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UNDISPUTED FACTS. After joining the Committee to Re-Elect the President, former Plumber Liddy twice presented extravagant intelligence-gathering plans to Dean, Mitchell and Jeb Stuart Magruder, the Nixon committee deputy, while Mitchell was still Attorney General. The plans, which initially included wiretapping Nixon's Democratic opponents, using call girls to blackmail Democrats at their national convention, and the kidnaping of anti-Nixon radical leaders—all at a cost estimated at $1,000,000—were rejected each time by Mitchell. Scaled down to concentrate on the wiretapping, the plans were presented again by Magruder at a third meeting with Mitchell at Key Biscayne after Mitchell had resigned from the Justice Department to head the Nixon committee. A Mitchell deputy, Fred LaRue, was present. Besides the Watergate, the wiretapping targets included Democratic convention headquarters at Miami Beach and the headquarters of the eventual Democratic nominee.
IN DISPUTE. Magruder claimed that Mitchell approved the plan at this third meeting. Mitchell claimed he bluntly rejected it. LaRue said he did neither, in his presence, but delayed a decision. Magruder also claimed that Charles Colson, a White House aide at the time, applied pressure on him to get the plan into motion. (Colson has admitted calling Magruder about Hunt's—and Liddy's "security activities" but claimed he did not know what they were.) Magruder said he reported Mitchell's approval to Gordon Strachan, an assistant to H.R. Haldeman, so that Haldeman would be informed. Strachan said he included this item in a memo to Haldeman. Haldeman could not recall reading it. Dean said he reported the first two Liddy meetings to Haldeman; the latter said he did not remember this either.
WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE. An intelligence-gathering operation budgeted at $250,000 and involving such risky and illegal activities as burglary and wiretapping would not have been undertaken on Liddy's authority—especially if Mitchell had flatly rejected it. Nor did Magruder carry that kind of clout. The likelihood is that Mitchell did give some sign of approval. There may also have been White House pressure.
WHAT DID NIXON KNOW? He has forcefully denied any knowledge of the Liddy plans. Dean said that he "assumed" that Haldeman had reported such significant information to the President, but that is highly tenuous. The Ervin committee was given no evidence that anyone told Nixon of the plans.
Destruction of Records