Nixon ordered kissinger to install wiretaps on the phones of

Their efforts pay off; Nixon beats McGovern and gets reelected. Woodward and Bernstein 2 Washington Post reporters investigated the scandal. They believed that the trail of evidence would eventually lead to the White House. During the trial, nobody was talking. Judge gives long sentences up to 40 years to encourage the truth, says he will reduce if they want to cooperate with the investigation.

James McCord testifies and says that Nixon staffers were involved, and an aide testifies and reveals that Nixon records all meeting and phone conversations. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes. When the special prosecutor continued to ask, he had him fired. VP Agnew resigns because he evading taxes, and took bribes. Ford Minority leader replaces him.

Impeachment charges against Nixon for obstruction of justice and abuse of power. August 9 th , Nixon appears on TV and painfully announces that he would leave the office of the Presidency the next day. Nixon resigned, the first President to do so.

A month later, Ford granted Nixon a Presidential pardon…for all offenses against the U. Share this: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.

Email required Address never made public. Name required. Follow Following. Sign me up. Today's posting also includes the full text of the finding aid to the Kissinger telcons collection, created by the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff of the National Archives and Records Administration. The finding aid describes the checkered history of the telcons as follows:.

The federal district court and the US court of appeals both ruled that the documents were government records becuase they were prepared on government time by government employees. In , the Supreme Court, in Kissinger v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, U. Accordingly, at the National Archive's behest, then Secretary of State Edmund Muskie agreed in to re-review the telcons at the LC for possible return to State, However, that review never took place.

In , Dr. Kissinger, upon request from NARA and the State Department following inquiries from researchers [that is, the legal complaint about to be filed in court by the National Security Archive] , gave both agencies copies of the transcripts held at LC. The State Department is reviewing its collection and will release it at a later time. Note: The following documents are in PDF format. You will need to download and install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view. A week after Seymour Hersh had broken the story of the My Lai massacre in the New York Times , Kissinger wanted to make sure that Laird had a "game plane" so that the Pentagon was on "top" of the story.

Laird had known about My Lai since the spring but a witness had gruesome photographs that were appearing in the press. Plainly appalled by the massacre but anxious to avoid having the Pentagon tarred by an atrocity, Laird did not know what to do. While he was inclined to sweep it "under the rug", Laird did not dissent when Kissinger warned him that could not be done. Document 2 : Kissinger and President Richard M. Nixon, 9 December , p.

Anxious about the Cambodian situation, Nixon ordered Kissinger to direct bombing attacks on North Vietnamese forces there "tomorrow.

Air Force was geared to waging nuclear war against the Soviet Union but not for "this war"--conventional bombing operations in Southeast Asia. As Kissinger noted the U. Air Force is not "designed for any war that we are likely to have to fight. Document 3 : Kissinger and General Alexander M. Haig, Jr. A few minutes later after receiving Nixon's call on Cambodia, Kissinger telephoned his military assistant Alexander Haig about the orders from "our friend. These two phone calls illustrate an important feature of the Nixon-Kissinger relationship: while Nixon would, from time to time, make preposterous suggestions no doubt depending on his mood , Kissinger would later decide whether there was a rational kernel in what Nixon had said and whether or how to follow up on it.

Note 1. Document 4 : Kissinger and President Richard M. Nixon, 15 April , p. Two weeks after the North Vietnamese launch their spring offensive on 31 March , Nixon ordered bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, including mining operations at the latter's harbor. When Nixon ordered the bombing campaign he realized there was some chance that it could jeopardize the Moscow summit with Brezhnev scheduled for Moscow later in May.

As this discussion shows, a meeting that Kissinger had with Ambassador Dobrynin earlier in the day indicated that there would be no problem. Employing language that Nixon liked to use, Kissinger disdainfully reported that "Dobrynin was in slobbering over me.

Unless the Soviets "screw us," Kissinger's secret visit, slated for the following week, and the summit would go ahead. Document 5 : Kissinger and Soviet Ambassador to the U.

Anatoli Dobrynin, 15 December , p. In late , the Paris negotiations on the Vietnam War entered an intense and frustrating stage where the North Vietnamese were unwilling to accept conditions proposed by the U. In the first two weeks of December, the talks reached an impasse and were suspended, slated for resumption in early January. Kissinger and Dobrynin discussed Tho's visit to Moscow in condescending terms, with the former suggesting that Le Duc Tho was coming to Moscow "crying on your shoulder.

While Dobrynin shared a laugh with his U. The Soviet ambassador might not have been quite so joking if he had known that Nixon and Kissinger were making decisions to launch a bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Through bombing the North, Nixon and Kissinger hoped to persuade the recalcitrant Saigon regime that it could rely on the Nixon administration to punish Hanoi in the event of future violations of the peace agreement.

Yet, some of the targets were in Hanoi and precision bombing by high-flying Bs was impossible. In a notorious incident, bombs aimed at another target struck Bach Mai hospital in central Hanoi killing 30 people. As is evident from this conversation with Secretary of Defense Laird, the accidental bombing of civilian facilities in North Vietnam triggered international protests. On his way out of the Pentagon, Laird had not supported the bombing strategy recommending diplomatic compromise instead but had been responsible for overseeing the bombing operations.

Thus, he was unhappy to see his agency associated with "lousy stories" about "hospitals and schools" publicized by "leftwing Joan Baez" and other anti-war critics. Laird hoped that Kissinger would bring the problem to Nixon's attention so that a "positive" story about the bombing of military targets could be spun.

Long before he was ready to acknowledge that he had been "terribly wrong" on Vietnam, Robert McNamara privately offered his support for Kissinger's Vietnam War endgame. Apparently a fan, McNamara told Kissinger that he was "the man who finally got us out of there. That McNamara referred to the war as "the damn thing" suggested a deeper level of discomfort that he would not discuss in public for many years. The day after the U.

Senate voted to confirm Kissinger Secretary of State, a New York Times reporter reminded him of an unpleasant subject--the wiretaps that Nixon and Kissinger had approved in to plumb the source of press leaks on the secret bombing of Cambodia.

Crewdson had a new angle from an undisclosed source-- Kissinger's own telephones may have been wiretapped; apparently someone else in the White House had suspected not unreasonably that Kissinger had been involved in press leaks.

Crewdson had been working on the story for some time and wanted to speak with Kissinger before reporting on it. Kissinger responded that he had never been officially told that he had been wiretapped, but he wanted the story to go away: "as far as I'm concerned, I'd just as soon not have any more wiretap stories. Haldeman and his assistant Lawrence Higby later denied that any wiretapping operation had been aimed at Kissinger.

Note 2. Document 9 : Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, 11 October , p. On Wednesday 10 October, a financial scandal forced Vice President Spiro Agnew to resign; kickbacks that he had taken years earlier when he was involved in Maryland politics had come to light. Nixon was already preoccupied by the Watergate scandal and this latest political crisis came only days into the Middle East war. Apparently such developments led Nixon to take comfort in drinking; not a heavy drinker, he did not hold alcohol well.

In any event, Kissinger and Scowcroft agreed that Heath's office should be told the president is not "available" and that the conversation should take place in the morning. Even the smallest incident would be recorded in the transcripts, such as this brief discussion with a startled reporter who found himself speaking with the Secretary of State. Isaacson, Kissinger, pp. Document 1 : Nixon and Kissinger, 11 March , c.

Box Not long after the White House and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin had established a secret "back channel" to the Soviet Union excluding the State Department , Kissinger and Nixon discussed a recent meeting with Dobrynin, as well as Vietnam war negotiations, other developments in Vietnam, the Sino-Soviet border clash, and anti-ballistic missile issues.

At the close of thediscussion, Nixon observed that Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird wanted to "get out" of Vietnam and would "pay a big price" to do so. As the following months would show, Laird would play a key role in forcing troop withdrawals from Vietnam.

Document 2 : Nixon and Kissinger, 14 January , p. As with most of these conversations, much contextual information is needed to make sense of them; moreover, sometimes the transcriber could not even get what the participants were saying, as is evident from occasional blanks in the text. At the close of the call, Nixon talked about his foreign policy innovation "the Nixon doctrine" but revealed his grudges against the late President Kennedy: If a recent speech "was said by the Kennedys the papers would have emoted all over the place.

Document 3 : Nixon and Kissinger, 10 March , a. Source: Nixon Presidential Materials Project. National Security Council Files. Israeli Aid. At the very end of the call, Kissinger raised the issue of the investigation of the My Lai massacre, and advises Nixon to let Secretary of Defense Laird handle it.