Posted on 01/23/2007 2:21:13 PM PST by Borges
MIAMI - E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in that led to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88.
Hunt died after a lengthy bout of 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 from 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, 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.
"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.
Hunt declined repeated interview requests from The Associated Press in the final years of his life, which he spent quietly in a modest home in Miami's Biscayne Park neighborhood with his second wife, Laura.
What book? Hunt's own book?
And in both pictures he's wearing a FELT hat, as in Felt of Deepthroat fame. Coincidence or conspiracy? You be the judge!
T. Woodrow Wilson got us into WWI.
I found the whole article posted somewhere else a couple of days after my FR posts, so here is the whole article:
Kerry, Watergate: DNC Links Caused Break-In? 'Republican Paranoia Started Early,' Says '72 Democratic Youth Director Bob Weiner
2/9/2004
From: Bob Weiner or Jeff Buchanan, 301-283-0821 or 202-329-1700
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 -- Were John Kerry and the veterans organization he led the real reason the Republicans broke into Watergate in 1972, with information on them the target of the espionage? Was doing so an early onset of Republican political paranoia against his work, a harbinger of the pending campaign against him in 2004?
Bob Weiner, the 1971-72 Youth Voter Registration director for the Young Democrats office at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and recently a Clinton White House staffer for six years, is asking these questions after doing a little research to refresh his memory. Weiner looked in the Senate's Watergate Hearings in volumes held by the Library of Congress and researched Kerry's specific assistance to the Party's '72 effort, a Rhode Island speech supporting youth voter registration, in the Providence Public Library's archives.
Here's what Weiner has confirmed:
James McCord of the Watergate burglars and CREEP (Committee for the Reelection of the President) testified before the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities on May 18, 1973 and was asked by Senator James Inouye (D-Hawaii) why the break-in was conducted. McCord replied, "Democratic national headquarters staff members" were "working closely with violence groups"... "which involved violence and demonstrations against our committee". When Senators Inouye, Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.), Ed Gurney (R-Fla.), and Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) asked for more detail, in each case McCord repeated the "violence" reference but specifically -- and only -- named the "Vietnam Veterans Against the War", accusing them as "a violence-oriented group" (Hearing pages 180, 200, 201, 223-24 and elsewhere, May 18 and 22 testimony).
So what was the actual connection that the national Democratic office had with Kerry? Kerry was the public spokesperson and national chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. At the request of the Rhode Island Young Democrats, Weiner had invited Kerry to speak, urging youth voter registration, at the Rhode Island Young Democrats' convention in Providence on February 12, 1972. Kerry accepted and spoke as documented in the Providence Journal of Feb. 13, 1972. Kerry also in a news availability there called for Nixon's impeachment as later did the House Judiciary committee by a 28-10 vote before Nixon resigned.
Weiner recalls, "That's ALL that we did with John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War -- invited him to give a voter registration speech to help increase youth voter participation, and he accepted. That's just God, Mother, and Apple Pie. It shows the paranoia and overcharged actions that Republicans used against him -- and the extremes that they would go to against him and the Democratic Party -- even back then when he and the Party were doing nothing together but positive voter involvement. Nothing is more American than that. Oh, we did have one other link with him: we invited him to give a similar speech to the Wisconsin Young Democrats a few weeks later -- but he was busy that day."
"The Republicans showed their hand as far back as 1972 in blasting John Kerry and his causes for being extremist when he in fact was helping our nation in the most patriotic ways, and that will once again be the Republican strategy in this presidential race," Weiner, now a Democratic strategist, asserts.
In his May 18, 1972 Senate testimony, McCord conceded, "Part of the reason attributed to the operation was political" (page 173). Under further questioning by Senator Inouye, he also admitted the acts were "wrong... a mistake." But, Weiner asks, "Have the Republicans yet learned the lesson of this historic miscalculation of hyping opponents as unpatriotic?"
Weiner said he is bringing out the story and facts as an "important part of history now and maybe one from which we can learn."
(Source: Robert Weiner Associates 301-283-0821 or 202-329-1700)
This article also shows that John Kerry didn't resign fromthe VVAW after the groups leaders discussed killing 21 US senitors who favored the war in Vietnam.
One VVAW leader actuallt had a group already in training for this task, his name was Camill.
Hey, I do that!
E. Aron Presley?
M. Claude Hammer?
The book Will talks about Hughes. He was invited to be part of an operation to break into some kind of safe, but declined. Liddy thought it was because the safe might contain some serious dirt on Hughes, and he didn't want ANYBODY to find it, even his political allies (Republicans). I haven't heard anything about Hughes and JFK do you know more details?
also mentioned in a news paper'
KERRY'S FAULT
A former aide to President Clinton is suggesting that John Kerry and the anti-Vietnam War organization he once led were the real reasons Republicans broke into Watergate in 1972.
Bob Weiner, the 1971-72 Youth Voter Registration director for the Young Democrats office at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and a White House staffer for six years, told this columnist that he has re-examined Watergate hearing volumes held by the Library of Congress.
He points out that Watergate burglar James McCord testified that the DNC office was broken into because its staff was "working closely with violence groups." Upon further questioning, he repeatedly named the Kerry-led Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which he termed "a violence-oriented group."
Z. Lead Penny
That is interesting information. Were you a kid when it happened, or were you old enough then to understand the full impact of what was going on? It must have been pretty spooky for you, in any case, to be that close to Oswald's house.
Couldn't Nixon have legitimately claimed "in the interest of National Security"?
I actually have seen LHO on TV.
Or Clinton.
Get a copy of "Triangle of Death", a definitive, short-read, documented, well-thought-out book about the Kennedy Assassination. I have read MANY of the books out there and this one is the most plausible and best documented. It gives REASONS that make sense backed up with all kinds of collateral. FYI
H. Ross Perot. But then that was your point, wasn't it?
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