In the Spirit of Physical Science and Current Events...Meet E. Howard Hunt

If you are all done clipping coupons for the weekend and have gotten over the firing of Tony Franklin, give yourselves a few moments of sundown time because here is something to think about.

The short story I'm about to share with you has probably been touched upon by the New York Times, the nation newspaper in Nigeria and The Sun newspaper in the United Kingdom. It has probably been thrown around by several major news conglomerates around the world for a little while and is currently struggling to find its' place in the international collective consciousness. So if you have a moment to tear yourself away from trying to solve supernatural mysteries in the Bermuda Triangle and can wait until tomorrow to answer that trivia question about the most visited city in the world, you should probably pay close attention to the next few words.

A few years ago there was a blockbuster series of films produced based upon the celebrated television series Mission Impossible. The films were pretty good. I think I may have seen them. The name of the lead character played by Tom Cruise was Ethan Hunt. He had a comprehensive understanding of all things related to the secret organization that he worked for. In the event that anything ever happened to him, his employers maintained complete deniability by separating themselves from everything he did. He did a lot of bad things. He knew a lot of bad things. Therefore, if anything horrible ever happened to him or if he got caught doing something horrible his employers could make like Ethan didn't even exist. If you saw the movies, you probably know all this already.

What you may not know however is that Hunt's character is loosely based on a real person, E. Howard Hunt. Much like the fictional character, Mr. Hunt worked for a government agency, the CIA. He was involved in a number of highly covert operations that on occasion did not go as planned. Some of his work involved some of the most highly publicised intelligence operations in history including the Bay of Pigs and Watergate. His involvement in the latter had him implicated and sent to jail.