Director of JFK Library Rebuts Hunt Allegations

The director of the Kennedy Library yesterday debunked claims that researchers working on behalf of the Library had covered up the alleged role of President John F. Kennedy '40 in the 1963 murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Vinh Diem.

E. Howard Hunt, a convicted Watergate spy, said in grand jury transcripts released Monday that secret State Department documents on the killing -- stamped as "photographed and duplicated for the Kennedy Library" -- were only partially complete.

Whoever copied the documents for the Kennedy Library, Hunt said, "would also have had the opportunity to remove any cables that could have been embarassing to the Kennedy legatees."

Dan H. Fenn Jr. '46, director of the Kennedy Library, said yesterday, "There is no reason to draw the implication that the people were plucking cables."

"Each agency selected material from its archives for Kennedy Library deposit," he said. "I don't know who made the selections, what their motivations were, or anything else."

"It would not have been people from the Kennedy Library," Fenn said.

Robert Kennedy

The request for the documents came from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy '48 in 1964, years before the Kennedy Library staff officially formed.

Hunt, who admitted earlier to forging telegrams designed to link President Kennedy with the Diem assassination, said he had forged the cables only after finding large gaps in State Department records.

"It became clear to me, from the State Department files, that a number of cables were missing," Hunt said. "That is to say that the chronological files did not contain cables in chronological sequence."

Hunt did find, however, three or four authentic cables suggesting that "they [the White House] had pretty close to pulled the trigger against Premier Diem's head, but didn't say so in so many words."

Hunt was reportedly building a dossier under the supervision of former White House aide Charles W. Colson to embarass Senator Edward M. Kennedy '56 (D-Mass.), then considered the leading Democratic presidential candidate by the White House.

Hunt's testimony, given before the grand jury investigating the Watergate break-in, was released Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Matt Byrne in Los Angeles at the trial of Daniel Ellsberg '52. Byrne publicized the transcripts after he learned Hunt had burglarized the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist and rifled the files to try to find information damaging to Ellsberg.

In an interview with The Crimson yesterday, former Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who served in Vietnam from 1963 to 1964, disclaimed any U.S. role in the assassination.

"There was no foreknowledge, either," Lodge said. "I was horrified by it, as was President Kennedy.