President Nixon Withdraws Approval of Huston Plan For Spying, Illegal Actions Against Americans
President Richard Nixon on this day cancelled the Huston Plan, which called for illegal and repressive actions against anti-Vietnam War activists and other political radicals, and which he had previous ordered developed on June 5, 1970.
Nixon wanted action because of the massive student protests against the Vietnam War that began on May 1, 1970. Nixon originally approved the plan on July 14, 1970. The plan was named after Tom Charles Huston, a Nixon administration staff person who specialized in national security.
The exact reason why Nixon cancelled the plan are still not clear. Most historians believe that J. Edgar Hoover, despite his own history of illegal actions, convinced Nixon to do it. Some historians believe that Hoover did not want other agencies, especially the CIA, intruding on his turf. Others argue that Hoover, aware of changing public attitudes on secret government actions, was worried about public exposure of some of the proposed actions.
Tom Huston was pushed aside in the White House and finally resigned in June 1971. Although the plan itself was cancelled, its spirit lived on. The Nixon White House established the “Plumbers” unit in 1971, which on September 9, 1971, burglarized the office of the psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg, who had released the Pentagon Papers. When the burglary was revealed, the Justice Department dropped the criminal charges against Ellsberg because of official misconduct. On January 27, 1972, meanwhile, White House operative G. Gordon Liddy proposed GEMSTONE, a plan for a series of actions — many of them illegal — against anti-Vietnam War and anti-Nixon activists. The GEMSTONE plan was rejected, but it provided the model for the Watergate burglary, on June 17, 1972, which touched off the Watergate Scandal. The scandal ended with President Richard Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974.
Learn more about the notorious Huston Plan here
Read the Church Committee Report on the Huston Plan (pp. 921–973): http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/html/ChurchB3_0479a.htm
Read the best biography of Hoover: Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (1991)
Learn more: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990)