HUSTON PLAN

1. Public Record

White House, 5 June 1970. Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Tom Charles Huston, twenty-nine, and the heads of FBI, NSA, CIA, DIA. The President wants the anti-war left and the counterculture collected as if they were a foreign service. Huston, liaison to Hoover's Interagency Committee on Intelligence, writes with William C. Sullivan a 43-page menu. Nixon ratifies on 23 July. Paper goes to the four directors.

The menu includes openings the Fourth Amendment is there to stop. Charles Mathias later says that for five days the Bill of Rights was, in the view of some constitutional lawyers, set aside. Hoover objects, almost alone, and takes Attorney General John Mitchell with him. Nixon rescinds on 28 July. Officially the plan dies. Huston had told Haldeman that Hoover could be stroked with a session and an autographed picture. Hoover hits the roof instead and Huston leaves the job.

The plan becomes public in the 1973 Ervin hearings. Five days of a signature are the official life. What continued without the cover sheet is the argument Church still had to have.

For five days in 1970 the fundamental guarantees of the Bill of Rights were suspended.

2. Date of Incident

Oval meeting 5 June 1970. Approval 23 July. Rescind 28 July. Public 1973.

3. Location

White House and the four agency heads. Approximate 38°54 N 077°02 W.

4. Official Narrative

A plan approved and pulled in five days. Official narrative after Ervin is that Hoover killed it on paper. Oversight committees treat the five days as a warning, not a myth.

5. Witness Layer

Huston. Nixon. Hoover. Mitchell. Haldeman. Ervin committee.

Hoover could be eased into submission by a stroking session with President Nixon and an autographed picture.

6. Recovery Logistics

The 43 pages. Decision memo. Hearing record. No public proof the whole menu ran under that cover after the 28th.

7. Assessment

A five-day file with a long shadow. Keep Huston's age. Keep the autographed picture. Keep Hoover's no, which is not virtue so much as turf and caution. Do not write the rescind as the end of every method on the list. Do not write five days as a coup. Sit it with CHAOS and Shamrock as the week the White House tried to put it all on one sheet.

8. Materials & Remains

Plan text. Ervin. Later Church references.

9. Key Personnel

Tom Charles Huston : The 43 pages.

J. Edgar Hoover : The no.

Richard Nixon : The five days.

John Mitchell : The pressure to pull it.

10. Aftermath

Huston becomes a Watergate-season name. The phrase Huston Plan outlives the signature. Oversight language still points at July 1970.

11. Current Archive Status

Status: Approved 23 July 1970. Rescinded 28 July. Public 1973.

Confidence: High that Nixon signed and then pulled the plan inside a week. High that Hoover killed it on paper. Low that no item on the menu continued under other captions. Low that Huston's stroking memo was a joke.

Filing note

A twenty-nine-year-old with forty-three pages, a President who wanted the street collected, four directors, five days of a signature, an old man at the Bureau who would not be paid in a photograph, a hearing three years later that read the week aloud.

An autographed picture. That was the tool he thought would move Hoover. It is the smallest object in a file about the Fourth Amendment, and the one that shows how young the author was.