The Nation: More Evidence: Huge Case for Judgment

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Kissinger have convinced me that he was not the originator, in the fundamental sense of the word, of any of these taps." Indeed, FBI memos in the new committee evidence show that Kissinger supplied only three names: Lord, Lake and Smith, who had written an article in June 1969 on the Administration's then unannounced plans to remove nuclear weapons from Okinawa.

Next week Kissinger will appear again before the Foreign Relations Committee to answer questions. The now prevailing interpretation: Kissinger approved of the wiretaps, and his forceful demand that the leaks be plugged may well have been a major factor in the President's decision to order them. But Kissinger only supplied names on request for a program that had already been ordered by the President.

The Judiciary Committee's evidence details for the first time the frantic efforts by the White House to keep the wiretap data secret. On July 12, 1971, the President ordered Robert Mardian, then Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Internal Security Division, to get the data from William Sullivan at the FBI. According to FBI interviews of Mardian, he showed the materials to Kissinger, Haldeman and Alexander Haig, Kissinger's assistant. Then, he says, he delivered the files to the Oval Office. Mardian was asked: "Did you give the bag [containing the wiretap files] to Mr. Nixon, the President of the United States?" His reply: "I cannot answer that question."

Mardian's answer, which implies that the President indeed saw the wiretap transcripts, could have an important bearing on the impeachment case. Reason: the evidence suggests, though it does not prove, a crucial connection between the wiretap records and the then ongoing trial of Daniel Ellsberg. The evidence shows that 15 conversations between Ellsberg and Halperin were included in the two boxes of wiretap data on Ellsberg. When William Matthew Byrne Jr., the judge in Ellsberg's trial, learned of the wiretaps and was advised of the break-in at the office of Dr. Lewis Fielding, Ellsberg's psychiatrist, he dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and declared a mistrial because of Government misconduct. Possibly the President wanted to cover up all the wiretap data in order to keep secret the surveillance material on Ellsberg, so as not to damage the Government's case against him.

Another piece of evidence in the committee's volumes makes this interpretation plausible. On April 18, 1973, while the Ellsberg trial was still under way, Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen called to tell the President that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy had broken into Dr. Fielding's office. The President's curt reply: "I know about that. That's a national security matter. Your mandate is Watergate. Stay out of that." In mid-April, the Justice Department began to advise Judge Byrne of the Government's covert activities involving Ellsberg. On May 11, the case was dismissed.

The impeachment evidence contains much other new material on the President's role in the Ellsberg case.

> A transcript of a presidential tape, not previously disclosed, casts doubt on Nixon's claim that the Pentagon papers case was a matter of national security. The President and John Dean talked on July 24, 1971, about a New York Times article that contained secret material