An Excessive Need to Know

Was it an updating of Seven Days in May, Fletcher Knebel's 1962 novel in which the military tries to take over the U.S. Government? According to news accounts, the Pentagon had planted a spy ring in the White House to ransack Henry Kissinger's classified files and copy documents relating to the National Security Council's most sensitive deliberations. The stolen information was then relayed to Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other Pentagon brass.

The bizarre—but basically true —tale raised a host of disturbing questions. Why did the military have to resort to spying to get information that it claimed was essential to maintain the nation's defenses? Was the Pentagon prying into matters that were none of its business? Were some leaders of the armed forces contemplating a coup? As it turned out, the story of the Pentagon v. the White House was not quite Seven Days in May but several deeply disquieting days in January (when the story first surfaced). It was something less than apocalyptic, but troubling nonetheless to a nation already alarmed about Government duplicity and secrecy. By authorizing the secret surveillance in the first place, by initially denying and finally admitting complicity in the affair, America's military found itself caught in the same kind of unseemly episode that has besmirched the record of the Nixon Administration.

The Plumbers. The Pentagon's snooping occurred in 1971, when the Administration was engaged in a series of delicate foreign policy initiatives—an open-door policy with Peking, arms talks with Moscow, parleys with Hanoi to end the war in Southeast Asia. Fearing that publicity might imperil these negotiations, Nixon and his national security adviser, Kissinger, resolved to keep them secret. Not even Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers were to be fully informed.

For all the precautions, there were still leaks. In June the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon papers. As Nixon later contended: "There was every reason to believe this was a security leak of unprecedented proportions." To find out who was responsible, Nixon created the plumbers, an investigative unit designed to locate and seal off leaks. Yet the unauthorized disclosures continued. In July a Times story outlined the U.S. negotiating position at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in Helsinki.

In December 1971, Columnist Jack Anderson obtained documents that quoted Kissinger as telling his staff that Nixon wanted the U.S. to "tilt" toward Pakistan during its war with India. Infuriated, Kissinger demanded a White House investigation of the leak.

The plumbers soon turned up a prime suspect: Yeoman First Class Charles E. Radford, now 30. He was serving as admiral's writer (military parlance for secretary-stenographer) to Rear Admiral Robert O. Welander, now 49, who was the Joint Chiefs' liaison to the National Security Council. Welander's job was to attend NSC meetings, take notes and brief the Chiefs on what happened, as well as to pass on other authorized data about foreign policy.