Remembering E. Howard Hunt and Watergate

Leader of Scandal-Sparking Hotel Break-In Died Tuesday

E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in, leading to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88.

Ex-Spy Crafted Watergate, Other Schemes (Post, Jan. 23)

Carl Bernstein, who was one of The Washington Post's lead reporters on the Watergate scandal and who shared in the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for public service, answered your questions about Hunt and Watergate on Wednesday, Jan. 24 at 3 p.m.

Bernstein, who left The Post in 1977, now is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair magazine -- writing recently on the legacy of Watergate and its impact on President Bush -- and is working on a biography of Hillary Clinton, which will be published this year by Knopf. Bernstein co-wrote "All The President's Men" and "The Final Days" with fellow Post Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, and also co-wrote a biography of Pope John Paul II ("His Holiness") and a memoir of his parents' ordeal during the McCarthy era ("Loyalties").

The transcript follows.

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Carl Bernstein: Hi -- It's good to be with you -- back at The Post.

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Washington: Dear Carl: Thanks for taking questions on this complicated man. Do you have any insights or thoughts on the fact that a week ago Howard Hunt announced he was publishing a book in the spring that implicated LBJ and George Bush Sr. in the murder of President Kennedy -- and a week later Hunt is dead? Maybe he had some big things to get off his chest?

Carl Bernstein: I look forward to reading the book. But if the claim is as you state, I would judge it preposterous and not worth further examination. The JFK examination is the most studied murder in modern history; even in all the conspiracy theories that have been floated for more than forty years, the LBJ-Bush Sr. claim seems especially outlandish -- with no basis in known fact.

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St. Louis: Off-topic, but I've always been curious -- Do you ever get tired of talking about Watergate, and how often are you asked about those days?

Carl Bernstein: Talking about Watergate -- in its larger context, with the benefit of hindsight, especially -- can be interesting and constructive. Re-hashing old facts long ago confirmed (or assertions proved unfounded) is tiresome and I try to avoid it.

This seems to me a particularly important time to be talking about Watergate and its legacy -- and I've written about it extensively in two long articles relating to the Bush Administration and its war in Iraq. Both articles were in Vanity Fair and on its Web site -- I'm a contributing editor of the magazine.

Watergate was about a constitutional conspiracy by the president of the United States and the men around him. Afterwards, it often was said that "The American System worked." It did. The press did its job as an independent entity trying to obtain the best obtainable version of the truth -- what good journalism really is. A courageous judge -- John Sirica -- refused to bow to conventional wisdom of the day: that no-one with ties to the Nixon presidency would be involved in something like the break-in at Democratic national headquarters. A great Senator -- Sam Ervin of North Carolina -- and a bipartisan group of senators, led by Republican Howard Baker of Tennessee, conducted one of the most thorough, unbiased and definitive investigations in the history of the Republic. From the beginning, Baker asked the right question: 'What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

A truly independent series of special prosecutors pursued the facts and a courageous attorney general refused to carry out Nixon's illegal orders or be part of the cover-up, and forded the president to fire him -- and his assistant attorney general -- rather than perpetuate the cover-up.

A bipartisan impeachment investigation by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee definitively established grounds for impeachment: the key votes were cast by Republicans. When it was clear that Nixon would be convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors in the Senate, leaders of his party -- with Barry Goldwater, the great conservative at the front -- demanded of the President that he resign. Nixon did.

That long answer is intended to show that, yes, the American system worked -- including Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon, which allowed the country to move on.

In the case George W. Bush, the American system obviously has failed -- tragically -- about which we can talk more in a minute. But imagine the difference in our worldview today, had the institutions -- particularly of government -- done their job to insure that a mendacious and dangerous president (as since has been proven many times over and beyond mere assertion) be restrained in a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers, brought turmoil to the lives of millions and constrained the goodwill towards the United States in much of the world.

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Trier, Germany: Hi, Mr. Bernstein. I'm amazed when I read of Hunt's role within the administration and the bluntness of his antics to carry his role out. I wonder how common has it been in White House history to hire such characters, whose sole purpose is to ensure the perpetuation of the administration through subversive means. I mean, I realize this happens on a strategic political level. And these types of subversive means also happen on a global level to protect national interests. But how common is it for the administration to employ an American whose sole purpose is to destroy the property and reputation of other Americans, simply so the administration retains its power?

Carl Bernstein: Another good question. Until the Bush-43 administration, I had believed that the Nixon presidency was sui generis in modern American history in terms of your question -- i.e., hiring "such characters ... to ensure the perpetuation etc..."

In terms of small-bore (but dangerous) characters like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy with their schemes, I doubt that any presidency approaches the criminality of the Nixon White House. But the Watergate conspiracy -- to undermine the Constitution and use illegal methods to hurt Nixon's political opponents and even undermine the electoral system -- was supervised by those at the very top.

In the current administration we have seen from the President down -- especially Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld -- a willingness to ignore the great constitutional history of the United States -- to suspend, really, many of the constitutional guarantees that have made us a nation apart, with real freedoms unknown elsewhere, unrestricted by short-term political objectives of our leaders.

Then there are the Geneva conventions -- who would have dreamed that in our lifetime our leaders would permit their flagrant abuse, would authorize torture, "renditions" to foreign-torture chambers, suspension of habeas corpus, illegal surveillance of our own citizens...

But perhaps worst, has been the lying and mendacity of the president and his men and women -- in the reasons they cited for going to war, their conduct of the war, their attempts to smear their political opponents. Nixon and his men lied and abused the Constitution to horrible effect, but they were stopped.

The Bush Administration -- especially its top officials named above and others familiar to most Americans -- was not stopped, and has done far greater damage. As a (Republican) bumper-sticker of the day proclaimed, "Nobody died at Watergate." If only we could say that about the era of George W. Bush, and that our elected representatives in Congress and our judiciary had been courageous enough to do their duty and hold the President and his aides accountable.

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Sherbrooke, Quebec: Mr. Bernstein, why did former President Ronald Reagan refuse a request to pardon Mr. Hunt? Thank you.

Carl Bernstein: I can only offer you hopeful conjecture: that Reagan understood that Hunt's lack of remorse -- the argument that he made until the end of his life was that his illegal acts actually represented service to the country -- prevented him from offering a pardon. But that is sheer speculation.

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Detroit: I lived during the Watergate era and I think what has gone on in the past few years with this administration is worse. I think getting the country into a war on false pretenses, squelching the opposition as unpatriotic, leaking the name of a spouse employed in intelligence, etc. is worse than what happened under Nixon. Do I have a short memory span? What is your take on the comparison of abuses of the Nixon era vs. the Bush administration?

Carl Bernstein: I agree -- in terms of damage to the institutions of this country, to responsibility for the killing and maiming of thousands of Americans and many more innocent civilians -- and some not innocent -- in Iraq, the Bush administration has left a far more destructive record. This is particularly true because of the failure of the Congress to exercise its war powers; its oversight and investigative functions; and simple political courage. Even now.

As for the supposed leaking of the name of the spouse, etc., I think this represents a truly Nixonian event, a happenstance not atypical of the take-no-prisoners politics of the Bush presidency. But it pales in comparison to the larger questions of the Constitution, of life and death, of the Geneva Conventions, of the expectation that our leaders -- from Condoleeza Rice to Dick Cheney, to the attorney(s) general to Paul Wolfowitz and on down and up the line speak truthfully to the American people and the Congress. They have consistently failed to do so.

In terms of the "leaked" I.D. of the spouse -- this was about smearing political opponents, from the vicinity of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby's offices, obviously; I doubt seriously that the intent was to identify Ms. Plame as an undercover agent, but rather to smear her husband and -- once again -- to cover up the real facts of what was done in the run-up to the war, in terms of the fact that there was no so-called "Niger connection" through which Saddam Hussein intended to obtain nuclear materials.

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Clifton, Va.: Carl, of all the original conspirators, Hunt seemed to be the most "aware" of what his leverage was and what he had done, and afterwards, perhaps the most broken man. Did he ever speak about figuring out how he got to that path from a distinguished early career? His cynicism seemed to be very deep.

Carl Bernstein: I'm not sure, in all due respect to the deceased, that he ever had a "distinguished career." He was never highly regarded in the intelligence community by his colleagues. He had a certain erudition, he could write (spy novels) he liked to see himself in a heroic, Cold War tradition ... but his accomplishments were meager...

If he was broken, I would speculate it had to do with the death of his first wife, who was killed in a plane crash carrying $10,000 -- apparently some of the money that was used by Nixon and his associates to pay the Watergate burglars for their silence.

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Falls Church, Va.: Carl: Thanks for hosting this chat. Do you think there will be any new Watergate revelations now that Hunt has passed away? And if so, what might they be? If not, were there any questions that you had/have that you wished he had answered?

Carl Bernstein: We still do not have a definitive explanation of what the Watergate burglars were looking for at Democratic headquarters. Bob Woodward and myself always have tended toward the belief that it was to find out pretty much anything the Nixon campaign could find out about the opposition, especially given the sensibility of Charles Colson and others who knew there was an "intelligence-gathering" operation directed by Hunt and Liddy.

Hunt maintained the purpose was to confirm White House suspicions that the Democrats were getting campaign funds from Castro in Cuba ... Others -- especially Republicans -- have advanced a theory that the purpose was to find out if the Democrats knew that the Nixon campaign was receiving secret funds from Howard Hughes and others, and that the Nixon people feared the Dems would disclose same...

Part of the problem of a definitive answer is that it is very possible that there were different perceptions among different people of what was intended -- Hunt, Liddy (whose head was somewhere where few other Earthlings ever have been, which speaks volumes about the kind of people recruited for the Nixon administration's undercover activities), James McCord, Charles Colson, John Mitchell, etc. etc. My guess? That there indeed were differing perceptions, particularly as the chain went higher.

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Laurel, Md.: Of the five men arrested at the Watergate how many still are alive?

Carl Bernstein: Liddy for sure. That counts for about a dozen.

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Falls Church, Va.: Hi Carl. On the smoking gun tape Nixon tells Haldeman to get the CIA to tell the FBI to lay off investigating the Watergate break-in. How, asks his chief of staff. Nixon tells him to relay to Richard Helms that "this guy Hunt" will lead back to "the Bay of Pigs thing" and "open up a can of worm." Later Haldeman reports that Helms will cooperate. My question is, 35 years after this tape was recorded and 45 years after the event that Haldeman thought "Bay of Pigs thing" reflected, why does the question about Hunt and the Cubans still make mainstream journalists so nervous?

Carl Bernstein: I don't think it does ... the point was that what Nixon was saying would work plausibly to fool Helms and others at the CIA ... and keep agencies from investigating and thus concluding that Hunt was in the employ of the White House Plumbing Unit, and no-one else. No fear there.

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Great Neck, N.Y.: It seems like this is as good a time as any to re-examine Watergate and its place in American history. How do you think future generations will view the scandal and its importance? Do you feel it completely overshadows President Nixon's legacy, or will he eventually be remembered more for detente and his conducting of the latter stages of the Vietnam War?

Carl Bernstein: Nixon's singular accomplishment, it seems to me, was the historic to opening to China. His -- and Kissinger's -- conduct of the latter stages of the Vietnam war allowed almost 25,000 young American soldiers to die long after the inevitable realization that the war was not winnable; the parallel there with the situation in Iraq is horribly apt; detente, given the success of Reagan and Pope John Paul II (and the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan) in terms of shaking the Soviet empire, seems less an accomplishment that it might at the time.

But the basic Nixonian enterprise was "Watergate" -- long before the break-in at Democratic headquarters. It lay in Nixon's psyche, and I suspect the next generation of research about the Nixon presidency will deal with the President's psyche -- not the "facts" as we now know them so definitively.

Watergate was about a presidential/criminal conspiracy to use the power of the presidency for retribution; to trash the constitutional protections that require the president to act with in the law; to conduct and have presidential authority and authorization for patently illegal acts, from break-ins to firebombings, all ordered in the name of the President of the United States on spurious grounds of national security. The same for illegal surveillance of American citizen, including the wiretapping of journalists.

From there it is not much of a jump to see that the unthinkable -- a generation ago -- has happened. That we have another president and presidential cadre -- men and women, this time -- who believe that they are above the law, that the unique circumstances of their presidency and "the enemy" justify acts that violate the constitution and the laws of this country; that consistent lying and mendacity and misinformation and disinformation -- so routine as to use the same techniques from New Orleans to Baghdad -- are acceptable.

The great shame is that our system has failed to restrain their conduct or even mediate it. Perhaps in the coming months there may be a change in attitude to hold President Bush, Ms. Rice, Mr. Gonzales et al to the same standard of law and constitutional authority as Richard Nixon was held to. Thank you.

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Carl Bernstein: Thanks for the fine questions and the opportunity to reflect on them. Until next time,

cb

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