"The Houston Plan": an Unrealized Project of Interaction between American Intelligence Agencies in the Early 1970s

Abstract

An article based on recently declassified documents from the U. S. National Security Archive reveals the so-called “Houston Plan”. Prepared by the White House and U. S. intelligence officials, it envisioned a range of covert operations from surveillance of political radicals and criminal organizations (such as the Black Panthers) to breaking into the offices of social organizations suspected of disloyalty. The plan, named after Tom Charles Houston, a young White House liaison to the Interagency Intelligence Committee (IIC), played a role in the impeachment of President Richard Nixon by providing evidence of his abuses of the FBI and other executive branch agencies.