Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt dies at 88; organized break-in that led to scandal

Wednesday, January 24th 2007, 5:56 am

By: News On 6

MIAMI (AP) _ He served as a Navy and CIA officer, and helped orchestrate a coup in Guatamala and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, but E. Howard Hunt is best known as something he always said he wasn't: a Watergate burglar.

Hunt, who often said he preferred the term ``Watergate conspirator,'' died Tuesday at the North Shore Medical Center in Miami after a lengthy bout of pneumonia, said his son, Austin Hunt. He was 88.

``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.''

Hunt was eventually jailed for helping plan the June 17, 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, which led to the collapse of Richard Nixon's presidency.

While working for the CIA, Hunt recruited four of the five actual burglars _ Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Rolando Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis _ all who 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. Hunt said the burglary's aim was to see whether Fidel Castro's Cuban regime had given money to the campaign of Nixon's Democratic opponent, George McGovern.

It hadn't, and the fallout from the break-in led to Nixon's resignation 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.

The Hunt recruits and James W. McCord Jr., security director for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, were arrested at the Watergate, and 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 the 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.''

Hunt also was involved in organizing an event that foreshadowed Watergate: the burglary of the office of the Beverly Hills psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, published in 1971.

Hunt and Liddy _ the so-called White House ``plumbers'' _ broke into Ellsberg's office to gain information about him. The break-in was revealed during the 1973 espionage trial against Ellsberg and co-defendant Anthony Russo, and was one of several incidents that led to the dismissal of the case because of government misconduct.

Watergate was one of many wild tales _ some true, some not _ that followed Hunt through the final decades of his colorful life.

His alleged involvement in a purported conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy was among the most popular spy-esque stories with which he was linked. One theory, which some still believe, was that Hunt was in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot and that his image was captured in photographs from the scene.

Hunt said he was in Washington, D.C., on the day of the assassination.

Everette Howard Hunt was born Oct. 9, 1918, in Hamburg, N.Y., graduated from Brown University in 1940 and was commissioned as a Naval Reserve officer in Annapolis, Md. the following year. He served as a destroyer gunnery officer, was injured at sea and honorably discharged from the Navy.

From 1949 through 1970 he worked for the CIA, and was involved in the operation that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz as Guatemala's president in 1954, plus the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

Hunt declared bankruptcy in 1997, largely blaming his Watergate fines and legal fees.

``I think I've paid my debt to society,'' Hunt said in 1997. ``I think I've paid it amply.''

Hunt spent his final years in a modest home with his second wife, Laura Martin Hunt, and declined many interview requests from The Associated Press.

He has a memoir coming out next month titled ``American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond.''

Hunt's first wife, the former Dorothy Wetzel Day Goutiere, died in a plane crash in 1972. Besides his wife, Hunt was survived by six children.

A memorial service was scheduled for Monday in Miami.