PAGES FROM HUNT'S MANUSCRIPT
Originator: PRIVATE
Document date: 01/01/1974
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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104-10105-10272

2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

I had access to the pages of Mexico's most respected newspapers,

penetrations of the Communist Party uf Mexico and the Trotskyite

offshoot and two organizations that could accomplish medium-size 73.

public demonstrations on call.

From time to time our Mexican agents disrupted Communist

meetings held indoors with CIA-manufactured stink bombs and

itching powder. One such disturbance took place during the well-

attended recantation speech of Communist artist Diego Rivera.

At my request Joe Bryan lent me an artist who spent a month at

the station and turned out enough poster designs so that for several

months a different anti-Communist poster appeared on the walls of

Mexico City each week. These poster campaigns did much to

awaken Mexican public consciousness to the menace of interna-

tional Communism and appeared under the aegis of an organization

headed by a Mexican of unimpeachable reputation.

A long letter from Bob and Maxine North in Bangkok informed

me that Bob's cover work was to establish a Thai film industry, erect

il modern studio and produce a lengthy film reenactment of an epic.

Thai legend. For her part, Maxine was learning Thai and improving

her already first-rate golf game. En route Washington for consulta-

tion. Bob spent a few days with me in Mexico City, where we

planned a complicated operation designed to discredit a prominent

Mexican Communist. The operation required critical timing and a

good deal of work by the printing services section of CIA's Technical

Services Division.

The Mexican Communist leader was then visiting Peking. On the

chy of his departure Bob North airmailed me a copy of the English:

language Shanghai Postannouncing his departure, sending a dupli- .

cale copy to CIA headquarters. To replace the departure an-

nouncement I fabricated a story in which the Mexican Communist

Wils quuted as deprecating fellow Mexicans and saying, among other

things, that Mexican peasants could never hope to achieve the

cultural level of the superior Chinese. I cabled thé fabrication to

headquarters, where a specia, type font had been/made by repro-

ducing samples from the Shanghai Post. My fabricated story was set

in this duplicate type and the entire front page of the Posyre-created

lụ teclmical means. A dozen copies were pouched to me and were

received before the target Communist returned to Mexico.

The fabricated newspipers were mude available to agent a

inurnalists who published facsimiles of the offensive interview to-

a Cruzze pater.

C 4

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sinsture

Cell: +7-8-7-9493663

Sting

Bureau target. I agreed in principle, but reminded the ambassador

that CIA had no arrest powers whatever, foreign or domestic. I was

80 embarrassed, of course, that CIA had not known of Greenglass

presence, much less the instructions given him by Soviet Intelli-

gence.

Twenty years later I was to learn that what the Bureau had done to

Greenglass, they did routinely to fugitives they were able to locate

abroad.

I had not taken part in a surreptitious-entry operation since

Sparrow 11 burglarizee the office of the Italian consul in Shanghai

and photographed his lists of Nazi and Soviet agents in China. That

entry had been hardly surreptitious, with uniformed men piling out

ofjeeps and bursting into the consulate, where we set up a Recordak

Camera and photographed records for many hours, hardly caring

whether the consul appeared or not.

«he Guatemalan Embassy in Mexico City was located two blocks

from Die American Embassy in an apartment building. From our

CIA offices we had a direct line of sight to the front windows of the

embassy, which were on the third floor of the apartment building.

According to prescribed form, we cased the target office and

mounted round-the-clock surveillance on the principal embassy

ofticers. With the concurrence of the National Security Agency a

date was fixed for surreptitious entry, and a week or so before that

date a team of CIA safecrackers arrived in town. These highly skilled

men were part of a small cadre of specialists that traveled, and

perhaps still travel, for entry operations in different parts of the

work.

No recruited the charwoman who cleaned the Guatemalan Em-

bassy oftices and placed a microphone in the ambassadors oftice

from which could be heard conversations relajed to an

apartment-the Listening Post-we had rented one floor above.

The microphone installation supplemented telephone taps which

had been active for some time. Several station cars were equipped

with mobile transceivers that operated on frequencies not normally

utilized in Mexico. We had a floor plan of the offices, a description of

the safe, and a putty imprint of its keyhole. The charvoman pro-

vided us with a key to the embassy service door, and we duplicated

il. Tow me were ready to move.

A Friday night had been selected fog, the first entry attempt, for,

icording to their pattern, the Guatemalans Jeft their offices early

Consines

Friday afternoon and

* With the aid of bino.

could be seen from m

us ofany movement

the offices that Frida

or apartments and ‹

eleven that night su

asleep and the rema

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did not really need

could hear their co

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black muslin, to el

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Friday afternoon and did not return until Monday at midmorning.

With the aid of binoculars, the interior of the ambassadors ottice

could be seen trom my office, the planted microphone would intorm

81

us of any movement within the target, and as each staff member left

the offices that Friday afternoon, they were followed to their homes

or apartments and continuing surveillance established. By about

eleven that night surveillance reported most of the staff members

asleep and the remaining few hecounted for. A precautionary tele-

phone call was placed to the Guatemalan Embassy; through the

pickup mike we could hear it ring repeatedly, but no one answered.

The word was Go.

Using the duplicate key, the entry team gained access to the

target preiises and reported the location dark and quiet. Through

the microphone we could hear them moving quietly around. They

did not really need to transmit to us on their walkie-talkies, for we

could hear their conversations perfectly well.

The operating procedure followed in this and all other entry

operations I participated in was to cover all windows with opaque

black muslin, to eliminate the possibility of team flashlights being

seen outside the embassy, then the team went to work on the safe.

Meanwhile, in the basement below, the night watchman was

drinking tequila and playing cards with one of our agents who had

begun his cultivation a month earlier.

Above, the entry team forced a soft metal compound into the safe

keyhole and, when the compound hardened, used it to make a

sturdy duplicate key. Before opening the safe, an amplifying listen-

ing device was applied to the keyhole to detect such sounds as, for

sample, the ticking of a time lock or a bouhy-trap bomb.

Is soon as the safe door was open, a Polaroid photograph was

then of the contents and developed on the spot. Later, by referring

to the photograph, everything in the safe could be replaced in its

original position. In a small room off the ambassador's office the

team set up a camera specially designed by CIA for document

photography. Floodlights were plugged into the embassy's electri-

till system, and for the next three hours the entire contents of the

sile were photographed.

Inside an inner drawer the team found more than $30,000 in

American currency but were ordered to leave it there. Photography

completed, the team packed up and withdrew from the target area

in reverse oreler, removing the blackout drapes just before they left.

Уж

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contessi

Before clawn the entry team had flown from Mexico to Dallas,

here they changed identities and flew to Washington. Pouched

32 separatel was the photographic record of their night-long work

The code-book film was sent at once to NSA, and the rest of the

filme documents were examined at leisure by interested sections of

CIA. Soon the Mexico City station received lists of Mexicans whom

the (Cuatemalaz Embassy had subverted, as well as the names of

prominent Mexicans still on their target lists. Of equal importance

vere ambassadorial notes covering his efforts to purchase arms and

munitions in Mexico, a physical description of the ambassador's

Soviet Embassy contact and a number of profiles in which the

ambassador appraised senior officials of the American Embassy.

If we were able to burglarize at will, we were also vulnerable to

Mexican burglars.

An FBI agent and his wife, asleep in their bed, were chloroformed

and their dog killed while burglars removed everything from their

home witha moving van. My own home had been entered twice and

looted. We lost my wife's jewelry, my typewriter, assorted sterling

silver, a radio and other valuables. All these effects were insured,

but Dorothy and I preferred to wait, hoping the Mexican police

moule procluce, at least, her jewelry.

* distinctive sapphire earring of my wife's had been dropped by

the second set of burglars, and with it to go on, its mate was located

in the Thieves Market downtown. Spurred on by the urgings of the

legal attaché and myself, Mexican detectives called daily at my

home, assuring me they were following all leads intensively.

Moreover, the insurance company had offered a large reward for the

return of our stolen valuables.

Presently I was summoned to Mexican police headquarters and a

stronghos opened for my inspection. In it was most of my wife's

missing jewelry. I identified it as such, but to my surprise saw the

strongbos closed, locked and removed. The jewels were needed for

evidence, the detective told me; otherwise the thieves would go

improsecuted

I was much less interested in a thiefs prosecution than in the

recovery of my wife's valuables, many of which were family heir-

looms. I consulted with the insurers, who indicated that the jewels

would be released to me as soon as the reward was paid. After this

"is done. I was again summoned to police headquarters and again

permitted to see my wife's possessions. This time I expected to take

. them with me, but no

" number of men and n

y suggested an audition

sum already paid hiri

it was quite enough.

what figure he bad in

of scotch would do ni

shooting him, but bi

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the strongbor to me

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the black market.

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American policemen

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change with what g

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trucked away and

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given us by Dorothy

Washington to find;

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covert operations fo

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Ime

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## Page 5

them with me, but no, not just yet. The detective dilated upon the

number of men and man-hours the investigation had consumed and

suggested an additional reward should be forthcoming. I named the

83

sum already paid him by the insurance company and suggested that

it was quite enough. He closed the lid of the strongbox. I asked him

" hat figure he had in mind. He raised the strongbox lid. Five cases

of scotch would do nicely, he told me with a vulpine grin. I felt like

shooting him, but bargained him down to three. True at last to his

word, the detective came to my home the following day, turned over

the strongbox to me and carted off three cases of scotch, which, 1

knew, he would be able to sell for three or four hundred dollars on

the black market.

I had been slow to learn the traditional way of dealing with Latin

American policemen, but it was an object lesson I never forgot.

There now arrived from Washington a long dispatch from Beetle

Smith addressed jointly to the OSO station chief and to myself. The

to stations were to be merged and the overall station chief would

succeed the OSO incumbent. I was named deputy. I accepted the

change with what good grace I could muster, but asked that I be

reassigned. Not long thereafter the new station chief arrived and

within three months my replacement reported to the embassy.

Before departing, Dorothy and I were remarried in her Catholic

faith and our daughters baptized as Catholics. For as long as I could I

hept this intelligence from my parents, for I knew that it would

inevitably produce ill feeling. Then, after a month of farewell parties

and making last-minute purchases and packing, we saw our lift van

trucked away and were driven by friends to the airport.

From there we flew to Florida, where we vacationed in a cottage

given us by Dorothy's mother. Toward the end of my leave I went to

Wishington to find a house and receive word of my next assignment.

I was to spend a year or so at headquarters, I was told, as chief of

¿wert operations for an area of the world with which I had had no

prior experience whatever: the Balkans.

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During his Arst few months, however, Woodward frequently

expressed astonishment at the breadth and depth of my contacts

across the country, and as a straight Foreign Service type he re- 115

sented my progress, feeling that CIA officers should, somehow, be

relegated to the back room, with only legitimale FSOs allowed any.

persobal contact in the host country. Although I could not have

disagreed more, I did my best to maintain working relations with

him, though I was not alway's successful.

Just before national elections the embassy predicted another

Colorado win and officially discounted the challenge of Nardone and

his Ruralista-Blanco supporters. But for the first time in nearly a

century the Colorados were defeated, and at that night's victory

party tendered Nardone by his enthusiasts, I was the lone American

invited from the embassy: And it galled Woodward that though he

"is obliged to meet the incoming President before inauguration, he

was forced to arrange the introduction through me, for no other

embassy officer was on speaking, much less social, terms with the

President-elect. After inauguration Nardone replaced the chief of

police, but I persuaded him to maintain the chief of military intelli-

gence as the best available man for the job.

The new police chief was an Army colonel who knew nothing

shout police work and less about intelligence. But he was loyal to

Nardone, and because I was obviously a favorite of the new

President's, he gave me full cooperation, When I took him on an

inspection of our clandestine listening posts. the new police chief

" is astounded to find that we were monitoring forty-two telephone

lines Later he told me his predecessor had either carried off or

destroy ed the card files of all known subversives in Uruguay. (Actu-

ille, when T heard the files vere to be destroyed, lashed permission

in photocopy them before the cards were destroyed by the outgoing

police chief. These photocopies had since been integrated into the

Tile's of my station.) Without violating his predecessor s contidence, 1

told the new police chief that from my own files I would be happy at

'' time to supply him with information on any individual of interest

to his department.;

-:

While at a country club dance I learned trom the embassy watc

the et that my father had died, and 1 departed early next mormng "

a my mother in Albany and make funeral arrangements in Ham-

He was buried in the Hunt cemetery plot beside my infant

ther, and I sas granted a week's leave to help my mother settle

is ties course

RETURN TO GA

Do Ma Reproduce

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