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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Watergate leader E. Howard Hunt dies at age of 88


E. Howard Hunt answers questions during Watergate hearings on Sept. 24, 1973.
 (File Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Tim Reynolds Associated Press

MIAMI – E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in, leading to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon’s presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88.

Hunt died at a Miami hospital after battling pneumonia, according to his son Austin Hunt.

The elder Hunt was many things: World War II soldier, CIA officer, organizer of both a Guatemalan coup and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and author of more than 80 books, many of the spy-tale genre.

Yet the bulk of his notoriety came from the one thing he always insisted he wasn’t – a Watergate burglar. He often said he preferred the term “Watergate conspirator.”

“I will always be called a Watergate burglar, even though I was never in the damn place,” Hunt told the Miami Herald in 1997. “But it happened. Now I have to make the best of it.”

While working for the CIA, Hunt recruited four of the five actual burglars – Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Rolando Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis. They all had worked for Hunt a decade earlier in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

All four also had ties to Miami, where part of the Watergate plan was hatched.

“According to street gossip both in Washington and Miami, Mr. Castro had been making substantial contributions to the McGovern campaign,” Hunt told CNN in February 1992. “And the idea was … that somewhere in the books of the Democratic National Committee those illicit funds would be found.”

The idea was wrong, and the fallout escalated into huge political scandal.

Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974. Twenty-five men were sent to prison for their involvement in the botched plan, and a new era of skepticism toward government began.

“I had always assumed, working for the CIA for so many years, that anything the White House wanted done was the law of the land,” Hunt told People magazine for its May 20, 1974, issue. “I viewed this like any other mission. It just happened to take place inside this country.”

The Hunt recruits and James W. McCord Jr., security director for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, were arrested June 17, 1972, at the Watergate office building. One of the burglars was found to have Hunt’s White House phone number.

Hunt and fellow operative G. Gordon Liddy, along with the five arrested at Watergate, were indicted on federal charges three months later. Hunt and his recruits pleaded guilty in January 1973, and McCord and Liddy were found guilty.

Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison on a conspiracy charge, and said he was bitter that he was sent to jail while Nixon was allowed to resign.

“I felt that in true politician’s fashion, he’d assumed a degree of responsibility but not the blame,” he told the Associated Press in 1992. “It wasn’t my idea to go into the Watergate.”