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Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt dies

Wednesday, January 24, 2007


MIAMI (AP) -- 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.
Hunt died at a Miami hospital after a lengthy bout with pneumonia, according to his son Austin Hunt.
The elder Hunt was many things: World War II soldier, CIA officer, organizer of both a Guatemalan coup and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and author of more than 80 books, many from 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," Hunt told The Miami Herald in 1997.
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