TAPES AND TAPS

By Henry Kissinger

It was like living on a volcano. Those of us who sought to keep the Government going had no idea when another eruption would start. For nearly two months the torrent of revelations seemed unending. Among the most startling was the disclosure that Nixon had been tape-recording conversations since early 1971.1 learned about it soon after Haig became chief of staff. He told me to be careful about anything I said in the Oval Office; it contained a voice-activated recording system.

Aside from Haldeman and Alexander Butterfield, his deputy who operated the system, practically no one knew of its existence. The idea was first suggested when Nixon found in the White House a taping system installed by President Johnson. He had had it removed then, but looked more favorably on it as he found himself engulfed in leaks. (He forgot that Johnson's system was controlled from the President's desk, permitting selectivity; Nixon's system, activated by sound, was beyond the control of even its originator--ironically symbolic of a White House mood that had run essentially out of control.) Some taping seems to have taken place also during the Kennedy period.

Haldeman has written that Nixon's motive was to protect himself against associates who might seek to disavow discussions in which they had participated. It was a high price to pay for insurance. Anyone familiar with Nixon's way of talking could have no doubt he was sitting on a time bomb. What could anyone uninitiated make objectively of the collection of reflections and interjections, the strange indiscretions mixed with high-minded pronouncements, the observations hardly germane to the issue of the moment but reflecting the prejudices of Nixon's youth, all choreographed by the only person in the room who knew that the tape system existed and could therefore produce whatever tableau suited his fancy?

As Watergate made only too evident, no one could possibly prearrange every conversation during every waking hour over a period of years. The spider got entangled in its own web. Even had Watergate not occurred, the tapes would have damaged Nixon's reputation severely. Had the tapes trickled out posthumously, as planned, Nixon would have managed the extraordinary feat of committing suicide after his death.

The tapes' existence was publicly revealed on television by Alex Butterfield before Senator Sam Ervin's Watergate Committee on July 16. Some Nixon supporters were jubilant: the foxy Nixon had once again confounded his opponents; the tapes were certain to exonerate him. I was less confident.

That day I had dinner with Nelson Rockefeller at his residence in Washington. He held that the tapes should be destroyed forthwith. They represented a breach of faith with anybody who had entered the Oval Office. They lent themselves to a form of selective blackmail either by Nixon and his associates or by whoever wound up controlling them. But Nixon was at that time in a hospital with pneumonia. When he emerged it was too late; legal processes to claim the tapes had started.

In retrospect it is clear that from then on the Nixon presidency was irredeemable. So long as the testimony of senior aides was in conflict, there was some chance that boredom and the impossibility of deciding conclusively among the different versions would cause the crisis to run out of steam. The revelation of the White House taping system ended any such possibility. Thenceforth Watergate was transformed into a bitter contest between the President on one side and the Congress and the special prosecutor (appointed in May) on the other for control of the tapes. Whatever the fine points of the legal debate, its very nature--with the implication that there was guilty knowledge to hide--destroyed what was left of Nixon's moral position. It made him a lame duck six months into a presidency won by the second largest plurality in American history.

Two other controversies were also in the news during this period, one over the so-called White House "plumbers," assigned to stanch leaks of information, the other over the wiretapping of individuals suspected of being responsible for such leaks. As Kissinger writes: "No doubt Administrations tend to confuse what is embarrassing politically with what is essential for national security--the Nixon Administration perhaps more than most. But few Administrations since the Civil War faced a more bitter assault on their purposes, a more systematic attempt to thwart their policies by civil disobedience or a more widely encouraged effort to sabotage policies by leaks of classified information in the middle of a war. As National Security Adviser I thought it my duty to help stanch these leaks. " Having said that, he notes: "I did not realize, or bother to inform myself, that a unit existed to investigate leaks and that its members essentially had no other duties. But even had I known this, I would not have found it improper that the White House sought to protect its classified information so long as it operated within the law." Besides, he adds, in the Nixon White House "the flow of information was strictly compartmentalized, and internal security was considered outside my province."

The second controversy centered on wiretaps placed on 17 officials and newsmen from May 1969 to February 1971, a period when Nixon was concerned that leaks might compromise military operations and sensitive negotiations. "The wiretapping was linked by some to Watergate to prove that the Nixon Administration had a pervasive inclination to unlawful behavior," writes Kissinger. "On this issue hypocrisy is rampant. Wiretaps may be unpalatable, but they are as ubiquitous as the telephone and almost as old. Wiretapping by past Presidents of both political parties seems to have been more widespread, with fewer safeguards and looser standards, than under Nixon." He points out that the program to tap the 17 individuals was recommended by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, approved by Attorney General Mitchell and ordered by Nixon. "My office did not supply all the names nor was it aware of every wiretap," he writes. Nonetheless, Kissinger concludes, "while electronic surveillance is widely used in 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."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.