by Tim Weiner
12. “clearly illegal”: “Such a technique involves trespass …,” Sullivan memo with Hoover’s notation, July 19, 1966, all reprinted in Church Committee files and in Theoharis, From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover, pp. 129–130; 147–152. LBJ and RFK may not have fully grasped the legal and technical differences between a wiretap on a telephone line, which could be legally authorized, and a bug, a hidden microphone whose installation usually required breaking and entering without a warrant.
13. “In our time in the Bureau”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
14. “Someone got to the old man”: Church Committee staff summary of Louis Tordella interview, June 16, 1975. The CIA’s James Angleton accurately assessed the effect that the changing political climate had on Hoover. “The Congress was delving into matters pertaining to FBI activities,” he said. “Mr. Hoover looked to the President to give him support in terms of conducting those operations. And when that support was lacking, Mr. Hoover had no recourse.” Angleton testimony, Church Committee hearings, Sept. 24, 1975.
15. “Hoover put us out of business”: Cregar classified testimony, Aug. 20, 1975, Church Committee staff files.
Hoover had threatened to pull the plug on the FBI’s surveillances once before: “I want consideration given to terminating all technicals—H.” That note came thundering down from the director on July 21, 1958. “Terminating all technicals” would have meant an end to electronic surveillance—the use of bugs and the break-ins required to install them—and the destruction of hundreds of American intelligence operations. The root of Hoover’s wrath was a CIA leak to Congress about a Soviet defector. Hoover’s anger faded, but his threat to pull the FBI’s bugs from every secret hiding place in America remained.
16. For the next decade, from 1966 to 1976: A grand total of eleven espionage cases were brought against Americans in that decade, and nine of them were investigated by military intelligence and tried by military courts. The primary cause of this decline in FBI counterespionage and counterintelligence was the ceaseless demand by presidents Johnson and Nixon to focus on the political warfare against the American Left. LBJ told Deke DeLoach “that much of the protest concerning his Vietnam policy, particularly the hearings in the Senate,” could be traced to the Soviets and their allies. The statistics and the underlying causes are analyzed in Espionage Against the United States by American Citizens, 1947–2001, Defense Personnel Security Research Center, July 2002.
17. “That guy traveled”: Edmund Birch oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
18. “King was told by Levison”: Hoover to LBJ, July 25, 1967, LBJ telephone tapes, LBJL.
19. “disrupt, misdirect, discredit”: FBI headquarters to field offices, Aug. 25, 1967, FBI/FOIA.
20. liberal-minded men: The intelligence coordination among Attorney General Clark, Deputy Attorney General Christopher, the military, the CIA, and the FBI was detailed first in hearings before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights on April 9 and 10, 1974, and later in the Church Committee’s reports. The major programs undertaken by the FBI, the CIA, and the military were code-named Shamrock and Minaret.
21. “I don’t want anybody to know”: LBJ to Hoover, Feb. 14, 1968, LBJ telephone tapes, LBJL. The full context of these heated discussions is in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 7, November 1–12, 1968: South Vietnamese Abstention from the Expanded Peace Conference; the Anna Chennault Affair.
22. “The Negro youth and moderates”: FBI headquarters to field offices, April 3, 1968, FBI/FOIA. Hoover’s “dead revolutionaries” warning came the day before the assassination of Martin Luther King.
23. “I have been appalled”: FBI headquarters to field offices, July 23, 1968, FBI/FOIA.
24. “He became a kind of Messiah”: Hoover memorandum for the record to Tolson, DeLoach, Sullivan, and Bishop, June 19, 1969, FBI/FOIA.
25. “We’ve lost Thieu”: LBJ telephone tapes, Nov. 1, Nov. 4, Nov. 8, Nov. 12, and Nov. 13, 1968. LBJ determined—after the election—that he could not prove the charge. The FBI, at LBJ’s command, eventually traced five telephone calls placed from the campaign plane of Republican vice presidential candidate Spiro Agnew in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One was a telltale: a conversation between Nixon’s clandestine emissary, Anna Chennault, at a Nixon command center in Washington, and an Agnew aide named Kent Crane, a former CIA officer. The tapes and conversations on the Chennault intrigue are recorded in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume 7, November 1–12, 1968: South Vietnamese Abstention from the Expanded Peace Conference; the Anna Chennault Affair.
26. “If it hadn’t been for Edgar Hoover”: Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, pp. 357–358. The telephone call to Hoover during the Nixon meeting is recorded in LBJ’s daily diary.
33. THE ULTIMATE WEAPON
1. “The risk of war”: Nixon’s sworn deposition in Halperin v. Kissinger, Jan. 15, 1976.
2. “I will warn you now”: Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, pp. 357–358.
3. “my closest personal friend”: Nixon White House tapes, May 3, 1972.
4. “he’d come in alone”: Nixon White House tapes, Feb. 16, 1973.
5. “Almost unbelievable conversation”: H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994), p. 192.
6. “florid and fat-faced”: John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), pp. 156–157.
7. “conducted, without a search warrant”: Nixon response to interrogatories, Church Committee, March 9, 1976.
8. “That was Mr. Hoover’s common practice”: Grand jury testimony of Richard Nixon, June 24, 1975, Watergate Special Prosecution Force Records, online at http://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/nixon-grand-jury/.
9. “This is the way civilizations”: Nixon statement on campus disorders, March 22, 1969.
10. “Attorneys General seldom directed”: Nixon testimony, U.S. v. Felt, Oct. 29, 1980.
11. “his friend and White House confidant”: Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, pp. 156–159.
12. “What is this”: The outrage of Nixon and Kissinger at the leaks, and their handling of the wiretaps, is best summarized in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, 2005), pp. 212–227.
13. “Within days”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, p. 387.
14. “Hoover informed me”: Nixon deposition, Halperin v. Kissinger.
15. “Here he was in this room”: Rodman oral history, FAOH.
16. “a leak which was directly responsible”: Nixon deposition, Halperin v. Kissinger.
17. “Dr. Kissinger said”: Hoover memorandum of conversation with Kissinger, May 9, 1969, FBI, July 9, 1969, 5:05 P.M.
18. “express your appreciation”: “Talking Points for Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Wednesday, June 4, 1969,” Library of Congress, Kissinger Papers, Box TS 88.
19. “Here’s your machine”: Dyson oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
20. “the potential to be far more damaging”: Sullivan to DeLoach, Sept. 8, 1969, FBI/FOIA.
21. “attacks against the police”: Brennan to Sullivan, Feb. 3, 1969, FBI/FOIA.
22. “to form commando-type units”: Brennan to Sullivan, Jan. 26, 1970, FBI/FOIA.
23. “They were a bunch of renegades”: Perez oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
24. “Hoover had no idea”: Jones oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
34. “PULL DOWN THE TEMPLE”
1. “the greatest mistake I ever made”: Mark Felt and John O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being “Deep Throat,” and the Struggle for Honor in Washington (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), p. 121.
2. “moving ahead of the winds”: Sullivan to Helms, Oct. 24, 1968, FRUS 1964–1968, Volume 33.
3. “I do not think”: Huston testimony, Church Committee, Sept. 23, 1975.
4. “President Nixon was insatiable”: DeLoach oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
5. “gave u
s all hell”: Nolan oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
6. “The President chewed our butts”: Staff summary of Bennett testimony, Church Committee, June 5, 1975.
7. “revolutionary terrorism”: “Presidential Talking Paper: Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Lt. Gen. Bennett and Adm. Gayler, June 5, 1970,” Haldeman White House Files.
8. “Individually, those of us”: Sullivan memorandum, June 6, 1970, Church Committee files.
9. “I saw these meetings”: Cregar testimony, Church Committee staff summary, Aug. 20, 1975.
10. “went through the ceiling”: Sullivan deposition, Nov. 1, 1975, Church Committee.
11. “in view of the crisis of terrorism”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, pp. 474–475.
12. “Hoover has to be told”: Huston to Haldeman, Aug. 5, 1970.
13. “Mitchell and I”: Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, p. 243.
14. “I was told five times”: Mardian oral history, Strober and Strober, The Nixon Presidency, p. 225.
15. “running all over the place”: Mark Wagenveld, “Delco Raid Forced Changes in FBI,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 1996.
16. “to steal the nomination”: Nixon White House tapes, May 26, 1971.
17. “The national security information”: Ibid.
18. “Do you remember Huston’s plan?”: Nixon White House tapes, June 17, 1971.
19. “Why Watergate?”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
20. “Hoover refused to investigate”: Nixon White House tapes, May 9, 1973.
21. “In terms of discipline”: Nixon White House tapes, June 29, 1971.
22. “As a young Congressman”: Nixon at graduation exercises of the FBI National Academy, June 30, 1971.
23. “He was trying to demonstrate”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, pp. 598–599; “At the end of the day”: Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, p. 357.
24. “He may have suffered”: Ray Wannall, The Real J. Edgar Hoover: For the Record (Paducah, Ky.: Turner Publishing, 2000), p. 146.
25. “playing on the paranoia”: Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, pp. 116–121.
26. “There were a few men”: Hoover memorandum of conversation with Rep. H. Allen Smith, May 23, 1966, FBI/FOIA.
27. “We have those tapes”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 8, 1971.
28. “We’ve got to avoid the situation”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 25, 1971.
29. “Sullivan was the man”: Ibid.
30. “We got to get a professional”: Nixon White House tapes, March 13, 1973.
31. “As political attacks on him multiplied”: Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, p. 160.
32. “That son of a bitch Sullivan”: Wannall, The Real J. Edgar Hoover, p. 147.
PART IV • War on Terror
35. CONSPIRATORS
1. “Oh, he died”: Nixon White House tapes, June 2, 1972.
2. “Pat, I am going to appoint you”: L. Patrick Gray III with Ed Gray, In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate (New York: Times Books, 2008), pp. 17–18.
3. “Never, never figure”: Nixon White House tapes, May 4, 1972.
4. “an interloper bent on pushing”: “they lied to each other”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 23–27.
5. “Once Hoover died”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH. 310 “He laughed because”: Bledsoe oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
6. “It was agreed”: C. W. Bates, “Subject: James W. McCord Jr. and Others,” June 22, 1972, FBI/FOIA.
7. “The FBI is not under control”: Nixon White House tapes, June 23, 1972.
8. “I again told him”: C. W. Bates, “Subject: James W. McCord Jr. and Others,” June 22, 1972, FBI/FOIA.
9. “These should never see the light of day”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 81–82. Dean corroborated Gray’s account in his Watergate testimony.
10. “There is little doubt”: “FBI Watergate Investigation/OPE Analysis,” July 5, 1974, FBI/FOIA.
11. if “the President decides”: The oral arguments and the ruling are from the Supreme Court records of U.S. v. U.S. District Court, decided June 19, 1972, and more commonly known as the Keith case, after the federal trial court judge whom the Justice Department sued to prevent the disclosure of the warrantless wiretaps. It soon became clear why the Justice Department had fought so long and so hard against the disclosures. The FBI had placed a warrantless tap on the White Panther headquarters in Ann Arbor. The Bureau also had overheard the defendant Plamondon on a warrantless tap aimed at discovering ties between Black Panthers and Palestinian radicals; that surveillance had been part of a highly classified program called MINARET, in which the FBI and the National Security Agency had collaborated to spy on members of the radical antiwar and black power movements since 1967.
12. “They will kidnap somebody”: Nixon White House tapes, Sept. 21, 1972. 313 “Everybody at that meeting”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 117.
13. “he had decided to reauthorize”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
14. “hunted to exhaustion” and “No holds barred”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH; Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, pp. 259–260. See also Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 117ff. The FBI’s Paul Daly led the subsequent internal investigation of John Kearney, leader of the FBI’s Squad 47: “I believe I counted up over eight hundred break-ins, for which he was commended.” The Justice Department eventually dropped the case against Kearney, once its investigators understood that he had been following orders from the top of the chain of command.
15. “It hurt all of us deeply”: Bolz oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
16. “There is a way to untie the Watergate knot”: Woodward notes, October 9, 1972, Harry Ransom Center, www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/woodstein/deepthroat/felt.
17. “They would meet at the end of the day”: Daly oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
18. “We know what’s leaked”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 19, 1972.
19. “we’ll screw up our source”: The White House knew thanks to Roswell Gilpatric—a lawyer for Time and once JFK’s deputy secretary of defense. The magazine’s top editors had ordered their reporter, Sandy Smith, to identify Felt as his own source. Then they betrayed his confidence by telling Gilpatric, who told his friend John Mitchell that Felt was leaking the FBI’s secrets.
20. “They would probably ask you”: Nixon White House tapes, Feb. 16, 1973; Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 152–77.
36. “THE BUREAU CANNOT SURVIVE”
1. An FBI agent interviewed the Iraqi: Finnegan testimony, United States v. Khalid Mohammed el-Jessem, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 73 CR 500, March 6, 1993.
The case against el-Jessem, aka Kahlid Jawary, is reconstructed here from the federal court records of his 1993 trial; a partially declassified National Security Agency history, “The First Round: NSA’s Efforts Against International Terrorism in the 1970’s”; an FBI situation report sent out under Director L. Patrick Gray’s name, “Black September Organization Activities,” dated March 25, 1973; and Santo F. Russo, “In re Extradition of Khaled Mohammed El Jassem: The Demise of the Political Offense Provision in U.S.-Italian Relations,” Fordham International Law Journal 16, no. 4 (1992). After serving sixteen years of his sentence, the Iraqi was deported to the Sudan in February 2009.
2. “The Bureau cannot survive”: Nixon White House tapes, March 1, 1973.
3. “For Christ’s sake”: Nixon White House tapes, March 1, 1973.
4. “The quid pro quo”: Nixon White House tapes, March 13, 1973.
5. “Dean had lied to us”: Gebhardt to Baker, “Subject: Confirmation,” March 7, 1973, FBI Watergate Special Prosecutor Files.
6. “I would have to conclude”: Hearings on the Nomination of L. Patrick Gray, Senate Judiciary Committee, March 22, 1973.
7. “Gray is dead”: Nixon White House tapes, March 22, 1973.
8. “Dean has apparently decided”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 238.
9. “I’m worried”: Nixon White House tapes, April 17, 1973.
/> 10. “This is stupidity”: Nixon White House tapes, April 26, 1973.
11. “I had never seen”: Ruckelshaus speech to National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys, Oct. 3, 2009.
12. “Felt—everybody’s to know”: Nixon White House tapes, May 12, 1973.
13. “a dangerous game we were playing”: FBI Special Agent Nick Stames interview with John H. Mitchell, May 11, 1973, FBI/FOIA.
14. “I don’t think a cop should run the Bureau”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 25, 1971. There were strong rumors at the FBI that Nixon’s choice had come down to either Clarence Kelley or Bill Sullivan. The FBI’s Paul Daly said: “Kelley told me that when he went in to interview with the President … he sat beside Sullivan, and Sullivan went in first and came out, then he went in. And it was a very close call.” Nixon’s available presidential records do not confirm that Sullivan was signed in at the White House that day.
15. “I was shocked by the wounds”: Clarence M. Kelley and James Kirkpatrick Davis, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director (Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews, McMeel & Parker, 1987), p. 116.
37. HOUSE OF CARDS
1. “The FBI engaged in a prolonged series”: Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General; 73 Civ. 3150; 642 F. Supp. 1357 (Southern District of New York).
2. “sirens, endless streams of sirens”: Hahn oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
3. “It was done clandestinely”: Dyson oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
4. “Why not add the FBI?”: Memorandum of Conversation, Oval Office, Jan. 4, 1975, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
5. “The FBI may be the sexiest part of this”: Memorandum of Conversation, White House, Feb. 20, 1975, GRFL.
6. “designed for the Civil War era”: Kelley to Attorney General, Aug. 7, 1974, FBI/FOIA.
7. “warrantless searches”: John C. Kenney, Acting Assistant Attorney General, filing in U.S. v. Ehrlichman, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, May 9, 1975.