As attacks from the Black Panthers and Weathermen continued to escalate, Nixon turned to the inner reliance that had faithfully served him thus far. His instincts told him to fight fire with fire, and that is exactly what he decided to do.

Because the terrorists had such efficient underground communication, it was impossible for the police to anticipate when or where they would strike next. Banks, universities, and courthouses had all become common targets. Nixon reasoned that the only way to get advance notice of their activities was to spy on their leaders. For help on how to implement the process, he turned to the one man in Washington whom Lyndon Johnson had advised him could always be trusted. It was thanks to J. Edgar Hoover, the exiting President had reportedly told Nixon, that he had been able to carry out his duties as President. Johnson assured his successor that he, too, would come to rely on the Director again and again whenever matters of security were in question.

Regardless of what Nixon thought of Johnson’s assessment, he had little choice but to seek the Director’s approval, as the retaliatory measures he planned to put into effect would obviously involve bureau personnel. Among the ideas discussed were a resumption of covert mail-opening, expanded electronic surveillance, and an increase in campus informants, all of which had been common practice during the Communist frenzy of the fifties. Most had been phased out by 1967, thanks to increased pressure from Congress—a move Hoover deemed responsible for the current wave of chaos plaguing the Country.

Although Nixon gave serious thought to implementing what came to be known as the Huston Plan (named for Tom Huston, a White House attorney who drafted the proposal), in the end, he became convinced it would be too risky given the present state of the nation. Looking back on the situation in RN years later, he second-guessed those doubts, wondering whether the Huston Plan might have brought about a swift end to the country’s bloodshed.

The aborted plan was not the only action reconsidered. One of Nixon’s first moves as President had been to remove the tape recorders that had been installed throughout the White House during the previous administrations. Some two years into his presidency, he began to wonder whether Johnson’s so-called paranoia had been justified. In 1969 alone, the CIA had reported 45 separate newspaper articles containing what they considered a serious breach of security. Increased leaks from within the National Security Council, the organization responsible for policy discussions regarding Vietnam, had already resulted in Hoover’s authorization of FBI wiretaps on seventeen individuals—four reporters and thirteen White House, State, and Defense Department aides. None of the suspected individuals was ever caught in the act, spreading concern that the leaks might be originating among the President’s most trusted advisors.

As 1971 began, Nixon was not about to sit on his hands, watch his dream of achieving world peace destroyed by trouble at home. As he saw it, the radicals of the Counterculture were working hand in hand with the North Vietnamese in the hope of achieving his early retirement, and thus his failure to make the world safe from the threat of Communist domination. Determined to find out who he could trust, Nixon ordered that voice-activated tape recorders be installed in the Oval Office, the Cabinet room, and his office in the OEB (Old Executive Building) located behind the White House. Additional machines were put in the Lincoln Sitting Room (where guests relaxed while awaiting their appointments with the President) and Nixon’s office phone at the presidential retreat in Camp David.

"Sometimes the letter of one law will conflict with the spirit of another and that is when the President must choose," he wrote in RN, reexamining the ethics of the Huston Plan. "He cannot throw up his hands in dismay, because inaction may be as devastating as wrong action. The question is: What is the law, and how is it to be applied with respect to the President in fulfilling the duties of his office?"