To finance
their 1972 plan to seize power within the federal government,
the White House strategists sought control over the
Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which had
grown from its Inception in i968 to a nearly $1-billion
fund for dispensing grants by 1972. Donald J. Santarelli,
the young and very ambitious attorney in the Department
of Justice who had already demonstrated his loyalty
to the White House group, having worked closely with
John Dean and Robert Mardian, was chosen by the president
to take over the administration of this agency immediately
after the election. The funds of LEAA could be used
for financing groups which for one reason or another
did not wish to seek congressional appropriations as
they were used to fund, indirectly, the ODALE strike
forces. The grants could also be used to reward local
politicians and police officials who cooperated with
the White House. To be sure, most of these funds were
mandated by Congress to go to the states in block grants,
over which the White House had little control, but there
were still tens of millions of dollars left over for
discretionary grants - certainly an amount sufficient
to finance the unorthodox projects of the White House.
Egil Krogh later explained, "Whatever discretionary
money there was ... in many cases would come directly
to the White House, and be addressed there by Mr. Ehrlichman,
by my staff, and in some cases the president directly....
It is very hard to separate the political interest from
the substantive interest', at times this lea s d you
into dangerous waters." When these discretionary
grants came before the Domestic Council, Krogh found
that the "political dimensions ... and the substantive
issues were impossible to separate." He observed,
"In terms of developing ILEAA] programs, my office
felt, first, yes, there is something that must be done
as a policy proposition, but it is also something that
must be done to make a political record in 1972."
As the election approached,
the White House demanded that these discretionary grants,
originally intended by Congress to help local police
departments, be used for political muscle in the campaign.
To illustrate how these grants were usurped by the White
House for political purposes, Krogh described for me
in considerable detail a case study of how $1 million
was channeled to Mayor Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia:
Mayor Rizzo had been making
overtures to the president about his interest in supporting
Mr. Nixon for reelection in 1972. The president was
smitten with the idea of Rizzo supporting him and carrying
the state of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ehrlichman instructed
me in 1972 to do all that was necessary to get Rizzo's
programs on narcotics and law enforcement on the line
as soon as possible. I was told to make sure that checks
for federal funds were transmitted to his office as
fast as possible.
When Krogh asked Rizzo what
"services" he could provide, the former police
chief and mayor of Philadelphia asked for immediate
help in lowering the crime statistics for his city before
the election. The newly organized Special Action Office
for Drug Abuse Prevention in the White House had just
developed a program called Treatment Alternative to
Street Crime, or TASC, which arranged for heroin addicts
with criminal records to be sent to city-administered
treatment programs rather than to jail when arrested
for some narcotics violation. If a substantial number
of addicts were enrolled in the TASC program in Philadelphia
and the local police and courts cooperated in not booking
them for narcotics offenses or other minor crimes, there
would be an immediate decrease in the crime statistics
in Philadelphia (although no decrease in actual crimes).
Realizing that such a program could bring some immediate
benefits before the election, Rizzo asked Krogh to rush
it through. Since Rizzo claimed that his staff had no
idea even how to prepare the applications for a grant
from LEAA, Krogh dispatched Jeffrey Donfeld, his former
staff assistant and now a deputy in the Special Action
Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, to Philadelphia to
assist Rizzo. Krogh recalled:
Donfeld was given a seventy-two-hour
deadline to prepare the application grant, have it sent
to Washington, signed, and transmitted back to Philadelphia.
While he was in Philadelphia, I received a call from
Mr. Ehrlichman at Camp David, who asked me, prior to
the deadline, whether the check-as I recall, for one
million dollars-had gone yet.... Mr. Ehrlichman said
it was the president's decision that the check was to
go out by the deadline and that there would be no excuses.
Accordingly, the check was transmitted to Rizzo, and
he was able to announce very shortly thereafter a greatly
expanded mechanism in Philadelphia.
A few weeks later, Krogh paid
a personal visit to Rizzo with Jerris Leonard, then
the administrator of LEAA. On Ehrlichman's orders, Krogh
had told Leonard that "the president felt that
supporting Mr. Rizzo was a matter of first importance,
that we knew that he had a severe law-enforcement problem,
as all cities did have, and that he was to be provided
the maximum support that LEAA could provide." Moreover,
Leonard was instructed by his immediate superior, John
Mitchell, to "provide whatever discretionary funding
they could to Rizzo in his hour of need." At a
press conference held immediately after the meeting,
Krogh was bemused to hear "Leonard and Rizzo proclaiming
the new cooperative venture which, at that point, had
not been specifically agreed on, but nevertheless structured
the relationship for future funding." Rizzo, although
a Democrat, publicly supported Richard Nixon for reelection
in 1972 (and was himself reelected mayor of Philadelphia).
Though Nixon's predecessors
had also used agencies of their administrations to mobilize
public support for themselves in reelection campaigns,
they were constrained by both congressional oversight
and the civil servants in the agencies themselves. However,
in the case of LEAA, a newly created fund with virtually
no staff except political appointees and with no real
congressional control, Nixon had the potential greatly
to enhance presidential influence. He was determined
to repeat the "Philadelphia Story" in as many
cities as possible, realizing that Congress could not
easily refuse appropriations for any crime-control measures
presented in an election year.
The White House strategists
thus worked diligently to expand the discretionary grants
for this agency and to complete their takeover of its
administration.
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