E. Howard Hunt may hold a controversial niche in American history, but mourners at his funeral Monday expressed only admiration for the man who helped organize the Watergate break-in.
"He was a great American. The country needs more like him. Too bad we don't have anyone in politics today with his leadership and boldness," said friend Jay Kodner of Miami.
Hunt died Jan. 23 after a bout with pneumonia. He was 88.
Standing near family photographs and an American flag, folded and framed in glass, his children spoke Monday of a man whose personal life was intertwined with world history, mourners said. Reporters were not permitted into the private service at Miami Shores Presbyterian Church.
Hunt's son, Austin, said it was touching to have close friends and family pay tribute to his father.
"They were proud of my father and the things that he did," Austin Hunt said after the service. "He was remembered well."
Hunt served in the Navy in World War II and was a music lover who sang and played saxophone, they said. While working for the CIA, he helped orchestrate the coup in Guatemala and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961, and came home to put his children to bed at night, they said.
"They emphasized he always had time for his family. He would read to his children every night," Kodner said.
Hunt's memoir, "American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond," is due to be published next month.
"We're sad he never got to see it in its finished form," Austin Hunt said.
Hunt always insisted he wasn't a Watergate burglar, often saying he preferred the term "Watergate conspirator." He eventually spent 33 months in prison for helping plan the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, leading to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency.
While working for the CIA, Hunt recruited four of the five actual burglars, who had worked for him in the Bay of Pigs invasion. The four also had ties to Miami, where part of the Watergate plan was hatched. Hunt said their goal at the Watergate was to see whether Fidel Castro's Cuban regime had given money to the campaign of Nixon's Democratic opponent, George McGovern.
It hadn't. Fallout from the break-in led Nixon to resign Aug. 9, 1974.
