Howard Hunt Unleashed, Part 1: The CIA & Animal Farm

True Spies, Episode 185 - Howard Hunt Unleashed, Part 1: The CIA & Animal Farm

+++Disclaimer - This episode contains strong language throughout.

NARRATOR: This is True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time. Week by week, you’ll hear the true stories behind the operations that have shaped the world we live in. You’ll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? I’m Daisy Ridley and this is True Spies from SPYSCAPE Studios.

HOWARD HUNT: We needed to prove to the higher-ups that our work was essential in the war against the Soviets. Not just necessary, essential. Yeah, it was time to start making movies. If Disney could do it, why not the CIA? 

NARRATOR: In the early 1950s, American spycraft was undergoing a radical transformation. While the country’s European allies - and enemies - had for decades deployed experienced spooks on the ground, the US lagged far behind in the intelligence stakes. 

HOWARD HUNT: That all changed in 1947 when the OSS became the Central Intelligence Agency. The need for a world-class intelligence-gathering capability was essential if the United States was to stay ahead of its enemies.

NARRATOR: But while orthodox intelligence gathering was ramped up, a more sinister, shadowy organization within the CIA was also forming. This was the part of the CIA concerned with not just informing the military and political establishment, but influencing their decisions and shaping their policies. And one of the most controversial tactics the Agency pioneered was a new form of warfare called Psyops - Psychological Operations. This was a unit within the CIA dedicated to changing hearts and minds through the strategic use of propaganda. 

HOWARD HUNT: That’s when the notion came up to take a respected work of literature and turn it into a movie for the masses. 

NARRATOR: In this episode, the first of a two-part series, we’ll tell the story of how the CIA’s Psyops unit turned a much-admired work of popular fiction, written by a champion of the left, into a work of anti-Soviet propaganda without anyone noticing. 

HOWARD HUNT: Absolutely no one could know it was the CIA backing the project. Not even the people making it.

NARRATOR: Everette Howard Hunt - known as Howard Hunt, or even Howie by his friends - was the archetypal Cold Warrior. For 25 years, Hunt was responsible for running some of the most notorious covert assignments ever mounted by the CIA, missions that were otherwise known as ‘dirty tricks’ operations. Inspired by Hunt’s surviving writings and historical research, True Spies brings him back to life to tell his definitive and - uncensored - side of the story. And Hunt was quite the storyteller. Prepare yourself for one of the darkest, strangest chapters in CIA history. Prepare yourself for one of the most outlandish tales in CIA history. Welcome, then, to Howard Hunt: Unleashed. Part One: The CIA and Animal Farm. Howard Hunt came from solid middle-class American stock. Having first been recruited into the OSS by its maverick chief, ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, Hunt saw action first-hand, exposing a double agent in India before running supplies to Chinese forces trying to repel the Japanese. After that, he’d set up the first CIA station in Mexico, where he’d become fluent in Spanish, which would come in handy down the line. He’d also gotten married in 1949 to Dorothy Wetzel. Dorothy was a former CIA employee who’d served in Shanghai and Paris where she met Hunt. All the while, Hunt had also been nurturing an equally successful career as a novelist, writing popular war and spy novels that had won him a Guggenheim Fellowship. It was a good cover for his Agency work, but in reality, it was more than that. 

HOWARD HUNT: If I’d had the choice? I don’t think I could have written those books without my Agency work. But which did I enjoy the most? There’s not much to beat a good day’s writing. That I can admit.

NARRATOR: Howard Hunt had already established himself as one of the CIA’s most trusted and effective operatives when, in 1950, the US failed to pick up on North Korea’s plans to invade South Korea. The credibility of US intelligence faced a major setback. The nascent CIA was under pressure to justify its existence and - importantly - its budget in the wake of this error. The CIA had been founded for ‘research, analysis and the collection of intelligence’. But with the looming threat of communism - exacerbated by the Korean War - some inside the Agency believed more extreme methods would be needed to win this ideological battle. Of course, nowhere in the CIA’s founding charter did it stipulate its funds were to be used for dirty tricks. But that was exactly what [officers] like Howard Hunt found themselves drawn to.

HOWARD HUNT: In that sense, the Marshall Plan was a gift. 

NARRATOR: The Marshall Plan of 1947 was a US-led initiative to provide financial assistance to European nations to help rebuild their depleted economies after the war. The main focus of the funds was rebuilding infrastructure. It was not a CIA propaganda tool.

HOWARD HUNT: The OPC [Office of Policy Coordination] chief Frank Wisner cooked up this idea - Operation Mockingbird - where we’d siphon off official funds for the Allied reconstruction and divert them into Psyops. 

NARRATOR: Frank Wisner was the head of the division of the CIA that ran the propaganda and Psyops units. Operation Mockingbird was essentially an all-out assault on all media - radio, movies, the press - to turn the intellectual and ideological tide against communism forever. 

HOWARD HUNT: The Soviets had rejected the Allies’ offer to collaborate in reconstruction, we knew that. So we had no choice but to begin the deconstruction of the communist ideology.

NARRATOR: Don’t forget: at the end of the Second World War, the US and the Soviet Union were, officially, Allies. But this was a partnership born of necessity. The defeat of Nazism had been the cause that had brought them together. In reality, the Allies were fearful of the growing influence of communism.

HOWARD HUNT: I had my first proper encounter with communism after the war in Vienna. It was very clear to me that this was a new kind of evil. Their secret police were everywhere and they had only one way of dealing with people who they ran up against, if you know what I mean. They executed ‘em in cold blood. 

NARRATOR: Which brings us to George Orwell and Animal Farm.

HOWARD HUNT: We knew this guy Orwell was a leftist. He’d fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the socialists. In normal circumstances, he’s the last guy whose words we’d want to turn into a movie. But being a writer myself, I figured there was a way of telling this story about a bunch of animals taking over a farm, and the horrific consequences of this collective action that would lend itself seamlessly to our ideas about how the world should - and should not - be run.

NARRATOR: The Spanish Civil War had also revealed the lengths Stalin would go to to spread orthodox communist ideology. George Orwell had witnessed this brutality first-hand.

HOWARD HUNT: In 1936, Orwell volunteered for the leftist forces in Spain to repel the fascist military takeover led by General Franco. It was, you could say, fashionable to do so among some of the high-minded literary set. Hemingway went out there too. The Spanish Republican (Republicanos) government had appealed to the international community for military support, but no one was keen to get involved. 

NARRATOR: Enter Joseph Stalin. The Soviet leader saw a chance to bolster the Soviet cause by supporting the leftist forces against Franco. He sent agents and munitions to Spain to fight alongside the democratically elected Spanish Republicans. Stalin knew that a Socialist victory in Spain would be good propaganda for International communism. But Stalin’s support for the Spanish left came at a heavy - even fatal - price. Stalin exported more than just arms. The NKVD, Stalin’s Secret Police, began hunting down and brutally executing the Spanish Republicans who were opposed to communism. The Spanish communists took over the fight against the fascists, but this in-fighting ultimately weakened the opposition to Franco’s better-trained and more effective army. 

HOWARD HUNT: The resistance fell and Spain became a fascist dictatorship.

NARRATOR: Orwell was horrified at what he experienced in Spain. He was outspoken in his criticism of the Soviets. Rumors circulated that his life was in danger, and he was forced to avoid places where Stalinists were known to hang out. Even some of his local pubs in London became no-go areas. Despite being born into privilege, Orwell established himself as a powerful left-wing commentator. Through books like The Road To Wigan Pier and Down And Out In Paris And London, he became a fierce advocate for the poor and a harsh critic of the greedy industrialist class that exploited and oppressed them. The true horrors of Soviet Russia were yet to be fully revealed to the world. But the warning signs were clear: now that Hitler had been defeated, a new and terrifying threat was emerging from the East. And the threat of Stalinist violence followed Orwell everywhere he went. 

HOWARD HUNT: I heard he ran into Hemingway, in Paris, in ‘45. Apparently, he was so afraid of being neutralized by the Soviet agents who were running around the place he asked Hemingway for a gun.

NARRATOR: Orwell’s literary response to the deadly threat posed by totalitarianism was the instant classic Animal Farm. The book is a brilliant political allegory in which a bunch of farmyard animals overthrow a corrupt, exploitative farmer and take over the farm. Orwell made a direct comparison between the way humans exploit animals and the way the rich exploit workers. But, mirroring what had happened in Soviet Russia, the animal revolutionaries are themselves corrupted by power. Their methods end up being even more oppressive than the farmer’s. It didn’t take much wit to see how clearly Orwell was pointing the finger at Stalin and his distorted, dystopian form of communism. 

HOWARD HUNT: That’s why the book appealed to us. We knew it was a powerful message and it would be clear to everyone.

NARRATOR: Unlike Hunt’s pulpy novels, Animal Farm had originally struggled to find a publisher. Its criticisms of Stalinism were considered harmful to the overall cause of international socialism by a host of left-leaning publishers on both sides of the Atlantic. However, by the time it was finally released in the US in 1946, the book had already started to capture the popular imagination - which was when Hunt’s plan hit its first obstacle.

HOWARD HUNT: MI6 had already put in an offer to the publisher for the adaptation rights.

NARRATOR: The race was on to turn Orwell’s bestseller into a blockbuster hit - which is when Hunt’s plan hit its next hurdle. Orwell had died.

HOWARD HUNT: Turns out Orwell had contracted Tuberculosis around the publication of Animal Farm. It was a pretty lousy way to go.

NARRATOR: The dying Orwell had remarried in his final months and his widow, Sonia, now had full control of the estate. Recently, she has regained some respect amongst historians. But back then, Sonia Orwell was perceived as a money-grabbing opportunist.

HOWARD HUNT: When I first read the book, Orwell was sick and lonely. We should’ve put our offer in then. Of all the challenges I envisaged, I hadn’t factored in that there’d be a new wife standing between us and our movie. 

NARRATOR: But Sonia Orwell’s ultimate price for handing over the film rights was not money - although she wanted that too. It was something far harder to obtain.

HOWARD HUNT: She wanted to meet ‘The King’.

NARRATOR: The ‘King’ was not some European royalty. No, Sonia Orwell wanted to be introduced to her hero, the King Of Hollywood. Which, to anyone alive at the time, meant she wanted to meet Clark Gable.

HOWARD HUNT: Operation Mockingbird’s biggest challenge so far. A date with Rhett Butler himself. Easy, right?

NARRATOR: To our younger listeners, Clark Gable may not be the most familiar of names. But by the late 1940s, the handsome actor was well-established as the world’s most sought-after and bankable film star. Of the many memorable roles he’d performed, none was more successful or career-defining than Rhett Butler, the swashbuckling hero of Gone With The Wind. Gone With The Wind remains in the top five highest-grossing films of all time, to this day.

HOWARD HUNT: Luckily, I had two advantages over our friends at MI6. One, I had done a stint in Hollywood myself.

NARRATOR: Which is true. After his third book Stranger In Town was published, Hunt was lured to Los Angeles to try his luck as a scriptwriter. 

HOWARD HUNT: I was ‘wined and dined’ in the traditional style for a few weeks. Pretty girls. Champagne. All of it. I learned mighty fast that you’re never as appealing as when you’re all promise, when it’s all ahead of you. Once I started writing actual scripts, the wining and dining slowed down and the girls got less pretty until it stopped altogether. That, then, was my big fat Hollywood career.

NARRATOR: Hunt also maintained - though it’s hard to prove - that his Hollywood prospects were limited by his political leanings.

HOWARD HUNT: Everyone knows Hollywood’s a liberal town. Woe betides a conservative who tries to break into that cozy little club.

NARRATOR: On the other hand, by his own admission, Hunt’s scripts weren’t very good. Maybe that had a hand in curtailing his dreams. It was also the beginning of the Red Scare, and Hollywood’s elite, leftist circles were closing their ranks to avoid infiltration and blacklisting. 

HOWARD HUNT: Which turned out to be advantageous when it came to recruiting the services of Mr. Gable. The King was that rare thing in Tinseltown, a Republican. He was on our side.

NARRATOR: Gable was also a war hero. He had been married to actress Carole Lombard. They were the Burton and Taylor of their day, the most celebrated couple in the movies. But when Lombard was killed in a plane crash, Gable’s mental health spiraled. Fuelled by depression, he enlisted in the Army and flew combat missions in Europe. After returning to the States a decorated war hero, Gable remarried. But the relationship soon floundered. It’s clear he never really got over Lombard.

HOWARD HUNT - So we had to lure this depressed, introverted, heartbroken heartthrob on a date with a notorious, status-seeking gold-digger. What could go wrong?

NARRATOR: Orwell’s biographers are divided on what happened when Sonia Orwell met Clark Gable. Or indeed whether the assignation ever took place. 

HOWARD HUNT: Trust me, it happened. I made it happen.

NARRATOR: Either way, after back and forth with Sonia and Orwell’s agents, the rights deal was agreed. Not that Sonia Orwell thought, for a second, she was optioning her beloved husband’s masterpiece to the Central Intelligence Agency. But Hunt’s travails had only just begun. With the film rights secured, Hunt needed a producer on board to create distance between the CIA and the project. Enter Louis de Rochemont.

HOWARD HUNT: Louis de Rochemont was one of those aristocratic Americans that I kind of despised usually. He was descended from Huguenots - so everyone kept telling me. Anyway, turns out de Rochemont was a great film producer and a patriot. Hated ‘commies’ as much as I did, which made him an easy sell to Wisner.

NARRATOR: Wisner had become something of a father figure to Howard Hunt, and Hunt was keen to curry favor with his boss.

HOWARD HUNT: He was a man of action. In a world full of talkers, they tend to stand out.

NARRATOR: Men of action - these were the kinds of people Hunt gravitated toward. And he undoubtedly saw himself as one. And it’s worth considering why, as it can tell us a lot about the trajectory of his career. Hunt always felt an insecurity about his place in society that dogged him till his dying day. And like another of his heroes, Richard Nixon, Hunt developed a chip on his shoulder. Hunt was posh, by American standards, just not posh enough. He was acutely aware there was an elite layer of society to which he did not have access, just out of reach. Which in turn led him to fall for these ‘men of action’, like ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, the maverick head of the OSS, and now Wisner and eventually perhaps his greatest hero of all, the machiavellian CIA chief Allen Dulles. All of them, it could be argued, were projections of Hunt’s own father. 

HOWARD HUNT: Dad was a lawyer by trade, but he wasn’t one of those greasy Ivy League types. He worked for a living. And when necessary, he took the law into his own hands. When one of his business partners absconded with dad’s money, he got on the first plane to Havana and brought this guy back single-handed. I guess that taught me a lesson about life. If you want to get something done, you’re going to see the best results if you do the job yourself.

NARRATOR: Which leads us back to Animal Farm. With de Rochemont approved as the film’s official ‘producer’, and the CIA funds secured, it should have been plain sailing.

HOWARD HUNT: Well it’s been exaggerated for effect, but yes, we had somewhat underestimated the time and actual cost - not to mention all the rest - that goes into making one of these things. 

NARRATOR: On de Rochemont’s recommendation, and to avoid anyone getting suspicious of who the film’s real backers were, de Rochemont convinced Hunt and the CIA that the best place to make the film was England. The only problem? There weren’t any animation studios in the UK big enough to make a feature-length film of this kind. Back then, animated films were made in the most labor-intensive way possible. Every single frame of a cartoon had to be hand-drawn, and the illusion of movement was created painstakingly by making minute adjustments to each drawing. Which made the UK essential as a production base for another reason. Thanks to the success of Walt Disney, animation in America had skyrocketed in popularity. But in the UK, where there was less of a precedent, there were no animation guilds or unions to protect laborers. 

HOWARD HUNT: De Rochemont estimated we could make this thing for 50 percent of what it could cost State-side.

NARRATOR: De Rochemont’s choice of filmmakers was acclaimed animation partners Joy Batchelor and John Halas. With established careers in making cartoon shorts, the duo were ideal candidates for the ambitious Animal Farm. Between them, they had the style, taste, and expertise to pull off the best possible version of the film. And they both respected Orwell’s writing. So much so that when the film deal was signed and news of it reached the press, Halas loudly stated to journalists that the film would deviate as little as possible from Orwell’s original story. But in truth, the film’s CIA backers had no intention of sticking with Orwell’s version.

HOWARD HUNT: Well it’s an old trick, right? It’s important to build trust and confidence and we didn’t want to rock the boat, so to speak. The Brits get very protective of their writers. Think of all the fuss that was made when someone, I can’t remember who, added a few words to Shakespeare when they made a movie of one of his plays. We had to tread carefully. But right from the start, we knew stuff had to change. 

NARRATOR: What is clear from first-hand accounts is that throughout the process, Batchelor and Halas believed that they were making a conventional film with conventional backing. Even with that ‘backing’ coming from an unnamed ‘distributor’ in the US, the filmmakers diligently engaged with the notes they received and, apparently, never once questioned the source of the feedback or the money. Even when the feedback started to look a lot like it was pushing the film toward anti-communist propaganda.

HOWARD HUNT: The thing is, and everyone agreed with me on this point, Orwell’s book ended in a very depressing way. It was a real ‘downer’ as they say in Hollywood. And you don’t have to be Einstein to work out that audiences get turned off by downbeat endings. They want to leave the theater elated. I detected some snobbery from the Brits that it was crass Americans wanting to cheapen their sacred text. But I always felt we were looking for the necessary changes to make sure that people would want to come and see the damn thing. 

NARRATOR: In reality, nine versions of the script were produced before the ‘backers’ - aka, the CIA - would sign off on the story. With each new revision, Batchelor and Halas did their best to accommodate the changes. But ultimately, all those changes brought about production delays – which came at a significant financial cost. 

HOWARD HUNT: With my experience in writing novels - successful novels I might add - I felt I knew a thing or two about stories. If you want my honest opinion, I reckon I could have fixed the script myself. But de Rochemont brought in this hack called Martin.

NARRATOR: John Stewart Martin was a renowned writer of propaganda films. He was hired to come aboard Animal Farm to help make it more ‘commercial’. Even though Hunt, the CIA, and de Rochemont had explicitly agreed to avoid the ‘Disneyfication’ of the story, Martin started to suggest changes that were aimed at making the film more palatable for younger audiences. What suddenly became clear to the filmmakers was that the so-called backers now wanted full editorial control - something that had never been agreed.

HOWARD HUNT: There were these three areas of disagreement we were stuck on. The main characters, the animals standing in for Stalin and Trotsky, were too sympathetic. Then there was the fact that the novel seemed to be saying that all farmers were bad. Which was wrong and a lie. And then there was the ending, which from my side looked like an endorsement of anarchism. None of which was in line with the message we were trying to get across.

NARRATOR: In fact, the filmmakers were being asked to endorse the ideological and political agenda of the now-transforming CIA. An organization that had gone from working to ‘contain’ the spread of communism to now rolling back the spread of communism. In other words, the CIA was now, without anyone knowing, pursuing regime changes around the world. By the time Animal Farm was in its second year of production, the Dulles brothers, the architects of this new form of covert US foreign policy, had taken over US intelligence. They were now actively pursuing an imperialist agenda aimed at protecting US business and political interests, whatever the consequences. So a propaganda film that explicitly showed capitalism in a negative light - intentionally or not - was unacceptable. And Hunt, more than anyone, sought favor with the Dulles' brothers, especially the new CIA chief, Allen. So something had to give. But the filmmakers weren’t going to cave in without a fight.

HOWARD HUNT: Halas played that old trick to try and get us to back down. You know, the one where they say they want to do what we want but it would drive up the budget and, well, nobody wants that, right? But that’s where we had the upper hand all along. Sure we needed this thing to get finished, and finished soon. But we wanted it right, and we were prepared for the long haul.

NARRATOR: Again, Hunt is being a little disingenuous. The CIA’s diverted Marshall Plan funds were certainly not unlimited. And the longer the project took to make, the more their spending would be scrutinized. And Operation Mockingbird needed to be a success to ensure the ongoing viability of the Psyops unit in the CIA and bolster the Agency’s credibility. Spending large sums of money on a project that was over-running by a year or more would seriously undermine this objective. But after a script summit was called in New York, de Rochemont was still unable to convince the filmmakers to adopt all of the CIA’s changes.

HOWARD HUNT: We’d been playing it all wrong. These liberal types, there’s nothing they fear more than obscurity. Not getting their film finished was a lot worse than what we were proposing editorially. 

NARRATOR: So the CIA played their trump card and threatened to pull the plug on additional funding. Either de Rochemont would have to find alternative financing or he - and the filmmakers - would have to accept the changes to the story. You can see where this is going. In a last-ditch attempt to save the integrity of the project, Halas suggested reverting to the original, more ambiguous ending that rejected all forms of totalitarian rule, not just communism. But to no avail.

HOWARD HUNT: How stupid did he think we were? 

NARRATOR: Production was now stretching into its third year. De Rochemont pushed the filmmakers to their breaking point to hit the CIA-imposed deadline for completion. And that meant accepting the Agency’s story demands or failing to finish the film on time. By the summer of 1954, animation production was completed on Animal Farm. Bachelor and Halas were hoping to breathe a sigh of relief. All that was left was the narration.

HOWARD HUNT: Looking back, I think the voiceover was always going to be how we saved the film - heck, purged it of any remaining traces of Orwell’s bad ideas.

NARRATOR: To expand the appeal of the film, the filmmakers hired an American actor, Gordon Heath, to voice the narration. But that wasn’t enough for the CIA. They wanted control over every word and, in the end, the voiceover narration was rewritten seven times before the CIA would sign it off.

HOWARD HUNT: It’s funny but when you look at it, I think it would be a fair assessment to say we ended up behaving exactly like a studio would. Seeing it from their angle, I am not ashamed to say I have a little more sympathy for these media monoliths than I had when I was running around town hawking my scripts. 

NARRATOR: Animal Farm received its world premiere on December 29, 1954. All the filmmakers attended. The relief that the feature-length cartoon - the first ever to come out of the UK - was finally getting its release was palpable. It had been no mean feat. It had taken 300,000 man-hours and 250,000 drawings to bring Animal Farm to life. Reviews, however, were mixed. In a warm-up for today’s culture wars, many left-leaning critics felt the film was too broad in its condemnation of communism, while the right-wing critics complained that it didn’t go far enough. The UK’s response, loyal to the homegrown Orwell, was especially hostile to the revised ending. By today’s standards, the film was a flop.

HOWARD HUNT: Nonetheless, I’m proud of what we did with Animal Farm. It may not be Gone With The Wind, but it stands up, I think. No one’s going to say this out loud, but I think it helped the book too. I heard it was on the curriculum in West Germany when the city was partitioned. Are you telling me all those young people would have come to the book were it not for our film?

NARRATOR: And the irony that the acclaimed democratic socialist, champion of the oppressed and enemy of totalitarianism, George Orwell, had an adaptation of Animal Farm funded by the CIA - is not lost on Hunt.

HOWARD HUNT: You could argue we had the last laugh if that’s your way of thinking about these things. We did what we intended to do and got what we wanted. How many studio moguls can say that?

NARRATOR: But that wasn’t the end of Operation Mockingbird. The CIA’s anti-communist propaganda vehicle was to continue until it was exposed by investigative journalists in the 1970s. These reporters uncovered a vast network of influence that had co-opted writers for Time, Newsweek, CBS, The New York Times, and many, many more to run stories planted and often written by the CIA. As for Howard Hunt, by the time Animal Farm was released, he’d already moved on to other things. The call to action was too strong to ignore.

HOWARD HUNT: Turns out if you want to fight communism, you have to actually fight it. By ‘54, when our motion picture was being finished, I was up to my neck in the whole Guatemala thing. And then, just five years later, Fidel Castro showed up, and then everything changed. The threat to our national security was no longer hypothetical. Suddenly, there was a bona fide Soviet puppet state 90 miles from the mainland. 

NARRATOR: I’m Daisy Ridley. The original hand-drawn frames from the Animal Farm film are on view - and available to buy - at SPYSCAPE. Visit spyscape.com/animalfarm for details.