E Howard Hunt Wife Plane Crash
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Marguerite McCausland of Ashburn discusses the afternoon 40 years ago when United Flight 553 crashed into a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, short of Midway Airport. A stewardess at the time, she was one of only 18 survivors. (Tom Jackman/The Washington Post) It was no routine flight. A mile south of Midway, United Flight 553 was told to pull up and circle back around for another approach. Hasp 217 Drivers.
Instead, it plunged into a South Side Chicago neighborhood, snapped in two and erupted into flames. And as the Chicago news media watched and filmed, firefighter John “Duke” O’Malley dove into the chaos, cut through the debris on top of her and helped lift McCausland to safety, 40 years ago this Saturday. McCausland now lives in Ashburn with her husband, and recently gave her first interview since 1973, when she returned to Chicago and was reunited with O’Malley as the cameras rolled. The crash quickly gained infamy for another reason: the wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt was on the plane, and died with more than $10,000 cash in her purse. Dorothy Hunt supposedly was involved in distributing cash to people connected to Watergate, and FBI agents were on the crash site with surprising quickness.
It became known as “the Watergate crash,” and continues to intrigue conspiracy theorists to this day. This photo was taken at the moment that Marguerite McCausland was being helped out of the burning aircraft.
The man with no helmet in the middle is firefighter John 'Duke' O'Malley, and the woman who is obscuring O'Malley's mouth and chin is McCausland. (George Bertonz/Southtown Economist) McCausland, now 77, does not think the plane was sabotaged, the pilots poisoned or that the crash had anything to do with Watergate. An extensive National Transportation Safety Board investigation found pilot error to be the cause, and McCausland agrees. “They went through a very thorough investigation,” McCausland said. Investigators determined that the three-man flight crew had discovered their flight data recorder wasn’t working (more fodder for the Watergate conspiracy), and were fiddling with that rather than properly preparing the plane for landing. Marguerite McCausland holds a photo taken in 1973 when she was reunited with Chicago firefighter John 'Duke' O'Malley, who rescued her from the wreckage of United Flight 553 a year earlier. (Jessica McKay/Erickson Living) “In view of the allegations of foul play which have been injected into the publicity surrounding this accident,” stated, “the Safety Board finds it necessary to present certain aspects of the trauma experienced by nonsurvivors in more detail than would normally be reported.” It was theorized by some that Dorothy Hunt, or her husband, had information that would further incriminate the Watergate operation, and so was killed.
The NTSB’s scientific findings never fully quashed those suspicions. Marguerite McCausland grew up in Oswego, N.Y., and received “hostess training” from Capital Airlines before taking to the air in 1957, mostly in DC-3s. Capital was bought by United in 1961, and “hostesses” were upgraded to “stewardesses” sometime thereafter.
The proper term today is “flight attendant.” During a United work stoppage in 1966, she took a part-time job serving lunch at the Key Club, a bring-your-own-bottle restaurant on Lake Anne Plaza in the new town of Reston. She met an electrical engineer there named Bob McCausland, they married and lived in Reston until 2008, when they moved to the Ashby Ponds retirement community in Ashburn. On the afternoon of Dec. 8, 1972, McCausland did not know that Dorothy Hunt was on the plane or know of her link to the still unfolding Watergate scandal. “She was just another passenger,” McCausland said, ”and she was also in coach,” while McCausland handled the first class seats. As the flight approached Chicago, there was no warning of a crash.
”All I can vaguely remember is a very high-pitched, winding sound,” McCausland said. “Very high-pitched. Then you could feel like things were out of control.
Then somebody screaming, I don’t know if it was me, ‘We’re gonna crash. Echo F1 Speedometer Manualidades. ’”. Marguerite McCausland reviews a Chicago newspaper from December 1973, sent to her by her rescuer, firefighter John 'Duke' O'Malley. The headline reads, 'Heroic firemen free stewardess in crash.' (Jessica McKay/Erickson Living) Items from the plane’s galley and bathroom crashed down on top of her, then bricks from one of the houses.