Hunt, along with G. Gordon Liddy and others, was one of the White House's "plumbers", a secret team of operatives charged with fixing "leaks". Information disclosures had proved an embarrassment to the Nixon administration when defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg had sent a series of documents which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.
An employee of the CIA from 1949 to 1970, Hunt organized the bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office building and was also found to be responsible for a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
The Rockefeller Commission of the U.S Congress in 1974 regarded Hunt and Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis as suspects in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Hunt's wife Dorothy was killed in the December 8, 1972 plane crash of Flight 533. Congress, the FBI, and the NTSB investigate but do not find anything suspicious.
In addition to his work at the CIA, Hunt was a prolific author, primarily of spy novels. He declared bankruptcy in 1995 and lives in Miami, Florida.