Step by step, the Nixon administration intensified and broadened its illegal surveillance of American citizens. Previous presidents from Franklin Roosevelt onward had authorized warrantless wiretaps and other illegal activities to protect national security. Nixon's efforts began with warrantless wiretaps in May 1969 by the FBI of national security aides and reporters to discover the sources of leaks. Rising antiwar protests following the invasion of communist sanctuaries in Cambodia in April 1970 and the shooting of students at Kent State and Jackson State Universities led to increased surveillance and infiltration of domestic radical groups which had begun on a smaller scale under LBJ. Frustrated by objections raised by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, friction between FBI and CIA and the inability of those agencies to find links between domestic radicals and foreign enemies, Nixon sought to increase the control of the White House over such activities. This led to the Huston Plan of July 14, 1970, which called for a greatly expanded and centrally directed program of domestic counter-intelligence gathering and surveillance of radicals by clandestine and illegal means. Hoover succeeded in vetoing the Huston Plan; but White House efforts to circumvent the bureaucracy continued. White, Theodore H. Breach of Faith The Fall of Richard Nixon. New York: Atheneum, 1975. ge in a secret escalation of the war and yet their beliefs also led them to pursue peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese and other communist powers at the same time. The Watergate crises grew out of their obsessive concern over preserving secrecy and Nixon's reelection strategy for 1972. The political activities of the White House staff and CREEP were financed from special funds raised for that purpose. Nixon placed Haldeman in charge of a slush fund consisting of moneys left over from the 1968 campaign and secret contributions from Nixon, Richard M. In The Arena A Memoir of Victory, Defeat a |
