Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate by Hughes Ken

Author:Hughes, Ken [Hughes, Ken]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2014-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

“A Natural Enemy”

On June 28, 1971, Daniel Ellsberg took a taxi to Post Office Square in Boston and arrived to find the largest assemblage of reporters, photographers, and television cameras he’d ever seen waiting for him on the sidewalk. His lawyer had warned them that Ellsberg was about to surrender himself. “Obviously, I didn’t think that a single page out of the 7,000 pages in the study would cause a grave danger to the country or I would not have released the papers,” Ellsberg told them, “and from what I’ve read in the paper, the government has not made a showing that the papers contain such a danger.”

Having publicly taken responsibility for distributing the Pentagon Papers to the press, Ellsberg walked into the federal office building and became the first American charged under the Espionage Act for revealing classified information to the American people. “The government prosecutor, David Nissen, admitted at the time that after investigation the government had no evidence to substantiate a charge of espionage against Ellsberg,” the historian Keith W. Olson wrote in Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America.1 Instead, Ellsberg was charged with “unauthorized possession of, access to, and control over copies of certain documents and writings related to the national defense” that were classified top secret.

“Unfortunately, they can’t do it on stealing, but it’s on unauthorized possession, which we can shift in rhetoric to stealing,” Haldeman told Nixon on June 29.2 The pending Supreme Court decision on whether Nixon could block the Times, Post, and other papers from publishing the Pentagon Papers threatened to expose another soft spot in the case. If the administration couldn’t convince the high court that publication would irreparably harm American national security, it would be that much harder to prove that Ellsberg did. “We’ve got a sticky wicket, legally, in that if the [Supreme] Court doesn’t find that this did any damage, we’ve got no legal grounds for getting Ellsberg,” Haldeman said. “The damn spy law says you have to damage the United States.”

“Well, there’s one slight difference,” Kissinger said. The prosecution in the Ellsberg case didn’t have to prove he’d caused irreparable damage.

“That’s right,” Haldeman said. “But they do have to find damage.”

“Yeah,” Kissinger said. “Damage they have to find.”

Ellsberg was also charged with converting government property valued at over one hundred dollars to his own use. The problem with that charge was that Ellsberg hadn’t stolen the papers; he photocopied them. He didn’t even use a government Xerox machine. Instead, he went to a friend’s ad agency and made copies there.3

Although polls showed a majority in favor of publishing the secret documents, Colson thought that Nixon’s core constituency on the right favored prosecution strongly. “They are not going to want to see us let him off the hook if there’s any way we can avoid it,” he said.

“He’s our enemy,” the president said. “We need an enemy.”

“Agree completely, and he’s a marvelous one,” Colson said. “He’s a perfect enemy to have.”4

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