It was late in the evening on May 16, 1973

“It was late in the evening on May 16, 1973, and I was in the Washington bureau of the Times, immersed

in yet another story about Watergate. The paper had been overwhelmed by Bob WoodSportd and Carl

Bernstein’s reporting for the Washington Post the previous year, and I was trying to catch up. The

subject this time was Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s national-security adviser. I had

called Kissinger to get his comment on a report, which the Times was planning to run, that he had been

involved in wiretapping reporters, fellow Administration officials, and even his own aides on the

National Security Council. At first, he had indignantly denied the story. When I told him that I had

information from sources in the Justice Department that he had personally forSportded the wiretap

requests to the F.B.I., he was silent, and then said that he might have to resign.

“… Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s sometimes loyal deputy, had called a few times during the day to beat

back the story. At around seven o’clock, there was a final call. ‘You’re Jewish, aren’t you,

Seymour?’ In all our previous conversations, I’d been ‘Sy.’ I said yes. ‘Let me ask you one

question, then,’ Haig said. ‘Do you honestly believe that Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from

Germany who lost thirteen members of his family to the Nazis, could engage in such police-state tactics

as wiretapping his own aides? If there is any doubt, you owe it to yourself, your beliefs, and your

nation to give us one day to prove that your story is wrong.’ That was Watergate, circa 1973. The

Times printed the story the next day, and Kissinger did not resign.”