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E04: "We're up against an enemy, a conspiracy!" –– Nixon Goes on Offense
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Nixon really flipped his lid in the summer of 1971. In response to the leak of the Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg, the increasingly paranoid president ranted about conspiracies and pushed for the development of an internal White House intelligence capability to deal with the leak problem. The first apparent development to result from this escalation was the proposed firebombing and burglary of the Brookings Institution by special counsel Chuck Colson that was called off once word of it reached the president’s inner circle. The second was the creation of the anti-leak Plumbers unit that would quickly be dissolved by the inner circle after the sloppy burglary of the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist –– by former intelligence agents G Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt –– that exceeded their project’s authorization. And third was the assigned task of the president’s counsel, John Dean, to develop a first-rate intelligence program for the upcoming 1972 campaign –– one that resulted in the transfer of Liddy and Hunt over to the newly formed Committee to Re-elect the President.
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