E. Howard Hunt, Watergate plotter

MIAMI - E. Howard Hunt, 88, who helped organize the 1972 Watergate break-in, leading to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency, died yesterday after a lengthy bout with pneumonia, his son Austin Hunt said.

The elder Hunt was many things: World War II soldier, CIA officer, organizer of a Guatemalan coup and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and author of more than 80 books, many in the spy-tale genre.

Yet the bulk of his notoriety came from the one thing he always insisted he wasn't - a Watergate burglar. He often said he preferred the term Watergate conspirator.

"I will always be called a Watergate burglar, even though I was never in the damn place," Mr. Hunt told the Miami Herald in 1997.

While working for the CIA, Mr. Hunt recruited four of the five actual burglars - Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Rolando Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis, all of whom had worked for him a decade earlier in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

All four also had ties to Miami, where part of the Watergate plan was hatched.

"According to street gossip both in Washington and Miami, Mr. Castro had been making substantial contributions to the McGovern campaign," Mr. Hunt told CNN in 1992, referring to Nixon's 1972 presidential opponent, Democrat George McGovern. "And the idea was . . . that somewhere in the books of the Democratic National Committee, those illicit funds would be found."

The idea was wrong, and the fallout escalated into a huge political scandal. Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974. Twenty-five men were sent to prison for their involvement in the botched plan.

The Hunt recruits and James W. McCord Jr., security director for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, were arrested June 17, 1972, at the Watergate office building. One of the burglars was found to have Mr. Hunt's White House phone number.

Mr. Hunt and fellow operative G. Gordon Liddy, along with the five arrested at Watergate, were indicted three months later. Mr. Hunt and his recruits pleaded guilty in January 1973, and McCord and Liddy were convicted.

In March 1973, McCord wrote a letter to the federal judge in his case, John J. Sirica, alleging that perjury had occurred and that political pressure had been applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent.

Mr. Hunt eventually spent 33 months in prison on a conspiracy charge, and said he was bitter that he was sent to prison while Nixon was allowed to resign. "I felt that in true politician's fashion, he'd assumed a degree of responsibility but not the blame," he said in 1992.

Everette Howard Hunt was born Oct. 9, 1918, graduated from Brown University in 1940, and was commissioned as a Naval Reserve officer in 1941. He served as a destroyer gunnery officer, was injured at sea, and was honorably discharged from the Navy. From 1949 through 1970, he worked for the CIA.

Mr. Hunt declared bankruptcy in 1997, largely blaming his Watergate fines and legal fees.

He spent his final years in Miami with his second wife, Laura Martin Hunt, who survives him along with his six children. His first wife, Dorothy, died in a plane crash in 1972.

His memoir, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, is due out next month.