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TheWhite House Plumbers, sometimes simply calledthe Plumbers, theRoom 16 Project,ODESSA or more officially, the White HouseSpecial Investigations Unit, was a covertWhite House Special Investigations Unit, established within a week of the publication of thePentagon Papers in June 1971, duringthe presidency ofRichard Nixon.[1] Its task was to stop and/or respond to theleaking ofclassified information, such as thePentagon 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 theCommittee for the Re-Election of the President, including theWatergate break-in and the ensuing Watergate scandal.[2] The group has been described as Nixon's "fixers".[3]
OnThanksgiving, 1971,David Young arrived home from his planning at the Special Investigative Unit, when his grandmother asked him, "What do you do at the White House?", he replied, "I am helping the president stop some leaks", purposely playing off oninformation leak versuswater leak. She exclaimed, "Oh, you're a plumber!" Young,E. Howard Hunt, andG. Gordon Liddy then put up a sign on their office with the title "The Plumbers", but it was taken down as their operations were intended to be top secret. Still, the name stuck for the group.[4]
The Plumbers came to include several Watergate figures includingFrank Sturgis. Hunt was recommended byCharles Colson, and Liddy was recommended byEgil Krogh. Liddy coined his ownsensitivity indicator for the group in the form of "ODESSA".[5] ODESSA stood for "Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen," Liddy termed the unit's mission as "directed to eliminate subversion of the secrets of the administration." He marked the Plumber's official papers with the monicker.[6]
Central Intelligence Agency officerJohn Paisley worked with the Plumbers through the CIA's Office of Security,[7] of which Nixon campaign security coordinator and Watergate burglarJames McCord was once a member. On August 9, 1971, Young's memo indicates he met with Paisley and OS Director Howard Osborn, in which Paisley provided a list of objectives for the Special Investigations Unit.[8]
The Plumbers' first task was the burglary of the office ofDaniel Ellsberg'sLos Angeles psychiatrist,Lewis J. Fielding, in an effort to uncover evidence to discredit Ellsberg, who had leaked thePentagon Papers. The operation was reportedly unsuccessful in finding Ellsberg's file and was thus reported to the White House. However, Fielding himself stated the file was in his office; he found it on the floor on the morning after the burglary and quite clearly, someone had gone through it.[9] In a September 1971 conversation,John Ehrlichman advised Nixon, "We had one little operation; it's been aborted out in Los Angeles which, I think, is better that you don't know about."[10] Eventually, the case against Ellsberg was dismissed due to government misconduct.[11]
Aside from the Fielding burglary, there are few other activities the Plumbers were known to have been engaged in. Hunt reportedly looked into theTed Kennedy-Chappaquiddick incident; and Liddy reported the alleged involvement of theKennedy administration in theassassination ofSouth VietnamesepresidentNgo Dinh Diem.[5]
After the California break-in, Liddy—who was general counsel, a member of the finance committee of theCommittee to Re-elect the President (CRP) and promoted from aide to Krogh and Young—worked with Campaign political-intelligence operations. Ehrlichman, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Special Investigations Unit, knew about Liddy's goal to perform an intelligence-gathering operation for the CRP. Liddy involved Hunt in the operations which would later include theWatergate burglary.[12]
In the early evening of June 17, 1971,Henry Kissinger held forth in the Oval Office, telling his President, andJohn Ehrlichman andBob Haldeman, all aboutDaniel Ellsberg. Kissinger's comments were recorded, of course, on the hidden White House taping system, and four years later, a portion of that tape was listened to by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, which was then investigating the internal White House police unit known as the Plumbers.
