Two of the President's Men

By WALTER ISAACSON

Hersh raises more questions Wiretapping National Security Council aides was a dirty business, and everybody in the White House and FBI knew it. Kissinger's method of handling it was simple: he put Haig in charge." Thus does Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh, in an article in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, assess once again the evidence that former National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and his aide Alexander Haig were deeply involved in some of the murky plots of Richard Nixon's White House.

Hersh's indictment reignites the controversy over the culpability of two of the foremost survivors of the Watergate era, the past and present Secretaries of State. For Haig, the story comes at a particularly awkward time, as he struggles with foreign policy crises in the South Atlantic and Middle East while fending off what he perceives as challenges to his authority within the Reagan Administration. For Kissinger, it comes on the heels of the publication of his own memoirs about that troubled period, Years of Upheaval, in which he describes his admitted involvement in the wiretap operation as "the part of my public service about which I am most ambivalent."

The latest story raises the abiding Watergate question: What did we already know, and when did we know it? Hersh, 45, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his expose of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, adds new details to the saga, based on interviews and previously unpublished information gathered by the Watergate special prosecutor's office. But most of the ground has been well turned before. Indeed, it was first explored by Hersh who, while a reporter with the New York Times, in 1973 revealed the extent of Kissinger's role in the wiretappings.

In his Atlantic article, which was drawn from a book to be published next year, Hersh sets out to prove that Kissinger and Haig were not merely passive participants in the bugging operation. His investigation shows that they instigated and closely monitored many of the 17 wiretaps that were placed between 1969 and 1971. In his memoirs, Kissinger denies that he had the power to order such a program. Says he: "It would have been unthinkable for a brand-new recruit to the Nixon entourage ... pulling off in his third month in office the initiative for and institution of a law enforcement program in the exclusive jurisdiction of such heavyweights as [Attorney General] John Mitchell and [FBI Director] J. Edgar Hoover."

Hersh also writes that:

> Kissinger was obsessed with undermining the influence of Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers by denigrating them behind their backs and excluding them from major policy matters. "Cutting out Mel Laird is what we did for a living," says former Kissinger Staffer Laurence Lynn. Hersh says that Laird was bypassed in the decision to bomb Cambodia.

> Nixon was sometimes drunk in the evenings and unable to deal with urgent matters. Hersh quotes former NSC aide Roger Morris: "There were many times when a cable would come in late and Henry would say, 'There's no sense waking him up--he'd be incoherent.' "

> Despite Kissinger's denials that he knew any details of the plumbers' operation, which was managed partly by his former aide David Young, Haig passed on to Kissinger information about the group's leak-plugging activities, according to a private journal kept by an anonymous NSC aide and shown to Hersh. In his memoirs, Kissinger says the extent of his knowledge about the plumbers' activities, in which he played no role, is an "essentially pointless question."

> Kissinger, Hersh speculates with no documentation, pandered to Nixon's anti-Semitism by not objecting to the President's castigations of "liberal Jews" and by ordering wiretaps on four Jewish aides. Hersh does not suggest that Kissinger was antiSemitic, but says, "Being Jewish was a chink in his armor."

One sidelight in the Atlantic article is a tale of blackmail that indirectly reveals the source for Hersh's 1973 story linking Kissinger to the wiretap orders. In an effort to win appointment as FBI director that year, former Assistant Director William C. Sullivan, who was the FBI liaison with Kissinger and Haig in the wiretapping operation, sent a pointed memo outlining his knowledge of the wiretaps to Kissinger, in order to force Kissinger's support. When Sullivan was not chosen, Hersh writes that Sullivan carried out his implicit threat and leaked to the New York Times copies of the wiretap authorizations implicating Kissinger. The frontpage article, attributed to information from Justice Department sources, was written by Hersh, who has pursued the story doggedly ever since.

In addition to producing a few new bits of evidence on the wiretapping operation, Hersh paints a detailed picture of the infighting and backbiting in the Nixon Administration. Hersh argues that the overriding motive, especially on the part of Kissinger and his staff, was a quest for authority and power. At times Hersh's zeal in pursuing Kissinger has spilled beyond the bounds of journalistic propriety. Last year he wrote a surprising 23,000-word correction of previous New York Times stories that implicated former U.S. Ambassador to Chile Edward Korry in the coup there in 1973. Korry says that in return for the retraction he provided Hersh with some information for the Kissinger book.

Haig answered questions about his involvement in the wiretapping at his confirmation hearings last year and was able to satisfy the Senate about his role. The Senate also concluded at Kissinger's own confirmation hearings in 1973 and during a follow-up investigation a year later that Kissinger was not materially involved in the wiretapping. Says former Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski: "I find myself in sympathy with Kissinger regarding the allegations made by Hersh. Nothing that would suggest that Kissinger was in any way involved [with any improper acts] ever came to our attention."

With the tenth anniversary this June of the break-in by Nixon's burglars into the Democratic headquarters, the country will no doubt examine and re-examine the whole Watergate affair, and debate once again the culpability of all those in Nixon's White House. --By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by Hays Corey/Washington and Peter Stoler/New York

With reporting by Hays Corey/Washington, Peter Stoler/New York

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