 |
.American
Free Press |
| |
| ..Vol
VII .#15 . .April 9, 2007 . americanfreepress.net |
| |
E. HOWARD HUNT'S SONS CLAIMING
DAD KNEW ABOUT PLOT TO KILL JFK
For decades researchers have said that CIA operative E. Howard Hunt was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his denials notwithstanding. Recently, his two sons have come forward to cast doubt on the recently deceased intelligence agent’s official testimony concerning that seminal event in U.S. history. Author and corres-pondent Michael Collins Piper has the story this week on the latest charges implicating Hunt in the murder of the popular U.S. president.
See HUNT SONS, Page 14
|
 |
|
Page 14, AMERICAN
FREE PRESS * April 9, 2007 Behind the Scenes with Michael Collins Piper
Hunt Sons Say
Dad Was in Dallas
It's hard to tell what's true and
what isn't — but it's intriguing . . .
By Michael Collins Piper
 |
.The two eldest sons of the recently-deceased longtime CIA operative E. Howard Hunt are proclaiming publicly that their father lied under oath before two federal inquiries and in two civil court cases relating to their father’s suspected involvement in the JFK Assassination conspiracy.
In fact, the younger Hunts, David and St. John, assert — contrary to their father’s sworn testimony—that their father had inside knowledge regarding the involvement of top CIA officials in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and that their father knew—in advance—of at least one CIA-connected plot against the president.
These revelations appeared in an article published in Rolling Stone magazine, but they’ve barely received any publicity at all in the mainstream media in America—with the exception of an item in The Los Angeles Times and a reprint of that article not in the news section, but instead in the gossip section of The Washington Post. The Times article was careful to report that it found the information the Hunt brothers submitted to back up their claims to be “inconclusive.”
"Hunt told his son that longtime senior CIA official Cord Meyer was a prime figure behind the JFK assassination. Meyer's wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had been a mistress of JFK. She later died under mysterious circumstances." |
Coming just several weeks after their father’s death, and in the wake of the recent publication of Hunt’s memoirs, these revelations from the Hunt family provide a bittersweet vindication for the staff of American Free Press, who during their previous service at the now-defunct Spotlight newspaper, waged a long and bitter battle against Hunt after he filed a libel action against The Spotlight over a story published in that populist weekly in 1978 regarding Hunt’s connections to the JFK assassination conspiracy.
During a federal court trial in Miami in 1981, a jury found in favor of Hunt, an appeals court judge set the verdict aside and ordered a new trial. During that second trial, veteran JFK assassination researcher Mark Lane came on board as defense attorney for The Spotlight and convinced a jury that the CIA had played a pivotal role in the murder of Kennedy.
The jury ruled against Hunt because the former CIA operative gave contradictory testimony, which led the jury to conclude that Hunt was lying about his whereabouts on Nov. 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
Shortly after the stunning conclusion of that trial, which was largely ignored by the mass media in America, attorney Lane published Plausible Denial, a book-length account of the Hunt case. Lane’s book introduced a whole new generation of Americans to the murky circumstances surrounding the Kennedy assassination, adding further new data to the growing assemblage of evidence pointing toward a conspiracy in the JFK affair, laying waste to the officially-perpetrated myth that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a mad “lone gunman” acting in Dallas.
This author, in 1995, wrote Final Judgment about JFK’s assassination, tying in the Mossad to the crime.
Hunt’s oldest son, St. John, says that as long ago as August 2003 he pressured his ailing father—who appeared to be dying at that time—to reveal what he knew about the JFK assassination, considering the fact that there had been so many allegations linking his father to the crime. The younger Hunt also noted that Hunt’s second wife, his stepmother, had serious concerns about her son pressing his father on this issue since one of the preconditions of their marriage had been that the senior Hunt swore to her that he knew nothing about the assassination. But Hunt had apparently lied to his second wife-to-be just as he had lied time and time again about the matter.
However, believing he was dying, in 2003, Hunt told his son that he (Hunt) believed that longtime senior CIA official Cord Meyer was one of the prime figures behind the JFK assassination.
Meyer’s wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had been a mistress of Kennedy. She later died under mysterious circumstances. Meyer has been alleged to have said, privately, that his wife had been murdered by the same people who had killed Kennedy.
So, if the stories about Meyer’s remarks are to be believed, this might raise some questions as to whether Hunt’s version of Meyer’s involvement is to be believed.
In his account of the JFK conspiracy—or at least that part of which he claimed to be aware—Hunt also named high-ranking CIA official William Harvey and another CIA figure, long involved in Latin American affairs, David Atlee Phillips. Hunt also alleged that David Morales, a longtime CIA covert operative, and Frank Sturgis, a mercenary with CIA connections, were also key players in the plot against JFK. Sturgis also had worked for Israel’s Mossad going back to the late 1940s, a point Hunt evidently did not mention.
The claim of Sturgis’s involvement is interesting since Hunt claimed under oath and in his memoirs that he didn’t meet Sturgis until many years after the JFK assassination, around the time that the two were involved in the now-infamous Watergate affair that brought Hunt and Sturgis international notoriety.
Hunt also told his son that the “hit” on Kennedy was originally scheduled to take place in Miami, but that Vice President Lyndon Johnson himself had suggested that the event take place in his home state of Texas. There are those who speculate that Johnson’s motivation in this regard, if Hunt’s story is indeed true, was to make it possible for Johnson, a longtime Texas power broker, to direct the subsequent on-site investigation, which was certainly something that Johnson was able to do.
Hunt told his son that he refused to participate in the JFK conspiracy. However, even the son has concerns about that claim since he recalls that, at the time of the president’s assassination, his father was away from their home in Maryland and that his mother, who later died in a plane crash in 1972, had told him that his father was on a “business trip” to Dallas.
This is interesting because in his memoirs, Hunt formally denied having been in Dallas at any time surrounding the JFK assassination or for many years before or afterward. And, in fact, when Hunt was testifying in his lawsuit against The Spotlight, Hunt made the same claim under oath.
Today St. John Hunt says that his memory of subsequent events, when—in the mid-to-late 1970s and early 1980s (during the Hunt vs. Spotlight trial) when his father was trying to shore up his claims about having been in Maryland with his family at the time of the assassination, is that he actually has no recollection of his father actually having been at home with his family on Nov. 22, 1963.
Hunt’s second wife subsequently found out that her stepson was talking with his father about these matters and, with the help of Hunt’s attorney, William Snyder—who continues to deny that Hunt ever made these claims— worked to keep Hunt’s son from continuing contact with his father.
St. John Hunt has also said that his father’s attitude was “Thank God” that the plot against JFK succeeded and that the senior Hunt said he backed out of the plot only so that he could later deny any hands-on involvement.
The record shows that Hunt’s own claims have been contradictory from the beginning, and even today, even if the sons’ claims are themselves correct in reflecting what their father told them (if indeed he did tell them these things), we cannot be certain that the senior Hunt was telling everything he knew.
What is interesting is that Hunt did not include any of these allegations, cited by his sons, in his memoir. The sons say that their father was concerned that he could be subject to perjury charges, even at this late date, since his claims contradicted what he (Hunt) had previously stated under oath.
We do know that, on one occasion, some years ago, Hunt privately told an investigative journalist that he would be willing to tell everything he knew about the JFK assassination in return for $14 million. Hunt said that the reason he needed that sum, in particular, was because he had calculated he would need that much money to live the rest of his life under armed guards to protect him and his family from the retaliation of those responsible for the JFK assassination.
The Hunt brothers’ two sisters, as well as their stepmother and her two children from her marriage with the senior Hunt, have denounced the claims by the two sons from the first marriage.
Did he tell his sons the truth—or part of the truth? Or are the sons embellishing for their own purposes? We’ll probably never know.
(Issue #15, April 09, 2007, AMERICAN
FREE PRESS)
|
