Two of the President's Men

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for his expose of the My Lai massacre in Viet Nam, adds new details to the saga, based on interviews and previously unpublished information gathered by the Watergate special prosecutor's office.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.' "