The Nation: More Evidence: Huge Case for Judgment

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criticize Nixon. A letter from Hoover to Nixon dated Dec. 29, 1969, states that the tap on Halperin disclosed that Clifford was preparing an article for LIFE critical of the Administration's Viet Nam policy. This tip was fed to Jeb Stuart Magruder, then White House deputy director of communications. In a memo to H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Magruder urged a drive to counteract Clifford's article by, among other things, "relating some of Clifford's activities to the press that would indicate the hypocrisy of his position." Ehrlichman wrote to Haldeman:

"This is the kind of early warning we need more of—your game planners are now in an excellent position to map anticipatory action." In another handwritten memo Haldeman told Magruder: "I agree with John's point. Let's get going."

After the taps were on for only a few weeks, it had already become clear, to the FBI at least, that they were turning up no national security leaks. Indeed, the entire 21-month program did not uncover a single such leak—a fact the President seemed to recognize when he told John Dean on Feb. 28, 1973, that "they never helped us. Just gobs and gobs of material: gossip and bull shitting."

Yet the tapping continued for months after its uselessness to security became obvious. In May 1970, the FBI was ordered to stop giving wiretap logs to Henry Kissinger, then the President's national security adviser, and turn them over to Haldeman, the President's chief of staff and one of his main political advisers.

Who initiated the national security wiretaps? A Hoover memo dated May 9, 1969, points to Kissinger. "Dr. Henry A. Kissinger ... called from Key Biscayne ..." the memo states. "He advised that there is a story on the front page [of the New York Times] by [William Beecher] which is extraordinarily damaging and uses secret information. * Dr. Kissinger said they wondered whether I could make a major effort to find out where that came from. I said I would."

Two later memos from Hoover similarly name Kissinger as the initiator of taps on his aides, Winston Lord and Lake, and New York Times Reporter Hedrik Smith. But Kissinger has hotly disputed this, saying at his Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination as Secretary of State that his only role in the wiretap program was to supply the names of people who might have had access to classified material. When leaks from the Judiciary Committee raised doubts about his version, Kissinger angrily threatened to resign unless his name was cleared.

Kissinger's version of the events has considerable backing. His defenders have pointed out that Hoover was in the habit of name-dropping in his request for wiretap authorizations. Moreover, after some apparent indecision in the White House, President Nixon two weeks ago sent a letter to J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which he took all responsibility for ordering the wiretaps. Former Attorney General Elliot Richardson, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 1973, offered an explanation that backed Kissinger while also accounting for Hoover's memos. Richardson testified that "although he is identified in the FBI record as having requested the taps directly ... my discussions with Dr.