Howard Hunt

The Watergate was an infamous event that shocked our nation and shook the people's faith in their leaders. The cover-up is much more famous than the actual bugging of the Democratic headquarters. Nixon hid behind his loyal politicians and revered station to avoid most of the blame for a long while. Even when condemning evidence in the form of secret recordings of the president surfaced, Nixon tried to save his own skin by ordering the Attorney General to fire the Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox. This resulted in the resignation of the Attorney General and his deputy and Cox was eventually firing by the Solicitor General, dubbed the "Saturday Night Massacre." By the time the tapes were released to the public, the president's reputation was ruined and he resigned rather than face the music.

The name at the forefront of this scandal is and will always be President Nixon, but he was not the sole person responsible for Watergate. One of the other integral people involved in the scandal was Howard Hunt. If Nixon was the brain who ordered the coverup, Hunt was the mouth that actually gave the commands. He was born as Everett Howard Hunt in Hamburg, New York. Hunt enjoyed a successful professional career after graduating from Brown University. Initially, his occupations ranged from screenwriter to Life magazine correspondent. A master with words, he also received the Guggenheim Fellowship and worked on a documentary for TIME. As a former member of the Naval Reserves and the Army Air Force as well, Hunt was not unfamiliar to serving his country. He eventually became a CIA operative and remained there until 1970.

Post CIA, Hunt worked for a public relations firm in Washington D.C. Hunt was known as a "plumber" who cleaned up leaks, one of which was the the Pentagon Papers incident. His involvement in the Watergate scandal was also extensive. In 1971, he and Gordon Liddy collaborated to dig up dirt on President Nixon's Democratic opposition in the upcoming election. He organized the five-man break in into the Democratic Party Headquarters. Hunt's involvement was quickly discovered when his phone number was found in some of the burglars possession. E. Howard Hunt pleaded guilty in 1973 and was sentenced to 35 years in prison for conspiracy, burglary and eavesdropping. This sentence was eventually reduced to 2.5-8 years, of which he served over 32 months and was fined $10,000. After being paroled in 1977, Hunt continued writing and eventually died on January 23, 2007 in Miami, Florida.




http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/chapters/6c.html
http://www.biography.com/people/e-howard-hunt-262375
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/howardhunt.html