Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt dies at 88

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- E. Howard Hunt, who helped organize the Watergate break-in, leading to the greatest scandal in American political history and the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency, died Tuesday. He was 88.

Hunt died after a lengthy bout with pneumonia, according to his son, Austin Hunt.

The elder Hunt was many things: World War II soldier, CIA officer, organizer of both a Guatemalan coup and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, and author of more than 80 books, many from the spy-tale genre.

Yet the bulk of his notoriety came from the one thing he always insisted he wasn't -- a Watergate burglar. He often said he preferred the term "Watergate conspirator."

"I will always be called a Watergate burglar, even though I was never in the damn place," Hunt told The Miami Herald in 1997. "But it happened. Now I have to make the best of it."

While working for the CIA, Hunt recruited four of the five actual burglars -- Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Rolando Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis, all who had worked for Hunt a decade earlier in the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

All four also had ties to Miami, where part of the Watergate plan was hatched.