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The President's intense feelings about the Ellsberg case refleeted his strong worries about leaks of many kinds. In one previously unpublished conversation with Ehrlichman and Krogh on July 24, 1971, the President was so outraged over the leaks concerning the SALT talks that he suggested that everybody in Washington with top-secret clearance—some 400 to 500 people—be given lie-detector tests. "Polygraph them all. I don't know anything about polygraphs and I don't know how accurate they are," the President said, "but I know they'll scare the hell out of people."
Similarly, Nixon's eagerness to collect intelligence on those whom he considered dangerous (mostly members of radical political groups) led him to briefly approve some clearly illegal operations in the so-called Huston Plan. The outlines of the plan have long been known; the Judiciary Committee evidence presents many of the reports and memos that circulated in the White House while it was under discussion.
Drafted in June 1970, by Presidential Staff Assistant Tom Charles Huston, the plan spelled out various ways for expanding domestic intelligence activities. Huston specifically pointed out that some of his recommendations—for secretly reading mail and surreptitious entries—were against the law.
Nevertheless, according to a Haldeman-to-Huston memo dated July 14, 1970, the President approved of these illegal operations. Five days later, after J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell balked, the President rescinded his approval.
Milking the Dairy Co-Ops
In the proposed articles of impeachment, President Nixon is charged with "acts of bribery" — one of the few offenses specifically listed in the Constitution as reason for impeachment. Under one lesser provision of the bribery law, a public servant may be found guilty for merely receiving a gift and knowing that it was given to benefit the donor in his dealings with the Government. The recipient need not have actually performed the act for which the bribe was given, or even have intended to do so. The question before the Judiciary Committee: Under this broad definition, was Richard Nixon guilty of bribery for accepting campaign contributions from dairy corporations that benefited from increases in Government milk-price supports?
In 1969 three of the nation's major dairymen's cooperatives, eager to get on the good side of the new Republican President, contributed $100,000 to Herbert Kalmbach, then the President's personal lawyer and roving fund raiser. In the fall of 1970 the cooperatives pledged $2 million for Nixon's re-election campaign in 1972. The President was told of their pledge, but the cooperatives soon had reason to reconsider their generosity. On March 12, 1971, Agriculture Secretary Clifford Hardin, with the backing of the President, announced that federal milk-price supports would remain at $4.66 per cwt., or about 79% of parity, instead of the 90% that the dairymen wanted. The higher the supports go, the more money the dairymen are sure to get — and, usually, the more consumers have to pay. After Hardin's announcement,