White House Plumbers Break Into Daniel Ellsberg Psychiatrist Office Seeking Pentagon Papers Dirt

In September 1971, the White House Special Investigations Unit—mockingly known as the “Plumbers” because their mission was to stop leaks—broke into the Los Angeles office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers exposing government lies about the Vietnam War. The operation was led by E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, recruited by White House officials Chuck Colson and John Ehrlichman. The Plumbers had been organized under Egil “Bud” Krogh to stop leaks in the Nixon administration, functioning as an extra-legal domestic intelligence operation operating out of the White House itself. The break-in aimed to find information that could be used to discredit Ellsberg and undermine the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Hunt and Liddy’s team found nothing useful in Dr. Fielding’s files, but the operation represented a systematic effort by the Nixon White House to use illegal methods—including burglary, wiretapping, and surveillance—against perceived political enemies. Colson, serving as Nixon’s Special Counsel and known as the President’s “hatchet man,” personally recruited former CIA agent Hunt for this work. Though Hunt never worked directly for Colson, he performed various assignments for Colson’s office before joining the Plumbers. The willingness to burglarize a psychiatrist’s office demonstrated how far the administration would go to destroy opponents, weaponizing citizens’ most private medical information for political warfare.

The Ellsberg break-in was part of a broader pattern of abuses that would culminate in Watergate. The same team of Hunt and Liddy who burglarized Ellsberg’s psychiatrist would later plan the Watergate break-in. Colson pleaded guilty in 1974 to obstruction of justice for attempting to defame Ellsberg, though charges related to the actual burglary were dropped as part of his plea deal. He received a sentence of one to three years and served seven months in federal prison—becoming the first Nixon administration official incarcerated for Watergate-related charges. The Ellsberg break-in established that the Nixon White House operated a systematic program of illegal domestic intelligence operations against political opponents, presaging the broader abuses that would destroy the presidency. Yet the relatively light sentences for these crimes sent a message that attacking whistleblowers and critics through illegal means carried minimal consequences for government officials.