WI: Huston Plan is approved in 1970?

[arrowiv]

The Huston Plan, the direct ancestor of the Patriot Act, was initially conceived in 1970 in the Nixon administration as a way to counter violent protestors and urban guerillas such as the Weathermen and included wiretapping, mail opening, and the like. However, it never really got off the ground due to inter-agency fighting and also J. Edgar Hoover's big ego, who would have approved of the plan had he conceived it himself. Another factor would be its creator, Tom Charles Huston. In 1970, Huston was a young guy fresh out of college who had been a Young Republican as well. However, he was very inexperienced and very naive about government bureaucracies and how they really worked. Hoover did not exactly like Huston, referring to him as 'that damn hippie". (Huston a hippie at age 29 and with short hair??)
Comments?

 

[Realpolitik]

Fully implemented, I presume? I don't think Hoover would ever accept it. He and Mitchell both got Nixon to revoke it, OTL. That didn't stop some parts from being implemented. How do you change this?

Appointing Huston was something of a calculated insult to Hoover and Helms.

 

[arrowiv]

I still have to give Tom Huston credit, though. He resigned from government service a full year before Watergate happened and miraculously escaped the fallout in contrast to the other Nixon WH aides he once worked with.

 

[Pesterfield]

J. Edgar Hoover's big ego, who would have approved of the plan had he conceived it himself.

A less politically naïve Huston let's Hoover take the credit?

Could whatever made Hoover not like him in the first place be changed?

 

[Workable Goblin]

Even if something like this passes, I can't see it surviving the mid 1970s backlash against these kinds of activities exemplified by the Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, the War Powers Act, and so on. The resulting fallout probably won't make much of a difference in the long run, just the same way that the imposition of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has not, evidently, limited, restricted, impeded, or in any way affected the CIA, NSA, or similar organizations spying on people, but it will mean that this act will likely end up being killed, at least for the time being.

 

[Realpolitik]

A less politically naïve Huston let's Hoover take the credit?

Could whatever made Hoover not like him in the first place be changed?

The Huston Plan, while violently illegal, was not the genesis of Watergate. It just expanded what the FBI was already doing though COINTELPRO and Company and put more control in the hands of the White House.

Hoover did some of the (illegal) standard-level buggings and black ops he always did for Nixon and Kissinger and Haldeman, but by the 70s, he was getting more cautious. Hoover was not stupid. He could sense that things were changing and refused to go to the levels that Nixon wanted. Nixon didn't want to accept that the "rules" were changing and began to distrust him more and more.

 

[Realpolitik]

Even if something like this passes, I can't see it surviving the mid 1970s backlash against these kinds of activities exemplified by the Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, the War Powers Act, and so on. The resulting fallout probably won't make much of a difference in the long run, just the same way that the imposition of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has not, evidently, limited, restricted, impeded, or in any way affected the CIA, NSA, or similar organizations spying on people, but it will mean that this act will likely end up being killed, at least for the time being.

The imperial state has got to blow up sometime or later. That's a given unless you have an earlier POD, with the post-Vietnam era with a less submissive Congress, media, and bureaucracy. The government isn't trusted anymore. It doesn't have to lead to impeachment or be nearly as wide-reaching or destructive as it was. It doesn't have to happen in 1973. But it has to happen sooner or later.