Committee to Re-elect the President

Overview

The Committee to Re-elect the President was Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign organization, formally abbreviated CRP and derisively remembered as CREEP, through which dirty-tricks proposals developed into the Watergate operation.

Current Profile

The episode presents the committee as the organizational setting in which demands to fight hard met operatives willing to cross legal and practical boundaries. Senior figures rejected or reduced some of G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt’s extravagant Operation Gemstone proposals, but continued to use the men and ultimately backed an operation to bug the Democratic National Committee. The profile therefore centers on filtering failure and permissive pressure rather than proving a direct burglary order from Nixon.

Key Characteristics

• Official campaign organization for Nixon’s 1972 reelection.
• Operated while Nixon pressed aides to act aggressively despite a commanding political position.
• Considered dirty-tricks proposals from Liddy and Hunt.
• Rejected some extreme schemes without removing the operatives who proposed them.
• Became the campaign channel through which the DNC bugging operation proceeded.

Evidence

Proposal review and operational failure

• 106. Watergate: Part 1 traces Gemstone proposals, senior consideration, and the eventual decision to target Democratic National Committee offices.

Qualifications

The source does not provide a complete organizational chart, funding trail, or legal allocation of responsibility. It separates pressure and tolerance from proof that Nixon ordered the break-in’s operational details.

What Changed

• Established CRP as the campaign structure that converted aggressive demands and retained extremists into operational misconduct.

Relationships

• Richard Nixon - incumbent president whose reelection the committee served.
• G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt - operatives who proposed and organized dirty tricks.
• Operation Gemstone - program of schemes considered through the committee.
• Watergate Scandal - crisis triggered by the committee-linked burglary.
• Presidential Command Climate - causal frame separating high-level pressure from a documented direct order.