‘Hunt Of Republican Party’ Named In Cuban Bomb Trial

By Ian Glass and Terry Johnson King

Miami News Reporters

“A man named Hunt of the Republican party” was brought into testimony in the Cuban Power trial in Federal court here today.

Defense attorney Melvyn Greenspahn read into the record a transcript of a recording of a conversation between government informer Ricardo Morales and Cuban exile leader Dr. Orlando Bosch.

Morales was heard to say to Bosch: “I understand a man named Hunt of the Republican Party . . . (next few words unintelligible) . . . wells . . . (unintelligible) . . . Texas, has given $15,000 to Cuban Power to place bombs.”

Bosch is heard replying: “I have not received the money, but you are the second person to tell me this.”

Bosch and eight other Cuban exiles are accused by the government of plotting to bomb foreign ships.

In Dallas, Texas, lives the 79-year-old H. L. Hunt, an ultra-conservative oil billionaire, reputed to be the richest man in America.

Hunt said by telephone today that he did not know Orlando Bosch. He said he had “helped in the political campaign” recently of a Cuban named Dr. Fernando Penabaz, who lives in Coral Gables.

“Anyway, I am sometimes a Republican and sometimes a Democrat,” said Hunt, “but always I am a constructive. That is my name for a conservative.”

Hunt’s political views, written by himself and associates, are aired daily in a program called Life line, carried, he said, by 530 radio stations.

Greenspahn did not explain why he suddenly decided to read this particular part of the conversation between the 29-year-old Morales and Bosch into the court record.

Last Friday, parts of four tapes of their conversation here heard in court before U.S. Judge William O. Mehrtens and the jury of 12. Some of the conversation was withheld at the defense’s request.

The tape recorder had been fitted to the body of Morales before he went to meetings of the Cuban Power organization.

The courtroom today looked like an arsenal as bombs and dynamite introduced into evidence were stacked on the floor.

Among today’s spectators for the first time were Bosch’s five children, three girls and two boys, dressed in their parochial school uniforms.

They sat in the front row with their mother.