September 21, 1973
Page 30817
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I thank my good friend, the Senator from Virginia. Before I begin my remarks I would like to compliment him on the appropriateness of his note of caution as we enter into a period of detente. We do have to take a good hard look at our interests as well as opportunities for expanded contacts with the Soviet Union as we look forward to the potentially constructive period that lies ahead. In additional views which I filed in the committee report I stated my position on the nomination before us but I thought it would be useful to express some of those views on the floor of the Senate this morning.
I support the nomination of Henry A. Kissinger to be Secretary of State. I do so after full consideration of certain reservations which I intend to set out in this statement. I have reached the conclusion that Dr. Kissinger should be confirmed, notwithstanding these reservations, and it would be well to state my reasons at the outset:
First, Dr. Kissinger is extraordinarily well qualified, by intellectual training and experience, for the position to which he has been nominated. On this there is little disagreement.
Second, he has demonstrated a capacity for creative initiatives in foreign policy which I believe to be beneficial to our national interests. Among such initiatives are the policy of rapprochement with China; broader cooperation with the Soviet Union in political, economic, and military affairs; and, more recently, an effort designed to reinvigorate our relations with traditional allies.
Third, Dr. Kissinger has expressed what I believe to be a genuine appreciation that the foreign policy process in our democratic system must be more open than it has been in the recent past. I believe he now wishes to consult and cooperate with Congress in meaningful ways and to seek the broadest possible public understanding of the ends and means of our Nation's foreign policy.
Fourth, he has been a vigorous and dynamic leader in the making of our foreign policy. Were the Senate for any reason to reject his nomination, he would probably remain as a decisive influence in his present White House post. There are, however, concrete advantages in having a man of his energy, influence, and ability as Secretary of State, where he will hopefully breathe life into a bureaucracy which has been made irrelevant by his operations outside the State Department. He will be better able to institutionalize the new directions in foreign policy which he has already charted in the administration's first term, and he will be available to testify before Congress when questions are raised about those policies and the manner in which they are being implemented.
Fifth, Dr. Kissinger's role in national security wiretapping was not such as to constitute an obstacle to his confirmation. I believe it was essential that he be cleared of any taint of Watergate-related misdeeds, for should that scandal envelop the Secretary of State, the consequences for America's standing in the world could be tragic. I have been reassured on that point by the evidence and by his own testimony presented to the committee.
For all these reasons I support Dr. Kissinger's nomination. But I think it is in his interest – and in the country's interest – that this nomination not sail by without an expression of concern over weaknesses in the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy and in its style of operation.
In contrast to Dr. Kissinger's accomplishments in dealing with our cold war adversaries, the record in many areas of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy is mixed at best.
First, the long, protracted withdrawal from Vietnam has yet to be justified by subsequent events.
It was my view at the time that the United States had long ago fulfilled its moral obligation to the people of South Vietnam, that the issues of the war had to be settled by the Vietnamese people themselves, and that continued direct U.S. military involvement in Indochina cost us much and gained us nothing. I see no reason to change that view today. In my opinion, the so-called peace settlement in Indochina was based more on U.S. political realities than on Vietnamese – and, if Congress had not insisted on the termination of U.S. military involvement after August 15, 1973, U.S. bombing would still be going on today with no end in sight. In sum, I do not believe that the administration's Indochina policy rates as any kind of success – rather, as one of its principal failures.
Second, the administration's justifiable interest in establishing new relationships with our European allies and former cold war adversaries has led to a kind of benign neglect of the developing world. In some cases – as in the poor performance of the Nixon-Kissinger team in the Bangladesh crisis of 1971 – benign neglect would have been preferable to the bungling, surreptitious "tilt" toward Pakistan that was in fact tried. But in other cases – notably in Latin America and Africa – the neglect has been real. Even granting that the role of indifference is preferable to the role of interventionism in third-world affairs, the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy has gone too far in its aloofness and implied indifference to the developing world.
Ultimately, our fate is intertwined with theirs, and our foreign policy should reflect a solid understanding of this fact.
Third, Dr. Kissinger has not, in my view, demonstrated a full appreciation of the interdependence of political and economic factors in world affairs. The Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy in the first 4 years has been marked by a curious separation of political and strategic initiatives on the one hand, and economic initiatives on the other. To be sure, close attention has been paid to growing trade with the Soviet Union as an integral part of our political strategy of detente. But on a global scale, the great and perplexing monetary and trade issues which have steadily grown, which have become more troublesome, and which now appear to be the most critical factors, for better or worse, in determining the world's future – these issues cannot be divorced from an overall political and military strategy designed to create a new world order. Dr. Kissinger, who has already brought an admirable degree of intellectual coherence to American foreign policy, must seek greater coherence between economics and politics in our nation's policy, and he has pledged to do so.
In expressing these doubts concerning the substance of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy, I should add my reservations about its style of operation. That style has been marked by secrecy and surprise. Initiatives are formulated within a closely guarded inner circle, then sprung on an unsuspecting public in a way calculated to maximize their theatrical potential – witness the China visit and the series of agreements announced at the Soviet-American summits, to name just a few. Dr. Kissinger has argued that these elements of secrecy and surprise were necessary to the substance of administration policy, given the delicacy of the diplomatic initiatives undertaken.
My own view is that we have paid a serious and possibly dangerous price for such a style.
Specifically, there are two principal areas in which the administration style has produced dangerous results: first, there has been the obsession with secrecy – accompanied by a willingness to deceive Congress and the public, to spy on trusted advisers, and to infringe upon the constitutional rights of newsmen – all in the name of national security. While Dr. Kissinger's personal role in such activities was not clear when the committee commenced its hearings – although it was clarified in those hearings – I was deeply concerned by the way in which the administration had used the Constitution – the presumed "inherent Presidential powers" in the area of national security – to commit acts which the Constitution was specifically designed to prevent. In doing so, it was striking at the very foundation of our political system.
It was for this reason that the committee – myself included – concentrated so heavily on questioning Dr. Kissinger on the issue of wiretaps – and on the whole question of executive authority to define national security interests and to take sweeping, secret actions based on that definition. The conclusion I reach from our hearings, and from the many other revelations of abuse of power with which we have become sadly familiar this year, is that it is imperative that the Congress establish new procedures, new criteria, new monitoring provisions that will prevent such abuses in the future.
We have seen the consequences of power operating unchecked to decide what official behavior can be justified by invoking concern for national security. National security has been used as grounds for wiretapping that included Government employees who had nothing to do with the security matters. National security has been invoked to justify surveillance of employees who had access to information that was leaked to the press in May of 1969, and has been invoked to justify eavesdropping on other employees a year later, when their superiors' real concern was dissent, not indiscretion. And national security supposedly required tapping the phones of men even after they had left Government service and gone back to private life.
I can hypothesize situations in which a clear foreign danger to the safety of the community could justify a decision to favor the greater needs of the whole society over the rights of individuals in that society. But the power to make such judgments will always be open to misuse if it remains unsupervised and unshared. Even the pledge of Attorney General Richardson to be scrupulous, when asked to authorize wiretapping, in balancing the need for security against the rights of personal privacy cannot guarantee us the permanent safeguards we require.
Officials do not lose their constitutional rights when they assume responsibility for sensitive policies and activities. While they must agree to be subject to closer scrutiny than ordinary citizens, they should not have to accept telephone taps on themselves and their families as a condition of employment.
And their loyalty to the Government should not be questioned simply on the basis of their conscientious dissent from one course of action or policy decision. If a man's private conversations are to become the property of his superiors simply because he opposes their judgment on an issue, then the vigorous internal debate from which the best policies are formulated will be stifled, and sycophants will take the place of candid, constructive advisers.
To avoid these dangers – the continuation of past practices we all recognize as improper – Congress must fully explore the Government's use of wiretapping and other surveillance techniques. The Foreign Relations Committee, acting on a motion I offered with the senior Senator from New York, Mr. JAVITS, who now presides over the Senate, has already committed itself to such a study in connection with foreign affairs. That resolution is printed in the committee report.
I ask unanimous consent that it be included in the RECORD at this point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. JAVITS). Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution ordered to be printed in the RECORD is as follows:
Resolved, that the Foreign Relations Committee pursuant to its oversight duties undertake a full examination of the use of electronic and other means of surveillance of American citizens in connection with alleged intelligence gathering or other activities related to the foreign policy and the areas of national policy over which this Committee has legislative responsibilities, to the end that more satisfactory guidelines and opportunity for more effective congressional oversight may be developed than those set forth in the letter of the Attorney General to Senator Fulbright dated September 12, 1972.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, in the course of our examination I hope we can weigh the applicability of safeguards contained in the Safe Streets Act of 1968 with respect to the use of wiretaps in domestic security cases: that wiretapping be subject to judicial warrant; that such warrants be for limited periods of time, renewable only by return to court; and that records itemizing the principal subjects of such wiretapping, the justification for the surveillance and the duration of it be made available, with requisite provisions for confidentiality, routinely and periodically to the appropriate oversight committees of Congress.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, would the Senator from Arkansas yield me some additional time?
Mr. FULBRIGHT. Mr. President, I yield the Senator 5 additional minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized for 5 additional minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, beyond these mechanical safeguards, however, we must address the harder task of formulating criteria to guide and limit the freedom of executive and judicial officials to authorize actions which will, inevitably, abridge the rights of individuals.
We enacted such standards in 1968, for many types of criminal activity, but apparently we did not define closely enough the President's discretion to act in situations he judged to present threats to national security. Now we have seen discretion twisted to serve questionable purposes, and the burden is on us – as much as on those officials who acted improperly in the President's name and who now promise new concern for individual rights – to define discretion so surely that it cannot be abused again.
Mr. President, in yesterday's New York Times and in this morning's Washington Post, there were stories illustrating the reasons why the Foreign Relations Committee and all of its members are concerned about the use of surveillance, not only in connection with surveillance of all kinds, but also in the case of surveillance which infringes upon individual rights. These articles appearing
in the papers related to surveillance of a news columnist. The article in yesterday's New York Times is headlined "FBI Reportedly Trailed Columnist on Visit to Paris."
This morning's Washington Post specifically mentions the name of the newsman. It reads: "Kraft Says FBI Tailed Him to Paris."
The story clearly relates to columnist Joseph Kraft.
I ask unanimous consent that the two articles be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From the New York Times, Sept. 20, 1973]
FBI REPORTEDLY TRAILED COLUMNIST ON VISIT TO PARIS
(By John M. Crewdson)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19.– The Nixon Administration ordered a high-ranking F.B.I. official to follow Joseph Kraft, the syndicated columnist, to Paris in 1969 and to arrange with the French government to keep him under electronic and physical surveillance during the visit, according to sources familiar with the operation.
The sources said that because of the Administration's "concern" about Mr. Kraft's contacts with representatives of the North Vietnamese government and the Vietcong, J. Edgar Hoover, the late director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, sent one of his top assistants to Paris, where Mr. Kraft and his family were vacationing.
The assistant, William C. Sullivan, who was then in charge of the bureau's Domestic Intelligence Division, consulted French security officials, who carried out the surveillance operation.
Mr. Kraft's room in the Hotel Georges V, near the Arc de Triomphe, was bugged by the French security agents, who also tapped his telephone and followed him around-the-clock.
The sources said that the 24-hour surveillance was continued by the F.B.I. after Mr. Kraft returned from France to his home in the Georgetown section of Washington.
John W. Dean 3d, the dismissed White House counsel, told the Senate Watergate committee in June that John J. Caulfield, the former New York City policeman who worked as an investigator for the White House, had told him of a wiretap placed on the Kraft family's telephone in Georgetown, and sources said today that they believed that the tap had been installed while Mr. Kraft was vacationing in France.
Barely a month before, the F.B.I. had begun a program of wiretapping Government officials and newsmen that was described by President Nixon as an effort to halt leaks of classified national security information to the press.
Asked why the F.B.I. had not been used to install the Georgetown tap, one source said he believed that the White House had never made such a request, but another, equally well- informed, said that the White House team had been used after John N. Mitchell, then the Attorney General, had refused to permit the F.B.I. to become further involved.
Mr. Sullivan, who recently retired from the Justice Department, said by telephone from Massachusetts that he would have "absolutely no comment to make one way or the other" on the matter.
It has never been entirely clear whether Mr. Kraft was included in the national security investigation that Mr. Nixon ordered in May of 1969 in response to a report in The New York Times describing the then-secret bombing of Cambodia by American aircraft.
But the logs of some of Mr. Kraft's conversations, presumably including those monitored by French security agents, were reportedly found last May with the wiretap records relating to the four newsmen and 13 Government officials who were targets of the White House wiretap effort.
Those records, which had disappeared from the F.B.I's files in late 1971, were found by bureau agents in a White House safe belonging to John D. Ehrlichman a few days after he had resigned as Mr. Nixon's chief adviser for domestic affairs.
One source said that although the instructions to follow Mr. Kraft to Paris came to Mr. Sullivan from Mr. Hoover, he did not know whether the late F.B.I. chief had been ordered by his superiors in the Administration to conduct the surveillance.
The source said, however, that Mr. Hoover had passed on to a superior the results of the intelligence-gathering effort by the French authorities that Mr Sullivan carried back from Paris.
Another source said he believed that the superior in question was Mr. Ehrlichman.
Mr. Kraft said in a telephone interview today that he had learned some months ago of the intelligence effort directed against him. He added that he had been in touch with representatives of the North Vietnamese Government and the National Liberation Front since 1964, that these relationships were "well known" and that from time to time he had used information provided by them in his column.
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 21, 1973]
KRAFT SAYS FBI TAILED HIM TO PARIS
Joseph Kraft, the syndicated columnist, said yesterday that the FBI had followed him to Paris in 1969 and arranged to have his hotel room bugged there.
Kraft said he was told by the FBI that William C. Sullivan, a former top official of the bureau, had been ordered to follow him.
During his testimony before the Senate Watergate committee last June, former White House counsel John W. Dean III said he had been told that Kraft's phone in Georgetown had been tapped by John J. Caulfield, a former New York police investigator who worked for the White House.
Kraft said after that testimony he asked the FBI for an explanation and was told of the Paris surveillance.
The FBI yesterday refused to comment. Sullivan, who is retired and lives in New Hampshire, could not be reached for comment.
Mr. MUSKIE. In its examination of the wiretapping issue, the Foreign Relations Committee addressed itself to 17 names, names of Government employees and newsmen which have been printed in the press as allegedly having been covered by the wiretapping policy.
I think it should be clear that these 17 names do not limit the committee's concern as to the extent to which surveillance has been used, not only in the form of wiretapping, but in other ways.
It is my understanding that the resolution adopted by the committee is intended to address the broader concern and is not limited to the 17 names specifically referred to in the press.
I wonder if the distinguished chairman of the committee would comment on this point.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. Mr. President, I say to the Senator that he understands the intent of the sense of the resolution quite correctly. It does anticipate that we should look into electronic and other means of surveillance beyond the 17 names mentioned.
I was approached yesterday by members of the Judiciary Committee who asked about the intention of the Foreign Relations Committee in this area and who suggested tentatively that there might be joint hearings held on that subject because it is of such great importance. The substantive jurisdiction insofar as legislation is concerned would be in the Judiciary Committee. There is already a bill pending on that matter.
It is my intention in the Foreign Relations Committee to discuss this at one of the next executive meetings and examine into who would like to be on a subcommittee representing the Foreign Relations Committee. I am sure that if the Senator from Maine is at all interested – and I am sure he is – I would be very pleased to have him act on that subcommittee. The matter ought to be looked into.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. FULBRIGHT. Mr. President, I yield 2 additional minutes to the Senator from Maine. I have committed most of my remaining time to the Senator from Iowa, who is to follow me.
That was the situation as I see it. The Senator explained it very well. It is extremely important if we are to establish any confidence in the Government procedure in this field. I think that what the Senator said is very appropriate. I certainly agree with what he had to say.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arkansas. I simply wanted the RECORD to reflect the committee's feeling on this and that it will press forward with hearings. The mere fact that the nomination is confirmed does not end the committee's concern. I want that to be fully understood.
The second principal area in which the administration's diplomatic style has caused serious difficulties is that of alliance policy. United States relations with our major allies in Western Europe and with Japan have undergone severe strain in recent years. To some degree such strain is an understandable consequence of our policies of detente with China and the Soviet Union – for the alliances themselves were born in opposition to these two powers, and detente raises questions about the significance we attach to our older alliance systems in the new era of good fellowship. Nevertheless, the administration can be criticized for failing to consult adequately with our allies, just as it has failed to consult Congress or fully inform the American public. In doing so, it has needlessly aroused their concern and caused irritations which it is now belatedly trying to calm with rhetoric about the "Year of Europe" and about the importance of Japan.
The failure of style in this respect is most sharply illustrated by the first "Nixon shock" applied to Japan in the summer of 1971 – the surprise Kissinger visit to China. Whether Dr. Kissinger honestly believed in the diplomatic necessity for springing this surprise, or whether he was merely giving way to a theatrical impulse, the decision to deliberately leave Japan in the dark on
new developments in our China policy has had a serious psychological impact on that country.
Compounded by later economic shocks and some fairly harsh rhetoric, the United States-Japan relationship has undergone considerable deterioration during Dr. Kissinger's tenure on the White House staff.
More recently, there have been signs of improvement, and I earnestly hope Dr. Kissinger will apply his energy and ability to furthering this momentum. Japan today is an industrial giant – the world's third largest economic power after the United States and the Soviet Union – and this economic power has given her an influence in world affairs which contrasts sharply with the low-key diplomacy which the world has learned to expect from Japan since the early 1950's.
Moreover, Japan today may be at a watershed period of her foreign policy – and very much in a position to exercise more than economic power if she chooses to do so. How Japan develops in this regard, within the framework of a United States-Japan partnership which the Japanese deem fundamental to their interests, should, I believe, be one of the overriding concerns of American foreign policy.
Similarly, our Atlantic ties have been unnecessarily disturbed by the administration style. To be sure, serious problems have long existed in that partnership – problems which Dr. Kissinger himself eloquently described in a 1965 book on the subject. But the dialog across the Atlantic has recently become even more difficult, and the time for a major overhaul of the relationship is long overdue. I therefore welcome Dr. Kissinger's initiative in trying to articulate a new set of guiding principles, and although he has a long way to go in turning the rhetorical "Year of Europe" into reality, he is especially qualified to do so.
As in the case of Japan and the China initiative, a significant cause of West European dissatisfaction with the Nixon administration is the considerable suspicion aroused by our policy of detente with the Soviet Union. In the European mind, that policy could result in sacrificing the interests of our allies in the unilateral pursuit of a special relationship with the Soviet Union. The Europeans need to be constantly reassured on this point.
In this connection, it is noteworthy that many doubts have recently been expressed concerning the limits of detente with the Soviet Union. One issue raised repeatedly in Dr. Kissinger's confirmation hearings was Soviet treatment of dissidents. While Dr. Kissinger claimed that
we have in the past successfully pointed out to the Soviet leaders the unfortunate impact that some of their policies have on our opinion, he also stressed that–
We have to ask ourselves a question: Whether it should be the principal goal of American foreign policy to transform the domestic structure of societies with which we deal?
The Soviet leadership gives every indication that it intends to pursue its policy of improved relations with the West without yielding to domestic or international pressure for liberal reforms.
Whether it be in relation to Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn, or to historian Pyotr Yakir and economist Viktor Krasin, or to physicist and civil rights advocate Andrei Sakharov, or to the rights of the Jewish minority to emigrate, the Soviet Government seems determined to repress those who do not passively submit to prevailing governmental thinking.
My own view is that progress toward detente must be accompanied by continued pressure on the Soviet Government for greater respect for human rights. The question Dr. Kissinger raises is a difficult one, but it can be answered with a plea that the conceptual basis of our foreign policy – and particularly our policy of detente – come to grips with this issue. In the words of Solzhenitsyn:
There are no internal affairs left on our crowded earth. And mankind's sole salvation lies in everyone making everything his business – in the people of the East being vitally concerned with what is happening in the West; the people of the West vitally concerned with what goes on in the East.
For a man who has written cogently about the need for conceptual clarity in foreign policy, I am not sure that Dr. Kissinger has thought clearly enough about this dilemma – or about the ultimate goals of detente with the Soviet Union. I hope that this matter will be more fully aired in the great public dialog on foreign policy which we have been promised.
I believe that the committee hearings on Dr. Kissinger's nomination have been a useful exercise – for him, for the committee, and for the country. While the size of the committee and the constraints imposed by time made it difficult to probe deeply, I believe the hearings were a satisfactory first step in a new relationship between Congress and the administration in the area of foreign policy. I have confidence in Dr. Kissinger's ability to fulfill the responsibilities of his position with distinction. I support him, and I wish him well.