Truthsmack #20: Howard Hunt & JFK

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Released docs reflect long-time Hunt-JFK rumors

Of the 1,279 JFK assassination documents released by the National Archives in April and May (the new deadline for disclosure of “releasable records” is June 30), 16 involve Howard Hunt. What did Hunt – best known as Watergate burglar boss – have to do with the assassination of President Kennedy? While these 16 documents have been released previously with redactions, the government finally agreed to the full monty. Written between 1958 and 1976, they span Hunt’s CIA employment and post-CIA work for Nixon. No smoking guns here, but the question is once again begged: what did Hunt have to do with the JFK assassination?

Few knew Howard Hunt from Adam – until June 20, 1972. Hunt’s personal hell broke loose when he was outed as a CIA agent in one of Bob Woodward’s first Watergate stories in the Washington Post. Investigators found Hunt’s name and phone number in the pop-up address lister of burglary suspect Eugenio Martinez [“Howard Hunt (W-House)”]. Hunt was now a “consultant.”

Hunt’s image was suddenly splashed across newspapers and TV screens for months as he was indicted for Watergate crimes by a federal grand jury, convicted in March, 1973 and testified before the Senate Watergate Committee. By the end of that year, New York Times reporter Tad Szulc had hog-tied Hunt to the CIA’s failed 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. Szulc’s Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt, published just prior to the 10th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, also linked Hunt to conspiracy narratives by stating Hunt was CIA station chief in Mexico City in August and September of 1963: “Through an extraordinary coincidence, Lee Harvey Oswald also visited Mexico City during September 1963.” Hunt denied the claim.