Dorothy, "An Amoral and Dangerous Woman": The Murder of E. Howard Hunt's Wife – Watergate's Darkest Secret

By St. John Hunt and Roger Stone

Contains new facts concerning Nixon, Watergate, and the death of Dorothy Hunt, wife of E. Howard Hunt
 
Dorothy Hunt, “An Amoral and Dangerous Woman” tells the life story of ex-CIA agent Dorothy Hunt, who married Watergate mastermind and confessed contributor to the assassination of JFK. The book chronicles her rise in the intelligence field after World War II, as well as her experiences in Shanghai, Calcutta, Mexico, and Washington, DC. It reveals her war with President Nixon and asserts that she was killed by the CIA in the crash of Flight 553. Written by the only person who was privy to the behind-the-scenes details of the Hunt family during Watergate, this book sheds light on a dark secret of the scandal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trine Day
• Release date: Oct 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781634240383

Book preview

Dorothy

An Amoral and Dangerous Woman

The Murder of

E. Howard Hunt’s Wife

Watergate’s Darkest Secret

St. John Hunt

Dorothy, An Amoral and Dangerous Woman: The Murder of E.

Howard Hunt’s Wife – Watergate’s Darkest Secret

Copyright © 2014, 2015. Saint John Hunt. All Rights Reserved.

Published by:

Trine Day LLC

PO Box 577

Walterville, OR 97489

1-800-556-2012

www.TrineDay.com

[e-mail]

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944179

Hunt, Saint John.

Dorothy, An Amoral And Dangerous Woman: The Murder Of E. Howard Hunt’s Wife – Watergate’s Darkest Secret—1st ed.

p. cm.

Epub (ISBN-13) 978-1-63424-038-3

Kindle (ISBN-13) 978-1-63424-039-0

Print (ISBN-13) 978-1-63424-037-6

1. Hunt, Dorothy. 2. 3. Watergate Affair, 1972-1974. 4. Intelligence services—United States—History—20th century. 5. United States—Politics and government, 1945-1989. I. Title

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the USA

Distribution to the Trade by:

Independent Publishers Group (IPG)

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

312.337.0747

www.ipgbook.com

What’s done cannot be undone.

–William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I want to dedicate this book to my brother

David who was too young to remember, but old enough to bare the deep scars of wounds still unhealed, to Lisa and Kevan who do remember, but choose to deny a place for me in their hearts, and to my wife and soul mate Mona, who gives me courage and a soft shoulder to cry upon.

A very warm and special thanks to Susan Ravenscroft, a friend who believes in me. Thank you Susan. (Kiss the animals.)

This book is about a woman. She was my mother. It’s about a family who lived as a

CIA cover story. It is a tale of love, lies, honor and sacrifice. It’s a story of spies, of covert operations and betrayal.

It’s an American story. On a snowy December night in 1972, a woman was killed in one of the most suspicious airplane disasters of the times. On that bloody and frozen runway lay the bodies of forty-four persons and something else; the truth.

As a result, something sinister began infecting my soul. It’s called by many names; bitterness, hate, and denial. For more than forty years I fought this disease with drugs and alcohol. At first I didn’t realize I had been infected and in fact when I first heard rumors that my mother had been murdered I reacted angrily and lashed out in disbelief. I was an innocent boy who lost his mother.

A boys’ mother is more than what can be described by mere words, and the language of the heart has no vocabulary. Yet the power and depth of this connection between mother and son is at the very core of life itself. She carried me. She loved me, before I was awake. After three miscarriages I was the gift of her agony. She gave me life and love, because life without love, is not life. In the two years before her death we saw each other with new eyes and new perceptions.

As I grew into young manhood I saw her as more than my mother who sang me to sleep on nights when I couldn’t, who gave me pride in my Indian blood and called me her little Indian boy, and did all the nurturing things that mother’s do. I saw a woman drained of hope, but not hopeless, robbed of faith but not faithless, denied of love but not loveless. I also saw fierce loyalty, endless compassion, and unbreakable strength.

These last things she taught me by letting me see her as vulnerable, tortured, and backed into a corner. To see her that way was the deepest and most profound beauty a son could ever glimpse of his mother. And then, just as our awakening began she was taken.

Her name is Dorothy, and this is her story.

A taped conversation on February 28th, 1973 between John

Dean, special counsel to President Richard Nixon:

Dean: Dorothy Hunt was the savviest woman in the world. She had the whole picture together.

Nixon: Did she?

* * *

Charles Colson, special counsel to President Richard Nixon:

Colson: I think the CIA killed Mrs. Hunt – Time magazine July 8, 1974

* * *

Conversation between Charles Colson and Saint John Hunt 2007:

Hunt: Mr. Colson, what can you tell me about the Time magazine quote regarding the death of my mother?

Colson: I will only say – and this is for our protection – that I stand by what I said.

* * *

Conversation between E. Howard Hunt and Saint John Hunt Miami, Florida 2005:

E. Howard Hunt: After they killed your Mother I worried for the safety of you children. I was imprisoned and unable to protect you.

* * *

Conversation between Saint John Hunt and Dorothy Hunt 1972:

Saint John Hunt: Mama, what’s wrong? Are you okay?

Dorothy Hunt: I’m sure I was being followed.

* * *

During the Senate Select Committee Hearings on Presidential Campaign Activities in 1972, CIA Director Richard Helms said:

… in the dimness of his recollection, Mrs. Hunt had been a CIA employee before marrying Howard Hunt.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright page

Epigraph

Dedication

Preface

Quotes

Foreword

Prologue: DC Noir

1) Born in Ohio

2) Bern, 1944

3) Shanghai, 1945

4) Paris, 1949

5) The Organization for European Economic Cooperation

6) Mrs. E. Howard Hunt

7) A Clean Slate

8) Mexico City, 1950

9) Tokyo, 1954

10) Montevideo, 1957

11) Washington, D.C., 1960

12) Madrid, 1964

13) Witches Island, 1966

14) Who’s on First?

15) Watergate Begins

16) Watergate Blues

17) Hippie with a Shotgun

18) Dorothy: Watergate Paymaster

19) The $1,000,000 Question

20) Watergate Continues

21) CIA Shadows

22) Chicago, 1972

23) We aren’t in Kansas anymore…

24) Prison & Hearings

25) Escape from Witches Island

26) The End?

AppendixOne: The Living and the Dead

Appendix Two: The Last Minutes of Flight 553

Appendix Three: Phone Call

Appendix Four: The Mystery of Sherman Skolnick

THE SECRET HISTORY OF AIRPLANE SABOTAGE

Appendix Five: FBI Files

Index

Foreword

Saint John Hunt is far more then just a son of legendary CIA operative and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt. Saint John is a writer, poet, troubadour, and researcher of extraordinary talents and fluency. E. Howard Hunt is, of course, more then just a CIA veteran and Watergate perp. It is only because of his exceptional courage and perseverance that we now know that Howard Hunt was both a participant and witness in some of the most extraordinary events in American history in the last five decades.

Essentially abandoned when his father went to prison for his role in the Watergate caper and his mother was mysteriously murdered in the Watergate cover up, Saint John began a lifelong search for the truth about his beloved parents and truth about Watergate. Despite very specific roadblocks put in his way by a stepmother, who would mysteriously marry his imprisoned father, and a family lawyer who emerged to advise the Hunts, Saint John would seek the truth. Lawyer Bill Snyder was alleged to be a CIA handler assigned to ensure that the deep secrets of Watergate, as well as Howard Hunt’s broad knowledge of the CIA/Mob plots to assassinate Castro, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the JFK assassination, the ascendancy of Lyndon Baines Johnson as well as the Watergate horrors would never be revealed.

Snyder was highly recommended to Mr. Hunt by CIA asset and conservative journalist William F. Buckley, Jr. Buckley also served as godfather to Saint John. Snyder would use both legal tactics and psychological warfare in an attempt to estrange Saint John from his gravely ill father and to ensure that the secrets of Howard Hunt died with him.

In the years since Watergate, Saint Johns siblings largely became unsuspecting pawns in the government’s game to ensure that Howard Hunt would not reveal what he knew before expiring. In the immediate aftermath of Watergate, Saint John’s brother David, was farmed out to live with Hunt’s comrade in the Bay of Pigs, Manual Artime, an anti-Castro leader who was a favorite of Bobby Kennedy. Artime would ultimately bolt for Nicaragua and become an international drug dealer. Saint John and his sisters became estranged, but his brother David would remain close to Saint John.

Howard Hunt suffering from cancer, lupus, chronic pneumonia and a double amputation was ready to tell St. John the truth about JFK and the Watergate murder. Yet Snyder blocked numerous books, films and other artistic projects that the prolific Hunt proposed, going out of his way to undermine negotiations between Howard Hunt and numerous publishers and Hollywood studios.

Cut off from his family, Saint John won’t deny burying his despair in a haze of booze and drugs but still he pushed to learn the truth about his own family. It didn’t take him long to figure out that the Bob Woodward-Carl Bernstein/Washington Post narrative of Watergate was not quite correct. Meanwhile, Saint John continued fighting with his father’s lawyer, whose true goal was to bury the truth.

Before the elder Hunt passed away in 2007, he outlined, to Saint John, the CIA’s role in toppling governments, plotting against Fidel Castro, confirming the involvement of CIA agents in a plot to kill JFK, and noted that Vice President Lyndon Johnson was running the show.

Hunt would also implicate Cord Meyer, David Phillips, Frank Sturgis, David Morales, Antonio Veciana, William Harvey, and Lucien Sarti. Ever the CIA trickster, Hunt would minimize his own role on the day of the assassination saying he was a bench warmer, but his confession dovetails with a clear memory that Saint John has of his mother telling him that his father was in Dallas on the actual day of the JFK shooting. E. Howard Hunt sent Saint John an audio tape with all the details. This became what is now known as the last confession of E. Howard Hunt.

Saint John would not only release the audio tape to the world, filling in an important blank in our historical knowledge of the assassination, he also wrote Bond of Secrecy the story of his tortured path to the truth about his father’s role in the death of JFK. The book received world wide attention and is the only book which reveals inside information by a top CIA operative with links to the assassination, as told to his son.

Now Saint John as embarked on the second part of his story; Dorothy, the story of his attractive, chic, determined mother who waged a one woman war with Richard Nixon. Nixon advisor Charles Colson called her an extraordinary women and the savviest woman in the world when he spoke of her to Nixon. Dorothy was OSS and CIA, a modern day Mata Hari, and a role model to women around the world for her fierce determination and cunning in her battle against the most powerful man in the world. A battle that would eventually cost her life. Saint John has documented the mysterious circumstances of her death and makes a strong case for murder.

Today Saint John works as a journalist in South Florida. From time to time he takes his guitar out to sing for friends or take a one-night gig at a friendly bar or blues club. Almost always clad in all black like a latter day Johnny Cash, Hunt is writing what he knows and understands. We are the beneficiaries.

Dorothy reads like a gripping spy novel and you are wise to have selected this title. I have no doubt that Saint John Hunt will continue to help us uncover the hidden history of the United Sates and the truth shall set us free.

ROGER J STONE JR.

Miami Beach, Florida

Prologue

DC Noir

November 1972...

Public phone booth at the crossroads of Falls Road and River Road.

Time: 11:30 P.M.

It was quiet. Dead quiet. The wind made a faint whistling sound on the branches of the trees that stood like arms with bony fingers outstretched into the blackness of the sky. It was just 11:00 p.m. and there was not a soul around. Dorothy had driven by herself on this dark foreboding night. She drove from the fourteen acre estate she had named Witches Island. The moon was just a crescent peaking in and out of the dark clouds and on this night it mostly stayed hidden as if to not bear witness.

Dorothy had waited at home, nervously checking her wrist watch until she knew it was time to go. She had made sure that the house was quiet and that her children were in bed. After saying good night to them, she quickly and quietly slipped out of the house and under this witches moon started her car and let it coast down the long gravel driveway that led from the house to River Road. She drove through the veil of darkness and cloaked in fright, she waited alone in her car, by the only phone booth in the now deserted little village of Potomac, Maryland.

During the day Potomac was the essence of upper middle class society. A bright cheery village with a small shopping center, post office, a Catholic church and boutique. The town was affluent without being gaudy, manicured without being stuffy and inhabited by people of wealth. It was sparsely populated, mostly large rambling houses with horse breeding ranches and lots and lots of open space to ride and yet was only an hour from the center of political power, media manipulation and the inner sanctum of all things powerful in Washington D.C. Those that lived here were either city folk riding horses on weekends, or riding folk working highly specialized government careers during the week. Washington was just across the Potomac River from Langley in northern Virginia where the CIA maintained it's headquarters. Northern Virginia also boasted the Pentagon; nerve center of all things military.

Within just a short drive from the city center of Washington D.C., one could find all the brightly lit buildings that tourists from around the world came to stand before … stand in awe of the power and history in the capitol city of the most powerful nation in the world. The Capitol building, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the United States Senate and Congress, and the White House. This surely was the center of all that is good and right and moral in the world.

Potomac, Maryland is located in Montgomery County just an hour north east of Washington DC. In 2013, it held the title of most affluent town in all of the United States based on median house income. Potomac is also seventh most highly-educated American small towns according to Forbes. But in 1972, Potomac was a town not yet on the public map of celebrity sightseeing. It was more of a well kept secret. A town that kept secrets. A town with secrets to keep.

Potomac had been settled in 1714 and took the name Potomac in 1881, before that the place had been called The Crossroads for a hundred and sixty odd years. Ah yes, the Crossroads; where the Devil meets you to strike a bargain for your soul.

Dorothy was ready to bargain, to negotiate. She thought for a moment, "How had it come to this?' She knew well the answer and she silently cursed her husband Howard; E. Howard Hunt. In his selfish and vain attempts to live as if he were one of the heroes in his spy novels he had gambled everything and lost.

No amount of reason could persuade him of the futility of his acts. The arguments, the fighting, the affairs she had caught him in. She had made up her mind several months ago that upon her return from Europe that summer, she would divorce him. But now she was trapped and it was too late to do anything else but clean up his dirty mess and protect her family.

Dorothy had played these games before, years ago. But now she was playing the most dangerous game she had ever played; blackmailing the President of the United States. This is what brought her to the Crossroads, where River Road and Great Falls Road intersect and where Dorothy Hunt now waited for the Devil.

Alone in her 1970 Monte Carlo she waited. It was now 11:01 p.m. and as she rolled down the drivers side window she thought she heard something moving in the dark. She stopped breathing. In the dark car she was completely still … as if