The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, the Room 16 Project, ODESSA or more officially, the White House Special Investigations Unit, was a covert White House Special Investigations Unit, established within a week of the publication of the Pentagon Papers in June 1971, during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop and/or respond to the leaking of classified information, such as the Pentagon Papers, to the news media. The work of the unit "tapered off" after the bungled "Ellsberg break-in" but some of its former operatives branched into illegal activities while still employed at the White House together with managers of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, including the Watergate break-in and the ensuing Watergate scandal. The group has been described as Nixon's "fixers".
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👉 White House Plumbers in the context of Impeachment process against Richard Nixon
The impeachment process against Richard Nixon was initiated by the United States House of Representatives on October 30, 1973, during the course of the Watergate scandal, when multiple resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon were introduced immediately following the series of high-level resignations and firings widely called the "Saturday Night Massacre". The House Committee on the Judiciary soon began an official investigation of the president's role in Watergate, and, in May 1974, commenced formal hearings on whether sufficient grounds existed to impeach Nixon of high crimes and misdemeanors under Article II, Section 4, of the United States Constitution. This investigation was undertaken one year after the United States Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex during the 1972 presidential election, and the Republican Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement; during those hearings the scope of the scandal became apparent and the existence of the Nixon White House tapes was revealed.
Following an April 1974 subpoena from the Judiciary Committee, edited transcripts of 42 taped White House conversations relevant to the Watergate cover-up were finally made public by Nixon. However, the committee pressed for the audio tapes themselves, and subsequently issued subpoenas for additional tapes, all of which Nixon had refused. That same month, Nixon also refused to comply with a subpoena from special prosecutor Leon Jaworski for 64 Watergate-related tapes. Ultimately, on July 24, 1974, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision against Nixon, which ordered him to comply. On May 9, 1974, formal hearings in the impeachment inquiry of Nixon began, culminating on July 27–30, 1974, when members of the Democratic-led Judiciary Committee eventually approved three articles of impeachment. These articles charged Nixon with: (1) obstruction of justice in attempting to impede the investigation of the Watergate break-in, protect those responsible, and conceal the existence of other illegal activities; (2) abuse of power by using the office of the presidency on multiple occasions, dating back to the first year of his administration (1969), to unlawfully use federal agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as establishing a covert White House special investigative unit, to violate the constitutional rights of citizens and interfere with lawful investigations; and (3) contempt of Congress by refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas. These articles were reported to the House of Representatives for final action, with 7 of the committee's 17 Republicans joining all 21 of its Democrats in voting in favor of one or more of the articles. Two other articles were debated in committee but were rejected. Based on the strength of the evidence presented and the bipartisan support for the articles in committee, House leaders of both political parties concluded that Nixon's impeachment by the full House was a certainty if it reached the House floor for a final vote, and that his conviction in a Senate trial was a distinct possibility.
White House Plumbers in the context of Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal, or simply Watergate, was a political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. The affair began on June 17, 1972, when members of a group associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign were caught burglarizing and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex. Nixon's attempts to conceal his administration's involvement led to an impeachment process and his resignation in August 1974.
Emerging from the White House's intelligence efforts to stop leaks, the Watergate break-in was an implementation of Operation Gemstone, enacted by mostly Cuban burglars led by former intelligence agents E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. After the burglars' arrests, investigators traced their funding to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, the fundraising arm of Nixon's campaign. Further revelations from investigators and reporters like the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein—who were guided by "Deep Throat", the leaking FBI Associate Director Mark Felt—revealed a political espionage campaign illegally funded by donor contributions. Nixon denied responsibility, but his administration destroyed evidence, obstructed investigators, and bribed the arrested burglars. This cover-up was initially successful and allowed Nixon to win a landslide re-election. Revelations from the burglars' trial in early 1973 led to a Senate investigation. In April, Nixon denied wrongdoing and accepted top aides' resignations.
White House Plumbers in the context of Pentagon Papers
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, it was made public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that Lyndon B. Johnson's administration had "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress".
The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with coastal raids on North Vietnam and Marine Corps attacks—none of which were reported in the mainstream media. For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property; these charges were later dismissed, after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
White House Plumbers in the context of E. Howard Hunt
Everette Howard Hunt Jr. (October 9, 1918 – January 23, 2007) was an American intelligence officer and author. From 1949 to 1970, Hunt served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he was a central figure in U.S. regime change in Latin America including the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état and the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba. Along with G. Gordon Liddy, Frank Sturgis, and others, Hunt was one of the Nixon administration's so-called White House Plumbers, a team of operatives charged with identifying government leaks to outside parties.
Hunt and Liddy plotted the Watergate burglaries and other clandestine operations for the Nixon administration. In the Watergate scandal, Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping, and was sentenced to 33 months in prison. After his release, Hunt lived in Mexico and then Miami until his death in January 2007. Hunt was the subject of pervasive conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, with his sons taping a disputed death bed confession.