Nixon and Aides Discuss Pentagon Spies December 22 1971

“I want a direct question about homosexuality asked.”

DECEMBER 22, 1971:
THE PRESIDENT, MITCHELL, AND EHRLICHMAN, 11:03 A.M,
OVAL OFFICE

The day after finding out that a Pentagon liaison to the National Security Council has been passing secrets to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Nixon and his aides discuss further questioning of the suspects, threatening Henry Kissinger, the astonishing amount of contacts that journalist Jack Anderson has, and the need for secrecy.

Transcript by Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter.

Conversation taken from the following audio file:
http://nixontapeaudio.org/chron2/rmn_e640a.mp3

Segment one runs from 37:32 to 44:32, segment two runs from 46:39 to 48:35.

Clip with audio of conversation accompanied by transcript is on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbptxaSVFUM

SEGMENT ONE

NIXON: Any verdict at all on this?
EHRLICHMAN: Yes and no. This fellow’s undergone a thorough polygraph exam.
NIXON: Good.
MITCHELL: This is the yeoman [Charles Radford]?
EHRLICHMAN: The yeoman.
NIXON: Yeah.
EHRLICHMAN: And I’m going to have [Radford’s supervisor, Admiral Robert] Welander up at one o’clock, and tape an interview with him. Henry [Kissinger] has signed a letter instructing Welander—
NIXON: Henry, does he know what we’re up to yet now?
EHRLICHMAN: I just put the letter under his nose and he signed it. So, we’ll know more in the middle of the afternoon than we do right now.
NIXON: The problem that I, after sleeping on it, one thing I—John, when you approach him, I want him to ask. I want a direct question about homosexuality asked. You never know what you’re going to find.
EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hmm.
NIXON: Because we dug up a couple on Hiss and Chambers, you know. Nobody knows that, but that’s the background on how that one began. They were both that way. And relationships sometimes poison a lot of these things. Now, if Anderson, I’m just getting, but if there’s any possibility of this, John, that could be a key as well. If something, he may be under blackmail.

(redacted natsec)

EHRLICHMAN: They’ve got a perfect excuse for reinterrogating him [Radford], because of yesterday’s Anderson column. And the question of whether this fellow had access to that. So I’m going to get into that, and then slide into this other thing in passing. Because the interrogator first thing this morning got him all upset.
MITCHELL: This is the polygraph again?
EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
NIXON: Yeah. The thing that concerns me, John, and I think your strategy is exactly right, except with one thing that I would worry about. This guy is a potential Ellsberg, in terms of, and he knows more. He knows—
EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
NIXON: Because he really knows what happens. Now, fortunately, what he knows is not anything that’s going to be, in my view, I wouldn’t have it all come out, but it’s better for it not to. The point is: is there any way that we can keep him scared to death, so that he doesn’t get out and think, “Oh, I’m now going to write the book, or I’m going to do this, or that or the other thing”? Can he be told that a criminal, I think he’s got to be told that a criminal offense hangs over him, that it’s going to hang over him, and that we’re going to be, you see what I mean? I’d like to scare the son of a bitch to death!
MITCHELL: I would believe—
NIXON: And if, do you believe that’s what you ought to do?
MITCHELL: Yes.
NIXON: Do you agree we should?
MITCHELL: We talked about that yesterday, Mr. President. I think the sign-off on this guy, when he’s sent to wherever he’s going to be sent, is going to be just that. You can sit down and read the statutes to him, and the background, and the sentences, and so forth, and really give him a good understanding of what is going to be in his background for a long time to come. I think this, if anything will keep this fellow from opening up, will be that.
NIXON: I think it’s important just to silence him. Correct? Fine. And also, the important thing is to handle the captain—and the admiral [Welander]—in a way that they do not talk.
EHRLICHMAN: Well, they’re career, and I suspect that that’s enough leverage—
NIXON: And they’re probably loyal fellows.
EHRLICHMAN: I suspect so.
NIXON: They’re just doing it for the service. This fellow, I think they’d be shocked to know what this guy did.
EHRLICHMAN: Oh, they know! They’re the—
NIXON: They know about the packet?
EHRLICHMAN: Absolutely!
NIXON: Oh.
EHRLICHMAN: Absolutely! See, they—Welander and the captain—used him!
NIXON: And they knew that he was stealing from Kissinger?
EHRLICHMAN: Oh, they had to! They had to.
NIXON: Jesus Christ!
EHRLICHMAN: I just don’t see any escape from that.
NIXON: Well, that’s the reason they need to be transferred. If they knew he was stealing from Kissinger—
EHRLICHMAN: See, the complicity there—
NIXON: Yeah. If they knew that, they have to be transferred.
MITCHELL: This is the only way you’re going to have a deterrent on future such operations.
NIXON: Right. That’s why you’ve got to have Moorer, you’re going to do him when?
MITCHELL: Well, your suggestion was to let this fester.
NIXON: Yeah.
EHRLICHMAN: Well, now, I’m going to interrogate Welander today at one.
NIXON: That’s fine.
EHRLICHMAN: And then we’ll just let it sit for a bit, and regroup, and we can compare notes and see where we go from here, depending on what we get. But I hope from this interrogation comes an admission from him that he has been passing this stuff to the Joint Chiefs, so that we can complete the chain. That’s the missing link right now. One thing that concerns me a little bit: I met Hughes’s [James Hughes, military aide to Nixon] successor this morning, and he is from the Joint Chiefs. Now, I don’t know that everybody in the outfit’s tainted, but—
NIXON: Mm-hmm.
EHRLICHMAN: It rang a bell just because I’m kind of alert to that these days.
NIXON: Hmm.
MITCHELL: And Welander, Welander’s going to have a pretty difficult time not talking to the subject matter.
EHRLICHMAN: That’s right. Oh, he’s, he’s going to have to talk to it.
MITCHELL: Yeah.
EHRLICHMAN: Or that’s the end of his career. I think that’s his choice.
NIXON: [unclear] This son of a bitch Anderson [reporter Jack Anderson] really knows how to work on us.
EHRLICHMAN: He does. He’s a master.
MITCHELL: He has more people around this government than, I guess, anybody has ever had. Far more than Drew Pearson ever had.
NIXON: Well, he got them from Pearson. He was Pearson’s leg man.
MITCHELL: Yes, I know, but he—
NIXON: He was all over the town!
MITCHELL: He’s developed a lot more of them.
NIXON: He developed them all around.
MITCHELL: Yeah.
NIXON: I certainly would say this: I’d watch around. I’d see anybody that’s—he was close to Wally Hickel [former Secretary of the Interior], as I recall. I just think that—
MITCHELL: Does he have—
NIXON: I think we better check everybody that Anderson knows and talks to. I really think we better do that, you know, if we want to find out where it leads, what he believes, if that’s gonna help us.
EHRLICHMAN: I’m not so sure. I think his regular sources are not a problem for us. That is, Safire [William Safire, speechwriter], if he’s a source, or something like that—
NIXON: Yeah.
EHRLICHMAN: That’s not a problem.
NIXON: Yeah.
EHRLICHMAN: It’s the hidden guys like this, who bootleg stuff to him, that we just stumble onto occasionally that we’ve got to root out. Now, I don’t know how you find those people.
MITCHELL: Have you had a report on a check-back on his columns yet?
EHRLICHMAN: No, not yet. David [Young] may have it for me when he comes in.

SEGMENT TWO

NIXON: Well, incidentally, on this, I think you’ve done a marvelous job of sleuthing. This is a great job of, of detective work—
EHRLICHMAN: Well—
NIXON: —and one day we’ll write it. But the point is now, as I say, John, your strategy is correct. We can’t blow it. But we ought to get out of this. Keep this guy under wraps by scaring him to death. And something’s got to hang over it. And second, use this as a device, of course, to clean out the Joint Chiefs operation. And third, you got to get to Henry. Now, you’ve got to get to Henry another way. Henry, we all know State leaks, and tries to jive Henry, and vice versa. On the other hand, Henry is paranoiacal with regard to anything that comes out. He says, “Well, it’s somebody at State,” you know, “Rogers is doing this,” or something. Now you, we’ve got to get to the point, he’s got to have it brought home to him that he’s got to look to his own shop, and not always assume that somebody else is doin’ it to him. Right?
MITCHELL: And there has to be ordered in there that security officer.
NIXON: That’s right.
EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, yeah.
NIXON: Mm-hmm.
EHRLICHMAN: And I think we’ll get Young to sit down with him, because Young knows that system so well. Sit down with the security officer and give him everything he knows, so the guy starts out ahead of the game a little bit.
NIXON: Yeah.
EHRLICHMAN: Now, Young is writing up a memo for your file on this whole episode.
NIXON: Good.
EHRLICHMAN: And it’ll be just the only copy there is, of the whole thing, and we’ll just sock that away, so you’re in a position to write about it sometime. But then, Young—
NIXON: See, what we’re doing here is, in effect, excusing a crime.
EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Yeah.
NIXON: So it’s a hell of a damn thing to do.
EHRLICHMAN: Well, I—
MITCHELL: But this has been the history all through this question of espionage—
NIXON: Has it?
MITCHELL: —all the way through.
NIXON: Yeah. All right.