I met Howard Hunt soon after arriving in Mexico City in 1951. I was a deep cover agent for the CIA—deep cover describing, I was given to understand, a category members of which were told to take extreme care not to permit anyone grounds for suspicion that one was in service to the CIA.
The rule was (perhaps it is different now) that on arriving at one’s targeted post, one was informed which single human being in the city knew that you were in the CIA. That person would tell you what to do for the duration of your service in that city; he would answer such questions as you wished to put to him; and would concern himself with all aspects of your duty life.
The man I was told to report to (by someone whose real name I did not know) was Howard Hunt. Howard was ostensibly working for the State Department in the Mexican embassy as a cultural affairs adviser, if I remember correctly. In any event, I met him in his office and found him greatly agreeable but also sternly concerned with duty. He would here and there give me special minor assignments, but I soon learned that my principal job was to translate from the Spanish the huge and important book by defector Eudocio Ravines.
Ravines had been an important Communist in the Peruvian party, and he defected in the forties. He had brought forth a book called The Road from Yenan, an autobiographical account of his exciting life in the service of the Communist revolution and an extended account of the reasons for his defection.
It was a lazy assignment, in that we were not given a deadline, so that the work slogged on during and after visits, averaging one every week, by Eudocio Ravines to the house I and my wife had occupied in the region that used to be called San Angel Inn—postrevolution, Villa Obregon. (We lived and worked at Calero #91.) It is a part of Mexico City on the southern slopes, leading now to the university (which back then was in central Mexico City).
It was only a couple of weeks after our meeting that Howard introduced me to Mrs. Hunt. Dorothy was a striking presence, witty and sharp, devoted to her husband and to their firstborn child, Lisa. The Hunts became frequent visitors to our house, and we went to theirs from time to time.
I learned that Howard had graduated from Brown University, and he was exercised by left-wing activity there, by the faculty, the administration, and the students. His own interest in alumni affairs made him especially interested in what I had to say about my own alma mater. My book God and Man at Yale was published in mid-October 1951, and I shook free for one week’s leave to travel to New York to figure in the promotion that attended the book’s publication.
My book attracted a great deal of publicity, and two publications offered me jobs. One was The Freeman, the highbrow fortnightly edited by Henry Hazlitt, Forrest Davis, and John Chamberlain. The accent there was heavily on economic issues. The American Mercury was owned and edited by William Bradford Huie, a veteran journalist and novelist, and he also asked me to join his staff.
But I went back to Mexico and to my project with Ravines, and persevered in my friendship with the Hunt family. In the early spring of the next year, 1952, I yielded to the temptation to go into journalism. The project with Ravines was pretty well completed when I called on Howard to tell him I had decided to quit the agency.
Our friendship was firm, and Howard came several times to Stamford, Connecticut, where my wife and I were camped down. I never knew—and he was very discreet about—what he was up to, but I assumed, correctly, that he was continuing his work for the Central Intelligence Agency. I was greatly moved by Dorothy’s message to me that summer—that she and Howard were joining the Catholic communion, and wanted me to serve as godfather for their two children (daughter Kevan was now born). Later, the invitation extended to serve for their son, St. John, though by now the family had moved to the Far East, and years passed without my seeing Howard.
But then came Watergate, and the dreadful accident over Midway Airport in Chicago that killed Dorothy in December 1972. I learned of this watching television with my wife, and it was through the television that I also learned that she had named me as a personal representative of her estate in the event of her demise. I consulted with a veteran lawyer and close friend. He recommended that the Hunt family’s wrongful-death lawsuit (which had to be brought in my name) be turned over to the attorney who was representing other victims of the crash of the United Airlines airplane.
That terrible event came at a high point in the Watergate affair, and it was in November (as I recall) that I received a phone call from Howard, with whom I hadn’t been in touch for several years. He asked to see me.
He came with his daughter Kevan, a student at Smith who would soon be going to law school. He startled me by saying that he intended to disclose to me everything he knew about the Watergate affair, including much that (he said) had not yet been revealed to Congressional investigators.
What especially arrested me was his saying that his dedication to the project at hand had included a hypothetical agreement to contrive the assassination of syndicated muckraker Jack Anderson, if the high command at the Nixon White House thought this necessary. I remember especially his keen surprise that the White House hadn’t exercised itself to protect and free Hunt and his collaborators in the Watergate enterprise. He simply could not understand this moral default. It was left that I would take an interest, however remote, in his household of children, now that he was headed for jail. (Neither he nor Dorothy had any brothers or sisters.)
Soon afterward, Howard told me that his lawyer had quit because Howard could no longer pay for his services. I called a very distinguished lawyer in New York who served also as my personal attorney. He was vastly informed on the international struggle against the Communists, and he volunteered to handle Howard’s appeals free of charge.
A singular piece of good fortune was that Howard came upon William Snyder, a young and resourceful attorney who became not only his advocate but his close friend to this day.
Howard was soon in jail, and I visited him once in Washington. I thought back on the sad contrast between Hunt, E. H., federal prisoner, and Hunt, E. H., special assistant to the U.S. ambassador to Mexico—and his going on to a number of glittering assignments but ultimately making that fateful wrong turn in the service of President Nixon, for which his suffering has been prolonged and wretchedly protracted. I prefer to remember him back in his days as a happy warrior, a productive novelist, an efficient administrator, and a wonderful companion.
Howard Hunt now has a new family, who love and dote on him. I can say of his two oldest daughters that they are exemplary human beings and citizens and represent the best of their two parents.