June 19, 1974

Kissinger Victim Of "New Ooze"

A "new ooze" has just about engulfed the House Judiciary Committee hearing evidence of possible impeachable crimes by the President.

The Washington Post calls it "investigative reporting".

The public calls it "leaks."

I call it a disgrace.

The whole slimy business of character assassination, guilt by association, and destruction by innuendo was brought into focus last week by the extraordinary outburst of Henry Kissinger, U.S.  Secretary of State.

After a brilliant accomplishment of separating the Arabs and Israelis in the mideast, Kissinger returned home to a hostile press conference.  Instead of questions about the historical disengagement of the warring nations, Kissinger was pelted with carping questions about whether he ordered wiretaps on his aides.

Kissinger denied he had ordered wiretaps, as he had before the Senate committee confirming his appointment to the top job in foreign relations.

Apparently he did a slow burn for it was not until several days later, in Salzburg, Austria, en route with the President to the mideast, that Kissinger blew his stack.

"It is impossible to conduct the foreign relations of the United States under these conditions of leaks and innuendo.  If it is not cleared up I will resign," he blurted.  "I will not leave to history my public honor."

The secretary's voice trembled with rage.  His righteous indignation was so genuine it had an immediate effect.  The license to destroy an elected president does not carry a stamp for shooting appointed officials out of season.

Suddenly, Congress discovers that we cannot afford to lose the- services of a technician who carried out the innovative foreign policies of a tactician who ended the longest war in U.S.  history, brought home the prisoners with honor, opened up communication with the second and third largest powers in the world, and de-fused a potential third World War in the mideast.

The double standard-which the Nixon haters have applied ever since he convicted Alger Hiss of "leaking" U.S. secrets to the communists-is glaringly exposed.

Hiss was a "leaker" and his ideological friends are still using the vile technique to gain with propaganda what they cannot win at the ballot box.

Kissinger got the treatment simply because he succeeded and was close to Nixon.  To destroy Kissinger is to cut Nixon.

The Watergate burglars were caught by Washington, D.C., police and jailed by normal judicial procedures.

Then the muckrakers moved in for the long and arduous task of moving the guilt up the ladder step by step until Nixon himself would topple.  It has taken $6 million tax dollars, two years of intensive investigation and thousands of wild leaks to back Nixon to the wall.

But the bias is starting to show.  Kissinger's public complaint may be the turning point for Nixon's fortunes.

The general public has been reminded how the whole Watergate business started.

Campus radicals were burning buildings, rioters menaced life and property on the streets, social activists bombed public places.

In the midst of all this, national security secrets were "leaking" to the New York Times and to Russia directly.  It was urgent to determine whether secret documents relating to Vietnam and to India made their way into unauthorized hands by misguided protest or calculated spying.

Both Nixon and Kissinger were absolutely right in being concerned and trying to discover the traitors - misguided or other-wise - jeopardizing sensitive foreign negotiations.

An FBI search quickly turned up Daniel Ellsberg, a left-wing egg head with access to secret documents entrusted to the Rand Corporation, a "think tank" under contract to the U.S. government.

He boasted that he stole the documents and leaked them to friendly newspapers.  He escaped trial because of a legal technicality.

In my opinion, the President would have been derelict in his duty had he not asked the FBI to find the leaks.  Unfortunately, Nixon's staff, in their eagerness to help, initiated the "plumber's" group to short-cut the ponderous above-board "approach."

After an unfruitful break-in of Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, it was a tempting step by the plumbers to bug National Democratic headquarters.

It was - as President Nixon termed it on one of his now famous tapes - "jackassery."

And it is just such foolishness that lends itself to trial by unsupported "leaks."  The misdeed is not heinous enough to bring down the country or a president, yet it is unethical enough to support a campaign of smear.

It is a disgrace that the House Judiciary Committee has become a captive of its highly-partisan staff of liberal lawyers.  Daily they prepare "interpretive" memos to the Democratic majority members who then leak them to anti-Nixon newspapers.

The committee had made up its mind - in the majority - to nail Nixon even before the first document was read.  But it has not yet worked up enough case to support its pre-conceived opinion.

This is a farce becoming ever more obvious to the public.

It is time for the Judiciary Committee to shove in its shiv and let justice be determined by public forums where leaks evaporate.

Author: Lindsey Williams