Seymour Hersh: WATERGATE DAYS

ssue of 2005-06-13 and 20
Posted 2005-06-06

It was late in the evening on May 16, 1973, and I was in the Washington bureau of the Times, immersed in yet another story about Watergate. The paper had been overwhelmed by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s reporting for the Washington Post the previous year, and I was trying to catch up. The subject this time was Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s national-security adviser. I had called Kissinger to get his comment on a report, which the Times was planning to run, that he had been involved in wiretapping reporters, fellow Administration officials, and even his own aides on the National Security Council. At first, he had indignantly denied the story. When I told him that I had information from sources in the Justice Department that he had personally forwarded the wiretap requests to the F.B.I., he was silent, and then said that he might have to resign. The implicit message was that this would be bad for the country, and that the Times would be blamed. A few minutes later, the columnist James Reston, who was a friend of Kissinger’s, padded up to my desk and asked, gently, if I understood that “Henry” was serious about resigning. I did understand, but Watergate was more important than Kissinger.