American Spy: My Secret History in the Cia, Watergate and Beyond

I have the greatest respect for Hunt. He was an insider on the JFK assassination and Watergate. In addition he was a very skillful writer and keen analyst of the personalities around him. This book takes on greater significance when Hunt's deathbed audio-taped confession of his involvement in the early planning for the Kennedy assassination is added to it. In this book he describes his ideas about the assassination as a "what if" or "it might have happened this way" story. Shortly after this he gave a confession to his son, that the "what if" story is the real story and he sat in on it. I think he was totally honest.

This book reads just like a mystery novel. It's easy to read and full of suspense, so I couldn't wait to turn the page to find out what happens. The pages on Watergate were especially suspenseful. This book was good from beginning to end. It's interesting to get the inside information on CIA training and activities from someone who was really there. Also, it was good to read about Watergate from someone who was really there and knows what happened. He also fills this book with stories about his personal life, his parents, wife and children. At the end, he offers his views on how to fix the agency today. This is a very good and easy to read book! I enjoyed every page of it.

Hunt shows one last time why his books sold so well. This one reads as if he were sitting in a den with you, telling things as he remembered them. I just wish I could believe everything he said...

I grew up distrusting my government partly because of E. Howard Hunt, but it looks like I didn't distrust it enough. Hunt fancied himself a 007-style secret agent -- and this book reads like a page-turning thriller -- but the one gadget that the CIA forgot to give him was a conscience. From toppling the duly elected government in Guatemala to the Bay of Pigs fiasco to the Watergate break-in, tragedy followed Hunt wherever he went -- yet barely a whisper of remorse emanates from his memoir. Clearly, Hunt's only regret was getting caught. Don't make the mistake of relegating the events in this book to the dustbin of quaint history, for the parallels with the Bush administration are uncanny. Just substitute a few of the names with those of your favorite neoconservative bogeymen and replace the word "anti-communism" with "anti-terrorism," and it's like reading today's headlines. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I figured E. Howard Hunt would be a relatively interesting guy: real life spy, Watergate conspirator, author of dozens of espionage novels. All the derring-do is in this book and it's fun reading --underground in China, plotting the Bay of Pigs, being on the other end of the walkie-talkie as the Watergate "plumbers" break in and get caught. (Getting the inside story of that night from Hunt is fascinating.) But if you read between the lines in this fast-paced bio you also get an insight into a certain kind of twisted, ultra conservative patriotism. The self deception and duplicity are breathtaking and will remind you of some people in the headlines today -- except Hunt is surely a much better storyteller. He's a trip.