Dorothy Hunt, wife of Howard Hunt (scapegoat for Watergate who was threatening to spill the beans on the whole thing), and a CIA agent like her husband, was allegedly on the flight with $250,000 cash aimed at buying the silence of her Husband’s co-conspirators. Traveling along with her on the flight was CBS news correspondent whose CIA boyfriend had given her inside intel about Watergate and what it was really about, Michelle Clark. These two along with 12 others on the flight, according to Howard Hunt, had information that would blow the White House out of the water. According to people in the neighborhood just beyond the Chicago airport where the crash occurred, FBI agents flooded the area prior to the crash and were on the scene immediately rummaging through the wreckage. A radio hound who overheard the deliberately misleading signals given to the pilot called into a radio station to report and suggest getting the tapes, but the tapes were all confiscated by the FBI and never released. Howard Hunt served out his time as the scapegoat and returned to civilian life $1 million dollar richer.
The aircraft hit the branches of trees close to Midway Airport: “It then hit the roofs of a number of neighborhood bungalows before plowing into the home of Mrs. Veronica Kuculich at 3722 70th Place, demolishing the home and killing her and a daughter, Theresa. The plane burst into flames killing a total of 45 persons, 43 of them on the plane, including the pilot and first and second officers. Eighteen passengers survived.” Hunt was killed in the accident.
The airplane crash was blamed on equipment malfunctions. Carl Oglesby, the author of The Yankee and Cowboy War (1977) has pointed out that the day after the crash, Egil Krogh was appointed Undersecretary of Transportation, supervising the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Association – the two agencies charged with investigating the airline crash. A week later, Nixon’s deputy assistant Alexander P. Butterfield was made the new head of the FAA, and five weeks later Dwight L. Chapin, the president’s appointment secretary, become a top executive with United Airlines.
