In July 1970, White House aide Tom Charles Huston produced a 43-page proposal to coordinate domestic intelligence operations against alleged left-wing radicals and the antiwar movement. President Richard Nixon approved the plan on July 23, 1970, but rescinded it five days later on July 28 after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover objected and Attorney General John Mitchell pressured the White House. The proposals included warrantless electronic surveillance, burglary, opening domestic mail, and expanded monitoring of college students; a detention-camp concept for protesters was also reportedly included, though the source marks that detail as requiring citation.
The plan became public during Senator Sam Ervin’s 1973 Watergate hearings, where Senator Charles Mathias said constitutional lawyers believed the five-day authorization suspended Fourth Amendment protections. Although formally revoked, later investigations reported that some elements continued: the FBI lowered the age of campus informants, reinstated mail covers in 1971, and continued sending names to a CIA mail program. The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, investigated the plan and broader domestic-intelligence abuses in 1976, placing it alongside the Plumbers operation, the Daniel Ellsberg psychiatrist’s-office burglary, the enemies list, and alleged IRS retaliation as examples of the Nixon-era “White House horrors.”
