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Date: 09/02/94

Page: 1

JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM

IDENTIFICATION FORM

AGENCY INFORMATION

AGENCY : HPSCI

RECORD NUMBER

: 135-10001-10243

RECORDS SERIES :

AGENCY FILE NUMBER

CIA HAS NO OSJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION ANO/OR

RELEASE OF CIA INFORMATION

IN THIS DOCUMENT AS SANITIZEO

8/20/98

10 12 ap2 99

ORIGINATOR : ROCK

FROM

:OLSEN,

TO : FILE

TITLE :

DOCUMENT INFORMATION

ROBERT

CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO:

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

RELEASE OF CIA INFORMATION

IN THIS DOCUMENT AS SANITIZED

1p 12

apr

99

DATE

: 03/06/75

PAGES

: 10

SUBJECTS

INTERVIEW OF MARCH

HUNT •

1975, WITH E. HOWARD HUNT AND HIS DAUGHTER, LISA

DOCUMENT TYPE : PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

CLASSIFICATION

:S

RESTRICTIONS : OPEN IN FULL

CURRENT STATUS

JATE OF LAST REVIEW : 09/02/94

OPENING CRITERIA :

COMMENTS

CONTAINED

IN FILE ENTITLED, "HUNT, E. HOWARD - INTERVIEWED 3/4/75"

O/R-I (AA) "

SANITIZED BY CIA.

U25 Release under the President John a Kennedy

Assassination Records Collaction Act of 1992

[R] - ITEM IS RESTRICTED

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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:

FROM:

SUBJECT:

David W. Belin,

Executive Director

March 6, 1975

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.

Mr. Hunt is presently residing at 1245 N. E. Mch Sireet, 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 -.

mation that Mr. Gregory and Mr. Schoenman referred to is drawn from

a book by Tad Szulc entitled, E. Howard Hunt, the Compulsive Spy.

Hunt states that the book is saturated with errors. One of those errors

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

1963.

SECRET/SENSITIVE

CIA HAS NO OBJECTION TO

DECLASSIFICATION AND/OR

RELS CE OF THIS DOCUMENT

1D (1(b);

12 thy 94 eve

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SECRET/SENSITIVE

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

_SECRET/ SENSITIVE

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SECRET/SENSITIVE

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

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

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

minute.

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 bipadcasts for foreign use;

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.

SECRE

G/SENSITIVE

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SECRET/SENS

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 CLA.

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.

-SECRET/SENSITIVE

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SECRET/S

ENSITIVE

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 upper 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.

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

_SECRET/SENSITIVE

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SECRET/SENSITIVI

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 Traynor.

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.

cc: D. Belin

Senior Counsels

•SECRET/SENSI

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The allegations made by Dick tregory and othors connecting

me to the murdor of President john Kennedy are totally without foundati

Irey constitute a false and vicious libol.

Those charges are bizarre

products of sick minds.

The Political Left has never been able or willing to

accopt the fact

that Konnody's assass In was a nan of the left; thus the Loftist

preoccupation with finding an alternate assassin.

Dick Gregory's smear represents the ultimate in slander ana

innuendo customarily characterized as McCarthyism.

The Rockefeller and other Investigative committees will

probably examine Gregory's charges - as indeed they should. For my

part I would welcome a thorough high-level investigation and a full

airing of all relevant findings. Only if this takes place will I havo

any hope of clearing my name and living free from the threats

against

my life already made by neurotics.

I was not in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963; in fact I

novor visited Dallas until eight years later. I did not meet Frank

Sturgis until 1972, nine years after we were allegedly together in

Dallas. I was not in Moxico in 1963, and I did not meet Lee farvoy

Oswald there or at any other place or time. Moreover, I shared tha

nation's grief over the murder of our President. Ihose aro the facts.

Until authoritative Investigative bodies make known their

judgment concerning my alleged involvement in the Kennedy murder I

will continue to bring libel actions against any and all parties

who repeat the libel. I must take this course because the libels aro

prejudicial to my position before the court now considering my

Appeal from the Watergate affair. And because the libels threaten my

only means of livellhood, as a welter. But of even greater concern to

me is that

continuod publicity givon to these reckless

charges could, stimulate some yet-unpublicized maniac into violent

artinn against me and my family.

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FEB 5 1975

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ADVICE AND WAIVER

Date

Time

3:31

Before you make any statement to, of answer any

questions fom, the Commission or its investigators, you

should understand that you have the right to remain silent.

If you choose to answer, anything you say can be used

against you in court.

You may consult a lawyer for advice before any questions

are out, and may have a lawyer with you during questioning.

If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you

before questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer

questions without a lawyer present,

you still have the

right to stop answering at any time; of you may defer your

answer until you talk to a lawyer.

WAIVER

I have read and understand the foregoing advice. I

am willing to make a statement and answer questions {ith}

[without] a lawyer at this time. No pronises.or threats

have been made to me, and no pressure or coercion of any

kind has been used against me.

signed

Witness

Witness:

Time:

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