President Nixon’s “Plumbers” Burglarize Ellsberg’s Psychiatrist’s Office
A White House group known as the “Plumbers” (reportedly set up on July 24, 1971, to “stop leaks” of information), burglarized the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist on this day in order to find information to discredit Ellsberg.
Ellsberg had leaked a copy of The Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, which published stories based on the Papers on June 13, 1971. The articles about the secret history of American involvement in Vietnam created a national sensation by indicating that several presidents had lied to the American people about the nature of American involvement in Vietnam.
The Nixon Administration enjoined the Times and the Washington Post from publishing even additional stories, and this led to a historic Supreme Court decision on freedom of the press in Times v. United Sates, on June 30, 1971.
The burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist set a precedent for the break-in of Democratic Headquarters, on June 17, 1972, which set off the Watergate scandal and led to President Richard Nixon’s eventual resignation on August 9, 1974.
The burglary had a major impact on subsequent events. When Daniel Ellsberg was being prosecuted for stealing the The Pentagon Papers, the revelation of the burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist caused the charges against him to be dismissed, on May 11, 1973. See the landmark Supreme Court decision on freedom of the press in the Pentagon Papers case (June 30, 1971).
Read about the “Plumbers”: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1992)
Learn more about the Pentagon Papers case: John Prados and Margaret Porter, Inside the Pentagon Papers (2004)
Read: Tom Wells, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg (2001)
Watch the documentary about Ellsberg: The Most Dangerous Man in America (2009)