In 1967, at a secret meeting with top advisers, President Johnson discusses the mounting opposition to the Cuban and Southeast Asian conflicts. He makes it clear that he regards the growing anti-war movement as 'Communist-influenced' and asks what can be done to neutralize it.

The outlines of a plan to identify, round up and incarcerate up to several thousand of 'the most dangerous radicals' are sketched out. Several of the camps used during World War II to hold Japanese-Americans are to be reconditioned for use as holding centers, along the lines envisioned but never fully implemented under the 1948 Hoover-McGrath 'Security Portfolio' and the 1950 Internal Security Act. The new plan is codenamed 'Operation Garden Plot' and is immediately classified top secret.

At the same meeting, Johnson discusses using conventional or nuclear weapons to breach key dikes in North Vietnam, a measure which would food large areas and potentially kill hundreds of thousands of people, as a means of forcing Hanoi to surrender. His military advisers favor the idea, but several key civilian figures present argue that the diplomatic damage such a move would cause would outweigh any military gains. Johnson decides to order that the military prepare to carry out this scheme, codenamed 'Noah's Ark,' but hold off on actually carrying it out.