HUSTON PLAN

Opening

The Huston Plan was a 1970 proposal to lift the limits on domestic intelligence gathering in the United States. It came out of a White House meeting on 5 June 1970, where Richard Nixon told the heads of the FBI, CIA, NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency he wanted more on campus unrest, bombings and Black militant groups. Tom Charles Huston, a 29-year-old White House aide, steered the work. The agencies' report offered options that included mail opening, wider wiretapping and break-ins.

On 14 July 1970 H. R. Haldeman told Huston the President had approved. Huston's decision memo went to the four directors on 23 July. J. Edgar Hoover objected, the Attorney General had never been told, and on 27 July the White House recalled the memo. Every copy was back by the end of the next day. It lasted five days as policy, and it became the core of an article of impeachment.

Timeline

March 1970Hoover cuts the FBI's formal liaison with the CIA after a dispute over a source.

5 June 1970Nixon meets Hoover, Richard Helms (CIA), Admiral Noel Gayler (NSA) and Lieutenant General Donald Bennett (DIA) in the Oval Office, and an Interagency Committee on Intelligence is formed under Hoover's chairmanship.

25 June 1970The committee's 43-page Special Report is signed by all four directors. Hoover adds footnotes objecting to most of the options.

Early July 1970Huston sends Haldeman his recommendations, "Operational Restraints on Intelligence Collection", urging Nixon to lift most restraints.

14 July 1970Haldeman writes that the President has approved Huston's recommendations.

23 July 1970Huston signs and sends the decision memo to the four directors.

25 to 27 July 1970Hoover writes a memo of objection and goes with his assistant Cartha DeLoach to Attorney General John Mitchell. Helms sees Mitchell on 27 July.

27 to 28 July 1970The White House Situation Room recalls the memo. All four agencies comply by close of business on 28 July.

December 1970An Intelligence Evaluation Committee is created at the Justice Department, one of the plan's proposals.

April to May 1973John Dean takes the Huston papers before his dismissal and puts them in a bank safe-deposit box in Alexandria, Virginia. Judge John Sirica takes custody of them in May.

7 June 1973The New York Times prints the texts.

July 1974The House Judiciary Committee's Article II of impeachment draws on the plan. Nixon resigns on 8 August.

Key figures

Tom Charles Huston, the White House aide and former Army intelligence officer who drafted the recommendations and signed the decision memo.

Richard Nixon, who approved the recommendations through Haldeman. He never signed the plan himself.

J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, who chaired the committee, objected in footnotes and then killed the plan through Mitchell.

William Sullivan, the FBI's head of domestic intelligence, who did much of the drafting and favoured the plan.

Richard Helms, Noel Gayler and Donald Bennett, the other three signatories of the Special Report.

John Mitchell, the Attorney General, who first heard of the plan from Hoover.

Physical and documentary trail

The documents are the Special Report of June 1970, Huston's July memo to Haldeman, Haldeman's approval of 14 July and Huston's decision memo of 23 July. The Senate Watergate Committee published them, and the Church Committee devoted a staff report and a public hearing on 23 September 1975 to the plan. That hearing and the rest of the committee's work are covered in the Church Committee report.

Huston wrote plainly about what he was recommending. On mail opening, he admitted the risks but said the advantages outweighed them. On break-ins he went further.

Use of this technique is clearly illegal: it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed. However, it is also the most fruitful tool and can produce the type of intelligence which cannot be obtained in any other fashion.

Corrections to the earlier version of this report. Nixon did not sign the plan. His approval came through Haldeman's memo of 14 July, and the decision memo of 23 July went out over Huston's signature. The five days run from that memo to the recall on 27 and 28 July, not from June. The papers did not sit in White House files until Watergate: Dean removed them and lodged them with Judge Sirica.

Things you might not know

• The agencies kept copies. Markings on the recalled memos showed every agency had taken out the staples and photocopied the document before returning it.
• Huston planned a "stroking session". He advised that Nixon meet Hoover face to face, describing the Director as "bullheaded as hell" and "getting old and worried about his legend."
• The generals joked about the signature. Bennett and his assistant James Stilwell agreed that Nixon and Haldeman "didn't have the guts" to sign it themselves.
• Hoover "went through the ceiling". That was Sullivan's description of Hoover's reaction to the decision memo.
• The report left out what was already happening. The Special Report did not mention that the CIA was already opening mail or that the NSA was already running a watch list on Americans.
• Huston blamed one man. The Situation Room manager recalled Huston, agitated, saying Hoover had "pulled the rug out" from under him.

Competing explanations

A blueprint for lawlessness that Hoover happened to stop. The Church Committee's staff concluded that the President's aide asked him to sanction illegal acts, that Nixon agreed, and that Hoover's objection was the only thing that reversed it.

Hoover protecting the FBI, not the Constitution. The Bureau had itself run break-ins until 1966. On this reading Hoover objected to taking the risk under a White House order with his name attached, and to sharing domestic intelligence with rival agencies.

Coordination of work already under way. The CIA mail program and the NSA watch list continued, the Intelligence Evaluation Committee was created, the FBI lowered the minimum age of campus informants and resumed mail covers in 1971. On this reading the recall ended a memo, not the activity.

Later life of the case

Nixon defended the plan in a statement on 22 May 1973, citing the violence of 1970. In 2017 Judge Royce Lamberth unsealed a fuller version of the Special Report from Watergate trial records, and the National Security Archive published it after declassification review in June 2020, with some passages still withheld.

Finding

The Huston Plan is fully documented. The President approved a program that included acts his own aide called burglary, and the approval was withdrawn five days after it went out because Hoover and Mitchell objected. Several of its pieces went ahead anyway.

What still will not resolve: how much of the plan's surveillance the agencies carried out without it. Passages of the Special Report were still withheld in the 2020 release.