H.R. Haldeman Diary Entries Dec 21 + 22 1971

Audio for the December 21, 1971 entry is on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5UECDu6Ez0

Diary entries by H.R. Haldeman for December 21 and 22, 1971, dealing with attempts by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to spy on the White House:

Tuesday, December 21, 1971 Ehrlichman called, said that he and the Attorney General had to meet with the President and me immediately upon our return tonight, which we did. It turned out that in their investigation of the Jack Anderson leaks, they had uncovered the fact that a yeoman in the NSC shop, assigned to liaison with the Joint Chiefs, was the almost certain source of not only the leaks, but also the absconding of infor-mation from Henry's and Haig's and other people's briefcases, which were turned over to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The President was quite shocked, naturally. by the whole situation and agreed that very strong action had to be taken, but very carefully, since we don't want to blow up the whole relationship with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Apparently they had set up this system for getting the information to them. The question is, who at the Joint Chiefs was aware of it? In any event, Mitchell is going to proceed on the basis of having Henry tell the Admiral that works for him now that he can go ahead and answer questions. The Admiral has refused to answer some of the key questions on the grounds that his personal relationship with Kissinger precludes it. In the meantime they've sort of semisuspended the yeoman and figure that they don't want to prosecute because that would just accelerate the situation. So it's a tough one to figure out.

Postscript: The previous week, columnist Jack Anderson had printed verbatim transcripts from the Washington Special Action Group meetings on India-Pakistan, revealing Kissinger and the President's pressure to "tilt" toward Pakistan despite official neutrality. It had created an uproar in the press, and during our investigation we discovered that a Navy yeoman on the NSC staff had actually been copying classified documents and passing them to his superiors in the Pentagon.

Wednesday, December 22, 1971 We had a long session this afternoon with the Attorney General, John Ehrlichman, and David Young on the NSC security leak problem, which was quite interesting because they have now tracked the thing all the way through. It turns out that Admiral ... was taking the material that the yeoman was stealing from Henry's briefcase and the burnbags and all other sources, sorting it out, and transmitting the pertinent things directly to Admiral Moorer. This creates a highly sensitive situation, since it's directly tied to the fact that the yeoman was also transmitting the India-Pakistan stuff to Jack Anderson, who was running it in the columns. So we have a clear breach of security that's actionable. Although the yeoman hasn't admitted it, his polygraph makes it clear that he did it, plus all the other circumstantial evidence. The President said that Ehrlichman and I should get together with Henry and move on the thing with him, and the President was particularly concerned because Henry and Haig had not raised it with him, although it was such a clear security problem. He can't figure out why they didn't do this when they do know at least some of the particulars. Laird apparently is trying to shut it off completely, and there will undoubtedly be a monumental hush-up all the way around on it.