On June
13, 1971, the meticulously planned scenario promulgating
a national emergency over the putative heroin epidemic
was rudely interrupted by the New York Times's publishing
an archive of national defense documents which became
known as the Pentagon Papers. In-the weeks that followed,
the controversy over the publication of these classified
documents dominated the covers of the national newsmagazines
and the choice time on network television. Meanwhile,
the disclosures from the White House about the drug
menace, the recalling of ambassadors from France, Turkey,
and other countries, the cabinet-level meetings to deal
with narcotics, the agreement to suppress opium, -production
in Turkey, and other highlights of the heroin crusade
were relegated to the back pages of newspapers and newsmagazines
and given only minor coverage on television. While the
timetable for creating a White House-controlled office
with unprecedented investigative powers moved slowly
ahead under the direction of G. Gordon Liddy and Egil
Krogh, the president demanded immediate action to remedy
the massive leaking ofthe Pentagon Papers. When Krogh
returned from an inspection of the drug problem in Vietnam
in late June, he was summoned to the Western White House,
at San Clemente, California, and told by Ehrlichman
that the president wanted him to work on a special project.
The president's assistant for domestic affairs explained
more fully the next day that this project involved investigating
the background of Daniel Ellsberg, a former Rand Corporation
employee who had provided the New York Times with the
Pentagon Papers. Ehrlichman stressed that this was a
joint undertaking of his Domestic Council and Henry
Kissinger's National Security Council, and that Kissinger,
then a national security advisor to the president, was
supplying a top investigator on his staff named David
Young, who along with Krogh would direct this new investigative
unit.
Krogh and Young established
their Special Investigations Unit, which Young nicknamed
"the Plumbers," in room 16 of the Executive
Office Building, conveniently located on the ground
floor near the narrow underground passageway leading
directly to the White House. Since Krogh had little
experience in spy work, he brought his more experienced
assistant on the Domestic Council, Gordon Liddy, into
room 16 as his deputy. Liddy, then working to develop
a more permanent investigative capacity in the White
House under the cover of a narcotics office, seemed
to Krogh "a natural choice" for the Plumbers,
who would engage in "all sorts of national-security
work." Since the White House assumed that the FBI
would not cooperate fully in investigating what was
then thought to be a possible conspiracy of "establishment
Democrats" involved with Ellsberg in the distribution
of the Pentagon Papers, the Plumbers assumed that they
would need the special services of the Central Intelligence
Agency. The deputy director of the CIA, General Robert
Cushman, whom Krogh had worked with in developing international
narcotics programs, agreed to provide Krogh with financing
for "narcotics work," but held that the CIA
could not get involved in a domestic investigation of
this sort. Krogh did manage, however, to obtain the
services of E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA official who
reportedly had helped Allen Dulles. the most illustrious
of the CIA directors, to write his book The Craft of
Intelligence, and who officially had been detached from
the CIA several months before going to work for Robert
R. Mullen and Company, a public-relations firm at times
serving as a front for CIA operatives. At the time,
Hunt seemed to Krogh to be a logical candidate for the
Plumbers and a possible member of the more permanent
organization then being planned: Hunt had been in the
CIA more than twenty years and had specialized in the
distribution of "black," or misleading, information.
He also had headed the CIA station in Uruguay and was
involved at a high level with the successful CIA coup
d'etat in Guatemala and the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs
invasion in Cuba, he therefore could be expected to
have wide-ranging contacts with other CIA agents, executives,
and independent contractors for various services. Furthermore,
he came with the strong recommendation of Charles Colson,
the special counsel to the president who specialized
in dealing with political "enemies." Hunt
saw the possibility of using black information in, the
Ellsberg case, to denigrate as traitors a whole class
of Democratic opponents to the war in Vietnam. While
retaining his $25,000-a-year public-relations job at
Mullen and Company, and still receiving his $24,000-a-year
CIA pension, Hunt was put on the White House payroll
as a $130-a-day consultant for special projects.
By the end of July, Hunt proposed
a covert psychological assessment/evaluation on Ellsberg
which would "destroy his public image and credibility,"
according to a memorandum which surfaced in the Senate
investigation of Watergate. This required special assistance
from employees, or former employees, of the CIA. Hunt
therefore contacted a number of Cuban exiles who had
been involved with him in CIA operations against Castro's
Cuba, including Manuel Artimes, a former captain in
Castro's army whom the CIA had helped defect from Cuba
and had used to train Its exile army in Guatemala. Bernard
"Macho" Barker, a former CIA infiltrator into
the Cuban intelligence apparatus who had been subsequently
"exfiltrated" into the United States by the
CIA, was also contacted. Hunt explained to Captain Artimes
that he had been authorized by the White House to recruit
Cuban exiles into "hit teams" which would
be used ostensibly to assassinate narcotics dealers.
He asked his former comrade in clandestine work to recommend
Cubans for these teams. Since Barker had arranged the
escape of Artimes from Cuba on the CIA's behalf, he
was apparently highly recommended. Hunt already knew
Barker from the Bay of Pigs operation, in 1961, and
after explaining to him that he was now working for
a "higher level structure than either the FBI or
CIA,- Hunt asked him to assemble a team of Cuban exiles
who were burglars and lock-picks.*
* Hunt also apparently
recruited Frank Sturgis, a self-proclaimed soldier of
fortune who was arrested with four others in the burglary
of the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex,
for this new office. Sturgis claims that he undertook
several missions for Hunt involving tracking narcotics,
and he assumed that this was the nucleus of a new supranational
police force that would be expanded after Nixon's reelection.
Meanwhile, Liddy wrote
the president a long memorandum analyzing the deficiencies
of the FBI and argued that because of these flaws in
its organization, it could not be counted on by the
White House. The president was impressed with this analysis
and remarked to Krogh that it was "the most brilliant
memorandum he had received in a long time." Liddy
also arranged to funnel money from the dairy cooperatives,
which were clients of Hunt's public-relations firm,
into the Special Investigative Unit, to pay for the
break-ins, wiretaps, and other clandestine activities.
By mid-August. Liddy had obtained permission from Krogh
and Ehrlichrrian for a covert operation in which the
Plumbers would -et access to Ellsherg's psychiatric
records. which his psychiatrist- Dr. Lewis Fielding,
had steadfastly refused to show to the FBI.
Over that Labor Dav weekend
Dr. Fieldino was not expected to be in his Beverly Hills
office. Thus. Liddy, Hunt. Barker, and the two Cuban
exiles he recruited for the mission, Eugenio R. Martinez
and Felipe de Diego-both of whom claimed to have taken
part in CIA clandestine operations against Cuba-flew
to Los Angeles to execute what was known in White House
circles as Liddy-Hunt Project Number One. According
to the plan worked out by Liddy. Martinez and Diego
went to Dr. Fielding's office wearing the uniforms of
a local delivery service and left a green suitcase addressed
to the psychiatrist, containing Photographic equipment
which the CIA had made available to Hunt. The housekeeper
accommodatingly placed the suitcase in Dr. Fielding's
office. Later that evening, while Liddy drove a rented
car around the office building to be in a position to
warn the burglars against any police who might be on
the scene, Barker, Martinez, and Diego forced open the
door of Dr. Fielding's office, opened the green suitcase
they had left there that afternoon, and began photographing
Dr. Fielding's confidential files. During the entire
operation, Hunt watched Dr. Fielding's home and kept
in contact with the other conspirators by walkie-talkie
radio. There were, however, no interruptions. and the
White House unit returned to Washington, D.C. (When
the burglary was discovered the following Monday, a
narcotics addict, conveniently arrested for the crime,
readily "confessed" to it in return for a
Suspended sentence: as in other White House crusades,
narcotics addicts served as covers for the subterranean
activities of White House "investigators.")
Liddy-Hunt Project Number One was not a complete success,
however, because the records of Ellsberg were not in
Dr. Fielding's office and thus could not be photographed.
Nevertheless, while Liddy and Krogh worked on plans
for a permanent Investigative unit which ostensibly
would operate against narcotics traffickers, the Plumbers
kept busy in room 16, investigating, among other things,
the possible leaking of national security documents
to Jack Anderson by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (presumably
to undermine Kissinger's detente policies). Finally,
in December, 1971, the president ordered Ehrllchman
and Krogh to create the permanent White House-controlled
Investigative unit envisioned in the option paper drawn
up by Liddy. The new unit was to be known as the Office
of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement.
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