E. Howard Hunt

E. Howard Hunt enters the account through a single covert-looking freight run recalled by Frank Sheeran: in 1961, a truck carrying military uniforms, weapons, and ammunition was delivered to Hunt and anti-Castro Cubans in Florida. Sheeran later identifies Hunt as the figure who would become known as the person in charge of the Watergate burglars, but the remembered encounter establishes only Hunt’s place at the receiving end of this particular transfer.

The Florida delivery

Sheeran says that Phil supplied him with a truck and that Jack Flynn drove with him to the Campbell plant in Baltimore. At the plant, Dave Ferrie, whom Sheeran had recently met, directed the truck to a position beside army vehicles. Soldiers then loaded uniforms, weapons, and ammunition onto it. Ferrie said the materiel came from the Maryland National Guard and gave Sheeran paperwork in case the truck was stopped.

Ferrie directed Sheeran to take the load to a dog track in Orange Grove, Florida, where a man known by the description of having big ears would meet him. The drive down old Route 13 took about twenty-one hours. Sheeran recalls handing the cargo over to Hunt and anti-Castro Cubans; Flynn remained in Florida to drive the truck back, while Sheeran flew to Philadelphia. In the account, Hunt’s role is concrete but narrow: he is the expected contact who receives the shipment.

Identification and later context

Sheeran says Hunt’s ears made him recognizable when he arrived. He later saw Hunt on television as the person in charge of the Watergate burglars, and recalled that Hunt had been connected with the Central Intelligence Agency at the time of the Florida delivery. Sheeran also remembers seeing him again after Hunt had undergone an operation on his ears, which appeared closer to his head.

The surrounding account places the delivery in the context of anti-Castro activity. After reporting to Russell Bufalino, Sheeran says he was told that Jimmy Hoffa had sent him at the request of Sam Giancana and Bufalino, and that the effort concerned taking Cuba back from the Communists. That explanation comes through Sheeran’s recollection of Bufalino’s account; it does not establish what Hunt himself knew about the shipment or its purpose.

Limits of the account

The book presents the episode as Sheeran’s retrospective first-person recollection, not as a separately documented account from Hunt. It supplies specific details about the route, cargo, handover, and the men involved, but does not describe Hunt’s instructions, authority, or subsequent actions. Hunt’s significance here therefore lies in the connection the narrative draws between a 1961 arms transfer for anti-Castro Cubans and the later public identification of him with Watergate, while the extent of his involvement in the earlier operation remains unspecified.