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black,green & silver metallic ½ cloth hardbound 8vo. ~ 8º (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges have yellow fox spots. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in fine cond., minor wear, couple of faint scratches, not torn or price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking , underlining, remainder markings etc ~ first edition. first printing ( FPu1974 & nap). illustrated title pg. x+180p. biography. american history. covert operations. espionage. secret societies. conspiracy theory. ~ The life and fate of E. Howard Hunt remain unresolved. But his story is part of the story of Watergate, the political consequences of which are certain to be felt for years to come. Hunt is part of American history in the making. Tad Szulc's eye~opening expose of the life and times of Howard Hunt makes it clear that there was a natural, although very strange, progression from the Cold Warrior CIA man of the 1940s to the White House "dirty trick" operator of 1972. Mr. Szulc recounts in vivid and sometimes appalling detail the activities and programs on which Hunt worked for most of his adult life~and shows how this romantic and oddly extravagant personality shared in pursuits that were considered routine and correct by Washington's top policy~makers. Drawing from published accounts as well as from his personal sources in the intelligence community, Mr. Szulc starts with Hunt's OSS days in the jungles of Burma and then details his work in Europe and Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s, (Hunt was active not only in CIA preparations for the coup in Guatemala in 1954 and in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, but in a second, hitherto unknown plan for an invasion of Cuba in 1964.) But most of this headline~making book concerns itself with the activities that led up to and followed from the break~in at the Watergate in June 1972. The cast of characters and the methods and attitudes which Hunt brought to his White House work after his departure from the CIA significantly did not alter much. And they are none too savory. Mr. Szulc throws new light on a number of aspects of the Watergate caper, and asks~on the basis of several important points of unexamined evidence~many startling questions, theorizing that Hunt and his colleague G. Gordon Liddy may have participated in other "black" operations that remain secret. The story of E. Howard Hunt~secret agent, novelist, lover of the good life, a spy who never overcame his obsession with the craft of "intelligence"~ is one of cruel ironies and odd coincidences but Tad Szulc makes it clear that it could have ended as it did only in the special circumstances created by the presidency of Richard Nixon. TAD SZULC was a political; diplomatic, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times for eighteen years.
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