reader comment:
The context, clearly indicated in your quote, is the Huston Plan, which involved mass surveillance of US citizens, burglary, and even potentially internment camps for “radicals.” It was an assertion that any crime could be committed if it was claimed to be in the national interest (preventing people from making the nation less “peaceful” and “orderly”).
Nixon:
Well, what I, at root I had in mind I think was perhaps much better stated by Lincoln during the War between the States. Lincoln said, and I think I can remember the quote almost exactly, he said, “Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation.”
link given above:
https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/78917/was-nixons-when-the-president-does-it-that-means-that-it-is-not-illegal-tech
WIKI
The Huston Plan was a 43-page report and outline of proposed security operations put together by White House aide Tom Charles Huston in 1970. It came to light during the 1973 Watergate hearings headed by Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC). According to U.S. Senator Charles Mathias (R-MD), U.S. President Richard Nixon rescinded the plan on July 28, 1970, after approving it on July 23.
The impetus for this report was President Richard Nixon’s desire for coordination of domestic intelligence on purported ‘left-wing radicals’ and the counterculture-era anti-war movement in general. Huston had been assigned as White House liaison to the Interagency Committee on Intelligence (ICI), a group chaired by J. Edgar Hoover, then Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director. Huston worked closely with William C. Sullivan, Hoover’s assistant, in drawing up the options listed in what eventually became the document known as the Huston Plan.
The plan called for domestic burglary, illegal electronic surveillance, and opening the mail of domestic “radicals”. At one time, it also called for camps in Western states where anti-war protesters would be detained.
On July 23, 1970, Nixon ratified the proposals, and they were submitted as a document to the directors of the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA).
Only Hoover objected to the plan and gained the support of then Attorney General of the United States John Mitchell to pressure Nixon to rescind the plan.
As details of the Huston Plan unfolded during the Watergate Hearings, it came to be seen as part of what Attorney General Mitchell referred to as “White House horrors”. This included the Plumbers Unit, the proposed fire-bombing of the Brookings Institution, the 1971 burglary of the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the creation of a White House enemies list, and the use of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to punish those deemed to be enemies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huston_Plan