Attorney General of the United States in the context of "Office of Legal Counsel"

The United States Department of Justice Criminal Division is a federal agency of the United States Department of Justice that develops, enforces, and supervises the application of all federal criminal laws in the United States. Criminal Division attorneys prosecute many nationally significant cases and formulate and implement criminal enforcement policy. Division attorneys also provide advice and guidance to the attorney general of the United States, the United States Congress, and the White House on matters of criminal law. The Division was founded in 1919.

In the context of the Watergate scandal, Operation Gemstone was a proposed series of clandestine or illegal acts, first outlined by G. Gordon Liddy in two separate meetings with three other individuals: then-Attorney General of the United States, John N. Mitchell, then-White House Counsel John Dean, and Jeb Magruder, an ally and former aide to H.R. Haldeman, as well as the temporary head of the Committee to Re-elect the President, pending Mitchell's resignation as Attorney General.

Operation Gemstone proposed a series of plans with each having their own code name. Operation Diamond involved kidnapping and drugging protestors who would be held in Mexico. Liddy described this operation as Nacht und Nebel, a reference to the Nazi operation. Another, Operation Turqoise, was a plan to sabotage the air conditioning at the Democratic National Convention. Operation Ruby involved planting spies in the campaigns of the Democratic primary contenders and then the eventual winner's, while Operation Coal was the clandestine funding of the candidacy of black woman Shirley Chisholm, which would help her campaign and in turn force the other candidates to pay more attention to Chisholm and criticize her. This, it was hoped, would disillusion the black community and make them less likely to vote for the eventual Democratic candidate. When Operation Coal was proposed, according to Liddy, Mitchell replied "You can forget about that. Nelson Rockefeller is already taking care of that nicely".