Watergate's Hunt, 88, dies

MIAMI, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt Jr. died Tuesday in Miami at the age of 88.

His wife Laura said he died of pneumonia at North Shore Medical Center, The New York Times reported.

The June 1972 burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee led to an administration coverup which eventually led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

Hunt recruited four of the five burglars, The Washington Post said, but did not participate in the burglary itself.

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

He was charged in the incident and served 33 months in prison.

A veteran of World War II, he also had a career in the CIA, though he was working as a White House "security consultant" at the time of the burglary.

Hunt was born in Hamburg, N.Y., on Oct. 9, 1918.