Nixon's dictatorship plan

PLANS FOR the setting up of a virtual dictatorship in the United States, with wholesale violation of basic rights and a massive witch-hunt against the left, have come to light as a result of the Watergate affair.

President Nixon admitted in his latest Watergate statement issued last Tuesday that he had approved the plans as 'specific options for expanded intelligence operations' • They would have been carried into practice had it not been for the obstinate opposition of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI.

The latest issue of 'Newsweek' says the plans would have brought together the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) for a concerted drive against daft dodgers, deserters, actıvists such as Philip and Daniel Berrigan and left-wing groups including the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panthers.

The plans would have included opening their mail and harassing them with tax audits as well as spying, wire-tapping and burglaries.

Washington sources say one of the main aims would have been to find (or manufacture) evidence of foreign involvement in the anti-war movement and among left-wing groups.

Nixon and his aides were convinced that the anti-war movement and the left in the United States were being financed from abroad.

They refused to believe CIA and other reports that this was not the case. One intelligence official told the 'New York 'Every time the kids went abroad there were those in the White House who were convinced that they were meeting Jeb McGruder... Ready to tell all? with communists and coming back with dope.

One of the main purposes of the huge investigation planned by Nixon-which was completely illegal—-was to lay the basis for conspiracy trials to 'prove' this unfounded suspicion.

Once Congressional sources quoted by 'Newsweek' called the plan • •.. a totally far-right view. It frequently brings up the question of legality and concludes that the problem (i.e., domestic unrest) is too great to consider legal niceties.' The magazine called the plan the most wide-ranging secret police operation ever authorized ... in the peacetime United States.' The witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy would have paled into insignificance compared with the scheme which Nixon and his aides planned to set in motion.

This plan was only one of three similar programmes of surveillance described by Nixon in his Watergate statement.

The two other plans were the series of wire-taps on newspaper reporters and the establishment of a special investigation unit in 1971 in connection with the Pentagon Papers case.

FORMER White House aide Jeb Stuart Magruder, a key witness to the Watergate burglary and the subsequent cover-up, has agreed to 'name names' His evidence is likely to implicate several officials whose names have not so far been linked to the scandal. A source close to the team of prosecutors preparing the cases was quoted as saying:

'You may think it can't get much worse, but things are even worse than they appear.'

Press, Monday