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working for a "higher level structure than either the FBI or CIA,- Hunt asked him to assemble a team of Cuban
exiles who were burglars and lock-picks.*
* Hunt also apparently recruited Frank Sturgis, a self-proclaimed soldier of fortune who was arrested with
four others in the burglary of the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex, for this new office.
Sturgis claims that he undertook several missions for Hunt involving tracking narcotics, and he assumed that
this was the nucleus of a new supranational police force that would be expanded after Nixon's reelection.
Meanwhile, Liddy wrote the president a long memorandum analyzing the deficiencies of the FBI and argued
that because of these flaws in its organization, it could not be counted on by the White House. The president
was impressed with this analysis and remarked to Krogh that it was "the most brilliant memorandum he had
received in a long time." Liddy also arranged to funnel money from the dairy cooperatives, which were clients
of Hunt's public-relations firm, into the Special Investigative Unit, to pay for the break-ins, wiretaps, and other
clandestine activities. By mid-August. Liddy had obtained permission from Krogh and Ehrlichrrian for a
covert operation in which the Plumbers would -et access to Ellsherg's psychiatric records. which his
psychiatrist- Dr. Lewis Fielding, had steadfastly refused to show to the FBI.
Over that Labor Dav weekend Dr. Fieldino was not expected to be in his Beverly Hills office. Thus. Liddy,
Hunt. Barker, and the two Cuban exiles he recruited for the mission, Eugenio R. Martinez and Felipe de
Diego-both of whom claimed to have taken part in CIA clandestine operations against Cuba-flew to Los
Angeles to execute what was known in White House circles as Liddy-Hunt Project Number One. According to
the plan worked out by Liddy. Martinez and Diego went to Dr. Fielding's office wearing the uniforms of a
local delivery service and left a green suitcase addressed to the psychiatrist, containing Photographic
equipment which the CIA had made available to Hunt. The housekeeper accommodatingly placed the suitcase
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The Secret of Room 16
in Dr. Fielding's office. Later that evening, while Liddy drove a rented car around the office building to be in a
position to warn the burglars against any police who might be on the scene, Barker, Martinez, and Diego
forced open the door of Dr. Fielding's office, opened the green suitcase they had left there that afternoon, and
began photographing Dr. Fielding's confidential files. During the entire operation, Hunt watched Dr. Fielding's
home and kept in contact with the other conspirators by walkie-talkie radio. There were, however, no
interruptions. and the White House unit returned to Washington, D.C. (When the burglary was discovered the
following Monday, a narcotics addict, conveniently arrested for the crime, readily "confessed" to it in return
for a Suspended sentence: as in other White House crusades, narcotics addicts served as covers for the
subterranean activities of White House "investigators.") Liddy-Hunt Project Number One was not a complete
success, however, because the records of Ellsberg were not in Dr. Fielding's office and thus could not be
photographed. Nevertheless, while Liddy and Krogh worked on plans for a permanent Investigative unit which
ostensibly would operate against narcotics traffickers, the Plumbers kept busy in room 16, investigating,
among other things, the possible leaking of national security documents to Jack Anderson by the Joint Chiefs
of Staff (presumably to undermine Kissinger's detente policies). Finally, in December, 1971, the president
ordered Ehrllchman and Krogh to create the permanent White House-controlled Investigative unit envisioned
in the option paper drawn up by Liddy. The new unit was to be known as the Office of Drug Abuse Law
Enforcement.
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Executive Order
Agency of Fear
Opiates and Political Power in America
By Edward Jay Epstein
Chapter 26 - Executive Order
Just before he left for his Christmas vacation in 1971, Attorney General Mitchell turned over to Leo Pellerzi,
his assistant attorney general for administration, a White House plan for a new narcotics enforcement office.
He instructed Pellerzi that the White House wanted this office to be administratively incorporated in the
Department of Justice, but actually it would operate out of the executive office of the president. When Pellerzi,
a careerist in the Department of Justice, read the details of the plan, he became decidedly alarmed. It called for
a series of special strike forces to be formed around the country, each staffed with selected agents from the
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the Bureau of Customs, the Alcohol. Tobacco and Firearms unit,
and the Internal Revenue Service, as well as several state police officers. Each strike force would be
empowered to use court-authorized wiretaps and no-knock warrants in making arrests of narcotics pushers
around the country. Special grand juries would then be convened to indict the arrestees. Both the strike forces
and grand juries would be under the direct control of Myles Ambrose, who would operate both from the
Justice Department and from the president's executive office and report directly to the president.* What
alarmed Pellerzi most about this new organization was that it Would temporarily detached from the agency,
employ a group of CIA agents, for domestic-intelligence purposes, which in his opinion was clearly illegal.
(This was never carried out.) Pellerzi also doubted the propriety of a provision in the plan which gave the new
office the authority to assign grants from the Law Enforcement Administration Agency to local police
departments that cooperated with the new federal strike forces. Pellerzi read the proposal over several times
and then decided to take it to Henry Petersen, who was then the assistant attorney general for the criminal
division of the Department of Justice, in which the new office would ostensibly be located.
* In fact, the White House staff. which was loosely called the Executive Office of the President and had grown
from less than 100 persons when Nixon was vice-president to more than 1,200 by the time he had become
president, was housed in a number of buildings, including the old Executive Office Building, the new
Executive Office Building, and a row of brownstones, restored by Kennedy, on Jackson Street.
Petersen, who had worked his way up from a messenger boy to an assistant attorney general, was equally
dismayed by this new White House plan. He told Pellerzi that he suspected it was no more than "political crap"
designed to help the Nixon administration in the 1972 election, and he suggested that Pellerzi use his special
talents in administrative procedures to slow down the implementation of this new office. He also said that he
would attempt to select a deputy director for this new office, if it were finally approved, who would resist
political pressures. As for the possible illegalities, Petersen assured Pellerzi that he would take them up with
Richard Kleindienst, then the deputy attorney general, since Mitchell had left on his Christmas vacation.
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