The Huston Plan - Democratic Underground

H2O Man

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Jul-26-07 12:43 PM
Original message

The Huston Plan

{1} "The Huston Plan: The earliest evidence that this concept of Presidential power existed is found in a 1970 top secret document entitled ‘Operational Restraints on Intelligence Collection’ (Exhibit 35, 3 Hearings 1062, 1319) and the various memoranda from Tom Charles Huston to H.R. Haldeman which were first revealed by John Dean. (Exhibit 36-40, 42, 3 Hearings 1062, 1324-33, 1338) In preparation for his testimony before the Select Committee, Dean placed these papers, some of which bore the highest security classification, in the custody of Chief Judge John Sirica …." -- The Senate Watergate Report; Chapter 1: The Watergate Break-In and Coverup; Section A: The Background of Watergate, page 53

In the past couple of years, a few of us older DUers have spoken about what was known as "the Huston Plan" during the Nixon years. I will again suggest to DUers of all ages that they take the time to review this chapter of American history. The Huston Plan was perhaps the greatest threat to our Constitutional democracy that the Nixon administration posed. By no small coincidence, it may be that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales revealed that a similar, secret program exists today. I think that if Congress appoints a Special Counsel to investigate Gonzales’ many lies, it is likely that the Cheney administration’s updated version of the Huston Plan will be uncovered.

In Woodward & Bernstein’s "The Final Days," they note, "And Nixon still had to account for what had been done in the White House: the Huston plan expanding covert domestic intelligence activities – wiretapping, breaking and entering, mail opening; the 1971 break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist; the ‘Plumbers’ unit which investigated news leaks; the seventeen wiretaps on reporters and Administration officials; orders to the Central Intelligence Agency to have the Federal Bureau of Investigation limit the initial investigation into the break-in at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee; payments to burglars to buy their silence." (page 24)

In "The Government Against the People: The American Police State," author David Wise wrote, "Under Nixon, an attempt was made to institutionalize ….a blueprint for a police state in America." (page 154) He quotes a Huston memo that said, "We are now confronted with a new and grave crisis in our country – one which we know too little about. Certainly hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans – mostly under 30 – are determined to destroy our society." (page 270)

In the Watergate Report, we find that John "Dean testified, however, that the White House concern was directed not only toward violent demonstrators, but also to peaceful demonstrations and dissent." (page 58) He also testified that, despite Nixon having officially canceled the creation of the Inter-Agency Domestic Intelligence Unit a few days after having approved of it, the Huston plan was, in fact, continued.

The Huston plan was the blueprint for most of the crimes that today are known as "Watergate." There was opposition, even within the intelligence community, to such blatantly unconstitutional abuses by the executive office. Some of that opposition came from a fellow named Mark Felt. In Bob Woodward’s recent "The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat," we read, "Felt later wrote that he considered Huston himself ‘a kind of White House gauleiter over the intelligence community’. The four-inch thick Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary defines a gauleiter as ‘the leader or chief official of a political district under Nazi control’." (page 34) That sounds like a fair description of Gonzales to me.