J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (108 page)

Hampton, an executive of the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company, had a good working relationship with the FBI, one based on “profound mutual trust,” according to Belter. For more than twenty years, he’d handled all the Bureau’s national-security wiretap requests for the Washington area. Highly patriotic, he felt he and the telephone company were making an important contribution to the country’s defenses. But he had warned the agents that if they ever tried to put one over on him, and put on a tap that was not for purposes of national security, he’d cut them off immediately and never give them another thing.
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Gaffney returned in less than an hour with the cable pair numbers of Halperin’s home telephone. Conveniently, a master cable ran from the telephone company to the Old Post Office Building, and a technician was sent downstairs to make the necessary hookup.

There were problems. Halperin lived in Bethesda, Maryland, which meant adding a long loop to the telephone line, which affected the volume and necessitated special amplification equipment, and it was nearly 5:00
P.M.
before the equipment was functioning.

After this, the procedure was fairly simple. When there was an incoming or
an outgoing call on the line, a red light on the console would come on, and the monitor, who was wearing headphones, would plug his jack into the console with one hand, hit the start switch on the tape recorder with the other, and begin listening, at the same time making notes, which he’d later, replaying the tapes if necessary, expand into a typewritten summary, or log, of the calls received that day.

Verbatim transcriptions of entire conversations weren’t made unless deemed necessary, while the tapes themselves were usually destroyed every two weeks by erasing them. Technically, it was an uncomplicated audio system and, contrary to popular myth, it produced neither clicks nor feedback on the line.

It did, however, generate considerable paperwork. In addition to the logs, which were made in two copies—one for the case officer, the other for the confidential file room—there were ELSUR index cards, again in duplicate, with the name of each person heard on the tapes; a cable pair book; the use of file, classification, serial, and case numbers, if the materials were to go into the master files; a symbol assignment book (a symbol was used to indicate, to authorized FBI personnel, that the source of the material was a wiretap); indexing; and so on.

But not in this case. Sullivan wanted no paper, beyond the single copy of the daily log. Except for that scrap of notes which Jones had brought in, and which Belter had already destroyed, they didn’t even have written authorization. This was one of the things that bothered Belter.

Another, of lesser import, was that there was no traffic on the line. However, because the next day was a Saturday and he didn’t want to have to come in to confirm that the tap was working, Belter stuck around past his usual departure time. At 6:20
P.M.
, however, the monitor reported traffic. A voice, which the monitor soon recognized as that of Dr. Halperin, was on the line. Officially the tap was now operational.

Because this was a “White House special,” one of the few Belter could recall, he assigned two monitors to the number, telling them only that it involved “the leak of information”—so loose a term they’d find it necessary to take down anything even possibly relevant—and then he went home, taking with him that nagging concern, which would bother him all weekend.

Unknown to Ernie Belter, Court Jones was worrying about it too.
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Saturday morning the Kissinger aide Colonel Alexander M. Haig, Jr., came to Sullivan’s office and requested wiretaps on four people, three National Security Council staff members and an assistant to the secretary of defense. The request was made on “the highest authority,” Haig stated (by which Sullivan presumed he meant Kissinger or the president), and involved “a matter of most grave and serious consequences to our national security.” Haig “kept pounding away at that point,” Sullivan recalled; “he was himself personally very disturbed and upset by this and he said Dr. Kissinger was even more so,” that
Dr. Kissinger “considered his entire policy would be ruined unless these leaks could be stopped and that damage to the country would be irreparable.”
⁵⁴

Haig also stressed that the matter was “so sensitive it demands handling on a need-to-know basis, with no record maintained. In fact, he said, if possible it would be desirable to have the matter handled without going to the Department”—skipping the attorney general. But Sullivan told him the AG was already aware of the problem.

Rather than send the product to his office, Haig suggested he come to Sullivan’s office and read it there. That way they would maintain tighter control.
⁵⁵

Looking over the four names, Sullivan found one that was familiar. He didn’t tell Haig, however, that Halperin was already being tapped.

Sullivan was unable to reach the director that day—Helen Gandy took a message but wouldn’t relay the call, which meant Hoover was probably at the races—but Sullivan did talk to him on Sunday, repeating Haig’s requests.

From his handling of the matter, it was apparent that Hoover already saw its blackmail potential.

“Do it just the way the White House wants it done,” he instructed Sullivan, meaning he should put on the other taps, “but make sure everything is on paper.”
⁵⁶

If Haig wanted to read the logs in Sullivan’s office, that was fine; but a summary of the logs should be hand delivered by a special systems courier (which required a signed receipt) to
both
the president and Dr. Kissinger. The Bureau would, of course, keep copies. And each of the taps should be authorized, in writing, by Attorney General Mitchell.

Nothing was to be oral. Everything was to be on paper. And all the paper would be safely stored in one place, in the director’s own office. Later, when he was under fire and even his own office no longer seemed safe, Hoover amended these instructions and asked Sullivan to keep the materials in
his
office. It was a decision he regretted until the day he died.

The director was not the only one obsessed with paper. It was an occupational hazard of the FBI.

Monday morning, May 12, having worried all weekend, Ernie Belter voiced his concern to Court Jones. Everyone at headquarters knew that Bill Sullivan and the director had been feuding, that there was a lot of tension. All they had by way of authorization for the tap was a single telephone call. From Sullivan.

“God, I hope Sullivan isn’t freewheeling and dealing direct with the White House and cutting out the regular routine.” Bypassing the attorney general was one thing—that was common enough—but what if he was cutting out the director himself? It was a frightening thought, and Jones, who admitted he’d been worrying about the same thing, said he’d make some inquiries.

Later that same day, however, they received the authorization—signed by both the AG and the director—not only legitimizing the Halperin tap but adding three others; greatly relieved, they set to work adding the new taps.
Still, “it made us a little bit nervous,” Belter recalled, “the fact that we were covering White House people…people still in the White House.” Frequently they picked up Henry Kissinger, who talked as if he were aware his every utterance was being recorded—as he, of course, was—and on occasion there was even the familiar voice of President Nixon.
⁵⁷

On May 20 both Kissinger and Haig came to Sullivan’s office and read all of the logs. When the president’s foreign-policy adviser had finished, he remarked to Sullivan, “It is clear that I don’t have anybody in my office that I can trust except Colonel Haig here.”
⁵⁸
He then added two more names, both of NSC staff members.

By this time Sullivan was getting the impression that Kissinger had been bitten by the secrecy bug, that his main interest was in hearing what other people were saying about him.

Two months after the start of the program, Sullivan, desperately needing the personnel and equipment for a major espionage investigation, asked Hoover if he could remove the taps.

“No, the White House put them on; let them take them off,” the director responded. “This is not an FBI operation. This is a White House operation.”
⁵⁹

When Sullivan suggested to Haig that the taps had failed in their purpose—there was still no clue as to the source of the
New York Times
leak—Haig, after checking with Kissinger, insisted the taps be kept on, so “a pattern of innocence” could be established.
⁶⁰

In all there would be seventeen wiretaps, ranging in duration from five weeks to twenty-one months, the longest being that of Morton Halperin, who was tapped for a year and a half after he left the NSC and no longer had access to classified documents. Those tapped included seven NSC staff members, four newsmen, two White House advisers, a deputy assistant secretary of state, a State Department ambassador, a brigadier general with the Defense Department, and one of Nixon’s speech writers.
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Henry Kissinger ordered fourteen of the wiretaps, John Mitchell two, and H. R. Haldeman one.

No national-security leaks were ever discovered. The White House never did
learn who leaked the Cambodia bombing story, but much was learned about the social contacts, vacation plans, marital disputes, mental problems, drinking habits, drug use, and sex lives of those who were tapped, as well as their wives, children, relatives, and friends.
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According to Richard Nixon, the taps produced “just gobs and gobs of material: gossip and bullshitting.” “The taping was a very, very unproductive thing,” he later told John Dean on one of the White House tapes. “I’ve always known that. At least, I’ve never, it’s never been useful in any operation I’ve ever conducted.”
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But those immediately under the president felt differently. By putting taps on two of their closest aides, Henry Kissinger was able to spy on Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers.

The “gobs and gobs of material” also contained a vast amount of political information. Some samples:

Two of those tapped left the government and went to work for the Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. His campaign plans were duly reported, as was LBJ’s decision not to endorse Muskie.

A tap on the reporter Henry Brandon yielded special dividends. Brandon’s wife was a close friend of Joan Kennedy, which enabled the White House to pick up Mrs. Kennedy’s comments about her husband following his accident at Chappaquiddick.
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In December 1969 Hoover informed the president that the former secretary of defense Clark Clifford was planning to write a magazine article criticizing Nixon’s Vietnam policy. Ehrlichman to Haldeman: “This is the sort of early warning system we need more of—your game planners are now in an excellent position to map anticipatory action.”
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Haldeman to Jeb Magruder: “I agree with John’s point. Let’s get going.”
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In May 1970, a year after the first tap was installed, Hoover met with Nixon and Haldeman in the Oval Office, and it was decided to eliminate Kissinger from the distribution chain. Thereafter all the summaries were sent to Haldeman. By now there wasn’t even the pretense of looking for leaks: the taps were being used solely to collect political intelligence—and, ironically, to keep an eye on Henry Kissinger.

Meanwhile, stacks and stacks of paper accumulated—thirty-four summary memorandums to the President, thirty-seven to Kissinger, fifty-two to Haldeman,
fifteen to Ehrlichman. To maintain tighter security, it was decided that all the summaries and related correspondence should be returned to the Bureau for safekeeping.

There was one other White House-ordered surveillance during this period. This one was not ordered by Kissinger but was apparently used by Ehrlichman to spy on him.

In June 1969 Ehrlichman asked the FBI to tap the home telephone of the nationally syndicated columnist Joseph Kraft. But “Hoover didn’t want to do Kraft,” Nixon would tell Dean,
⁶⁵
and so Ehrlichman gave the assignment to John Caulfield, the ex-NYPD cop, and John Ragan, a former FBI agent who was chief of security for the Republican National Committee.
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A twenty-three-year veteran of the Bureau, Ragan had headed the thirty-five-man New York City tech squad, in charge of all wiretapping in Manhattan and the boroughs. But Ragan’s expertise was wasted, for, after he had shinnied up the telephone pole behind Kraft’s Georgetown residence to install the tap, it was learned that the columnist was in Paris covering the Vietnam peace negotiations. Apparently not wishing to use the CIA, Ehrlichman asked Hoover for coverage, and William Sullivan flew to Paris, where he arranged for the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, the French equivalent of the FBI, to put a bug in Kraft’s hotel room at the George V. It was learned that Kraft had interviewed the North Vietnamese delegates, but then so had many of the other reporters covering the talks. Reports were sent to FBIHQ, then hand carried to the White House. (As a thank-you gift, for his professional courtesy, the FBI director sent Jean Rochet, head of the DSTR, an autographed photograph.)

That fall the White House requested a round-the-clock physical surveillance on Kraft. After Hoover pointed out that it was too dangerous, a compromise was reached, and for six weeks, from November 5 to December 12, the columnist was placed under “a selective spot surveillance in the evenings to check on his social contacts.”
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“I’m baffled as to why they did it,” Kraft later told the author David Wise, after the FBI surveillances became known. “I just can’t fit it into the life in Washington that I know and that I lead.”
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Kraft’s social life was apparently the clue. He and his wife, Polly, moved in the same Georgetown social circles as did Kissinger and his starlet of the moment. It was a “Henry” and “Joe” relationship. And Joe had himself been the recipient of more than a few of Henry’s own choice leaks.