Legacy of Secrecy (73 page)

article. Justice Fortas also stated that he personally would be glad to line

up a publication or publishing house through which a book or article

could be handled.” The mind boggles at the conflicts of interest the

Fortas-FBI meeting represented. LBJ’s use of a Supreme Court justice

for such errands and back-channel dealings was a sign of the problems

that would soon force Fortas from the Court.10

Dealing with a Supreme Court Justice about attacking critics was

far from the most egregious action Hoover and his men took in that

regard. According to Bud Fensterwald and Michael Ewing, “Senate

investigators [later] established that FBI Director Hoover not only had

prepared secret ‘derogatory dossiers’ on the critics of the Warren Com-

mission over the years, but had even ordered the preparation of similar

‘damaging’ reports about staff members of the Warren Commission.”

One member of the Commission, Louisiana congressman Hale Boggs,

would later charge on the floor of Congress that “certain FBI agents had

tapped his own telephone, as well as the phones of certain other mem-

bers of the House and Senate.” After Boggs’s death, his son would tell

the
Washington Post
that “the FBI leaked to his father damaging material

on the personal lives of critics of its investigation into John F. Kennedy’s

assassination.”11

Hoover’s investigation into the private lives of the critics had begun

while the Warren Commission was still conducting its investigation.

Fensterwald and Ewing, both veteran Congressional investigators,

wrote that “Mark Lane . . . uncovered a February 24, 1964, Warren

Commission memorandum [that] revealed that FBI agents had Lane’s

movements and lectures under surveillance, and were forwarding their

reports to the Warren Commission.” At that time, Lane was trying to rep-

resent the interests of Oswald and Oswald’s mother to the Commission.

Even in early 1967, “the official list of secret Commission documents

then being held in a National Archives vault included at least seven FBI

files on Lane, which were classified on supposed grounds of ‘national

security.’ Among these secret Bureau reports were ‘Mark Lane, Buffalo

appearances.’”12

However, Hoover had the FBI do far more than just monitor Lane’s

travels. Fensterwald and Ewing point out that in 1975, Senator Richard

Schweiker, of the Intelligence Committee, would reveal “new informa-

tion from a November 8, 1966, memorandum by J. Edgar Hoover, relat-

ing to . . . the critics [in which] ‘Seven individuals [were] listed, some

of their files . . . not only included derogatory information, but sex pic-

tures.’” Senator Schweiker found other FBI files from two months later

showing “an ongoing campaign to personally derogate [critics of] the

Warren Commission.”13

Hoover’s firm support of the “lone nut, magic bullet” conclusion of

the Warren Report would far outlive him. Even decades later, when FBI

agents question people about new evidence in the JFK assassination,

they often refer to the Warren Report as the only officially accepted

version of events, ignoring the 1979 conspiracy conclusion of the House

Select Committee on Assassinations. However, the FBI wasn’t alone

in its quest to prevent broader investigations of conspiracy in JFK’s

assassination, since other federal agencies also had investigative and

intelligence failures to hide.14

358

LEGACY OF SECRECY

CIA Director Richard Helms would have been alarmed by the growing

surge of JFK assassination books and articles questioning the Warren

Commission’s conclusions. Helms had to protect not only Almeida and

the CIA’s ongoing operations against Cuba, but also his own unauthor-

ized Castro assassination plots that had backfired against JFK. But in

the fall of 1966, his Deputy Director for Plans, Desmond FitzGerald, was

in declining health, and David Atlee Phillips was still serving as CIA

Station Chief in the Dominican Republic. So Helms turned to someone

else who had every incentive to prevent the intelligence failures from

1963 from coming to light: E. Howard Hunt.

In the summer of 1966, Richard Helms ordered Hunt to return to the

US from Spain and resume Hunt’s important role in the CIA’s dealings

with publishers and the press. Hunt’s and Helms’s efforts would impact

not only the CIA’s response to the mounting media attacks on the War-

ren Commission, but also the unfolding coverage of Jim Garrison’s JFK

investigation, articles tying Johnny Rosselli and Joseph Milteer to JFK’s

murder, and coverage of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and

Bobby Kennedy. The actions of Helms and Hunt in dealing with the

press and leaks would lead to both men’s involvement in Watergate,

eventually landing Hunt in prison and costing Helms his position as

CIA Director.

The emerging skepticism of the press and public regarding the War-

ren Report was a double-edged sword for E. Howard Hunt. It increased

his value to Richard Helms, but raised the possibility that a journalist

might come across Harry Williams or someone else who could implicate

Hunt’s associates in the events surrounding JFK’s assassination. For the

next six years, Helms made sure that Hunt was in a good position to

keep that from happening.

Once the fallout from Cubela’s trial had subsided in 1966, Hunt

returned to the US, marking what he called “the beginning of the period

that would make [him] a household name.” During Cubela’s public trial

in Havana, Cubela had named Artime and the CIA’s Madrid Station

Chief as part of the plot, but neither Cubela nor any other witness had

mentioned Hunt’s real name or his code name, “Eduardo.” Escaping

notice, Hunt remained valuable to Helms and returned to the US appar-

ently expecting great things and a very bright future.15

Hunt bought an estate twenty minutes from CIA headquarters that

he described as a “sprawling horse ranch.” Tad Szulc notes that its cost

was “reported to have been $200,000,” more than a million dollars in

today’s money. Szulc points out that “even with income from books

and his CIA salary . . . Hunt could not have afforded that much.” Szulc

didn’t realize that Hunt had profited from selling Artime’s multimillion-

dollar trove of CIA-supplied arms and supplies. Hunt’s lavish lifestyle

apparently didn’t arouse the interest of the usually extremely observant

CIA Counter-Intelligence Chief James Angleton, possibly because Hunt

enjoyed CIA Director Helms’s patronage and support.16

Hunt’s primary objective for Helms, which he would maintain

for the next six years, was to ensure that Helms’s unauthorized 1963

Castro assassination attempts (primarily the CIA-Mafia plots, but also

the CIA’s backing for Cubela’s plot and QJWIN) didn’t become known

to the press, public, or Congress—that would have destroyed both of

their careers. Hunt’s likely role in the CIA’s continuing support for Com-

mander Almeida’s family outside Cuba provided a national-security

basis for his actions. However, Hunt’s role with Almeida was known

only to a relative handful of CIA officials and wasn’t a full-time job, so

Hunt needed a more traditional position once he returned to the US to

“officially” rejoin the CIA. (Hunt’s phony resignation before going to

Spain had been just a matter of paperwork, to provide cover.)

Helms’s position as CIA Director allowed him to give Hunt a pres-

tigious title and assignments, and Hunt’s official position would soon

be “chief of covert action for Western Europe,” a key battleground in

the Cold War. As he had in 1963, Hunt had an additional role as well:

Congressional investigators found that Helms put Hunt “in charge of

contacts with US publishers in the late 1960s.” While much information

was withheld from those investigators, they were able to discover a few

examples of Hunt’s handiwork, such as when Hunt arranged “a book

review for an Agency book which appeared in the
New York Times
[that]

was written by a CIA writer under contract.”17

Not only are CIA operations targeting citizens inside the US forbid-

den by its charter, but also, since 1948, American laws have forbidden

federal agencies from spreading propaganda inside the US. However,

as one of Desmond FitzGerald’s men later told
Newsweek
editor Evan

Thomas, when it came to targeting the US news media, “we were not

the least inhibited by the fact that the CIA had no internal security role

in the U.S.”18

After Watergate later triggered a series of Congressional investiga-

tions, Helms and the CIA would do a masterful spin job of downplaying

Hunt’s roles at the CIA, successfully depicting him as a bumbling loser

whom Helms barely knew. Helms (and later, CIA officials) also down-

played the serious nature of much of Hunt’s work by withholding from

360

LEGACY OF SECRECY

Congress Hunt’s important work on the JFK-Almeida coup plan, appar-

ently on the grounds that it was an ongoing CIA operation because of

Almeida’s family. While we don’t want to overstate Hunt’s importance

within the CIA, it’s clear from the now available historical records that

he retained Helms’s trust and continued to perform important tasks

for the Agency until Watergate. After Hunt’s arrest in that matter, the

American publishers and press Hunt had dealt with previously had

no incentive to tout their own ties to Hunt, especially if they wanted to

maintain their own reputations with the public or their relationships

with the CIA.19

Hunt justified his CIA work with the media by saying the CIA “had

a very real public relations problem within the U.S.” Aside from a few

exceptions, like
The
Invisible Government
, the CIA seemed to get most of

what it wanted from the American news media until late 1966. Then,

the flood of books and articles questioning the Warren Commission

coincided with the start of a gradual shift in the mainstream media away

from unwavering support for the war in Vietnam. At the same time, the

illegal activities of the CIA, FBI, and other federal agencies were starting

to be exposed in progressive publications like
Ramparts
magazine.20

For Richard Helms, having Hunt working again with the press and

publishers in 1966 offered him many of the same benefits it had in 1963.

It gave Helms a trusted subordinate who could monitor books and

the press for any leaks about Almeida’s secret work for JFK, as well as

any stories hinting at Helms’s unauthorized Castro assassination plots

involving Rosselli, Trafficante, and others. Hunt was the logical choice

for Helms and Desmond FitzGerald, since Hunt had participated in

those operations and it was in Hunt’s personal and professional interest

to make sure those matters weren’t made public. By using Hunt, Richard

Helms didn’t have to make other CIA officials aware of the potentially

career-ending information about his unauthorized Castro assassination

operations.

Almeida remained in place and unexposed, and of potential benefit to

the CIA if anything happened to Fidel Castro. Given Counter-Intelligence

Chief James Angleton’s concern about a “Monster Plot” involving pos-

sible Soviet moles in the CIA’s upper echelons, it made little sense to tell

additional CIA officials about Almeida or about Helms’s unauthorized

Castro assassination plots. That is why Helms continued to use the same

small group of knowledgeable people (Hunt, Phillips, Morales, etc.) for

certain sensitive operations, and continued drawing from that same

small pool even though their results were often mixed (and disastrous

or fatal for their targets).

The CIA continued a broad program of intelligence gathering and

some covert action against Fidel Castro, and Hunt had the background

and contacts to know whether any press or publishing plans might

impact those operations. Hunt could also try to present a more posi-

tive view of the CIA in print, just as the Agency’s image was starting to

come under attack. According to Senate investigators, approximately

250 books written in English “were produced, subsidized, or sponsored

by the CIA before the end of 1967.” The investigators found that some

of the books “were written by witting Agency assets” with access to

“actual case materials,” and at times, “the publisher was unaware” of

the CIA’s involvement.21

E. Howard Hunt actually wrote a few of those books, and two of

his writing projects in particular are important in that regard. The first

was Hunt’s nonfiction take on the Bay of Pigs, called
Give Us This Day
,

which Hunt began writing in 1966. Hunt claims he wrote the detailed,

emotional account simply for his own pleasure, with no plans to have

it published. However, Hunt’s manuscript reads like a CIA response to

the 1964 Kennedy-sympathetic book
The Bay of Pigs
, written by Haynes