TRIALS: The Spy in the Cold

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As a member of the agency's "Department of Dirty Tricks," he worked on the operation that overthrew the Communist-supported Guatemala regime of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. After the coup, he recalls, "Arbenz and his people were stripped naked at the airport and searched before they were allowed to leave. One of his aides was Che Guevara. If we'd let our Guatemalans start to shoot them, as they wanted, there's no telling when the shooting would have stopped. It was a close decision, and I have often wondered how effective Castro would have been with out the intelligence of that asthmatic little medical student from Argentina."

On his years in espionage, Hunt reflects: "You see, our Government trains people like myself to do these things and do them successfully. It becomes a way of life for a person like me." Of ten he traveled under assumed names, says Hunt, "to preserve plausible denial, " the phrase rolling from his lips so smoothly that it sounds like an agency cliche. Again and again he returns to the theme of an officer's loyalty to his subordinates: "If your people are caught in an operation, you do everything you can for them. Money is the cheapest commodity you've got in an operation like this."

Hunt retired from the agency in 1970. "The Bay of Pigs," he says bitterly, "really ended my chance for substantial advancement within the CIA, because I was associated with it and the thing went sour." In 1971 he was asked to join the White House to plug security leaks. "It wasn't a petty operation. There were major leaks involving the SALT talks, operations in India. One leak resulted in the extermination of one of our agents in Asia. The Administration couldn't stand for that, and I worked closely with the CIA trying to stop it."

Why did he get mixed up in the Watergate case? Hunt admits that he had a political motive, which he dresses up rather elaborately. "There is a built-in bias by the intellectual community, including the news media, against people who want to preserve the best of our country's heritage. As for me, I don't want to exchange the good of this country for the uncertainties of change." Hunt also has a more practical explanation for his involvement: "I was not aware that my activity constituted a federal offense. I never personally went into Democratic offices, and I thought the most they could get me on was second-degree burglary."

Hunt insists that he never thought much of the Watergate scheme in the first place. "I cased the situation thoroughly, and I'm good at it. I appraised the risk [in bugging Democratic headquarters] as very high and the potential return as very low. I recommended against it, but it wasn't my decision. I can tell you this: if it had been a CIA operation and I'd been in charge, it never would have happened."