Richard Nixon—Henry Kissinger

The relationship between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger was tested on two fronts: the disclosure that Kissinger may have authorized national-security wiretaps, and his sustained advice that Nixon distance himself from former aides under investigation for the Watergate scandal. The evidence depicts Kissinger as a senior adviser whose own conduct became a subject of inquiry and whose counsel to the President diverged from the course Nixon pursued. It does not establish that Nixon directed the taps or accepted Kissinger’s recommendations.

Wiretap authorizations under scrutiny

On May 14, the administration disclosed that 17 wiretaps had been ordered during its 1969–71 search for news leaks. The taps had targeted 13 government officials and four reporters. Their logs, which had been missing, were found in John Ehrlichman’s White House office safe. The announcement left an unresolved question: who had authorized the surveillance? That inquiry brought Kissinger’s connection to the investigation into public view.

A senior FBI official told Bob Woodward that some authorizations had reached the bureau orally or by letter from Kissinger. A former FBI official independently confirmed that Kissinger had given some authorizations. Woodward then called Kissinger, explaining that two FBI sources said he had personally authorized taps on his own aides. The allegation placed the National Security Adviser not merely near the leak investigation but in a possible authorizing role. The available account, however, does not say that Nixon ordered the taps, or that Kissinger acted at his direction.

Kissinger’s replies did not settle the question. He first suggested that H. R. Haldeman might have authorized the taps, then said he did not believe the allegation about himself. Asked whether that was a denial, he paused and said, “I frankly don’t remember.” He offered a possible explanation: he might have supplied the FBI with the names of people who had seen or handled leaked documents, and the bureau might have construed that information as authorization. In some cases, he said, he could have identified document handlers to his deputy, Alexander Haig, who might then have passed the information to the FBI. That account described a potential path by which information moved from Kissinger’s office to investigators; it did not clearly establish whether Kissinger had authorized surveillance.

When Woodward pointed out that his sources described personal authorization, Kissinger answered, “Almost never.” The qualification left open the possibility of exceptions without specifying any. He then objected that he did not have to submit to police interrogation, but added that, if the taps were possible and had occurred, he had to take responsibility: “I’m responsible for this office.” The distinction matters to the relationship: Kissinger accepted institutional responsibility for his office while remaining uncertain, and at points resistant, about his personal role. When Woodward asked whether he had done it, Kissinger asked, “You aren’t quoting me?” The exchange records an unresolved inquiry, not a confession or a demonstrated connection to Nixon’s orders.

Advice on Nixon’s response

By the time the Watergate investigation had widened, Kissinger and Haig had been urging Nixon for more than six months to sever his ties with three former aides closest to him: Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Charles Colson. The advice reflected their growing doubts about the President’s course. It also proposed a different political and legal posture: separate the presidency from the aides who had become principal targets of the special prosecutor’s investigation.

Nixon instead built his legal defense in concert with the three men and continued to meet with them and speak with them by telephone. During the summer of 1973, Kissinger tried to persuade him to disavow the former aides publicly and accept a measure of responsibility for Watergate. The recommendation thus went beyond a private warning about the risks of association. It called for a public break and for the President to acknowledge some responsibility. The evidence describes the proposal and the President’s contrary course, but does not specify every conversation between the two men or Nixon’s private reasoning.

The recommendation met an angry response from Ron Ziegler, who rejected it with the words, “Contrition is bullshit.” In the account of the episode, that response marks the sharp contrast between Kissinger’s proposed course and the White House’s defense of the President. It should not be mistaken for a verbatim exchange between Nixon and Kissinger: the evidence attributes the quoted rebuff to Ziegler. What it establishes is that Kissinger’s counsel—to disavow the aides and accept some responsibility—was not the line the administration adopted.

A divided White House

The two strands of the relationship reveal different kinds of exposure. In the wiretap inquiry, Kissinger’s own actions and the chain of communication from his office to the FBI were under question. His answer shifted between an alternative attribution to Haldeman, lack of recollection, a possible explanation involving information passed through Haig, and an acknowledgment of responsibility for his office. These statements leave personal authorization unsettled; they do not show that Nixon authorized the surveillance or that Kissinger acted on Nixon’s instructions.

In the Watergate crisis, by contrast, the evidence is clear about the divergence in counsel and conduct. Kissinger and Haig advised Nixon to cut ties with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Colson and, in Kissinger’s case, to accept some public responsibility. Nixon maintained his association with the three and constructed his defense alongside them. The relationship therefore appears not simply as a hierarchy in which an adviser transmitted the President’s wishes, but as one in which Kissinger could press for a different response while Nixon followed another course.

By late February 1974, the special prosecution force had obtained guilty pleas from Magruder, Porter, Donald Segretti, Herbert Kalmbach, Fred LaRue, Egil Krogh, and John Dean. On March 1, a grand jury indicted seven former White House and campaign aides for conspiracy to obstruct justice, including Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, and Mitchell. Those developments supplied the immediate context for the earlier advice to separate the President from his former aides. They do not prove what Nixon and Kissinger privately said to one another, but they show how consequential the choice between Kissinger’s recommended separation and Nixon’s continued alignment had become.