Everything about The White House Plumbers totally explained
The
White House Plumbers or simply
the Plumbers is the popular name given to the covert
White House Special Investigations Unit established
July 24,
1971 during the presidency of
Richard Nixon. Its job was to stop the
leaking (hence "plumbers") of
classified information to the news media during the Nixon administration. Its members branched into more nefarious projects working for the
Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP, or CREEP), including the
Watergate break-ins and the ensuing
Watergate scandal.
History
The Plumbers was in response to the publication of
The Pentagon Papers in
The New York Times, beginning
June 13,
1971. These documents detailed the history of U.S. involvement in the
Vietnam War. Initially, White House Chief of Staff
H.R. Haldeman downplayed the matter to Nixon, stating that the information mainly made the
Kennedy and
Johnson administrations look bad. However,
National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and special counsel
Charles Colson advocated a severe response to the massive leak in the form of publicly discrediting the leaker of the papers, former
State Department and
Defense Department analyst
Daniel Ellsberg.
On
July 1,
David Young joined the White House and together with
Egil Krogh penned a memorandum to Nixon advisors Haldeman and
John Ehrlichman advocating the formation of a White House Special Investigations Unit. Haldeman and Ehrlichman agreed to the plan and obtained the approval of Nixon. Young was put in charge of the unit and reported to Krogh. The nickname the "Plumbers" came to being when Young posted his name on his office door which read "David R. Young/Plumber".
Members
The Plumbers came to include several Watergate figures.
E. Howard Hunt was recommended by Colson and
G. Gordon Liddy was recommended by Krogh. Liddy coined his own
sensitivity indicator for the group in the form of "ODESSA" for "Organization Directed to Eliminate the Subversion of the Secrets of the Administration". The name reflects Liddy's admiration for
Nazi-style intelligence operations as
ODESSA was also the name of a
Nazi fugitive network.
Another member of the group was its liaison to the
CIA,
John Paisley. In recent years Paisley's involvement has led to speculation the CIA had a far greater hand in the operations of the Plumbers than originally thought at the time. What is known is Paisley was assigned to the CIA's
Office of Security (OS), of which Hunt was once a member. On
August 9,
1971, David Young's memo indicates he met with Paisley and OS Director
Howard Osborn in which Paisley provided a list of objectives for the Special Investigations Unit.
Operations
The Plumbers' first task was the burglary of the office of
Daniel Ellsberg's
Los Angeles psychiatrist,
Lewis J. Fielding, in an effort to uncover evidence to discredit Ellsberg. The operation was reportedly unsuccessful in finding Ellsberg's file and was so reported to the White House. However, Fielding himself stated the file was in his office, he found it on the floor on the morning after the burglary and quite clearly someone had gone through it. In a September 1971 conversation, Ehrlichman advised Nixon, “We had one little operation. It’s been aborted out in Los Angeles which, I think, is better that you don’t know about." Eventually, the case against Ellsberg was dismissed due to government misconduct.
Aside from the Fielding burglary there are scarce few other activities the Plumbers were known to have been engaged in. Hunt reportedly looked into the
Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddick incident and Liddy reported purported Kennedy administration involvement in the assassination of
South Vietnamese President
Ngo Dinh Diem.
After the California break-in, Liddy was recruited by White House Counsel
John Dean to perform an intelligence gathering operation for CRP. Liddy was transferred to CRP and involved Hunt in the operations which would later include the Watergate burglary.
Further Information
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