Friendly Neighbour: Another One Bites the Dust

Watergate Burglary Planner, Dead at 88

E. Howard Hunt, the CIA officer who planned the Watergate breakdown, has died at the age of 88. He served a mere 33 months for his act of treason against the principles of democracy. Even so he was bitter that he should have been punished at all when his boss, Richard Nixon, got off scot free.

From BBC News:

"From 1949 to 1970 he worked for the CIA, and was involved in the operation that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz as Guatemala's president in 1954, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961."

Like the CIA-backed coup which deposed Salvador Allende in Chile during the Nixon presidency, this was a war crime - for which Hunt got off scot free. Arbenz and Allende were BTW both popular, elected leaders. Their hand-picked successors were bloodthirsty dictators - preferred by the GOP leadership for their friendly relations with US business interests, and their brutal repression of workers' rights. So much for promoting democracy outside the US.

Probably the most controversial story associated with Hunt is the theory that Nixon stacked the CIA with Gopper-friendly agents while he was Eisenhower's Veep, and this cabal pulled off the assassination of John F. Kennedy and later his brother Bobby. It is a certainty that bad intel led to JFK's embarrassing involvement in the Bay of Pigs incident. Photos taken in Dealy Plaza on the day of JFK's assassination are reputed to show E. Howard Hunt and fellow Watergate conspirator Frank Sturgis.

Some people will tell you that conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination or connecting it to Watergate are pure flights of fantasy. Magic bullet theories, missing brains, two widely conflicting autopsies, dozens of witnesses dying shortly after the event, the elimination of Lee Harvey 'fallguy' Oswald before trial...