What was Nixons Committee to Re-elect the President?
Many incumbent presidents seeking a second term in office form re-election committees, staffed primarily by trusted aides and influential political party members. In 1971, such a committee to re-elect the president was formed to help raise funds for Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign. Officially, this committee was known as the CRP, but eventually would earn the more sinister sounding acronym CREEP. The committee to re-elect the president was led by a former attorney general named John Mitchell, whose wife Martha would figure prominently in the events leading up to the Watergate scandal. Mitchell was assisted by several of Nixon’s closest advisors, including John Dean and Jeb Magruder. CREEP’s primary mission was to raise as much money as possible for the upcoming Nixon campaign and use it to pay the expenses of political operatives hired to obtain intelligence on Democratic party activities.
