What Was Richard Nixon’s ‘Enemies List’—And Who Was on It?

The project's stated goal: to 'use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.'

John J. Edwards III

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President Richard Nixon in a blue suit, sitting at the desk in the White House Oval Office, talking on the phone, with a bust of Abraham Lincoln behind him in front of a window
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Among Richard Nixon’s many presidential priorities—ending the Vietnam War, thawing relations with China, expanding environmental protections—there was one initiative his team hoped to keep well under the radar: his secret “enemies list.” In an August 1971 memo, White House Counsel John Dean offered a piquant summary of the project’s goal: to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

The formal list began in June 1971as a short memo of 20 names of people, most of whom had deep ties to the Democratic Party. Actor Paul Newman made an appearance, with the notation “Radic-Lib causes. Heavy Mc Carthy involvement in '68.” So did Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory, cited for her “daily hate Nixon articles.” The list would grow into several unwieldy compendiums, totaling hundreds of names, encompassing politicians, media figures, celebrities, labor leaders, activists, watchdog groups, scholars and businesspeople.

Nixon and his aides repeatedly attempted to weaponize the Internal Revenue Service against many of these perceived enemies, but never managed to bring the full weight of federal power to bear against most of them. Meanwhile, the list itself became a political liability. Dean’s revelation of its existence during 1973 congressional testimony added to the growing Watergate scandal that would push Nixon from office the following year.

What drove the most powerful man in the world to have an enemies’ list compiled, then seek ways to leverage government against them? Ultimately, it came down to his complex psychological makeup, Rutgers University historian and journalism professor David Greenberg tells HISTORY.com: “People who aren’t paranoid don’t feel a need to make enemies lists and frame the world in terms of who’s out to get me.”

What Were the Roots of Nixon’s Paranoia?

Born in 1913 in the tiny Southern California town of Yorba Linda, Nixon endured a troubled childhood.

“He was someone who had a lot of loss as a boy,” says Greenberg. “He lost an older brother who was the hero of the family. He had a very stern and exacting father, who was violent. He grew up with a real chip on his shoulder, resenting others who had it easier.”

As he rose in politics, as a Republican congressman and later vice president to Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon often directed his resentment toward members of the so-called Eastern Establishment, Tim Weiner writes in One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon. They encompassed “that congregation of well-raised, well-educated men who had ruled much of Washington for a generation; Nixon despised them by instinct,” Weiner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, writes.

After his narrow loss in the 1960 presidential election, Nixon focused his anger and suspicion on John F. Kennedy. He believed the Massachusetts senator had somehow stolen the election—without evidence, Greenberg asserts. Nixon felt further embittered after losing the 1962 governor’s race in his native California, telling assembled reporters the following morning, “you don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

Wiretapping His Own Team

Although he made a remarkable comeback to win the 1968 presidential election, Nixon brought a paranoid style to the White House. The new president believed in a variety of supposed conspiracies against his administration. In a precursor to the Watergate scandal, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger—with Nixon’s blessing—ordered the wiretapping of the president’s own National Security Council staff and others after The New York Times disclosed the administration’s secret bombing of Cambodia in May 1969.

“That’s the first enemies list, the people they wiretapped,” Greenberg says. “I don’t think the Kissinger list was ever called an enemies list, but it’s in that spirit.”

Pushing the IRS to Inflict Pain, and Expanding the List

Efforts to use the Internal Revenue Service against Nixon’s political adversaries began well before the 1971 creation of the first written enemies list, Evan Thomas writes in Being Nixon: A Man Divided.

After former JFK campaign manager Larry O’Brien became chairman of the Democratic National Committee in early 1970, Nixon worried the appointment meant Senator Edward Kennedy would become a bigger political threat. On March 9, 1970, White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman took note of a presidential directive, Thomas writes: “Get O’Brien’s tax return audited.” White House efforts to push the IRS to harass O’Brien and others would continue for years, according to Thomas, though top IRS and Treasury Department officials continually pushed back on the efforts.

That was the milieu in which George T. Bell, a White House special assistant, compiled an “opponents list” in a June 24, 1971, memo under the direction of his boss, Charles “Chuck” Colson. Colson, later a key Watergate conspirator, served as a special counsel to the president and had been one of the White House aides tapped for a “campaign attack group” in late 1970, according to Thomas.

In addition to Newman and McGrory, the initial list of 20 included film industry bigwig Arnold M. Picker, a top Democratic Party fundraiser; advertising executive Maxwell Dane, best known for helping defeat Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 with the famed “Daisy” commercial; and Black Democratic congressmen John Conyers of Michigan and Ron Dellums of California. Bell, who died in 1973, never discussed why the names were chosen. Colson later denied involvement with it.

In his August 1971 “screw our political enemies” memo, John Dean urged that the White House keep the list tightly focused. Nevertheless, a later list of political adversaries featured more than 200 names, and still another ballooned to more than 500. Notable figures ranged from Black Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to quarterback Joe Namath to the president of Philip Morris, Inc.

How Did the Enemies List Come to Light?

The public knew nothing of the enemies list effort until Dean mentioned it in testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee on June 27, 1973. Reporters obtained copies of the 20-name short list later that day, and CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr was reading through it live on the air when he got a surprise: His name was number 17 on the list, described as “a real media enemy.”

“The idea that I was becoming a part of the story I was covering was really quite incredible,” Schorr said in a 2010 interview.

What Did Nixon Do With the List—and Was It Illegal?

Dean wrote in his memo: “The project coordinator should…determine what sorts of dealings these individuals have with the federal government and how we can best screw them (e.g., grant availability, federal contracts, litigation, prosecution, etc.).” There’s little evidence the White House pursued most of those avenues, and a 1973 congressional investigation determined that the IRS hadn’t harassed anyone who appeared on the longest enemies list.

However, that wasn’t for lack of trying. Beyond the efforts against DNC Chairman Larry O’Brien, who appeared on the longest of the enemies lists, the White House pushed the IRS to probe the entire list. Dean presented the list to IRS Commissioner Johnnie Walters in September 1972, but Treasury Secretary George P. Shultz instructed Walters to “do nothing,” according to September 2024 testimony from Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

“It would be hard to overestimate the damage that Richard Nixon could have done to the U.S. taxation system if he had had a complicit secretary of the Treasury and an unethical commissioner of the IRS,” said Naftali, who also served as the first director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “The only protection came from the Republican officials who said 'no' to a president of their own party.”

In July 1974, the enemies list project became a basis of the second impeachment article against Nixon, which accused him of efforts to get tax information and spur audits “in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens.”

Naftali suggested in his testimony that it must fall to Congress to determine presidential motives in cases of White House actions that may be legal on their face. “The improvement of taxpayer compliance is a justifiable presidential motive,” he said. “Deterring leaks of national security secrets is another… But when these are veils to permit unethical and potentially illegal acts, then the question arises: Who or what protects the public from their president?”

Watergate at a Glance

Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

Five men are arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate headquarters, stealing copies of top-secret documents and bugging the office’s phones. They later plead guilty to conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping. Two stand trial and are convicted. More

John J. Edwards III

John J. Edwards III is a journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was a longtime senior editor at Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal. You can follow him at @johnjedwards3.