Chapter Seventeen
I had started trying several months before he died to find another way to break the incredible information my father had given me. One of my old high school friends worked as a writer at Rolling Stone and after countless attempts to reach him, he finally returned my e-mail. To make a long story a bit shorter, I told him what I had and, after getting approval from his bosses, he flew to Eureka for three days of interviews. He examined all the documents I had, listened to the tape, and questioned me exhaustively. In the meantime the news broke that E. Howard Hunt had passed away, and it was all over the papers and the Internet. Eureka’s newspaper, the Times Standard, sent someone over to cover the story from a local perspective. During that interview I let it slip that there might be a big story coming out with Rolling Stone magazine. Immediately I got calls from members of my family. I got calls from Snyder, the lawyer, whom I had hoped and prayed would not continue to be involved in family matters. This was not to be. There was no doubt that he was going to fight me every step of the way.
When the Rolling Stone article came out in April of 2007, the fecal matter really hit the fan! I got a call from the family saying they never wanted to talk to me again. As far as they were concerned I was no longer a part of the Hunt family. I had betrayed them and they considered me a lowlife. Immediately parts of the story were up all over the Net, and myriads of people had opinions and set up websites to break the news that Hunt gave a “death-bed confession” with startling revelations naming the assassins of JFK. “Death-bed confession” was not a term I ever used. The title of the Rolling Stone article was, “The Last Confession of E. Howard Hunt,” but, true to human nature, people went with the sexier “death-bed” thing, and it exploded into a media frenzy. I started getting calls from radio shows and decided to go ahead with interviews on some of the top programs.
I picked “Coast to Coast” with Ian Punnett, and he became the first to broadcast the taped confession my father made and sent to me back in 2004. Shortly before the airing, my sister Kevan called Ian and said that there was no such confession tape, that it was all a lie. Ian told her she should remain on the phone and tune in to the program. He said, “I’ve heard this tape now a dozen times and I assure you that this is nothing short of astounding.” The problem my family had was that they didn’t know Papa had made the tape, let alone its contents; so when it was broadcast it completely shut them up. To me, it was a major victory. I gleefully imagined Kevan’s jaw dropping … even becoming dislocated! The rest of the doubters never said another thing to me. What could they say? How could they deny words from the man himself?
I don’t know what, if any, strategy meetings the family had to contain the story and destroy my character, but there did appear a “Hunt family” website with a long letter full of character assassination against yours truly. In it they brought up my drug use and claimed I had pressured an old and sick Hunt into making up false stories. I was a liar and shouldn’t be believed. The response from the public was nearly unanimous: I was the bearer of truth. They were the liars and should be ashamed of themselves! Letters and e-mails started pouring in from all over the world thanking me for coming forward with the story.
With all the public support, I could bring the truth to a larger audience and agreed to go on the Alex Jones radio show. I had never heard of Alex, but I quickly learned that this was a man I could relate to. He was a freedom fighter in the purest sense of the word. An inexhaustible mover and shaker, he runs around like a six-headed demon attacking fraud and political corruption from every angle. He’s a very controversial figure with a huge radio audience. My interviews on his show were a big success and we became good friends. His knowledge of the underside of political intrigue and misinformation is encyclopedic. Alex is a great supporter of mine, and I hope I am of him as well.
I did some smaller shows … pirate radio and such, trying to reach as many people as I could. It was not only time consuming, but emotionally exhausting as well. Talking about my mother’s death and answering questions about my past sometimes left me without the energy to get up from my chair.
The next media offer that came in was from Inside Edition, a Hollywood/News tabloid TV show. They wanted to put me on the air. I flew down to Los Angeles and met my friend Eric Hamburg. We had agreed to do the show together. We drove to their studios in Hollywood and waited for them to call us in for the taping. I had never done TV before and I didn’t know what was going to happen. As I waited there the thought did occur to me that I might be getting a bad deal. What if the interviewer, Jim Moret, was working to discredit me? In a few moments I would know. My fears proved unfounded. Moret was not only a very nice man; he was an exceptional interviewer. He was smooth and direct without being abrupt. He handled me perfectly and we taped for about an hour. The final cut was much shorter of course, but it was very well received. After the show, Eric and I got a chance to hang out together.
There was a lot going on in my life and I was getting tired of the radio shows. I felt like I was getting repetitive and people were asking some pretty strange questions. One caller asked if I knew where JFK’s brain was! Other people asked if Lee Harvey Oswald ever came to my house. Radio shows are very time consuming. You have to wait on the phone for long periods while the host does his advertising spots and talks to his other guests, who all have something to sell. It might be a DVD or a book, but they all have some kind of product.
I decided to bring something to the sales table. I went ahead and had an interview filmed, which I offered on a website that was created for me. On the website, you could hear the entire audio of my dad’s “confession” and see a transcript of his words. There was also a link to sell my DVD. Was it wrong or unethical? It certainly was not. At best, what little money came in would barely offset the cost of manufacturing the DVD’s and setting up the website. Unfortunately, by the time my DVD was available, I had tired of the radio shows and decided that Alex’s would be the last for a while.
My father had instructed me to come forward with his revelations after his death and I felt like I had done a pretty good job. I had other things going on in my life. My wife, Mona Arnold, was the woman I had waited my entire life to meet. We met at College of the Redwoods, and I knew almost immediately that I would ask her to marry me. I decided to propose to her at the big Relay for Life cancer fund-raiser.