THREAD:
1) This is the Watergate “dirty tricks” thread, as promised.
The “dirty tricks” tie in to the scandal b/c the “dirty tricks” gang rec'd direction & payment from the same people who ran the “burglars” unit out of the WH & the Committee to Re-Elect the President (“CREEP”).

2) Early in Nixon’s 1st term, he had people scouting/investigating the likely D candidates for president in ‘72; it was a large field, but the 2 most likely candidates were Sen. Ed Muskie of ME & Sen. George McGovern of SD.

3) Special Adv Chuck Colson, head of Nixon’s “dirty tricks” gang, thought McGovern looked “tired” on television. “He’s got no animation at all.” Nixon thought McGovern’s entire campaign was “a disaster” - one he wanted to run against.

4) He wanted Muskie, the strongest D, to lose the primary, so he told Haldeman to get “someone” working on “dirty tricks” against Muskie, by which he meant have someone fabricate & ascribe to Muskie false stances on issues to make voters believe that Muskie held views he didn’t.

5) At the time, Ted Kennedy w/n running, & d/n want to be drafted to run; he’d already requested removal of his name from the ballot in 2 states. So Colson’s unit sent anon postcards to every registered D in NH, urging them to write Kennedy in - rather than voting for Muskie.

6) Then they sent flyers, supposedly from the Muskie campaign, to voters in Florida saying Muskie was for busing/desegregation of schools, when he was not, to confuse them on Muskie’s real stance on the issue.

7) On 10/6/71, Harry Dent, a WH aide, told Nixon that John Rollins, a major GOP donor from DE, had an idea; to run “newspaper ads for a committee to elect Jesse Jackson,” & have R operatives send low dollar amount campaign contributions to Jackson, who w/n then running.

8) Rollins would pay for the ads. The idea was to make Jackson believe there was a grass-roots movement behind him, so that he would run, and pull support from likely Muskie voters. Nixon authorized the scheme.

9) On 12/15/71, Don Segretti, an outside agent hired by Chuck Colson, recruited Robert Benz to the “dirty tricks” gang, agreeing to pay him $150/wk, & authorizing him to hire others at $75/wk; the money came from CREEP.

10) Benz hired 7 others, 1 of whom got a job at Muskie’s campaign HQ & fed him info. Benz himself passed out cards at a Wallace rally that said on one side “If you liked Hitler, you’ll just love Wallce” & on the other “cast your ballot for Sen. Edmund Muskie.”

11) Benz put up signs saying “Help Muskie support busing our children.” Meanwhile, Hunt replaced Colson as the head of the unit & made occasional calls to Segretti w/suggestions for additional “tricks.”

12) Segretti & Benz ruined a Muskie campaign picnic by scattering vials of nasty smelling chemicals around the picnic site before it started. Colson also hired Bart Porter, who then hired Roger Stone (then head of the DC Young Rs).

13) Porter sent Stone to NH to make a donation on behalf of the “Young Socialist Alliance” to both the Muskie and the McCloskey campaigns.

14) On 1/27/72, G. Gordon Liddy, Finance Counsel for CREEP, & a former aide to John Ehrlichman, outlined a plan* to obtain campaign intelligence to CREEP’s Acting Chairman, Jeb Magruder, AG John Mitchell, & Presidential Counsel John Dean.

15) (*Liddy later claimed he’d been duped by Dean. No one believes this.) The plan involved extensive illegal activities against the Democratic Party & its numerous primary candidates.

16) Mitchell initially thought the plan sounded unrealistic, unaware that the “dirty tricks” gang had been working for a while. Eventually, he agreed to a plan to break in to DNC HQ to obtain copies of docs & plant bugs in phones. By then, he’d resigned as AG to be CREEP’s Chair.

17) On 2/24/72, 2 wks before the NH primary, the editor of the Manchester Union Leader newspaper rec'd a letter ("the Canuck Letter"). Its alleged author, “Paul Morrison of Deerfield Beach, FL,” was never found.

18) In it, “Morrison” claimed to have met Muskie & staff in FL, & that he’d asked Muskie how he could understand the problems of African-Americans, when his home state had such a small black population.

19) The letter stated that a staff member had said, “Not blacks, but we have Canucks,” a derogatory term referring to Americans of French-Canadian ancestry. In reality, the letter was written by WH staffer Ken Clawson (he admitted it to a WaPo staff reporter), & sent by Segretti.

20) In response to the Canuck Letter, Muskie gave a speech in front of the Manchester Union Leader’s offices, during which he broke down in tears. It's widely believed this led directly to the eventual implosion of his campaign.

21) On 4/17/72, Muskie threw a fund-raising dinner for 1300 people at a hotel in DC. Various party supplies, including food, liquor, flowers, etc., arrived unordered; the dinner’s organizer, Madalyn Albright (later SecState under Clinton), was presented w/the bills.

22) B/c it was a fund-raiser, & only US citizens can donate, no one from any foreign embassy had been invited; yet dignitaries from 16 African & Middle Eastern countries showed up. It was a plated dinner w/assigned seating, so there was a last-minute, embarrassing scramble.

23) Later, it turned out all the dignitaries had arrived in rented limousines, for which the Muskie campaign received the bills. All of it was Segretti & Benz’s work.

24) At the same time, CREEP “dirty tricks” staffers were also working FOR Nixon’s ‘72 campaign, writing postcards, making calls, sending in phony polling ballots, & taking out full-page ads claiming a majority of Americans favored Nixon’s policies.

25) The ads were "signed" by numerous noteworthy people - all forgeries, the work of Colson.

On 5/19/72, Segretti forged the name of a California supporter of Eugene McCarthy’s campaign to a letter sent to McCarthy delegates, asking them to vote for Humphrey in the primary.

26) Nixon was re-elected in a landslide in ‘72, largely due to the “dirty tricks” work of Liddy, Benz, Segretti, Porter, and Stone.