Bond
of
Secrecy
My Life with CIA Spy and
Watergate Conspirator
E. Howard Hunt
by Saint John Hunt
Introduction
By Douglas Caddy
Original Attorney for the Watergate Seven
Before Watergate
When I first met Howard Hunt in 1970, my immediate impression was of a man who was highly
intelligent, possessed perfect manners and was extremely articulate in his conversation.
The occasion of our first meeting was Howard’s coming on board as an employee at the Robert Mullen
& Company upon his “retiring” from the CIA. The Mullen Company was a public relations firm with its
headquarters in Washington, D.C. and with offices scattered around the globe. General Foods Corporation
was a Mullen Company account. I had gone to work for General Foods in White Plains, New York, not
long after graduating in 1966 from the New York University Law School. In 1969 General Foods assigned
me to work out of the Mullen Company in conjunction with my job representing General Foods’ interests
in the nation’s capital.
Howard and I quickly became friends once we learned that we had another friend in common: William F. Buckley, Jr., publisher of National Review magazine. I had worked closely with Buckley in the
founding of the modern conservative movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I had served as the first
National Director of Young Americans for Freedom, a nationwide youth organization, which had been
founded in September 1960 at a gathering of young conservative activists at the Buckley family compound
in Sharon, Connecticut.
From Howard I learned something that I did not know: that Buckley at one time had been a CIA agent
and had worked under Howard’s supervision in Mexico City for a year after graduating from Yale
University, where he had been selected for Skull & Bones.
As our friendship burgeoned, neither Howard nor I had any prescient inkling that two years later he
would become a central figure in a scandal that would change the course of history and of my life and
career.
A few months after our initial meeting, Robert Mullen called us into his office and surprised us by
saying that he desired to retire and wanted to sell the Mullen Company. He then asked if we would be
interested in purchasing it. He proposed that the sale would be financed over the ensuing years by
payments to him of profits from the company’s public relations accounts, which included General Foods,
the Mormon Church, a lucrative federal government contract with the Department of Health and Human
Services and several others.
Both Howard and I were stunned by Mullen’s proposal and told him that we needed time to consider
it. Mullen agreed and during the next two months we had additional meetings with him about the purchase.
However, at these subsequent meetings Mullen seemed to forget key details that we had discussed
previously about the purchase, causing Howard several times to query me about whether I thought Mullen
was suffering from the onset of dementia.
Then one day Mullen announced out of the blue that he had decided to sell his company to Robert
Bennett, a Mormon who was the son of the senior U.S. Senator from Utah. What I came to learn years
later was that Mullen, Bennett and Hunt knew something that had been kept from me, namely that the
Mullen Company had been incorporated by the CIA in 1959 and served as a front for the intelligence
agency. The Mullen Company offices around the world were in fact operations of the CIA, and General
Foods was aware of this and a participant in the overall intelligence scheme. Although Hunt was a
protégé of CIA Director Richard Helms and had been placed by Helms inside the Mullen Company, a
decision had been made by the CIA that one of its other key operatives, Robert Bennett, would purchase
the Mullen Company and become its president.
After meeting Bennett and finding him to be an extremely strange man who exuded duplicity I chose to
leave General Foods and went to work as an attorney with the Washington law firm of Gall, Lane, Powell
and Kilcullen. Howard stayed with the Mullen Company as its vice president.
Soon after I began work at the law firm, Howard contacted me and asked that I perform legal work for
him. I readily agreed and did so along with one of the partners of the law firm, Robert Scott, who found
Howard to be an intriguing client.
In mid-1971 Howard informed me that he was under consideration to work in the White House while
still an employee of the Mullen Company. His sponsor for the position was Charles Colson, one of
President Nixon’s closest aides and an alumnus, like Howard, of Brown University. Howard asked if I
would write a letter of recommendation for his appointment, which I promptly did.
Once Howard began working for the White House, we saw each other only intermittently. However, on
several occasions he invited me to join him and his colleague, Gordon Liddy, for lunch at the Federal City
Club. Both men were circumspect in their discussion in my presence, but from what I gathered they were
involved in hush-hush, sensitive work on behalf of the White House.
In February 1972, John Killcullen, one of the partners of the law firm that employed me, informed me
that I was being assigned to do volunteer work for the Lawyers Committee for the Re-Election of the
President. I soon met with John Dean, Counsel to the President, in his White House office and he in turn,
after explaining the campaign legal work I would be doing, assigned me to work with one of his
assistants, another lawyer.
Howard was delighted to learn of my newly assigned task and so was Gordon Liddy, who at one point
asked me to do legal research for him and the Finance Committee for the Re-Election of the President.
The head of the Finance Committee was Maurice Stans, a close friend of Nixon.
In April 1972 Howard asked me to join him and the General Counsel for the CIA, Lawrence Huston, at
a restaurant in Maryland, not far from the CIA headquarters on the other side of the Potomac River. At the
meeting the two men sounded me out as to whether I would be interested in going to work for the CIA. If I
were agreeable, my assignment would be to move to Nicaragua and there build and manage a luxurious
seaside hotel that would lure the Sandinista leaders. This would allow the CIA to learn more about them.
I told Howard and Huston I would think about it, but for certain reasons decided immediately I would not
accept their job offer.
Two months later Watergate broke with the arrests of the five burglars inside the offices of the
Democratic National Committee.
During Watergate
The narrative is picked up in a passage from Howard Hunt’s 1974 book, Undercover: Memoirs of an
American Secret Agent:
“I drove to the White House Annex – the Old Executive Office Building, in bygone years the War Department and later the Department
of State.
“Carrying three heavy attaché cases, I entered the Pennsylvania Avenue door, showed my blue-and-white White House pass to the
uniformed guards, and took the elevator to the third floor. I unlocked the door of 338 and went in. I opened my two-drawer safe, took out
my operational handbook, found a telephone number and dialed it.
“The time was 3:13 in the morning of June 17, 1972, and five of my companions had been arrested and taken to the maximum security block of the District of Columbia jail. I had recruited four of them and it was my responsibility to get them out. That was the
sole focus of my thoughts as I began talking on the telephone.
“But with those five arrests the Watergate affair had begun …
“After several rings the call was answered and I heard the sleepy voice of Douglas Caddy.
“‘Yes?’
“’Doug? This is Howard. I hate to wake you up, but I’ve got a tough situation and I need to talk to you. Can I come over?’
“’Sure. I’ll tell the desk clerk you’re expected.’
“’I’ll be there in about 20 minutes,’ I told him, and hung up.
“From the safe I took a small money box and removed the $10,000 Liddy had given me for emergency use. I put $1,500 in my wallet
and the remaining $8,500 in my coat pocket. The black attaché case containing McCord’s electronic equipment I placed in a safe drawer
that held my operational notebook. Then I closed and locked the safe, turning the dial several times. The other two cases I left beside the
safe, turned out the light and left my office, locking the door.”
About half an hour after he telephoned me, Hunt arrived at my Washington apartment located in the
Georgetown House at 2121 P St., N.W., about a five-minute drive from the both the Watergate and the
White House. He quickly informed me of what had occurred.
Hunt then telephoned Liddy from my apartment and they both requested that I represent them as their
attorney in the case as well as the five arrested individuals – James McCord and the four CubanAmericans.
On June 28 – 11 days later – I was served with a subpoena to appear “Forthwith” before the grand
jury. The subpoena was served on me by Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Campbell while I was in the
federal court house. He grabbed me by my arm and pulled me into the grand jury room.
The prosecutors asked me hundred of questions over the next two weeks and subpoenaed my personal
bank records. Ultimately I refused to answer 38 questions that I and the five attorneys representing me
believed were protected by the attorney-client privilege. For example, one question was: “At what time
did you receive a telephone call in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972?” By answering this
question, I could ultimately be forced to identify Hunt and thus incriminate him.
Principal Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Silbert argued in court that my refusal to answer the grand jury
questions on the grounds of the attorney-client privilege was “specious, dilatory and … an obstruction of
justice.”
Judge John Sirica, who had assigned himself to try the Watergate case, saw a golden opportunity to
inflate his towering ego and exercise his unlimited ambition at the expense of justice and the country. At a
hearing on July 12, 1972 – less than a month after the case broke – Sirica rejected outright my attorneys’
argument that the attorney-client privilege was being egregiously violated by the 38 questions. Declared
Sirica to a courtroom packed with lawyers, the press and spectators:
“You see, to put the matter perfectly bluntly, if the government is trying to get enough evidence to indict
Mr. Caddy as one of the principals in this case even though he might not have been present at the time of
the alleged entry in this place, I don’t know what the evidence is except what has been disclosed here. If
the government is trying to get an indictment against Mr. Caddy and he feels that way and you feel it and
the rest of you attorneys feel it, all he has to say is ‘I refuse to answer on the grounds what I say would
tend to incriminate me.’ That ends it. I can’t compel him to say he knows Mr. Hunt under the
circumstances. He doesn’t do that, understand? He takes the other road. He says there is a confidential
communication. Who is he to be the sole judge of what is confidential or not? That is what I am here for.”
The next day, after I refused to answer the 38 questions before the grand jury on the grounds that doing
so would violate the attorney-client privilege, Sirica convened a court hearing to hold me in contempt.
Robert Scott, one of my attorneys who later was named a District of Columbia judge, asked Sirica to
honor professional courtesy by not ordering me jailed while an appeal was filed with the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, stating:
“If Your Honor please, there is nothing malicious in this refusal. It is done in good faith, good
conscience, it is done because we believe it is the proper course. I would respectfully suggest this is very
harsh treatment – not the finding of contempt, I don’t say that. I disagree that he should be found in
contempt, but I think it is very harsh treatment that your honor would commit him when it is perfectly clear
that these positions are being put forth in the utmost good faith and utmost of sincerity. This is a young
man, I just think it would be as harsh as it could be to commit him at this time.”
Of course, this plea fell upon the deaf ears of a judicial bully and thug who took delight in destroying
the careers and lives and the innocent as well as the guilty. Sirica ordered the U.S. Marshal to take me
into custody to be jailed.
On July 18, 1972 the U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed Sirica’s contempt citation of me. It did so in by
employing gratuitously insulting language, declaring, “Even if such a relationship does exist, certain
communications, such as in furtherance of a crime, are not within the [attorney-client] privilege.”
The day after the decision of the Court of Appeals, I appeared again before the grand jury and pursuant
to the threat posed by the Court’s decision answered all the questions posed to me by the prosecutors.
The actions of Sirica and the Court of Appeals did not go unnoticed by the White House. In an Oval
Office tape of July 19, 1972, an incredulous President Nixon asked John Ehrlichman, “Do you mean the
circuit court ordered an attorney to testify?” to which Ehrlichman responded, “It [unintelligible] to me,
except that this damn circuit we’ve got here with [Judge David] Bazelon and so on, it surprises me every
time they do something.”
Nixon then asked, “Why didn’t he appeal to the Supreme Court?”
What Nixon and Ehrlichman did not realize was that I and my attorneys firmly believed that we had
created a strong legal record that the constitutional rights of the defendants and me as their attorney had
been egregiously violated. If Hunt, Liddy and the five arrested defendants were found guilty, their
convictions could then be overturned as a result of the abusive actions of the prosecutors, Judge Sirica
and the Court of Appeals.
However, Sirica’s vitriolic courtroom antics, aided and abetted by a biased Court of Appeals, had the
effect of encouraging the defendants to embark on a “hush money” cover-up after they realized early on
that the courts were not going to give them a fair trial. Hunt later wrote that “If Sirica was treating Caddy
– an Officer of the Court – so summarily, and Caddy was completely uninvolved in Watergate – then those
of us who were involved could expect neither fairness nor understanding from him. As events unfolded,
this conclusion became tragically accurate.” Bear in mind all the above described courtroom events
occurred in the first 33 days of the case. The dye has been cast by the prosecutors and the judges to deny
the seven defendants a fair trial.
Shortly after indictments were handed down against all seven defendants in September 1972, the
prosecutors informed me that I would be a government witness at their trial and that I should review my
grand jury transcripts in their office in preparation of so testifying.
William Bittman, a former Justice Department prosecutor who succeeded me in representing Hunt,
advised me that because the prosecutors had gone too far in their persecution of me, they had jeopardized
their case and were worried about that fact. No evidence had been uncovered over the months since the
case broke that I had engaged in any criminal activity. One of the prosecutors even disclosed that an
examination of my personal bank records, obtained by subpoena, revealed that I was “scrupulously
honest.” Bittman then instructed me that when I reviewed my grand jury transcripts I should diligently
determine if any alterations had been made in them. His fear was that the prosecutors had rewritten my
testimony so as to weaken the attorney-client privilege. He said that if I found any of my transcripts had
been altered, he planned to call Silbert to the witness stand at the trial to question him about the alteration.
He declared, “Hunt deserves a fair trial and I am going to see that he gets one.”
When I did review the grand jury transcripts, I determined that a key alteration had been made by the
prosecutors. This alteration dealt with my attempt to tell the grand jury on July 19, 1972, that I had been
approached in early July to act as conduit for “hush money” to be distributed to the defendants.
The overture was made by Anthony Ulasewicz, a former New York City police detective, acting upon
the instructions of Herbert Kalmbach, President Nixon’s personal attorney. Here is the testimony of
Kalmbach subsequently before the Senate Watergate Committee:
“Mr. Dash: Now, what was the first instruction you received to give the money?
“Mr. Kalmbach: Again, as I have tried to reconstruct this, Mr. Dash, the first instruction that I received,
which I passed to Mr. Ulasewicz was to have Mr. Ulasewicz give $25,000 to Mr. Caddy. I don’t know too
much of Mr. Caddy, I understand that he is an attorney here in Washington. And, as I recall it, this was
probably from approximately July 1 through July 6 or 7. There were a number of calls. I would either talk
to Mr. Dean or Mr. LaRue. I would then call Mr. Ulasewicz who, in turn, would call Mr. Caddy. He
would have some response from Mr. Caddy, and I would call back up either Mr. Dean or Mr. LaRue.
“Mr. Dash: What was the response from Mr. Caddy?
“Mr. Kalmbach: Well, the sum and gist of it was that Mr. Caddy refused to accept the funds.
“Mr. Dash: In that manner?
“Mr. Kalmbach: That is correct. That was the end-all. There were several phone calls, but the final
wrap-up won it was that he refused the funds.”
My grand jury testimony was not the only one altered by the prosecutors. Alfred Baldwin, a key figure
in the case, later charged that his grand jury testimony also had been altered by the prosecutors.
At the first Watergate trial, Hunt and the four Cuban-Americans pleaded guilty at its beginning. This
came about because about a month previously Dorothy Hunt had died in a mysterious plane crash in
Chicago. For Hunt, a trial following on the heels of his wife’s tragic death was more than he could bear.
The four Cuban-Americans, loyal to a fault to Hunt, followed his lead. Liddy and McCord stood trial and
were found guilty.
Liddy appealed his conviction. The same Court of Appeals that had forced me to testify before the
grand jury in its gratuitously insulting decision opined as to the defendant Liddy being denied Sixth
Amendment counsel because of what the courts had done to me as his attorney: “The evidence against
appellant … was so overwhelming that even if there were constitutional error in the comment of the
prosecutor and the instruction of the judge, there is no reasonable possibility it contributed to the
conviction.”
Of course, neither Judge Sirica, whom Time magazine later named “Man Of The Year,” nor the U.S.
Court of Appeals ever acknowledged that their abusive actions and decisions in the first month of the case
relating to me and the attorney-client privilege were a principal cause of the cover-up that ensued.
Sirica later wrote a book about Watergate, fatuously titled To Set the Record Straight, for which he
pocketed one million dollars, which would be almost four million of today’s dollars. James Jackson
Kilpatrick, a nationally syndicated columnist, wrote at the time: “It would be pleasant if someone would
set the record straight about this tin pot tyrant. Sirica is a vainglorious pooh-bah.… When the Watergate
criminal trials were assigned to him in the fall of 1972, he set out to enjoin the whole countryside with an
encompassing gag order that perfectly reflected his lust for power. The order was patently absurd – it
embraced even ‘potential witnesses’ and ‘alleged victims’ and had to be watered down.”
Despite the efforts of the prosecutors, Sirica and the Court of Appeals to set me up, I was never
indicted, named as an unindicted co-conspirator, disciplined by the Bar or even contacted by the Senate
Watergate Committee.
Watergate, as Senator Sam Ervin, Chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee said at the time, was
the most publicized event in American political history. It certainly was the country’s biggest criminal
case of the 20th century.
Post Watergate
I believe the media has painted an erroneous portrait of who Howard actually was. A fuller picture of
the man is shown in the 2012 book Watergate: The Hidden History by Lamar Waldron, which contains
numerous references to Howard and his career. Waldron writes, “Some writers depict Hunt as a minor
figure, bumbling his way from one small White House operation to the next. However, a review of all the
evidence shows that Hunt was consistently working on important tasks for the White House, on matters
that interested the President. Hunt also kept expanding (or wanting to expand) his operations, which often
overlapped with other projects that he sought out or pushed. The more Nixon operations Hunt became
involved in, the higher his status in the White House and the better for his future. It was also good for his
mentor, Richard Helms, since it gave him access to the White House (and FBI) information and
operations. The President’s White House staff was expanding its illegal operations on his behalf so
rapidly that Hunt had no problem finding Nixon aides who wanted Hunt’s services, to help them achieve
the illicit goals the President wanted. That symbiotic relationship would soon grow so rapidly that it
would start to spiral out of control, with disastrous results for all concerned.”
As I look back I have come to the conclusion that the CIA had a goal of placing Howard in the White
House in 1971, and that he thought of himself more as a CIA agent than as a trusted member of the White
House staff. Thus, after the Watergate “hush” money scheme was exposed, Howard was quoted in People
magazine of May 20, 1974: “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. I viewed this like any other mission. It just
happened to take place inside this country.”
Howard’s longtime friend and former CIA colleague William F. Buckley, Jr. accurately assessed himas follows: “Hunt had lived outside the law in the service of his country, subsequently of President Nixon
… Hunt, the dramatist, didn’t understand the political realities at the highest level transcend the working
realities of spy life.”
While Howard revealed a lack of political awareness during Watergate, on another important political
topic he was right on target. As the New York Post reported on January 14, 2007, he originally wrote in
his memoir, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, published in 2007, that
“Having Kennedy liquidated, thus elevating himself to the presidency without having to work for it
himself, could have been a very tempting and logical move on [Lyndon] Johnson’s part.
“LBJ had the money and the connections to manipulate the scenario in Dallas and is on record as
having convinced JFK to make the appearance in the first place. He further tried unsuccessfully to
engineer the passengers in each vehicle, trying to get his good buddy, Governor [John] Connally, to ride
with him instead of JFK’s car – where … he would have been out of danger”
Howard pinpointed CIA agent William Harvey as playing a key role in the JFK assassination: “He
definitely had dreams of becoming [CIA director] and LBJ could do that for him if he were president.
[LBJ] would have used Harvey because he was available and corrupt.”
Just prior the memoir’s publication, passages that dealt with advance knowledge possessed by
Howard of JFK’s assassination were removed at the insistence of Howard’s then lawyer. However,
Howard, ever the consummate intelligence officer, clandestinely arranged that his views on Kennedy’s
murder would ultimately be publicly made known by giving his son, St. John, an audio tape to be released
after his death in which he described the planning of the assassination. This is why St. John Hunt’s book is
an important contribution to history.
Chapter One
Watergate In Context
I’ve always thought of myself as being of sound moral character. As I move through my fifties, I feel this
statement is substantiated by the fact that, though I have pushed the envelope of legality, never once have I
been accused of double dealing or other unethical behavior. As with all self-assessments, these value
judgments can be different from the ones other people may have. Everyone likes to think they’re honest
and true, but there are always others who have a different agenda or whose story comes into conflict with
your own. Having said that, and realizing full well that at least the members of my family may object to
the story I’m about to relate, I will recount events in my life that have had a profound effect on me. After
wrestling with many of the issues that arise out of this story, I’ve reached a simple ideology: you can’t
make everybody happy all the time.
Another factor that has weighed heavily on my mind is the concept of truth, one of those lofty
principles that most of us try to keep in our embrace. However, we all know that when truth hurts, it’s
easier to turn away. But what if avoiding truth creates a deeper hurt? I guess you’d have to consider hurting, and what the stakes are in telling that truth. People say, “There’s only one truth.” I find that
a questionable supposition. Certainly, if you tell a lie, you aren’t telling the truth. But consider truth as a
three-dimensional value. Truth would then be subject to point of view.
What I see and therefore “know,” might be different from what the person on the other side of this
three-dimensional value sees, and therefore knows. This variance, then, brings into play moral and ethical
issues. People “see” things in a way that supports the agenda that they have. The agenda I have in writing
this story is to recount, to the best of my recollection, only those events of which I have direct knowledge
and involvement.
As is true in many families, the children of my parents (there are four) fulfilled many of the standard,
stereotypical personality traits inherent in most post-WWII families.
Lisa, the eldest, was the classic dark and brooding teen drama queen. She was the first to experiment
with drugs, sex and rock ’n’ roll. For a time, in the fashion of “girl interrupted,” she was held in a hospital
in Maryland. To add that she has led a productive and meaningful life, raising three wonderful children,
would only be fair. I felt her struggles in our youth deeply, as her closest ally and friend.
Kevan was the classic goody two shoes. She was everything a daughter (or son) should be. She was
highly motivated, academically superior; never a stain would she bring to her family. She strove
desperately to do all the right things that would gain my father’s approval and praise, while at the same
time despising him for the very things that made his opinion so important.
I was the physically challenged one. Born with a club-foot, suffering from petit mal epilepsy and
dyslexia, and stuttering so badly I could barely speak, I was nothing for my father to be proud of. As the
first-born male in the family, my father had high hopes for me. I was an utter disappointment. A poor
student, unable to keep still, an inferior athlete, I was thin and not competitive. I had double vision, due to
a lazy eye, so I wore glasses. I needed constant tutoring and was at best a D student.
It didn’t help that English was the fourth language I was exposed to, and that by the time I was nine, I
had already been raised in many conflicting cultures, namely Japanese, French, and Latin American. I
became the dreamer, lost in my own world, turning inward to find what I couldn’t on the outside. I
embraced my mother’s Native American heritage, learning Indian spiritualism, and developed a gift for
music, writing my first song at age ten. When she died I was just beginning to establish the close
relationship I had always craved with my mother, but which seemed forever out of reach.
David, nine years younger than I, was afforded only the leftover scraps of attention. He was perhaps
the most needy, and the youngest to feel the devastation brought by Watergate and the death of our mother.
At the tender age of 9, he lost everything that he hadn’t yet realized he had. Shipped off to live in Miami
with his Godfather, the ex-Bay of Pigs leader Manuel Artime, he quickly found solace and purpose in the
glamorous life of rich Miami cocaine dealers. After years of family separation, he soon lost all memory
of the mother that had cradled him in her arms and sang to him softly. Whereas I and the other children
have memories of our mother crystallized in time that never ages,
David has nothing. For each of us, growing up in this family
carries different pains and perspectives. I can’t know what it
meant to be my sisters or my brother, and it is in this realm that
truth shows its variables and shades.
The fact that my father chose to share details of his knowledge
of historical events to no one but me may seem ironic and farfetched to some. But in 1972, when Watergate exploded, my father
had already trusted me in helping him with sensitive and illegal
tasks: like destruction of evidence, and hiding large sums of
unreported cash from the White House. For me, and a trusting
nation, Watergate was the portal that led to doors that had been
locked and buried, unknown to a naïve public for decades. The
proverbial Pandora’s Box was opened and the ghosts of the
covert past were unleashed.
Watergate led to all things conspiratorial. By its very nature
Watergate was part of a much larger conspiracy, already in place,
running smoothly, and functioning as if it were standard
procedure. The cast of players, already wallowing in the murky
world of black-bag jobs, plausible deniability, money laundering,
and assassination plots, were there to be assembled. Fueled by
paranoia, driven by greed, sustained by fear, those that were in a
position to uphold our nation’s values ultimately destroyed the
almost blind trust that a nation’s people had bestowed upon its
government. Watergate was the critical event that showed the emperor had no clothes. From the coup in
Guatemala, through the Bay of Pigs invasion, the assassination plots against Cuban president Castro, the
militant Cuban exile groups and Mafia lords, through the Kennedy assassination and into Watergate, one
thread that ran through all these events was a man, my father, E. Howard Hunt.
Certainly he was one of a cast of hundreds, perhaps thousands, going about their jobs on a need to know basis. Sometimes, the left hand doesn’t need to know what the right hand is doing. In a business
where information is power, nobody has all the keys, all the answers, and the truth that they know is,
again, a matter of perspective. Presidents Bush and Reagan both used deniability in their defense. “I was
kept out of the loop.” President Nixon was much less successful in that argument. He paved the way for
those that followed him into that office not to repeat the same mistakes.
This of course doesn’t mean not to commit crimes, but rather to cover your ass more effectively. My
father’s importance in these events can best be underscored by reading the Nixon Presidential transcripts
of June 23, 1972. On that tape, Nixon said “Hunt will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab, there’s a
hell of a lot of things … This involves those Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky panky that we have nothing
to do with ourselves … this will open up that whole Bay of Pigs thing.… It’s going to make the CIA look
bad, it’s going to make Hunt look bad, and is likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing.”
H.R. Haldeman wrote in his memoir, The Ends of Power, that when Nixon referred to “the Bay of Pigs
thing,” he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination! It’s hard now, in retrospect, to think how I
felt about the events that were unfolding with dramatic and merciless ferocity back in 1972, like a freight
train out of control, unstoppable, smashing everything in its path. I think I must have been in shock, unable
to contemplate or verbalize the meaning of what was happening both to my family and to the country.
That my father had been in the American intelligence services for 27 years was something I had
learned in 1970 when I was 16. At the time, the term CIA really didn’t have much meaning to me, so when
he told me he was retiring I didn’t think much of it (later, he admitted to me that he was in fact still
working with “the Company”). My parents told me that his new job was as a public relations executive
for the Robert Mullen Co. This as it turns out was another front for the CIA. I had grown up believing that
my father worked for the State Department, and this was supported by several documents he had hanging
on the wall of his office in the basement of our home.
My mother, I had been told, was a retired worker for the
Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C. I remember the stories she
told of being on the last train leaving Shanghai, China, as the city
fell to the Communist forces. I had even seen the pearl-handled
.25 caliber automatic pistol she carried hidden on her body
somewhere: pretty exciting for an embassy employee. She talked
of having traveled to India, where she spent some time in Calcutta
and Delhi, and she had worked for Averell Harriman tracking
Nazi money through Europe. This sounded all too confusing to
me, but I am sure my father would have had a clearer picture of
what she actually did before they married. Once they tied the knot,
she became a normal housewife and mother to her children … or
at least that was the story. I can’t really tell the facts from the
fiction, and that is the sad part of it all. Growing up in a world of
half-truths and lies, where it turns out that just about everything
you thought was real isn’t, and then hearing about her being in the
CIA and how they were the “classic” agency couple, using their
superficially normal life as a cover for more sinister deeds … all
that stuff. I wish I knew what my mother really did. I suppose it
doesn’t make any difference any more; she was loving, sweet,
patient, compassionate, very artistic, and yet unhappy, tortured, and chronically in pain (she broke her
back twice).
She had first married an alcoholic French count of some kind; he was later killed in an automobile
crash (maybe, who knows; certainly not I). Somehow, between growing up on a farm near Dayton, Ohio,
and joining the “foreign service,” she transformed herself into a world-class jet-setting beauty. She was
exotic looking; dark thick hair with a widow’s peak, strong high cheekbones, and a well-developed full busted figure. She was German and Sioux, and her Native American heritage shone in her richly olive
toned skin. In the year before she died we became very close, and she was able to confide things about
her sorrows that I never dreamed existed.
In the waning months of 1970, my father had many new friends at our rambling 14-acre estate in
Potomac, Md. Set back from the road, the only visible sign was one that read “Witches Island.” Follow
that up a dark, unlit one-lane gravel road, and our one-story brick house would eventually appear. We had
a front and rear paddock, horse stables, four beautiful horses, a large “pigeon coop” the size of a single wide trailer, a rabbit hutch, and no home would be complete without a bomb shelter. My father’s new
friends would come and go for “meetings” and dinners. Some of these men I would later recognize as
Watergate conspirators Bernard Barker, G. Gordon Liddy, and Manuel Artime. Later, during the Senate
Watergate Hearings, I was called to testify about certain things, and was counseled by my father’s attorney
to lie about having seen these and other men.
One day, when my mother and I went out for a horseback ride, she told me that Papa was not actually
working for a public relations company, but was really working for the Nixon White House, doing some
secretive things that had her quite worried. She said that against her advice, he was going ahead with an
operation that was being directed at the very highest levels of government. He was now so embedded in
this mess that she could not be sure of its operational security. There were men whom she didn’t trust. He
had gotten in with people that weren’t themselves aware of what was required of them, professionally
speaking. “Amateurs” she said angrily. “Your father, as smart as he is, can’t see the forest for the trees.”
I had heard them fighting at night and wondered what it was about. My parents rarely fought. I was
curious, and one day when they were gone, I sneaked into their bedroom at the rear of the house and
looked around. I found some ID’s with my fathers’ picture on them, but the name was not E. Howard Hunt.
It was Edward J. Hamilton. I also found a reddish wig. This is the famous wig that my father was reported
to have worn when he interviewed Dita Beard for John Mitchell, Nixon’s infamous attorney general.
In 1971, my father’s work took a different turn; one that sent him away from home and mired him deeper into the quicksand of Watergate. I didn’t really take much notice of his travels, he had spent so
many of my formative years away from home, but recently his trips were short and there was tension with
his departures and arrivals. Later, I learned that he had gone to Miami to recruit Watergate’s Cuban breakin crew; to Los Angeles, to break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist; and to Milwaukee, to
break into the apartment of Arthur Bremer, the man who tried to assassinate presidential candidate
George Wallace. In retrospect, it’s a wonder that my father allowed himself to be used in such blatantly
illegal schemes. I find it hard to believe that someone who held the notions of our Republic so dear, and
the ideals of democracy in such high regard, would be swayed by such obvious presidential paranoia.
This must have been the source of the tension and arguments that he and my mother were having.
Chapter Two
Watergate Days
In the summer months of 1972, my mother took my sister Kevan and my little brother David for a month long vacation and sight-seeing tour of Europe and England. Lisa was spending the majority of her time
with a boyfriend, and I was dividing my time between my band and my girlfriend. My bedroom at home,
which my father had built, was in the basement, and when the lights were turned off it was so dark, you
couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
Being alone in the house night after night with my father didn’t bring us any closer together, and I
missed my mother and brother very much. Our live-in housekeeper, an asthmatic English woman, would
prepare meals and leave them for us either in the oven or the refrigerator. We rarely ate together or saw
each other much, and the house felt overly large and gloomy. When I did see him, he seemed very distant
and preoccupied. I could often hear my father tapping away at his old Royal typewriter in his office next
door to my room. He somehow managed to write and have published dozens of spy thrillers. His books
were usually published under pseudonyms, and for one series he used David St. John. The only interest
we really shared was music, and I remember fondly that he let me accompany him to Blues Alley, a
favorite night-spot in Georgetown.
Politically we were much different; he, in my mind, was a right-winger, and I, in his mind, was a left winger. The truth, once again, is a matter of perspective. I wasn’t really a radical. My hair was longish
and I didn’t support the war in Vietnam, but I wasn’t out there throwing rocks or carrying signs. When our
family was invited to attend a White House function at which we would be introduced to President Nixon,
I quietly declined, stating that I disapproved of his foreign policies. Needless to say, my father was very,
very upset.
Sometime after midnight June 17, 1972, I was catapulted out of a deep sleep when the stygian darkness
of my basement room was shattered by a shaft of light. My father, silhouetted in the doorway, was calling
to me.
“Saint, Saint John! Wake up!”
He flicked on my light and stepped quickly to the center of the room. I sat upright and looked
questioningly at my father, slowly focusing on his face. He was perspiring heavily and seemed extremely
agitated. His breathing was quick and shallow as he talked in short bursts, pausing to search for the right
words. At that early morning hour in the darkness of my bedroom, I had no way of knowing that this
moment would forever change my life. For our family and so many others the world was about to turn
upside down, and there would begin a bond of secrecy between my father and me that would last 35
years. He stood in my room, suit jacket rumpled and shirt-tail hanging out. He swiped his hand across his
face and loosened his tie.
“Papa, what’s the matter?”
“Saint, I need you to get dressed and come upstairs immediately!”
“Yeah, okay … what’s going on?”
“I’ll fill you in when you’re more awake … right now I need you to do exactly as I say, and not ask any
questions! Do you understand me?” He was firm and direct, and I obeyed him without hesitation. I’d
never felt really needed by him before, never felt very important. Now, here was this man for whose
approval I had deeply longed; and he was asking for my help! What would any good son do? I didn’t have
time to think that I was becoming part of a crime, a conspiracy to destroy evidence. It wouldn’t have made
any difference anyway. Starved for his attention, I happily did what he needed me to do.
He turned and left the room. I hurriedly got dressed and ran upstairs. Walking back to my parents’
bedroom I knocked lightly on the door and my father opened it. He had taken his jacket and shirt off and
was wiping himself with a damp towel. Wordlessly he motioned me in, and I saw that there were two
suitcases on the bed.
“I’m going to ask you to do something for me tonight and you must never, ever tell anyone about what
happens here. Can I count on you?”
“Yes, of course,” I responded.
“First, I want you to get some rags from the garage, grab some of those dish-washing gloves, and some
ammonia or window cleaner. Then come back here.”
I followed his instructions and gathered the
requested items. When I came back to his bedroom he was talking on the phone, but I couldn’t hear what
he was saying. He placed the receiver back in its cradle and told me to open the suitcases up and remove
all the items. What I saw was a jumble of cords, wires and electronic stuff, some walkie-talkies, cameras
and a small collapsible tripod. It had obviously been thrown together in a hurry. I removed the items and
placed them on the bed next to the suitcases. “Put these gloves on and start wiping everything down with
the glass cleaner. When you’re finished, put it all back in the cases and wipe them down too. I’ll be back
in a minute to help you.”
He put on a clean shirt and left me alone in the room. I think he headed down to his office in the
basement to make some more phone calls. When he returned he had a small stack of envelopes and papers
in his hand. He tossed them down on the bed next to me, and I noticed some of them were written on
White House stationery. He sat down on the other bed, put some dish gloves on and started spraying and
wiping the remainder of the equipment. I may have been young, but I did realize that I was erasing
fingerprints. That much I knew.
When we were done he said, “Now we have to get rid of this stuff, we don’t have much time … it
looks like it’s getting light out.” Noticing that I wasn’t wearing shoes, he said, “Get your shoes on and
meet me in the garage in five minutes!” I ran down to my basement room, put my shoes on and left, turning
out the light and closing my door. I trotted through the house and out the kitchen door where my father was
already placing the cases into the trunk of his Pontiac Firebird.
Slamming the lid down, he motioned for me to get in. As we pulled out of our “Witches Island” he
turned left onto River Road. It was still dark as we drove silently, my father lost somewhere in his
thoughts. I can only imagine what was going through his mind. Was he making a mental check-list of
everything he needed to take care of? Was he wondering about his safety? Would he be found out? What
were his men doing? How long would they keep silent? He was going to have to get money to secure their
bail. They were going to need legal counsel. A million things must have been racing through his mind and
as I drove with him, I too was lost in thoughts of my own. I was scared, exhilarated and still completely in
the dark about what was going on.
We drove for about 45 minutes to an hour and then turned west towards the canal. This was a small
waterway that served this part of Maryland a hundred years ago. Barges and small vessels plied their
trade goods on its waterway, providing commerce and transportation long before there were any decent
roads. Now, as dawn cleared the night from the sky, we found a good spot near the edge of the water. My
father turned off the engine and waited for the silence to signal that all was clear. He got out of the car and
removed the suitcases from the trunk. Walking to the edge, the water flowing lazily along, he tossed first
one, then the other out into the muddy canal.
Full daylight was shining around us with the temperature and humidity rising as we drove back down
River Road to our house. On the way back, my father said that he had been doing some special work for
the White House. Last night he had been on an assignment when things had gone sour, necessitating his
quick departure from the scene and his abrupt return home. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I
may need your help with some other things.”
“Okay, Papa,” I said.
“Let’s turn in and get some shut eye. I think we’re in for a long day.” I headed downstairs, threw myself
on the bed and fell asleep.
My mother, sister and David found out about Watergate in the papers over in England. They called and
planned to return as soon as possible. I’m not sure about the timeline here because I know it was at least
several days before they returned. In the interim, I was to help my father out with a few more tasks. One
involved the transfer of a large amount of cash from a safety deposit box in a Georgetown bank to a secret
hiding place in the basement of our house. The plan was this: I was to wait several hours after my father
left and meet him at a prearranged time in the safety deposit room of the Riggs National Bank in
Georgetown. Watergate had been in the papers, and from what I later learned, the FBI was looking for my
father. I don’t know if this is true or not, but supposedly he was the object of a huge search. Agents were
scouring the planet. How they could have missed him hunkered down at Witches Island, I’ll never
understand. I guess his home was too obvious a place.
I drove through the windy hills of Potomac and into Georgetown, an affluent shopping and historical
site near Washington DC. Pulling into the parking lot in my little Chevy Monza, I checked my watch: 2 pm.
Right on time. Wearing a suit jacket as instructed, I made my way to the vault area. Ringing the bell, I was
allowed into the safety deposit room. My father was to meet me at 2:10, and in a few minutes he arrived.
“Did you notice if you were being followed?”
“No, I didn’t” I replied. He removed a box from the wall, opened it, and pulled out a large manila
envelope. Turning me around, he lifted up my jacket and stuffed it down the small of my back.
Then he said, “Good, you look fine. Take your time driving back, make sure you’re not being followed,
and when you get home go down to the basement. Unscrew the heating duct above your door, and shove
this in.”
Again, I blindly did as my father wished. I left the bank and headed back to the house. I kept an eye on
the rear-view mirror, and as instructed, took my time in reaching my destination. Several times when a car
seemed to shadow me from behind, I turned around and doubled back. I thought I may have picked up a
tail, so as I approached Potomac Village, I turned into the shopping center and parked. Watching the
suspected vehicle make a turn down Falls Rd., I was confident that I had outwitted them. It was getting
hot, and the envelope under my shirt was soaking up my sweat. By 4:30 I was back at Witches Island. I
busied myself unscrewing the heating duct that my father had told me about. He had left a three-step
ladder nearby for me to use. I shoved the envelope into the space as far as I could, and replaced the sheet
metal covering. My father came home a few hours later and thanked me.
We had dinner together that evening, and I asked him how much money was in the envelope. “Not
nearly enough,” he said quietly, “about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I know that sounds like a lot
of money, but it has to be dispersed to a lot people.” I asked him about the newspaper articles that I had
seen about the break-in at Democratic National Headquarters. I recognized some of the names as men who
had been to our house that summer. Trying not to upset me, and perhaps believing in the power and loyalty
of the men he had been working for, my father told me he was confident this was all going to be resolved
soon, and everything would get back to normal. It wasn’t clear to me what “getting back to normal” meant,
but I was glad to accept his views.
There was one more bit of dirty business that my father would have me do for him. Late that same
night, he came down to my room carrying an old Royal typewriter, like the one he used to write his
novels. He set it down on the floor and banged it several times with a hammer Producing a cloth sack, he
placed the mangled typewriter inside. Handing it to me he asked me to take the sack and dump it into
Griffith Pond, a small fishing pond located in the middle of a huge field directly across the road from our
property. It was owned by a General Griffith and boasted a huge southern-style house at the top of a very
long driveway. I had never met the General, but he allowed us to ride our horses in his fields. I remember
with great fondness how my mother and I rode through the tall grass around the pond and through his
woods. He must have had at least a hundred acres and our mother brought each of us children there to
ride. I also spent many afternoons there, fishing with my brother David.
Unlike our property, the General’s was easily seen from the road, so, on that warm, clear night I slung
the sack over my back and hopped the fence. Keeping a low profile, so as not to be caught in any car
headlights that might be flashing by, I made my way to the edge of the pond. Without a second thought I
hurled the sack into the middle of the pond where it obligingly disappeared into the depths. Many years
later in Miami, my father and I revisited the tale of the typewriter, and it was then that I learned why he
got rid of it. The machine had been used to forge bogus government cables linking the assassination of
Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to the Kennedy administration
Within a few days, my mother returned and now she became the one to help him through the maelstrom.
As it turned out, this sealed her fate and led directly to her death. My mother, always thinking of us
children, took three thousand dollars from the envelope and gave it to me. I gladly took the money and
headed out across the country in my van, taking my girlfriend with me, and thinking that everything would
blow over by the time I got back. I was in for a serious disappointment when, after a month and a half, I
returned.
Chapter Three
Tragic Accident Or Murder?
I returned to madness; I knew from reading the papers in California that Watergate hadn’t gone away, but
I was wholly unprepared for what awaited. The scandal had developed into a cottage industry. There
were reporters from seemingly everywhere camped out at the foot of our driveway. It was a media circus
to rival any of more recent times. We drove into the driveway and everyone jumped up, shouting
questions. We drove out of the driveway and everyone jumped up, etc. In and out, up and down! We were
virtual prisoners on parade.
As Watergate deepened, my mother served as the unofficial spokesperson for the jailed burglars.
Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herb Kalmbach, hired ex-New York City Police Dept. Intelligence Unit officer,
Tony Ulasewicz to funnel “hush money” to the many men that so depended on him. Using codes like “the
writer” (my father), “the writer’s wife” (my mother), “the players” (the burglars), and “the script” (the
money), more than four-hundred-thousand dollars were paid out. How much of this went through my
mother, I don’t know, but she did have many spooky rendezvous at dimly lit bus terminals and airports,
where locker keys were taped in secret locations.
She was worried that she would be kidnapped or worse. I know this because she told me so. She felt
like she was being tailed, and probably was. I can only reflect that she was an incredibly brave woman.
Charles Colson called my mother a very “savvy” woman. She was frightened, under tremendous pressure,
and deeply involved in some very serious business with some of the most dangerous people in the world.
My father was viewed as a blackmailer, and my mother the instrument of his bidding. She was out there,
by herself, making demands, playing it tough, meeting desperate people in lonely, dark places. She
listened, I imagine, to every sound around her … footsteps echoing down empty streets. She watched
shadows moving across vacant buildings. She noticed strangers glancing a little too long, or too quickly.
She made her way through basement car garages, always checking her rearview mirror.
The need for money was almost suffocating. Calls from lawyers, banks, brokers, and debts piled one
on top of another … and another and another. School bills needed to be paid, the car payment was late,
and the children’s school tuition was overdue. Multiply this by all the families whose fathers had been
jailed for the Watergate burglary, add to that the need for repayment and good faith gestures, and you can
begin to see what kind of pressure she was under. I saw in her face such utter depression, such loss of
hope, such fear and anger. Oh, the resentment, and the bitterness! She suffered from severe pain due to
having broken her back twice. She worried about her weight gain, and suffered from diabetes. She had
spoken to me several times of divorcing my father, and just when she decided to make the break, this
disaster happened.
This Watergate monster was like an iron chain around her neck with the weight of the world attached,
and it robbed her of her freedom. She had to stay now. She couldn’t leave her husband at a time like this.
So, she endured. She not only endured, she fought tooth and nail. She rose to the challenge and faced all
the pressures and demons of the nation’s angst. Yet, throughout all of it, she tried her best to keep a smile
for her children. She never lashed out, never grew impatient, never withdrew. On the contrary, she
reached out even more. I don’t know if she knew the end was near, but she worked at being our friend.
Each of us will always have the memory of stolen moments, of shared secrets, and deep conversations.
This was a new woman to us; she opened up about herself and her dreams and losses. She had suffered
through ten pregnancies; six ended in miscarriage, and four babies lived
By December 1972, time seemed to have run out. My parents had made a desperate play to gain back
control of their lives and those of the loyal Cubans. The “writer and his wife” had made a final demand to
the President of the United States: pay up, or we’re going to blow this whole thing right up in your face.
They had the evidence to link the President to the Watergate scandal, and perhaps to deeper and darker
things. Nixon, caught on his own secret tapes, wanted to pay off Hunt at all costs. He figured it might cost
“… a million in cash. We could get our hands on that kind of money,” he said. On December 8, 1972, my
mother boarded United Airlines flight 553 scheduled to take off from Dulles Airport, non-stop to O’Hare
airport in Chicago. The purpose of her trip has generated a lot of controversy. The facts are:
1] She was to meet with her cousin’s husband, a man named Harold Carlstead, who owned two
Holiday Inns in the Chicago area.
2] She was delivering a large sum of money.
3] Some of the bills could be directly traced to the Committee to Re-Elect the President.
4] She also carried with her almost two million dollars in American Express money orders, travelers
checks, and postal money orders, according to testimony before the National Transportation Safety Board
during the re-opened Watergate plane crash hearings, June 13-14, 1973.
5] United Flight 553 never made it to O’Hare airport. My mother and 44 others were killed.
As the big jet closed in on its destination, the pilot received a call to divert the plane and land on the
little-used and much more poorly equipped Midway airport. As it approached the outer runway marker
lights, they flicked off, and, mysteriously, the pilot was not able to communicate with the tower. Missing
the landing strip, the plane tore into the surrounding houses, demolishing several, and came to rest amid
huge fires, with pieces of wing and metal housing strewn in a debris field which some have described as
a scene of total destruction and absolute hell. Miraculously, the outer markers returned to perfect working
order moments after the crash. The radio control tower also seemed to have suddenly started working
again. What’s even more remarkable is that within minutes there were 50 FBI agents at the crash site. The
fire department was called within a minute and a half of the crash and yet when they arrived, they were
told to stand down until the FBI was finished in their search. What were they searching for? The nearest
FBI field office was twelve miles away. How could there be 50 agents at the crash site in such a short
amount of time. On June 13, 1973, Chairman John Reed of the NTSB told the House Government
Activities Sub-Committee that he personally sent a letter to the
FBI. It included the following:
a) Never in its history had the FBI acted as it did in the flight
553 crash investigation.
b)Under what authority did it act? (Air piracy was later cited.)
c) Before the NTSB investigators could do so, the FBI
conducted 26 interviews within 20 hours of the crash and an FBI
agent had gone into the tower immediately after the crash and
confiscated the tape recording relating to the flight.
On December 9, 1972, just one day after the crash, White
House Aide Egil Krogh was appointed by Nixon as
Undersecretary of Transportation, supervising the NTSB and
FAA, the two agencies investigating the crash. Also on Dec. 9, White House Deputy Assistant to Nixon,
Alex Butterfield, was appointed the new head of the FAA. Five weeks after the crash, another of Nixon’s
men, Dwight Chapin, became a top executive at United Airlines. Am I to believe that all these facts are
just random coincidences? All of this, as well as testimony from eyewitnesses on the ground that said the
plane seemed to explode before it hit treetop level, pretty much defies the laws of chance. I was taught
that if something looks too good to be true, it usually isn’t, and if you smell smoke, there’s probably a fire.
This suspicious plane crash is still one of the greatest mysteries surrounding the Watergate scandal. I
call upon the U.S. Congress and the Department of Justice to reopen the case, and, using our modern
technology, re-investigate it for possible sabotage and a subsequent cover-up.
next-27s
The End Of Witches Island
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a journalist, I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of artistic, cultural, historic, religious and political issues. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Copyrighted material can be removed on the request of the owner.
No comments:
Post a Comment