NIXON ENEMY LIST REVEALS PARANOIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75B00380R000300050009-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 31, 2005
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: July 4, 1973
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Releaa
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The Washiaigton Merry-lao-Round
UA-RDP75BOO38OR000300050009-9
Nixon Enemy List Reveals Paranoia
By Jack Anderson
Getting on the White House
enemy list has become the lat.
est status symbol in Washing-
ton. I would have been disap-
- pointed if I hadn't made the
list of top 20 enemies.
Rival politicians like Sena-
tors Ed Muskie and George
McGovern used to be called
opponents, not enemies. Celeb-
rities like Gregory Peck and
Bill Cosby, who have .criticized
President Nixon, used to be
I called critics not enemies.
I Now the White House lists
them as "enemies" to be har-
assed through government in-
vestigations. Few private indi-
viduals can stand up against
the awesome power of the fed-
eral government. No private
bank account can match the
bottomless vaults of the U.S.
Treasury. No private staff can
marshal the manpower avails.
able to the government.
Yet the White House accord-
ing to the memos flushed out
by the Senate Watergate in-
vestigation, was determined to
use this government power to
"get" or "screw" political op-
ponents.
I became aware months ago
that the White House was
seeking to discredit and, if
possible, to destroy me. I de-
cided finally that the best de-
fense was to lay out the facts
in the open. "The word. has
gone out from the White
House," I wrote on February
'1, "to 'nail' Jack Anderson."
I named staff chief H. R.
Haldeman as the White House
official behind the move. I de-
scribed Haldeman's "cold, cal-
culated hostility towards the
press," And quoted a White
House source as saying Halde-
man "`has an absolutely evil at-
titude relative to the press."
More specifically, I wrote
that, "the word was passed to
the Justice Department to try
to make a case against us."
This led to the abortive arrest
of my associate Les Whitten.
A federal grand jury, how-
ever, refused to indict him,
and the Justice Department
was forced to drop the
charges.
White House press spokes.
man Ron Ziegler, with an un-
usual show of emotion, de-
scribed as "wrongl wrong!
wrong!" my charge that Halde.
man was trying to nail us.
Now the enemy lists and ugly
memos out of the White
House portray the true atti-
tude of the men formerl
around President Nixon. .
It is also worth examinin
how I wound up on the Whit
House enemy list. A review o
my columns shows I wrot
dozens of favorable storie
about President Nixon. I re
ported, for example, that h
had evidence the Democrat
had stuffed the ballot boxes I
Illinois, Missouri, and Texas I
the 1980 election. Yet h
turned down partisan appeal
that he use the evidence t
overturn the election result
,saying, "I damn well will no
be a party to creating (a con
stitutional crisis) just to be
come President."
I told how he had paid all
the college expenses of tw
black students without thei
knowledge, how as a college
student himself he had waited
each evening for a crippled
classmate to help him up the
stairs of their boarding house.
From sources who had gone
to the Moscow summit meet
jag with Mr. Nixon, I wrot
how he had broken the im
passe over disarmament b
leaning forward and tellin
Soviet leader Leonid Brczhne
bluntly: "Dammit, let's settle
it."
What landed me on the en-
emy list, apparently, was my
access to unauthorized infor-
mation embarrassing to the
Nixon administration. In early
1971, the White House ana-
lyzed my columns carefully
for three months.
A confidential report to
Haldeman acknowledged:
"Anderson does, indeed, have
access to intelligence digests,
and he proves it on a daily ba-
sis. It also appears his refer-
ence, to private Presidential
memoranda is valid, but most
likely when such material
leaves the White House and is
circulated on an agency level.
"On more than one occasion,
examination of a Presidential
quote in context indicates
strongly that the leak came
not from within the Whitt
House, but from the agency
concerned with the subject
matter.
"Andersen's comment re-
garding `some of the trdn-
scripts of confidential niin-
utes' possibly refers to verbs:.
tim quotes of comments made
at White House leadership
meetings , . ."
It was suggested that, "an
overt firing of a person di.
rectly connected with a. leak
would go a Iona way towards
making the ability of the An-
dersons of the world to gain
White House information both
difficult and hazardous." .
The White House was urf-
able, however, to find my
sources. Instead, I wrote even
more embarrassing stories
about ho..., President Nixon
had lied io the public about
the ,India:-Pakistan conflict.
Then I published the Dita
Beard m.'morandum, which
linked a X400,000 offer from
International Telephone and
Telegraph vith the settlement
of its antic rust troubles.
Tl+.ese v ere the crimes, ap-
parently, which made me an
enemy of _hc White [louse, Al-
most ever" public figure who
criticized 1 he President wound
up on the enemy list.
But the existence of the en-
emy list is revealing, most, of
all, about the people in the
White IR 11=e. It shows they
were cuff- ring from a patno.
logical pai'at,oia.
m 1973. Dnlted Feature Syndicate `' .
Approved For Release 2005/06/06 : CIA-RDP75B0038OR000300050009-9