Kissinger on the Carpet

The set was certainly familiar, but the actors had changed. Instead of Senator Sam Ervin in the chair of the ornate Caucus Room in the Old Senate Office Building, where the nation had seen and heard Watergate unfold, there sat Senator J. William Fulbright, tan and lean from his vacation. Flanking Fulbright were the members of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

And there in the witness chair, which had been occupied so recently by Dean, Ehrlichman, Haldeman and all the rest, sat Henry Kissinger, resplendent in a diplomatic dark blue suit, his brown hair and brown-rimmed glasses gleaming in the TV lights.

Communication Failure. There was no hostility in the air, but the questions were sharp--and occasionally barbed--as Fulbright's committee began its hearings on Kissinger's nomination as Secretary of State. Since early in Nixon's first term, Fulbright had been irritated by the fact that Kissinger, as a White House assistant, could not be summoned by the Senate to justify his policies.

Right at the start, Fulbright complained that his committee's private and informal meetings with Kissinger had been unsatisfactory and had twice led to a "failure of communication"--once in March 1969 when the Senator understood that the Viet Nam War would soon be ended, and again in April 1970 when he was given no inkling of the surprise invasion of Cambodia that occurred only a week after the meeting.

Kissinger did not dodge the fact that the making of foreign policy in the past had been less than open. He explained: "During the past four years, there were many delicate initiatives that required a high degree of secrecy and concentration of effort. Crucial foundations were laid. Now we need to build a more permanent structure that we can pass on to succeeding Administrations." In so doing, Kissinger pledged, he would work closely and openly with Congress.

The Senators were pleased by that pledge but, despite their respect for Kissinger, they were troubled by some other problems:

THE WIRE TAPS. Kissinger admitted that he had acquiesced in the White House tapping of the phones of 17 newsmen and officials, including some of his own staffers. At the time, Kissinger recalled, the White House was deeply concerned about leaks to reporters of National Security Council material. Justifying his involvement in the tapping, Kissinger sounded much like some of the Watergate characters. The "painful but necessary" process, he said, had been approved by the President, the then Attorney General (John Mitchell) and the FBI director (J. Edgar Hoover). "I had been in the Government only four months, and it didn't occur to me to question the judgment of these individuals." Still, some of the Senators remained concerned about the whole distasteful business, and the committee asked the Justice Department to send up its secret report on the taps this week. Without the report, warned Fulbright, it would be difficult for the committee to proceed with the hearings.

THE BOMBING OF CAMBODIA. Asked if he approved of the secret attacks, Kissinger said, "It was not my role to approve or disapprove; however, I was in agreement with the policy being pursued." Why had the air strikes not been made public? Kissinger said that Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk, who had tacitly agreed to the bombing, would then have had no recourse but to protest. That, in turn, would have left the U.S. with no choice but to stop the attacks or to flout the neutrality of Cambodia. As a general principle, however, Kissinger assured the Senators that he believes that "we cannot conduct foreign policy by deceiving the elected representatives of the people."

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE. The problem was that Kissinger would stay on as the President's assistant while also serving as Secretary of State, and thus might keep some foreign policy secrets from Congress on the ground of White House privilege. Kissinger insisted that he would testify readily on any matter traditionally covered by the Secretary of State, but that he could not discuss "direct communications with the President or actual deliberations of the NSC."

Kissinger is likely to be probed more deeply on these and other subjects when Fulbright's hearings resume this week. But if the Senators satisfy themselves about his role in the wiretaps, he is expected to be approved. He is eager to confront the challenge that he expressed this way: "Where once we ran the risk of thinking we were too good for the world, we might now swing to believing we are not good enough. Where once a soaring optimism tempted us to dare too much, a shrinking spirit could lead us to attempt too little. Such an attitude, and the foreign policy it would produce, would deal a savage blow to global stability." The Senators could hardly disagree.

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