43. Editorial Note

The wiretapping of National Security Council staff members, other administration officials, and journalists that began in May 1969 has been treated in a number of studies, among them the following: Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, pages 156–162; Roger Morris, Haig: The General’s Progress, pages 147–167; Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), especially pages 83–97, 318–325; Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), especially pages 212–227, 497–500; and David Wise, The American Police State: The Government Against the People (New York: Random House, 1976), pages 31–106. Henry Kissinger, Haig, and President Nixon all discussed the wiretapping in their memoirs: Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, pages 386–390; Kissinger, White House Years, pages 252–253, and Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982), pages 118–122, 426–429, 1114–1119; and Haig, Inner Circles, especially 213–223.

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Documentation on the wiretapping can be found in a number of locations. Both Seymour Hersh (Price of Power, pages 646–647) and Walter Isaacson ( Kissinger: A Biography, pages 789–791) include helpful information on sources. Among those sources they highlight are Dr. Kissinger’s Role in Wiretapping: Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), and the depositions and other material generated by Morton Halperin’s lawsuit against Kissinger, Halperin v. Kissinger, U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C., case 1187–73. Neither the National Security Council files in the Nixon Presidential Materials at the National Archives nor the NSC files for the first Nixon administration held by the National Security Council contain relevant documentation. However, the records of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force at the National Archives, RG 460, contain extensive documentation in a series entitled Plumbers Task Force, Gray/Wiretap Investigations. Included are many internal Federal Bureau of Investigation memoranda, Director J. Edgar Hoover’s letters and memoranda to Nixon, Kissinger, and Attorney General Mitchell, interviews with FBI agents who participated in the wiretapping, chronologies, and other material. While Henry Kissinger’s papers at the Library of Congress contain very little documentation on the wiretapping that dates from the 1969–1970 period (see footnote 4, Document 41, and Document 49), his file on Halperin v. Kissinger in Box CL 423 includes his statements regarding wiretapping made in connection with: 1) court cases; 2) his 1973 confirmation hearings as Secretary of State; and 3) his 1974 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Also included is a compendium of those statements arranged chronologically that was prepared in 1976 by the Legal Adviser of the Department of State.