A Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt

by Tad Szulc

The spirit of Watergate can be perceived and captured through the life and the time of one single man -- most of whose life was spent enveloped in the anonymity of undercover intelligence work, but who suddenly burst upon the national scene as the personification of all the painful things symbolized by Watergate. He is E. Howard Hunt, Jr., sentenced to a provisional 35-year prison term, who careless slip on June 17, 1972 led to the ultimate exposure of most of the Watergate scandals...What Hunt did before, during, and after the Watergate affair tells us a great deal about the very special Cold War environment from which he came.

Genres: History, Espionage, Politics, Nonfiction, Biography

180 pages, Hardcover

First published January 21, 1974

About the author

Tadeusz Witold Szulc was an author and foreign correspondent for The New York Times from 1953 to 1972

Szulc is credited with breaking the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Szulc was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Seweryn and Janina Baruch Szulc.

He attended Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland.

In 1940 he emigrated from Poland to join his family in Brazil; it had left Poland in the mid-1930s.

In Brazil, he studied at the University of Brazil, but in 1945, he abandoned his studies to work as a reporter for the Associated Press in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1947 he moved from Brazil to New York City, and in 1954, he became a US citizen.

His emigration had been sponsored by United States Ambassador John Cooper Wiley, who was married to his aunt.

In 2001, Szulc died of cancer at his home, in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm (slowly) reading Garrett M. Graff's expansive work on Watergate, and he quotes from this book, and then I got it in my head to read this book. It's interesting to read something Watergate-related that was published right after it happening, but I also started wondering why I was reading this book.

But still, mediocre fun.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this at Half-price Books for a buck. Being interested in the history of espionage, a biography of E. Howard Hunt Jr., one of the directors of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Watergate criminal and (possibly) JKF assassination conspirator, was, in my mind, quite a find. Written in 1974, it doesn't cover all of his life (such as the court's decision that he was in Dallas that fateful day) and it doesn't do justice to all we now know about the Nixon administration illegalities, but it does serve as decent introduction to the Watergate affair.