Guatemala: E. Howard Hunt and the CIA

E. Howard Hunt Jr. died last week at age 88. The former CIA officer is best known for his role in the bungled 1972 Watergate break-in, which later led to the downfall of President Richard Nixon.

But Hunt is also linked to a significant turning point in the history of Guatemala: he assisted in the planning and execution of a CIA-backed coup in 1954 ("Operation Success") which overthrew the democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz. Soon after, a decades-long civil war began, and would ultimately claim the lives of more than 200,000 Guatemalans, many of whom were Mayan peasants or dissidents.

Hunt was also involved in the Bay of Pigs incident, and wrote more than 80 spy and detective novels under various pseudonyms: more on that in this NYT story.

Slate has republished an interview he gave A.L. Bardach in 2004. In it, Hunt gloats over his role in the Guatemalan coup and other exploits, including the assasination of Che Guevara. Asked if he had any regrets, Hunt replies, "No, none. [Long pause] Well, it would have been nice to do Bay of Pigs differently."

Slate: So it seems you were the architect for the Guatemalan operation?
Hunt: It was mine because nobody else knew more than I did. I would say that I had more knowledge about it than anybody did. I knew all the players on both sides.

Slate: How did you run the Guatemalan operation?
Hunt: We set up the first Guatemalan operation/shop at Opa-Locka [airport in Miami, formerly an Army base]. There were three barracks, and we used the airstrip to fly in people from Guatemala and to send our people into Guatemala. These were known as "the black flights." They always occurred at night; they are a secret and officially do not exist as having happened.

Slate: Do you think the Guatemala coup went well?
Hunt: Yes—it did. And I'm glad I kept Arbenz from being executed.

Slate: How did you do that?
Hunt: By passing the word out to the people at the airport who had Arbenz to "let him go.

Slate: To whom did you give the word?
Hunt: It was a mixed band of CIA and Guatemalans at the airport and their hatred for him was palpable.

Slate: You were worried they would assassinate him right there?
Hunt: Yeah. … And we'd [the CIA and the United States] get blamed for it.

Slate: Some 200,000 civilians were killed in the civil war following the coup, which lasted for the next 40 years. Were all those deaths unforeseen?
Hunt: Deaths? What deaths?

Link. Image: Associated Press.