Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The essentially pointless question of whether “I knew about the Plumbers” became another controversy in the Kafkaesque atmosphere of Watergate. Unbelievable as it may appear to the outsider, it is difficult to reconstruct what others in a large bureaucracy thought one knew. I was, of course, fully aware that Ehrlichman’s office had responsibility for investigating security leaks, though the details were carefully kept from me except when they affected my office directly. I did not realize, or bother to inform myself, that a special unit existed to investigate security leaks and that its members essentially had no other duties. I assumed instead that staff members were assigned to conduct these investigations on an ad hoc basis, including Krogh and Young, though it is quite possible that Krogh and Young thought I knew that theirs was a full-time mission all along. But even had I known this, I would not have found it improper that the White House sought to protect its classified information by an investigative unit, so long as it operated within the law. Nor do I think to this day that the “Plumbers unit” — apart from the burglary — was illegal or improper given the context of the time.IV

  Another episode, and one in which I did play a part, was the installation of seventeen wiretaps on individuals between May 1969 and February 1971. I reported on the wiretapping in my first volume,8 but I return to it here because it became known in 1973. The mysterious “national security matters” that Nixon had spoken of the night before Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned turned out to be the wiretap records, which had been stored (unknown to me) in Ehrlichman’s safe, were confiscated by the FBI when the latter resigned, and soon began to leak out. The wiretapping became a major controversy in 1973, and again in 1974. It was linked by some to Watergate to prove that the Nixon Administration had a pervasive inclination to unlawful behavior.

  On this issue hypocrisy is rampant. The myth has been fostered that electronic surveillance was an invention of the Nixon Administration. Of course, that is absurd. Wiretaps may be unpalatable, but they are as ubiquitous as the telephone and almost as old. All major West European democracies — including Britain, France, and the Federal Republic of Germany — use wiretaps for investigative and intelligence purposes on a scale dwarfing the activities of the Nixon Administration. But that is only the beginning of the double standard. Wiretapping by past Presidents of both political parties seems to have been more widespread, with fewer safeguards and looser standards than in Nixon’s relatively small number of cases so cherished by his enemies. That is what law enforcement officials indicated when Nixon assumed the Presidency and there is voluminous published evidence to the same effect: Franklin Roosevelt seems to have used wiretaps to monitor the activities of White House staff aides, isolationist leaders, political opponents, and journalists; the hoary practice apparently continued with vigor through all successor administrations until Nixon came into office.9 Moreover, the wiretapping for national security purposes in 1969–1971 clearly complied with the administrative and legal procedures in effect at the time; judicial warrants for them were required only after a Supreme Court decision of 1972.10

  That wiretapping is distasteful is unquestionable. But so is the willful and unauthorized disclosure of military and diplomatic secrets in the middle of a war. Those responsible for national security in early 1969 were warned by their predecessors — Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson, in particular — that a dangerous practice was growing in the bureaucracy: Some who disagreed with national policy felt free to try to sabotage it by leaking classified information in clear violation of the law. We found the warning borne out as negotiating positions, military operations, and internal deliberations cascaded into the media. The media took the position that they had no responsibility to the country but to print or broadcast. It was up to the Administration to keep its own secrets — which is precisely what it attempted to do.

  By the spring of 1969 Nixon became convinced that the leaks of military operations and sensitive negotiations were jeopardizing American lives. He consulted Attorney General John Mitchell and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at a meeting on April 25, a portion of which I attended. Hoover recommended the institution of wiretaps, which he pointed out had been used in all previous administrations at least since FDR’s for these and other much less justifiable purposes. The Attorney General affirmed their legality. Nixon ordered them implemented on the basis of three categories: officials who had access to the classified information that had been leaked; officials in sensitive positions who had adverse information in their security files; and individuals whose possible involvement emerged from the FBI investigations. Later, Nixon courageously assumed full responsibility for the decision in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 12, 1974:

  I wish to affirm categorically that Secretary Kissinger and others involved in various aspects of this investigation were operating under my specific authority and were carrying out my express orders.

  Remarkably, this did not still the semantic contortions that accused me of “initiating” or “authorizing” or “ordering” the wiretaps. Given the somewhat haphazard bookkeeping — only Hoover kept records and he was a master at protecting himself11 — there is no clear-cut documentary record. But a little common sense is in order. It would have been unthinkable for a brand-new recruit to the Nixon entourage, widely distrusted for his liberal associates and with foreign policy responsibilities only, pulling off in his third month in office the initiative for and institution of a law enforcement program in the exclusive jurisdiction of such heavyweights as John Mitchell and J. Edgar Hoover.

  The truth is simpler. I agreed strongly with Nixon that something had to be done to stem the leaks; Mitchell and Hoover recommended the program; Nixon ordered it; my office implemented the part of identifying to the FBI persons we knew to come under the first of the three criteria established by Nixon: that is, persons with access to the leaked information. In each case, the FBI requested authority from the Attorney General to wiretap these persons. The FBI sporadically sent to my office brief summaries, averaging about a page in length, of conversations that it considered to represent discussions of secret military or foreign policy matters.

  Eventually under this program, wiretaps were established by the FBI on seventeen officials and newsmen. My office did not supply all the names nor was it aware of every wiretap.V (If someone was tapped but no conversation touched on military or foreign affairs, he would not be the subject of reports and I and my office would have no way of knowing about the tap. There was no opportunity, and even less desire, to spend time pruriently reading over transcripts of personal conversations.) The short summary reports of conversations touching on what the FBI considered national security matters were sent to my office, the President’s, and Haldeman’s for a year. In May 1970, a year after the first tap, Nixon ordered that my office be dropped from the distribution; I no longer saw any reports. Thereafter Haldeman was apparently the sole recipient until the whole program was discontinued in February 1971.

  In reflecting about the subject, I cannot add a great deal to what I have written in my first volume:

  . . . I went along with what I had no reason to doubt was legal and established practice in these circumstances, pursued, so we were told, with greater energy and fewer safeguards in previous administrations. The motive, which I strongly shared, was to prevent the jeopardizing of American and South Vietnamese lives by individuals (never discovered) who disclosed military information entrusted to them in order to undermine policies decided upon after prayerful consideration and in our view justified both in law and in the national interest. I believe now that the more stringent safeguards applied to national security wiretapping since that time reflect an even more fundamental national interest — but this in no way alters my view of the immorality of those who, in their contempt for their trust, attempted to sabotage national policies and risked American lives.12

  In retrospect it is also clear to me that while electronic surveillance is a widely used method of investigation i
n democracies, the wiretapping of one’s associates presents an especially painful human problem. I was never at ease about it; it is the part of my public service about which I am most ambivalent. At the time, I simply preferred it to the alternative, which was to separate from their posts those who were suspected of unauthorized disclosures of information. No doubt Nixon and his inner circle savored the notion that some colleagues of the Harvard outsider and Rockefeller associate were suspected leakers. And some officials of the FBI used the opportunity to vindicate their judgment in cases where their reservations about security clearances for my staff had been ignored. For these reasons I may well have subconsciously leaned over backward in resolving my ambivalence about the program. It does not change the fundamental fact that, as far as I knew, the only motive was to protect classified information against unauthorized disclosure in the middle of a complicated war. I had no reason to challenge the claim of the Attorney General that the program was legal and proper. Still, I want to express my regret at the anguish that may have been caused to any individual by a procedure that has since been modified by court decision.

  Having said that, I feel entitled to record my dismay at the harassment in lawsuits and print ever since by some who knew very well that I was torn between doing my duty as I saw it and sparing them personally. I even warned some of them about the suspicions of my superiors and cautioned them that they were under scrutiny. By the same token I am grateful to those who were tapped but have remained or become close friends, reconciling their sense of grievance with understanding of the practices, motives, and circumstances of the time.

  The Impact on Foreign Policy

  MY predominant concern during Watergate was not the investigations that formed the headlines of the day. It was to sustain the credibility of the United States as a major power. We were tragically back to the domestic disunity of the first term. While this time the national trauma had not grown out of foreign crisis — Vietnam — it would nevertheless affect our international position profoundly. We could — and did — take diplomatic initiatives; we could — and did — utter fierce warnings against threats to our security. But the authority to implement them was beginning to seep away for reasons quite beyond the reach of those conducting foreign policy, in a purgatory in which there were no victors, only victims.

  For a while, the real cost of Watergate to the conduct of foreign policy was not apparent. Patriotism and a sense of the awfulness of events induced many traditional critics to suspend their assaults. As an individual I led a charmed life; I became the focal point of a degree of support unprecedented for a nonelected official. It was as if the public and Congress felt the national peril instinctively and created a surrogate center around which the national purpose could rally. But that was a pale substitute for the real thing and it evaporated progressively.

  Tawdry revelation was matched by a vile animus. A journalist not known for his friendship to Nixon called me to say he was shocked by the “bloodlust” surfacing among many of his friends: All they seemed to be able to think of was “get him, get him, get him. As if they were gladiators that wanted to kill.” William Safire tells of a prominent editor who insisted to him, around this time in 1973, that a “bloodletting” was absolutely necessary.13

  The symptoms of weakening authority were everywhere. By May 10, 1973, we were receiving reports that Chinese officials were discreetly asking visitors about the extent of the damage to Nixon’s authority. They seemed to think that “organized groups” in the United States, determined to jettison the President’s foreign policy, were orchestrating the opposition.

  The same queries were put to me in the Soviet Union, where I spent May 4 to May 9 to prepare for Brezhnev’s June visit to the United States. At first the Soviet leaders seemed to treat Watergate as a passing phenomenon. But as the revelations began to accumulate and the investigations went on and on, one began to notice efforts to dissociate Brezhnev from Nixon. In early May, Brezhnev told me that he intended to bring his wife and children to America. On June 12, less than a week before his arrival, we were suddenly informed that his wife could not come: “[T]he doctors are flatly against that. As for the daughter and the son, they have had their own compelling reasons preventing them from making such a trip now.” A stop by Brezhnev in Houston was also canceled without explanation or consultation. The impression that Watergate was a key factor in Soviet thinking became unavoidable when the same message explained that Brezhnev was going with Nixon to San Clemente against the judgment of his doctors because

  if somebody speculates that my suggestion not to fly to California is somehow connected with the internal events in the United States, this is absolutely not true, Mr. President. There is no basis for such an interpretation. The President knows full well that from the outset we have unhesitatingly followed a consistent line in relations with him and our respect and my personal respect has not diminished a bit.

  This apparent token of solicitude could equally plausibly be explained as a heavy-handed Soviet attempt to remind the President of his weakened position. In either case it was profoundly demeaning to think that the President required an assurance of continued personal esteem from the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

  The erosion of executive authority affected not only adversaries; it blighted as well relations with our friends. West German Ambassador Berndt von Staden told me that the cynical West German press coverage of Chancellor Willy Brandt’s visit in early May was undoubtedly caused by its coincidence with the speech announcing the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. In my June 8 meeting with French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert, he insinuated that the purpose of the Year of Europe was to ease our domestic situation; it forced me to remind him that it had all been planned before Watergate (as Jobert knew very well from a conversation I had had with President Georges Pompidou in December 1972). The subject came up again when I met with the allied representatives to the North Atlantic Council in San Clemente on June 30 (they were touring the United States); with the Italian Ambassador on July 24; and on the visits of German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel and British Cabinet Secretary Burke Trend in July — always politely, even compassionately. But the policy of a great power is sustained by respect, not compassion.

  On August 4 Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, a man of singular intelligence and judgment and a true friend of the United States, interrupted a meeting of Commonwealth heads of government in Ottawa to fly to New York for a private meeting with me at Kennedy Airport. His sole purpose was to have the opportunity to judge the impact of Watergate on the foreign policy of the United States. “You are the anchor of the whole non-Communist world,” he said nearly in despair, “and because of righteous indignation this anchor is slithering in the mud.” His fear was that if Nixon was overthrown, for whatever reason, the strong foreign policy that Nixon represented would also be undermined. In 1976, a new President would be elected who saw his election as vindication of the antiwar, neo-isolationist position. This must not happen: “My survival depends on it,” he said.

  As so often before, Lee Kuan Yew was prescient. Friendly countries needed then, and still need, a strong Presidency for their security; even adversaries are more comfortable with a predictable, coherent America. Against my premonitions, I was duty-bound to reassure my old friend from Singapore. We would maintain the nation’s strength and purpose, I said; we would surely get through this crisis as we had overcome so many others. I asserted that the policy of our successors, whoever they might be, would maintain a strong America. I do not know whether the perceptive Lee Kuan Yew believed me; I tend to doubt it. I have been too embarrassed to ask him.

  In mid-1974, the distinguished columnist of the Washington Post, Chalmers Roberts, wrote perceptively in Foreign Affairs:

  Foreign policy is made both by commission and omission. It is affected by mood and nuance, by judgments of strengths and weaknesses, by one government’s measure of another’s will
as well as its ability to act, by one national leader’s perception of a rival or friendly leader’s political standing in his own country and its effect on both national power and policies.14

  That was the issue precisely. With every passing day Watergate was circumscribing our freedom of action. We were losing the ability to make credible commitments, for we could no longer guarantee Congressional approval. At the same time, we had to be careful to avoid confrontations for fear of being unable to sustain them in the miasma of domestic suspicion. (When we went on alert at the end of the Mideast war in October 1973, I was asked at a press conference whether it was a Watergate maneuver.) Deprived of both the carrot and the stick, we could only watch with impatient frustration as first Hanoi and then Moscow began to exploit our discomfiture.

  For better or worse it fell increasingly to my office to hold foreign policy together. There was now an entirely different atmosphere in the White House from that in the first term. Gone were most of the arrogant young men of the Haldeman era, cockily confident that all could be planned and every problem would yield to procedure. Only Ronald Ziegler remained, as head of the press office, carrying out an impossible task with loyalty and dedication. The White House staff, in any event, no longer had the authority of a strong President or the self-assurance of participating in a great cause. Senior members of the White House had to establish their right from case to case by performance, conviction, and the ability to appeal to a sense of the national interest in excruciatingly difficult circumstances, of which the most serious was the inability to articulate the extent of our peril.