Results tagged “Nixon” from SpyTalk

The Gift That Keeps on Giving: Kissinger's Secret Tapes

By Jeff Stein | December 23, 2008 3:12 PM | | Comments (1)

At 9:30 on the morning of Dec. 23, 1974 -- 34 years ago today -- Henry Kissinger called up Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon.

"I want to talk to you about the Helms matter," Kissinger said, referring to the former CIA director, Richard M. Helms. "I don't know the facts remotely."
 
The New York Times' Seymour Hersh had just broken a major story about a "massive" domestic CIA operation to spy on Americans. 

Kissinger professed to have no knowledge of the CIA spying.

"I don't know whom they report them to," he told Rumsfeld, doing his first stint as defense secretary, for President Gerald R. Ford. "They certainly never reported them to us. "

"Obviously," Kissinger added, "the CIA must operate within the law."

Classic. Kissinger had been wiretapping the homes of his own staff and journalists suspected of trading in leaks, which would eventually generate years of litigation culminating in an apology from the former Nixon advisor.  

On this particular day, Kissinger's own secret taping system was taking down every word of his conversation with Rumsfeld and scores of others in and outside of the administration, including, weirdly, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

(Ginsberg had called up Kissinger to arrange a meeting with antiwar and civil rights figures. When Kissinger appeared to be willing to go along with the idea of a private meeting, Ginsberg joked about having a discussion "naked on television.") 

The tapes were transcribed into some 15,500 transcripts, which were obtained and released today by the National Security Archive, a private, not-for-profit organization that specializes in forcing the government to cough up historical records via the Freedom of Information Act. 

Ranging from excited Nixon-Kissinger discussions about the "million pounds of bombs"  being dropped on North Vietnam, to discussions with Ford on U.S.-Soviet détente, the wars in Southeast Asia, the 1969 Biafra crisis, the 1971 South Asian crisis, the October 1973 Middle East War, and the 1974 Cyprus Crisis, the tapes are, simply, a gift that keeps on giving.

"Kissinger never intended these papers to be made public," said William Burr, who edited the collection, entitled the "Kissinger Telephone Conversations: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969-1977."

"Kissinger created a gift to history that will be a tremendous primary source for generations to come," Burr said in a press release from the Archive.

He called on the State Department to declassify over 800 additional telcons that it continues to withhold on the grounds of executive privilege.

Tags: CIA, DOMESTIC SPYING, KISSINGER, NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE, NIXON, SEYMOUR HERSH

What Would Tony Soprano Do About Iran?

By Jeff Stein | October 7, 2008 3:03 PM | | Comments (0)

A few days ago I wrote a column trying to clear up the campaign debate over the value of having "direct talks" with Iran, North Korea, etc.  

The Obama-Biden team, I wrote, had not been clear about what it means, which I thought opened them to phony charges of "appeasement."

What both sides should agree on is what "direct talks" mean, for the good of the country, if not themselves. It does not mean, as Obama has carelessly implied in some interviews, sitting down with, say, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, without pre-summit talks.

Of course, there are always pre-summit talks, also called "preparation," and these are done -- Yes, Virginia - without preconditions.  Given all the e-mail I've gotten,  I guess I didn't make that clear.

As Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who refined "direct talks" with their secret dialogue with China, have often said, you cannot find out what the other guy wants, and tell him what you want, without first sitting down "without preconditions."

Think of it in terms of  Tony and Phil, in The Sopranos. First they send emissaries to lay out their position. If they still have problems, then they have the sit-down. If that doesn't work, then they apply a little pressure.

If that doesn't work, then they whack the guy. But hey, ya gotta try to tawk first. 

Tags: Biden, China, direct talks, Iran, Kissinger, McCain, negotiations, Nixon, North Korea, Obama, Palin, Sopranos

Palin Not Likely to Repeat Cheney's Visits to CIA

By Jeff Stein | September 3, 2008 5:39 PM | | Comments (0)

If it's hard to imagine Sarah Palin touting her foreign policy experience tonight, it's even harder to imagine her taking up where Dick Cheney left off at the CIA.

Cheney famously visited the spy agency to quiz its analysts about Iraq, Afghanistan and terrorist threats, and took a leading role in formulating the administration's national security policies and tools, from warrantless wiretaps to waterboarding.

But whether you agreed with him or not -- and many at the CIA did not -- Cheney brought heavyweight foreign policy credentials to the table as a former White House chief of staff, a Secretary of Defense (who oversaw the 100-hour war to evict Iraqi troops from Kuwait in 1991), and as chairman and CEO of Haliburton, which has extensive business in the Middle East, during the five years before he was elected Vice President.

But Palin, it hardly needs saying, would be starting at ground zero when it comes to intelligence and foreign policy experience, notwithstanding Alaska's geographic proximity to Russia and her nominal command of the Alaska National Guard, which her most fervent supporters count as national security credentials.

As Vice President, she's not likely to rush out to CIA headquarters to challenge its analysis of Sunni splinter groups in Iraq. But if she did, it's fun to picture senior CIA officials greeting her while grinning through gritted teeth.

Of course, her reception there would be far different it came as President of the United States. 

In the face of such qualms, Palin may well take a swing tonight at critics of her foreign police experise, according to John McCain's strategist Steve Schmidt.

"People will hear about her reform-and-change message" and about energy and its links to national security, Schmidt told USA Today.

In stark contrast to Palin, it's easy to foresee Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, picking up where Cheney left off.

As my CQ colleague Jonathan Broder wrote back in January:

"Unlike many lawmakers who can't tell the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, Biden is a man who not only knows the difference, but also can speak knowledgeably about the allegiances of different Iraqi tribes, the shifting demographics in the northern city of Kirkuk, and the finer points of the Iraq constitution."

Indeed, Biden may well play Al Gore to Obama's Bill Clinton, another president who had little interest in national security, to the extent that he eventually abolished his daily CIA briefing.

Despite Barack Obama's chairmanship of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe, the first-term Illinois legislator has shown neglible interest in national security, as opposed to domestic, issues during his political career, which began with anti-poverty work in Chicago's South Side.

As for finding a parallel to a McCain-Palin administration, you have to go all the way back to Richard Nixon's choice of Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate.

Like Palin, Agnew had no foreign policy credentials to speak of, either. But Nixon, a two-time Vice President under World War Two hero Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, had a long and deep involvement in national security affairs, particularly in regard to the Soviet Union -- which evidently made the issue moot.

In any event, Agnew wasn't hired to play the role of statesman. He was dropped onto the electorate like a torpedo, with the single duty of blowing the Democrats out of the water, which he did with obvious relish until his resignation in disgrace over corruption allegations in 1974.

Considering Palin's likewise meager acquaintance with foreign policy, it looks like she's being positioned to follow in Agnew's wake, starting tonite.

Tags: Al Gore, CIA, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Haliburton, Henry Kissinger, Iran, Iraq, Nixon, Sarah Palin, Spiro Agnew