The Nation: Creating a New Who's Who

The most bizarrely captivating documents that John W. Dean III turned over to the Ervin committee last week were the ones he took from the White House file labeled "Opponents' List and Political Enemies Project." These lists of varying length, compiled in the summer of 1971, contained the names of as many as 200 politicians, journalists, labor officials, entertainers, scholars and businessmen and Democratic campaign contributors whom the White House staff considered to be the Administration's prime domestic enemies.

The project never seems to have got off the ground, but the idea, as Dean put it in a memorandum to Presidential Advisers...