Principal Watergate Figure Dies

As noted in a prior post, I’ve been reading James T. Patterson’s Grand Expectations for some time. Actually I just finished it a few days ago, so my memory of the passages on Watergate were fresh when I saw today that E. Howard Hunt died.

Hunt was an ex-CIA employee, Nixon employee, and accomplice in setting up the 1972 Watergate burglary. I’m not 100 percent clear on whether Hunt was actually a member of Richard Nixon’s infamous “Plumbers” (stoppers of White House leaks), but he was a member of Nixon’s CREEP (the Committee to Re-Elect the President). There’s no doubt that Hunt aided in their Watergate endeavor: his name was definitely in the address book of one of the burglars.

Nixon’s “dirty tricks” have been on my mind, unfortunately, as I’ve listened attentively to the Valerie Plame controversy. For the sake of the United States as a whole, hopefully nothing as historically dramatic will come out of the current affair. – TL