Imagine Having So Many Enemies You Have To Write Down Their Names to Remember

Now imagine nominating someone who does that to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

When we speak of Richard Nixon’s enemies list, we’re really describing a lengthy set of White House memos circulated in 1971 and 1972. These break down into three lists. The first enemies list was 20 names furnished by a White House aide named George Bell to Charles Colson, director of the White House Office of Public Liaison. Colson famously said he’d run over his own grandmother to re-elect Nixon, but in prison Colson was born again and decided that he’d run over his own grandmother for Jesus. But I digress. At the request of White House Counsel John Dean, Colson winnowed 20 names down to 11. Only three of these 11 names ring a bell today: Allard Lowenstein, Morton Halperin, and Leonard Woodcock. The longer list of 20 included Paul Newman, Mary McGrory, Stewart Mott, and Daniel Schorr.

The second enemies list was a far less exclusive list of 207 “political opponents” that’s a sort of Who’s Who of the Establishment: Leading journalists like Jack Anderson, Marquis Childs, Pete Hamill, etc. along with Democratic politicians like Ted Kennedy, George McGovern, Father Robert Drinan, etc., and organizations like the Brookings Institution (which Nixon proposed firebombing), Common Cause, the National Education Association, and SANE. The third list, which didn’t become public until December 1973, was a list of 576 names, and if you failed to make this list you were a total loser who had no hope of getting invited to any good parties.

Trump has declared various people to be enemies of the state, but he’s too lazy to compile a list, so Politico’s Josh Gerstein compiled it for him. These include Nancy Pelosi, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, etc. Trump’s nominee to run the FBI, Kash Patel, compiled a list of 60 enemies in his 2022 book Government Gangsters, and in my latest New Republic piece I analyze his method for choosing (and also furnish the complete list). You can read it here.