Also during 1971, the Washington Post had documents that showed the scale-and-scope of the FBI’s surveillance programs that targeted the New Left. The Post’s expose, drawn from the FBI’s own documents, showed that the FBI had crossed many lines with their sweeping surveillance activities, which was far more invasive and expansive than the public ever imagined. Many Americans now viewed the FBI as a police state in the US, and the documents also did no favors for Hoover, whose carefully crafted image from the last few decades was severely damaged. Worst of all for the FBI, the agency couldn’t figure out who stole the documents that were given to the Post.
Dean was asked to look into how Hoover could be replaced, as well as who that replacement would be. The position of FBI Director had never before been replaced, so the procedures were unclear, and Hoover would not go away easily or quietly. Meanwhile, the internal FBI feud between Hoover and Sullivan continued during the Spring of 1971, clashing now over what to do about Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Papers. Hoover wanted Ellsberg left alone, while Sullivan wanted to go after Ellsberg hard.
Mark Felt in that new position to assist Clyde Tolson, who had been Hoover’s “#2” FBI man since 1930 (Hoover and Tolson were personally very close). Felt’s job was to assist Tolson, who by then, like Hoover, was not doing too well physically and medically. By having a loyal Mark Felt in place, Hoover believed that Sullivan would be neutralized.
For the previous six years, Felt headed the FBI’s internal inspection division, and was very loyal to Hoover, siding with him over Sullivan in their feud. In Felt’s mind, being the “#3” man in the FBI, with both Hoover and Tolson ailing, meant that he was the heir apparent to be the next FBI Director. It appeared to Felt that Hoover’s successor would come down to him and Sullivan, and he truly believed that he had the inside track, was 100% deserving, and that his dream job of FBI Director was his after Hoover resigned or died.
Sullivan panicked after his demotion, fearing that he might be fired outright by Hoover, so he ingratiated himself even more with the Nixon administration’s senior staff. Sullivan had potentially explosive leverage with Nixon, in that he was in possession of all the FBI wiretap summaries that had been kept by Kissinger, Al Haig (on Kissinger’s staff), Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and even Nixon. Among those wiretap summaries were 15 conversations about Ellsberg, and Sullivan, via intermediaries, communicated to AG Mitchell that Hoover may use that information as blackmail.
Once back in DC, Mardian met with one of Sullivan’s men, who gave Mardian a huge satchel containing the wiretap summaries. Mardian took the satchel to the White House, where Kissinger, Haig, and their staff cross-checked the contents, after which Mardian personally delivered the satchel to the Oval Office. Nixon had Ehrlichman take custody of the wiretap summaries, and he placed them in a safe in his office. The entire episode with the wiretap summaries convinced the White House that Hoover had to be removed, and more immediately, that the leaks needed to be stopped. Ehrlichman started to build a team in the Justice Department to do just that: stop the leaks.
Nixon made sure his San Clemente getaway was stocked with books on Presidents and politics, which was the only meaningful hobby he ever had. Since he was President, it was very easy to get to San Clemente. Air Force One flew to the El Toro Marine Base, then a military helicopter flew to a Coast Guard base, and then a golf cart ride took him to his happy place in San Clemente. Nixon spent almost 200 days at San Clemente during his first term, and 150 days at Key Biscayne, which amounted to a full calendar year away from the White House.
It was while at San Clemente that Nixon went to NBC Studios in Burbank on 15 July 1971 to announce to the nation that he intended to visit China within the next year, which in February 1972 would prove to be a true diplomatic triumph, perhaps the greatest in over a century. While returning from Burbank to San Clemente via helicopter, Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Kissinger returned to the topic of leaks. Haldeman and Ehrlichman wanted one of Kissinger’s staffers to lead the new team that would find the leakers, since the both knew that Kissinger was great at igniting a fuse, but would then distance himself from it, especially around his liberal DC Elite friends and acquaintances.
Krogh, Young, and Hung called themselves the Special Investigations Unit, and set up shop in the Executive Office Building (EOB). Soon thereafter, G. Gordon Liddy was added to the team, who was determined to prove himself on life’s fields of honor. Liddy had a huge ego and was inflated with self-importance. During the Summer of 1971, Liddy worked it out where he was transferred to the White House, and was soon assigned to Krogh’s unit that tracked heroin from Vietnam to the US. Once part of the Special Investigations Unit, Liddy hit it off immediately. Both men were narcissists in love with spycraft, and to Hunt, Liddy was a character that came directly out of one of his spy novels. The group would be known forever in US History as “The Plumbers”, after Young’s grandmother asked what he did at the White House, and he responded by saying “I am helping the President stop some leaks”, after which his grandmother proudly exclaimed, “Oh, you’re a plumber”.
Days after that meeting, while sifting through the FBI’s reports on the Pentagon Papers, the Plumbers came across a reference to Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in CA, Dr. Lewis Fielding, who had turned down two requests for interviews from the FBI. The Plumbers immediately jumped to the conclusion that the doctor was hiding information about Ellsberg, and soon enough Hunt and Liddy hatched a plan to break into Fielding’s office in Los Angeles and steal his files on Ellsberg. Krogh went to Ehrlichman for authorization, and via Ehrlichman, Krogh got an enthusiastic “thumbs up” from Nixon to proceed.
On 11 August 1971, Krogh and Young drafted a two page memo on White House stationary that outlined their progress on the Pentagon Papers project, summarizing how they had been stonewalled by the FBI and other government entities. In that memo, Krogh and Young asked for permission for the covert operation to break into Fielding’s office, actually featuring boxes below that were labeled “Approve” and “Disapprove”. Ehrlichman initialed an “E” in the “Approve” box, with a notation saying that if they were caught, in no way could they be traced back to the White House.