Word: hoover
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Throughout those early Nixon years, Administration officials were at loggerheads with Hoover over the function of the FBI. They wanted Hoover to concentrate much more heavily on radical political organizations and black nationalists, and less on common criminals and old left subversives. What the Administration sought would have required intense FBI coverage of campuses across the U.S. Early in 1970, the White House asked the FBI whether rioting and violence were being directed by foreign countries. The FBI simply could not answer the question...
...Hoover's strictures had hindered the FBI in shifting its attention from watching over familiar and predictable Communist agents and Mafia gangsters to keeping track of radical free agents and anarchists, who were structured in no national pattern...
Before giving up on the FBI, the Administration had one last fight with Hoover. In June 1970, Nixon brought together the directors of the nation's various security agencies to work out a plan for increased surveillance not only of the New Left but also of the Arab terrorists and Weatherman-style anarchists who were blowing up buildings across the country...
Specifically, the White House wanted a return to many of the more questionable FBI practices stopped by Hoover in 1966-the illegal entry and burglary of suspects' houses and a greatly expanded use of wiretaps against political subversives. From the start, Hoover tried to scuttle the committee and the Administration's objectives, both of which he saw as rebukes to his agency...
When the report was finally finished, Hoover, as chairman, passed it along to Nixon, but only after he had detailed in footnotes his objections to virtually every proposal. When Nixon ignored his protests and ordered the suggestions put into effect on July 23, 1970, Hoover got on the phone to San Clemente and in strong terms told the President of his disapproval. Finally, Nixon knuckled under and ordered that the recommendations for expanded intelligence operations be disregarded...