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This is why the press leaks that came from American sources and recounted air strikes against the Cambodian sanctuaries struck Nixon and me as so outrageous.
The conviction that such leaks were needlessly jeopardizing American lives, which I shared, caused the President to consult the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI about remedial measures. J. Edgar Hoover recommended wiretaps, which he pointed out had been widely used for these (and other much less clear-cut) purposes by preceding Administrations. The Attorney General affirmed their legality. Nixon ordered them carried out on the basis of explicit criteria of which access to or unauthorized use of classified information was the principal one. 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. I believe now that the more stringent safeguards applied to national security wiretapping since that time reflect an even more fundamental national interest.
A Nation Tearing at Itself
By mid-1969, Nixon had unilaterally begun withdrawing U.S. troops and at the same time launched a major effort to upgrade Saigon 's forces to prepare them for the day when they would be entirely on their own. This program became known as "Vietnam-ization." Kissinger was concerned that this would become a risky strategy. The slow process of withdrawals, he warned, "would become like 'salted peanuts' to the American public; the more troops we withdrew, the more would be expected. In turn, Hanoi might simply decide to wait us out and launch an all-out attack after most American forces had been withdrawn." As it was, Hanoi did not soften its demands: total and immediate U.S. withdrawal, the removal of Saigon's government and the installation of a coalition regime dominated by the Communist Viet Cong. At home, meanwhile, antiwar groups staged nationwide demonstrations on Oct. 15, 1969—the "Moratorium"—even though, as Kissinger notes, "we had gone beyond the program for which they had been demonstrating only nine months previously."
Even with the perspective of ten years, it is difficult to avoid a feeling of melancholy at this spectacle of a nation tearing at itself in the midst of a difficult war. By October the Administration had announced withdrawal of over 50,000 troops and had also accomplished the reduction of B-52 sorties by 20%, of tactical air operations by 25%, and a change in battlefield orders that amounted to a decision to end offensive operations.
The previous Administration had sent almost 550,000 Americans to Viet Nam, had no negotiating proposal except that we would withdraw six months after the North Vietnamese left, and had strongly implied that it would insist on retaining a large residual force thereafter. Yet there was little compunction about harassing and