Word: memos
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Political dirty tricks, as White House spokesmen never tire of explaining, are hardly a novelty, nor is the use of the FBI to help play those tricks. According to a memo by William Sullivan, former No. 3 man at the FBI, the White House has a point. He says both Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson used the agency as a weapon against political opponents...
...memo was solicited by John Dean when he was still White House Counsel. Subsequently, he turned it over to the Ervin committee, which has not yet got around to making any use of it. Though it is still confidential, its contents were divulged to TIME...
Sullivan had personal reasons for writing his memo. He had apparently been friendly with a number of Nixon officials, and this brought him into conflict with J. Edgar Hoover, who fired him two years ago. Sullivan offered to testify on behalf of the Nixon Administration and "draw a very clear contrast" between its relationship to the bureau and that of previous Administrations. His material, he assured Dean, would put the current Administration in "a very favorable light...
...DISPUTE. Ehrlichman denied authorizing the burglary but admitted approving a memo from Krogh and Young suggesting that "a covert operation be undertaken to examine all the medical files still held by Ellsberg's psychiatrist." This information was needed, Ehrlichman said, not to prosecute Ellsberg (such evidence would be inadmissible) but to provide more data for a "psychological profile" that the plumbers had asked the CIA to compile; the White House had found the CIA's first such report inadequate. He rejected Senator Lowell Weicker's charge that the aim was to "smear" Ellsberg for political purposes...
WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE. Ehrlichman's admitted approval of a "covert operation" strongly suggests that he gave a go-ahead to the burglary; Young has told the Ervin committee staff that Ehrlichman in fact did so. A memo from Young to Ehrlichman just before the burglary said that "we have already started on a negative press image for Ellsberg" and that if the "present Hunt/ Liddy project Number 1 is successful," there must be a "game plan" for its use. This suggests a move by the White House to smear Ellsberg...