Committee for the Re-Election of the President

In late 1970, members of the Nixon administration's White House staff began planning for President Nixon's re-election campaign. Accordingly, in the spring of 1971, Attorney General John Mitchell, who had managed the 1968 Nixon campaign, was tapped to serve as campaign director and the nucleus of the campaign staff opened offices at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Originally called the Citizens Committee to Re-Elect the President, the organization, then headed by acting director Jeb Magruder (who became deputy campaign director when Mitchell resigned from the Justice Department to take up his political duties full-time in 1972), began planning to run a national campaign independently of the Republican National Committee.