TOM CHARLES HUSTON

You don't want to institutionalize the excesses required to meet extraordinary threats. The law just can't anticipate all the contingencies.

Use of this technique is clearly illegal: it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed. However, it is also the most fruitful tool and can produce the kind of intelligence which cannot be obtained in any other fashion.

The Director of the FBI is paid to take risks where the security of the country is at stake.... What Hoover is doing here is putting himself above the President.

Frankly, I wouldn't put anything past him [Nixon] and those damn technocrats. You can't begin to compete with the professional Nixonites when it comes to deception.... If Nixon told them to nationalize the railroads, they'd have nationalized the railroads. If he'd told them to exterminate the Jews, they'd have exterminated the Jews.

Making sensitive political inquiries at the IRS is about as safe a procedure as trusting a whore. Since the administration has no reliable political friends at IRS. We won't be in control of the government and in a position of effective leverage until such time as we have complete and total control of the top three slots of the IRS.

I suppose this [Watergate] is an example of the dangers of letting down your guard against increased executive powers–no matter what the circumstances. Not that the danger was not real, but in this case the risk of the remedy was as great as the disease. There was a willingness to accept without challenge the Executive's claim to increased power. That's why we acted as we did, and it was a mistake.

What we cannot do in a courtroom via criminal prosecutions to curtail the activities of some of these groups [anti-administration, dissident political groups], IRS could do by administrative action. Moreover, valuable intelligence-type information could be turned up by IRS as a result of their field audits.

Making sensitive political inquiries at the IRS is about as safe a procedure as trusting a whore. Since the administration has no reliable political friends at IRS. We won't be in control of the government and in a position of effective leverage until such time as we have complete and total control of the top three slots of the IRS.

I suppose this [Watergate] is an example of the dangers of letting down your guard against increased executive powers–no matter what the circumstances. Not that the danger was not real, but in this case the risk of the remedy was as great as the disease. There was a willingness to accept without challenge the Executive's claim to increased power. That's why we acted as we did, and it was a mistake.

Frankly, I wouldn't put anything past him [Nixon] and those damn technocrats. You can't begin to compete with the professional Nixonites when it comes to deception.... If Nixon told them to nationalize the railroads, they'd have nationalized the railroads. If he'd told them to exterminate the Jews, they'd have exterminated the Jews.

You don't want to institutionalize the excesses required to meet extraordinary threats. The law just can't anticipate all the contingencies.

What we cannot do in a courtroom via criminal prosecutions to curtail the activities of some of these groups [anti-administration, dissident political groups], IRS could do by administrative action. Moreover, valuable intelligence-type information could be turned up by IRS as a result of their field audits.

The Director of the FBI is paid to take risks where the security of the country is at stake.... What Hoover is doing here is putting himself above the President.

Use of this technique is clearly illegal: it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed. However, it is also the most fruitful tool and can produce the kind of intelligence which cannot be obtained in any other fashion.