INTERVIEW 3/4/75 WITH E.HOWARD HUNT AND HIS DAUGHTER, LISA HUNT
Agency: ROCKCOM
Originator: ROCKEFELLER COMMISSION
From: OLSEN, ROBERT
To: FILE
Document date: 3/6/75
Document type: PAPER-TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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178-10002-10363

JFK Assassination System

Identification Form

Agency Information

Date:

8/27/201

AGENCY :

ROCKCOM

RECORD NUMBER:

178-10002-10363

RECORD SERIES: OLSEN-ROETHE FILES

AGENCY FILE NUMBER: O-R (I-AA) HUNT, E. HOWARD INTERVIEWED 3/4/75

Document Information

ORIGINATOR: ROCKEFELLER COMMISSION

FROM: OLSEN, ROBERT

TO: FILE

TITLE: INTERVIEW 3/4/75 WITH E.HOWARD HUNT AND HIS DAUGHTER, LISA HUNT

DATE:

PAGES:

SUBJECTS:

03/06/1975

6

CUBAN EXILES

CONSPIRACY THEORIES, THREE TRAMPS

CONSPIRACY THEORIES, CIA INVOLVEMENT

BOOK, E. HOWARD HUNT--THE COMPULSIVE SPY

NIXON, RICHARD

ANTI-CASTRO ACTIVITIES

EISENHOWER, DWIGHT D.

HUNT, E. HOWARD

BAY OF PIGS

DOCUMENT TYPE: MEMORANDUM

CLASSIFICATION: Secret

• RESTRICTIONS: 1B

CURRENT STATUS: Redact

DATE OF LAST REVIEW: 07/10/1993

OPENING CRITERIA:

COMMENTS:

96

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COMMISSION ON CIA ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

Washington, DC 20500

Nelson A. Rockefeller,

Chairman

John T. Connor

C. Douglas Dillon

Erwin N. Griswold

Lane Kirkland

Lyman L. Lemnitzer

Ronald Reagan

Edgar F. Shannon, Jr.

SECRET/SENSITIVE

MEMOR ANDUM TO:

JEROM:

SUBJECT:

David W. Belin,

Executive Director

March 6, 1975

178-10002-10363

File

Robert Olsen

Interview of March 4, 1975, with E. Howard Hunt

and his Daughter, Lisa Hunt

• The interview commenced at approximately 4:00 PM and was conducted

at 712 Jackson Place.

85.

Mr. Hunt is presently residing at 1245 N. E.

82th Street, Miami, Florida.

33138. He has a silent telephone number of 305 758-6159.

Lisa Hunt resides at 3406 Nimitz Road, Apt. A-2, Kensington, Maryland

20795. She has an unlisted telephone number which she declined to

give us. She was born on March 9, 1951.

The interview concerned allegations that Mr. Hunt was involved in the

assassination of'President John Kennedy and other public figures. He

is aware of the public statements made by Dick Gregory and Ralph

Schoenman in early February 1975 relative to his being involved in the

assassination of President Kennedy. He states that most of the infor-

a the so, to a on winto the Come ot to error

is the claim that Hunt was Chief of Station in Mexico City in the fall of

1963.

PHOTOCOPY

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The Bay of Pigs Background

Hunt states that in 1960 he was assigned to the job of organizing a

"government in exile" for Cuba'among Cuban exiles in Florida.

The

plan adopted by the National Security Council under President Eisenhower

called for the formation and training of a brigade of Cuban exiles who

would invade Cuba, establish

a provisional government, receive recog-

nition by the United States and overthrow the Castro government. The

brigade had its own air force and was otherwise fully equipped by the

United States Government.

The operation, however, was not supposed

to be one involving United States Government participation. The venture

was to involve training and launching from outside the United States.

In connection with his political activity and the organization of the

government in exile, Hunt went to Mexico in 1960. Shortly thereafter

the Mexican government demanded that they leave and he returned to

the United States. Richard Nixon, then Vice President, was working

closely with the CIA on the project,

When President Kennedy was elected in November 1960, he was briefed

on the project and confirmed the plans, including the plan to provide air

cover to the invading Cuban force.

In early 1961, however, the Kennedy

administration decided that the political organization of the Cuban

government in exile would have to be broadened so as to include all

elements of the Cuban society. Even radical leftwingers were to be

included. Hunt was assigned the job of convincing the leaders of the

Cuban community to accept such a broadening of the political structure

of the government in exile.

Hunt found this to be an impossible job to

accomplish because the Cubans recruited to make up the invasion force

had been promised that the government in exile would be solidly anti-

Castro and anti-communist.

Hunt asked to be relieved of his assignment

because he thought it was an impossible one to achieve and he returned

to Washington

to work on propaganda and similar non-political aspects

of the forthcoming invasion.

Within twenty-four hours prior to the time that the Cuban brigade was

to hit the beaches at the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy made two

critical decisions that affected the final outcome: he cancelled plans

PHOTOCOPY

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for an airstrike on Cuba which would have destroyed the six remaining

combat planes that were available to Castro; second, the order that

there be no air cover for the invading brigade. The result was that

the invading force was chopped up while it was still in the water; the

ships carrying the armored vehicles were sunk, as were the supply

ships, and the troops were left abandoned on the shore. The remnant

of the Cuban Air Force was entirely adequate to demolish the invasion

fleet.

Hunt concedes that he was bitter

about the decisions made by President

Kennedy, but he primarily blames Arthur Schlesinger, Adlai Stevenson

and Robert Kennedy for advising the President to follow the course he

chose. He particularly feels that the Cubans had been recruited with

certain promises and that those promises were withdrawn at the last

Hunt says, in fact, that the decision not to make the airstrike

and not to provide air cover was made after the invasion fleet had arrived

at the point of no return, i.e., when radio communication to the invasion

fleet had already terminated for security reasons.

After the Bay of Pigs disaster, Hunt worked with Allen Dulles until early

1962 at which time Dulles was replaced as DCI. In January 1962, Hunt

was assigned to the Domestic Operations Division of the Deputy Directorate

for Plans.

He was involved in handling proprietaries based in the United

States, which have their impact abroad. His immediate superior was

Stanley Gaines, who was either Chief of Operations or Executive Officer

of the Domestic Operations Division and Tracy Barnes, who was Division

Chief of DOD (Barnes is a cousin by marriage to Vice President

Rockefeller.)

The proprietaries which Hunt was engaged in managing were Continental

Press, which prepared news and radio broadcasts for foreign use;

Alfied-Pacific Publishing Company of Bombay, which was engaged in

publishing textbooks for Indian schools; the Rome, Daily American; a

cover operation; and Fodor's Iravel Guides, a proprietary which Hunt

questions as to whether it had any use. (Fodor's had been set up in

1946 as a cover operation but served no apparent use during the years

Hunt was with DOD.

PHOTOCOPY

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The headquarters for the DOD was at 1717 H Street, N.W., in

Washington, D. C., and then later it was on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Hunt's assignment with DOD lasted until the spring of 1965.

During the period from January 1962 until 1965, he states that he never

traveled to Mexico or any other Latin American country. His first

trip to Mexico after 1961 was in 1970, when he traveled there for the

Mullen Company after his retirement from the CIA.

Hunt's Whereabouts on November 22, 1963

Hunt states that he had never been in Dallas until 1971, with a possible

exception of a change of planes on his, way to Mexico with his family in

1960. He does not recall whether that change of planes took place in

Dallas or in Houston. In any event, he and his family never left the

airport on that occasion.

He has never

had any contact, directly or indirectly, with Lee Harvey

Oswald, Jack Ruby or anyone else thought to have been associated with

the assassination of the President.

He was never in New Orleans in 1963 and has never had anything whatever

to do with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which he identifies as a

communist organization.

During the period

from January 1962 to 1965, he traveled once or twice

per year to India, two or three times per year to Paris, once or twice

per year to London, and, during that period, he traveled two or three

times to Rome. His only domestic travel in 1963 was between Washington

and New York. All travel, whether domestic or international, was in his

own name.

Hunt states that in 1961 he used the pseudonym of Edward J. Hamilton in

connection with his work on the Cuban project in Florida.

With the

exception of that pseudonym and the pseudonym he used on the identifi-

cation papers provided him for the Ellsberg break in, he has never used

a pseudonym.

PHOTOCOPY

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On November 22, 1963, he and his wife were driving on H Street at about

9th in Washington, D. C., when he turned the car radio on and learned

that the President had been shot. He and Mrs. Hunt had been shopping

in a Chinese grocery store

in that immediate vicinity, immediately prior

to their getting into the car.

The Hunts lived at 5215 Balton Road,

Sumner, Maryland. On their way home they drove to the Sidwell Friends

school on uppet Wisconsin Avenue and picked up their younger daughter,

Kevan. Kevan told them that Robert and Courtenay Kennedy, children of

Attorney General Robert Kennedy, were students in the same school and

had been picked up by the Secret Service. The children in the school

knew that the President had been shot.

Mr. Hunt states that the following persons are witnesses to the fact that

he was here in Washington, D. C., at the time the President was shot

in Dallas:

1. His son, Howard St. John Hunt, then ten years of age.

2. His daughter, Lisa, then twelve years of age.

wit

3. His daughter, Kevan, then eleven years of age.

4. The family maid, Mary Trayner, now employed by a family

living at 4806 DeRussey Parkway, Chevy Chase, Maryland,

and whose phone number is 652-2930.

Mr. Hunt believes that he was either taking the day off from work as

a part of annual leave on November 22, 1963, or he may have been

recuperating from a hospitalization for ulcers. He had been hospitalized

at about that period at Sibley Hospital in Washington, D. C.

Mr. Hunt states that he held the following oil company charge account

and credit cards in 1963 and that such accounts may provide corroboration

as to his presence in Washington, D. C., on November 22, 1963:

Esso Oil, Gulf Oil, Texaco Oil, Cities Service Oil, Brooks Brothers

(New York), Garfinkle's, Woodward and Lothrop, Sears Roebuck & Co.,

Hecht Co. He also states that telephone records might be checked with

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Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co.; that the CIA might have travel

voucher records showing his travel during that year and that CIA should

also have records on the dates on which he took sick leave or annual

leave.

Mr. Hunt categorically denies that he has been involved in any way what-

soever with the assassination of President Kennedy, Senator Robert

Kennedy, Martin Luther King, or any other person either within or without

the United States. He similarly denies any participation or involvement

whatever in the

attempted assassination of Governor Wallace, the

disappearance of Congressman Hale Boggs or the shooting of Senator

Stennis.

He states that in connection with the planning for the Cuban invasion in

1961, he did suggest that Fidel Castro should be assassinated either before

or contemporaneously with that invasion, but his suggestion was not acted

upon or otherwise approved.

Attached

are copies of a press statement made by Mr. Hunt in early

February 1975 in Florida, in which he denies the allegations made by

Dick Gregory and others with respect to his involvement in the assassi-

nation of President Kennedy and a letter written to Mr. Hunt by the former

family maid, Mary Iraynor.

Lisa Hunt confirms her father's account that he was at home with the

family in the afternoon and evening of November 22, 1963. She recalls

that her father assembled the family in front of the television set. He

wanted them all to watch the program because it was an important

historical matter. They were all shocked about the assassination of

the President.

PHOTOCOPY

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cc: D. Belin

Senior Counsels

97yд3

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