash payments to cover legal fees, family support, and expenses, for himself and his fellow burglars.

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21.

Howard Hunt pressured Colson, Dean, and John Ehrlichman to ask Nixon for clemency in sentencing, and eventual presidential pardons for himself and his cronies; this eventually helped to implicate and snare those higher up.

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22.

Howard Hunt was sentenced to 30 months to 8 years in prison, and spent 33 months in prison at Federal Correctional Complex, Allenwood and the low-security Federal Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, on a conspiracy charge, arriving at the latter institution on April 25,1975.

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23.

Szulc, a former correspondent for The New York Times, claimed unnamed CIA sources told him that Howard Hunt, working with Rolando Cubela Secades, had a role in coordinating the assassination of Castro for an aborted second invasion of Cuba.

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24.

In one passage, he stated that Howard Hunt was the acting chief of the CIA station in Mexico City in 1963 while Lee Harvey Oswald was there.

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25.

Howard Hunt added that rumors that Hunt was involved in the Kennedy assassination might be put to end if Szulc's source was revealed.

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26.

On November 3,1978, Howard Hunt gave a security-classified deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

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27.

Howard Hunt denied knowledge of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

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28.

However, nobody has been able to produce this supposed memo, and the United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States determined that Howard Hunt had been in Washington, DC, on the day of the assassination.

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29.

Liberty Lobby stipulated, in this first trial, that the question of Howard Hunt's alleged involvement in the assassination would not be contested.

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30.

Howard Hunt used depositions from David Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms, G Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner, and Marita Lorenz, plus a cross-examination of Hunt.

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31.

Former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin indicated in 1999 that Howard Hunt was made part of a fabricated conspiracy theory disseminated by a Soviet "active measures" program designed to discredit the CIA and the United States.

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32.

Howard Hunt concluded his review describing it as a work "in a long tradition of arrant nonsense" and "a book to shun".

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33.

Howard Hunt later married schoolteacher Laura Martin, with whom he raised two more children, Austin and Hollis.

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34.

Howard Hunt is buried in Prospect Lawn Cemetery in his hometown of Hamburg, New York.

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35.

Howard Hunt was portrayed by Ed Harris in the 1995 biopic Nixon.

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36.

Howard Hunt later wrote the foreword to Giammarco's book For Your Eyes Only: Behind the Scenes of the James Bond Films.

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