May 3, 1972

[Sorry; I had just one of these to do over a longish stretch, and I clean missed it. I'll try to stay on track next week when things really start up]

J. Edgar Hoover died on May 2.

Hoover's death was certainly important for all sorts of reasons, many of which would get involved in the various threads of the Watergate story, but for now I'll just focus on what happened the next day, May 3. A memorial service was scheduled, following which he would lie in state in the Capitol -- and antiwar activists and others scheduled a demonstration, with Daniel Ellsberg as one of the speakers. This was an opportunity...for Hunt and Liddy to mobilize the Cubans again. It's not clear whether the initial idea was from Nixon or just from Chuck Colson, but the idea was to have a counterdemonstration against Ellsberg and the other activists; the eventual instructions were apparently to go interfere with the rally and perhaps to beat up some of the "hippies" -- including, possibly, Ellsberg himself. Tom Wells, in his book on Ellsberg, describes the whole thing in quite a bit of detail.

As it happened, the thing mostly fizzled, although three of the operatives, including Frank Sturgis, who we shall meet again soon, were briefly detained by the Capitol cops. They didn't bust up the demonstration, or generate negative publicity for it.

Oh, and Liddy did a little Washington tourism with the Cubans while they were in town. Among other things, they drove past the Watergate office complex, home of the Democratic National Committee headquarters -- which Liddy told them was their "next target."