Howard Hunt’s investigation into Edward Kennedy’s private life

E. Howard Hunt’s investigation into Edward M. Kennedy’s private life was an effort to find scandal material about a potential political rival. Its surviving account traces Hunt’s use of an alias, his approach to a Massachusetts contact, and the limited, largely hearsay information he obtained. The episode later became part of the public record through a Washington Post report describing an inquiry conducted when the White House most feared a Kennedy candidacy.

Background and Purpose

Hunt’s approach to the investigation followed soon after he began working at the White House. According to Cliff DeMotte, Hunt visited him in the Boston area in July 1971, within a week or two of being hired. DeMotte had been public-relations director at the Yachtsman Motor Inn in Hyannis Port in 1960, when candidate John Kennedy had used the hotel as a press and staff headquarters. That earlier connection made DeMotte a possible source for information about the Kennedy family.

Hunt’s questions, as DeMotte recalled them, concerned whether he had heard stories about the Kennedy brothers’ personal lives or other potentially compromising material. Hunt also wanted DeMotte to look into Chappaquiddick, giving him a book about the subject to see whether it prompted any recollections. DeMotte said it did not. The episode therefore shows a search for usable material, but the account does not establish that the search produced substantiated evidence of misconduct by Edward M. Kennedy.

The Contact and the Information Sought

Hunt introduced himself under the name Ed Warren. He said he was a writer and represented a group whose identity he would not disclose. DeMotte did not know at the time that Warren was Hunt; he recognized him only after the FBI later showed him photographs and identified the visitor as Hunt. The alias and vague account of his affiliation concealed the purpose and sponsor of the inquiry from the person being interviewed.

DeMotte recalled that Hunt asked about scandal-type material and Kennedy-related stories. What DeMotte could offer was old and hearsay: recollections concerning the conduct of Kennedy staff members in 1956, including accounts of parties and a state-police car being used to obtain more alcohol. DeMotte said he had tried to persuade Hunt that the inquiry was a waste of time. His account documents what Hunt sought and what one contact recalled; it does not turn those recollections into verified evidence about Edward M. Kennedy.

Publication and Political Context

The Washington Post had already written about the investigation the previous July. Its February 10 editions carried a more direct account, reporting that Hunt had investigated Edward M. Kennedy’s personal life during a period when the White House most feared that Kennedy might become a presidential candidate. Ben Bradlee placed that story on page one. The prominence gave public visibility to an inquiry that had been conducted through a disguised identity and an undisclosed affiliation.

The reporting treated the DeMotte encounter as one part of a wider investigation into Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy’s activities at the White House; the reporters remained more interested in Hunt’s separate trip to see Dita Beard in Denver. The Kennedy inquiry thus mattered both for what it disclosed about efforts to gather personal information on a possible opponent and for the way it connected an individual interview to a broader pattern of political operations. Its evidentiary limits remained important: DeMotte identified Hunt and described his questions, but his own information was expressly old and hearsay.