Guest host Ian Punnett and Saint John Hunt, son of career CIA spy E. Howard Hunt, discuss his father's deathbed recording explaining the conspiracy behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and whether he truly believes his father was involved in the fatal shooting in Dallas.
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio. For his agreement with his father E. Howard Hunt, Saint John Hunt held onto that deathbed confession tape that he had received in the mail from two thousand and four until two thousand and seven and then released it to great amount of controversy, mostly because I would think and then you tell me different, Saint John. It went back to a theory that had been somewhat dormant for a long time, that LBJ was responsible for the death of JFK. Right, that wasn't a very popular theory, you know, vice president plotting for the demise of the president. But in reality, there was several things that were It was like the perfect storm. There were several things going on at the time. Of one thing, he military industrial complex was extremely worried about JFK because he was suggesting that that we give information of extraterrestrial interaction and UFOs over to the Soviets as long as they would be giving us their information that they had any Another one was that JFK was addicted to methamphetamine and receiving daily injections uh from his doctor. Um, you know, he was he was really jf He was really going off the deep end on in a lot of areas, and they just didn't think that if he was elected for another few years that he was going to be able to maintain his sanity because the Secret Service it was having a hard time already keeping JFK under control with all the girls he had, and of course hyper sexuality is one of the things that meth amphetamine affects you with he was he was really on the deep end of things. And uh was geveral people within the CIA, powerful people like Bill Harvey and uh uh David Morales and people like that that were real, real killers, and um, you know, it wasn't beyond them to you know, in America's quote unquote best interest to to remove the president. He didn't have LBJ doing. Of course. LBJ was just you know, you own problems. He was an instrumental in the death of many Texas legislators earlier on, so he was no problem. So my father suggesting that j I that LBJ was at the top of the line of people that uh that knew about the assassination and and and gave it the green light, is is really on track. And of course later on people like Roger Stone and uh and others wrote books about Jiff about the LBK involvement in the assassination. So it was it was early on that my father's uggestion came out. Well, I know he's a pal of yours, and at one point I thought Roger Stone was very amusing. I have less of of a positive opinion of him in other respects, but um I so I'll leave that for the moment. But I do want to say the other thing that they, the Inner Circle knew was that JFK had been very likely experimenting with drugs such as LSD with Mary Pinchot Meyer, Cord Meyer's ex wife, and they had an affair. They were having an ongoing sexual relationship that was also an affair of the heart as well, and that he would regularly go to her place. That I think is beyond debate, I think at this point. And that it was her diary which was sought by James Angleton of the CIA after her assassination along the Towpath in Washington, that she which was subsequently destroyed, but that diary was handed over by Ben Bradley and his wife to the CIA, And he said later on in life he regretted doing that, and he wondered at the time whether he should have been doing that, But it was like, you're doing what he thought again, this was for the good of the country. That there they were going to give up the diary of Mary Pinchot Meyer to the CIA. If she's writing about the president and his drug use. Yeah. The other thing, Mary, to Joe Myers, was a close confident of Anthy Leary, the LSD great at the time, and she would get LSD from him Leary, and do it with JFK. And he was his mind was really opened up, and he was thinking all these wonderful thoughts of the world peace and all this stuff, and it was just too much for the military industrial complex to deal with. So, you know, she was really taking a big chance in doing this. I don't think she ever thought for one second that her life was in danger, but as we now know, it was in danger and they killed her. For what's interesting is your dad kind of makes reference to that too here in the tape, because he talks about that there was no love lost between cord Meyer and JFK. So if LBJ was looking for an operative within the CIA that would be willing to go along with an assassination of JFK. Then that would be cord Meyer and that he even kind of tossed off handedly about about Mary Pincho Meyer's death too. What else do you hear when you listen to this deathbed confession? Back again, what insights do you hear that maybe some of the rest of us may miss? Well. He goes through several names, and probably a lot of people you know currently don't don't really know who some of these names were. But for example, Bill Harvey was in nineteen fifty nine, he put together the false defector program for the CIA, and Lee Harvey Oswald was one of these false defectors to Russia through that program, so he knew Oswald and had a relationship with that program. He also hated Bobby Kennedy because Bobby Kennedy found out that during the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Bill Harvey was still sending his his guerrilla group over to Cuba to blow up sugarcane fields and irrigation systems and that kind of name radio station UM and when he when Bobby Kennedy found out about that, he u pulled Bill Harvey out of his his his area of expertise there and sent him over to uh to Annaly, to Rome to be station sheep there. Well, as soon as he got to Rome, he got together found out who was in his French underground in Rome dealing the heroine to Marseille, France, and he got in with the Corsican underground and recruited uh Lucien Sarte as one of the shooters in the GfK's fascination. So Harvey was up to his neck and this whole thing, and he hated the Kennedy that just like my dad did. And there's another name he mentioned that the Frank Sturge is. Well, he doesn't say Sturgis by last name. I'm assuming when he says Frank, he means Frank Sturgis his former p I C in the CIA. Yeah, Frank was originally fighting UM Alongsidecastro. He was in charge of the of the casinos in Havana and elsewhere in Cuba. But as soon as Castro was leaning towards communism he uh he fled in the United States and joined the CIA as a contract agent and went about UM doing anti Castro activities. Um Frank I met Flankster just several times, and he was a very nice guy. On the outside. All these guys were very very nice to meet, very polite and and such. But underneath the tin layer they were they were stone cold killers. Yeah they were. Yeah. I hadn't know it at the time, but you know, they really kept a good front going. Yeah, and how could you really? I mean, and your dad obviously wasn't going to introduce him that way. So uh all right, Uh so let's play it again. I want to play it again. I want to get to the party again. So take some notes and then at the bottom of the hour, we'll open up the phones for Saint John Hunt. This goes back to two thousand and seven, but it's just as potent as it is as it was then when we hear it now. And I think we should point out that all this tape has been examined and historians have gone through and vetted it, and as far as I know, nobody has ever come out and released anything any analysis of the tape that wasn't any worse than inconclusive. Do you know if anybody who's come out and figured out it's been you know, it's accurate, and it's it's you know, he needs to take on his own and and he fanancined me. And that's all been verified. Here we go, let's play it again. This is the deathbed confession of Saint John Hunt's father, E Howard Hunt, on host to Coast Am. I heard from Frank that LBJ had designated Cordbyer Junior to undertake a larger organization, or keeping it totally secret. Cordbuyer himself was a rather favored member of the Eastern aristocracy. He was a graduate of Yale University and had joined the Marine Corps during the war and lost an eye in the Pacific fighting. I think that LBJ settled on Meyer as a as an opportunist parent like himself, a parent and a man who had very little left to him in life. Ever since JFK had had taken Cord's wife as one of his mistresses, I would suggest that Cordbuyer welcomed the approach from LBJ, who was, after all, only the vice president at that time. Of course, could not number Cordbyer long JFK's admirers. Quite the contrary. After Dave Pelps I knew him pretty well at one time he worked for me during the Guatemala project. He had made himself useful to the agency in Santiago, Chile, where he was an American businessman. In any case, his actions, whatever they worked, came to the attention to the Santiago station chief, and when his resume became known to people in the Western Hemisphere Division, he was brought in to work on Guatemala the operations, spurs and Morales and people of that Yelk stayed in apartment houses during his preparations for the big event, as their addresses were very subject to change, so that Quera Fellow, like Willis, had been one day, you not necessarily associated with that same address in the following game, and short of was a very mobile experience. Let me point out at this point that if I had wanted to fictionalize what went on in Miama and elsewhere during a ruma for the big event, I would have done so. But I don't want any unreality. The tinge and this particular a story or the information. I should say I was a bench warmer on it, and I had a reputation for honesty. I think it's a sense of the refocus on what this information that I've been providing you and you alone. By the way, consists of What is important in the story is that we've backtracked the chain of command up through through the Cordmyer and laying me the doings at the doorstep of LBJ. He, in my opinion, had a and almost maniacal urge to become president. He regarded as JFK as a as he was in fact an obstacle to achieving that. He could have waited for JFK to finish out his term and then undoubtedly a second term. So that would have put the LBJ at the head of a long list of people who were waiting for some change in the executive bridge. As a sidebar, Saint John Hunt, who do you think has it ever occurred to you who was who was responsible for the death of Mary Pinshall Meyer. Um, I've given it some thought, and I you know, I have no evidence to suggest anything anyone in particular, but I think it was a standalone operational group within the cia UH, and it could have been an offshoot of their Operation forty group which Bill Harvey started, which was a group of assassins UH that went around the world internationally and took care of various politicians, the presidents and such that who's feelings weren't in line with the United States feelings. So, um, you know, there there were these guys were lots and loaded and ready to go after anybody you know that was that was pointed to and say, yeah, you have to get this lady her. She had the diary as Maril Monroe had a diary that listed h JFK's drug youth and Marilyn's diary listed to his involvement with her sexually. And um, you know they were there to protect the ideal of the presidency at the extent of the presidents. Um. So I think it was a standalone group within the CIA of highed assassins that had been wanting, you know, globally active for years. Yeah, there's no doubt in my mind that that's what it was. Your father refers to himself as a bench warmer. Um, during the run up, if he had been asked to be in Dallas, do you they really begged him and said, look, dude, we really need you there, would he have been there? And he of course it's been long since disproven that he's one of the quote three hoboes who was arrested that day, But um, do you think he would have changed his mind, you could, could anything have changed his mind? I don't know, but I believe he was in Dallas that day. There is a photographs of people walking across the street towards the Grassy Knowl and it shows one gentleman in a trench coat and had just like my mother had those items. And I believe that him, although I had no way to prove it. No one's disproved it either. And my mother also mentioned to me at one point that that Papa was in Dallas during that time, So you know, it's pretty I think it's pretty obviously he did go to Dallas just he was been the guy that knew the escape routes, that had the codes for uh, you know, calling people to you know, to clean up the operation and that type of thing. I think he got sucked into it more than he was willing to say on that tape. Something that's part of the team as an active member of the team, but that is sitting on the sidelines waiting for his call. And I think he was there in a sort of an active, semi inactive role as someone that could be trusted because he did say he was known for his honesty and his trustworthiness and he was trusted by these people to carry out this operation. Now, interestingly enough, a man has come forward, Tosh Plumley, who was a pilot for the CIA in the Miami UH sector and said that he flew my father two dolls that day. So that's interesting, you know, newer item that's come up, even though your father denied it. Yeah, right interesting. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more