Hunt's Notebooks

Hunt's Notebooks were two missing notebooks belonging to E. Howard Hunt, whose absence turned a question about the handling of material from Hunt's safe into a dispute over what investigators had—and had not—received. The notebooks were not listed in John Dean's inventory of the safe's contents, and prosecutors learned of them months later through Hunt's effort to recover belongings left at his office. Their reported names and addresses might have led investigators toward other people involved in the Watergate conspiracy, yet the notebooks themselves were never found in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's possession. The record established the gap, not who caused it or where the notebooks went.

Discovery and Timeline

After June 17, Dean came into possession of the contents of Hunt's safe. He waited at least seven days before turning the material over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When Carl Bernstein examined Dean's file the day after L. Patrick Gray's testimony at the Senate hearings, he noticed that two notebooks belonging to Hunt were missing from Dean's inventory. The omission raised a question distinct from the delay: even if the listed contents had eventually been handed over, the inventory did not account for the notebooks.

A Justice Department attorney told Bernstein that prosecutors had first heard of the notebooks on October 11. That was the date Hunt filed a motion demanding the return of belongings he had left at his office. Thus, the notebooks entered the account not through the FBI's investigation of the safe, but through a later dispute over Hunt's property. The interval mattered: the prosecutors' first knowledge came after the inventory had been made and after the material from the safe had been transferred.

What the Notebooks Might Have Contained

Hunt's attorney, William Bittman, confirmed Bernstein's account and described the notebooks as containing names and addresses. Prosecutors had told him that the information might lead to other people involved in the Watergate conspiracy. That made the notebooks potentially significant not simply as personal belongings, but as possible leads in a case whose reach beyond the known participants remained important.

Bittman explained that he had thought the Federal Bureau of Investigation possessed the notebooks and had used them in its investigation. On that assumption, he had considered arguing that the government's case was tainted because its information came from material obtained in an illegal search. He also planned to call Dean and other White House personnel to establish that Hunt was still using his office in June and had not abandoned his property there. The notebooks therefore bore on two related questions: what information investigators had obtained, and whether Hunt's belongings were still his to claim.

An Evidentiary Dispute Without the Evidence

The notebooks' absence changed the legal argument Bittman had contemplated. When he learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had never received them, he regarded the issue as moot: the theory that the government had used information from those notebooks could not proceed on the assumption that the FBI had them. That did not answer what had happened to the notebooks. Bittman described the matter as strange and said he did not know where they had gone.

Bernstein asked how useful Hunt thought the notebooks would be in building a case against higher-ranking figures. Bittman declined to give a direct assessment, instead inviting Bernstein to infer their value and suggesting that someone might have wanted them to disappear. His remark conveyed suspicion, not proof. The account identifies neither a person who removed the notebooks nor an act of deliberate destruction; their possible usefulness and unexplained absence remained separate facts.

Significance of the Missing Record

The notebooks mattered through what the record could not establish. Their names and addresses were reported secondhand, their possible leads were described by the attorney, and their whereabouts stayed unknown. Their absence also exposed a weakness in the chain of accountability surrounding the contents of Hunt's safe: Dean's inventory did not list them, prosecutors learned of them only when Hunt sought his property, and the FBI never received them.

That uncertainty entered public view amid wider questions about Dean's handling of the safe's contents and the Watergate investigation. The notebooks did not supply a resolution or a confirmed list of additional conspirators. Instead, they became a missing link between Hunt's property, Dean's inventory, and the prosecutors' efforts to determine what evidence had been available. Their narrative force comes from that limit: the possible significance of the notebooks is clear enough to sharpen suspicion, while the evidence stops short of explaining their disappearance.