Opinion | What kind of boss gets the FBI to tap your home phone? Henry Kissinger.

Morton H. Halperin served as a senior official in the Johnson, Nixon and Clinton administrations.

Henry A. Kissinger and I were friends and colleagues at Harvard University. Soon after he agreed to serve as national security adviser to President-elect Richard M. Nixon in 1968, Kissinger asked me to work with him setting up and running the National Security Council. I eagerly accepted.

But as I would learn, Kissinger’s willingness to deceive in the interest of power extended not just to foreign governments but also to his own. The story of what happened when I tried to leave his employ illuminates and, I hope, invites us to consider Kissinger’s wider approach to policymaking. As we take the measure of his legacy after his death last week, we would do well to reflect on this dimension of his approach to statecraft — in particular, on the costs of deception when it comes to issues that should instead be open to robust public debate.

On May 9, 1969, the New York Times published a front-page story on the United States’ secret bombing of Cambodia. The next day I went to Key Biscayne, Fla., where Nixon and Kissinger were working. Kissinger and I went for a walk.

“The president is very upset about the story,” he said. Both Nixon and Kissinger feared it would create a storm that would make it impossible to continue the bombing. And, Kissinger told me, I was suspected of being the source of the leak.

I assured him I was not. “I know none of the operational details,” I reminded Kissinger, “and have no idea if the ones reported in the story are correct.”

Kissinger assured me he did not think I was responsible. But because others in the White House suspected me, he proposed to deal with the problem by cutting me off from the most sensitive information.

I had no idea how I could do my job without full access to these sources. “Perhaps it would be best if I left,” I responded.

“You are the best memo-writer in the world,” he told me, refusing to accept my resignation.

What I would not learn until three years later was what Kissinger did next: He ordered the FBI to wiretap my home phone to determine whether I was the source of the leak.

Still unaware of this in mid-1969, I continued to work on policy issues. But much of my energy was devoted to persuading Kissinger to let me resign.

As rumors began to spread that I was considering leaving the NSC, offers came in from the Brookings Institution and the State Department. The state job interested me, but Elliot Richardson, an undersecretary of state, said I needed Kissinger to approve my departure first.

Kissinger would not give it. The state job was filled by someone else, and Brookings gave me a deadline to respond. I told Kissinger about the Brookings offer. This got his attention.

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On Saturday, Aug. 9, 1969, I received a call early in the morning asking me to come in and meet with Kissinger to discuss my status. I went into the office. Hours later, I was still waiting. I told his assistant, “If Dr. Kissinger wants to speak to me, he can call me at home.”

I had no idea what a dilemma that would create for Kissinger. He knew, as I did not, that the FBI would be listening to every word. At 3:43 p.m., Kissinger called me. We talked for some 20 minutes, with (I would later learn) an FBI employee taking copious notes. Our conversation went, in part:

Kissinger: “I am disturbed by your continuing desire to leave. I ask you to bear with me as I work it out by talking with the president and the attorney general. … If we can’t work it out, then we know it can’t be worked out. Why must you commit yourself this week?”

Halperin: “I do not really have to commit myself. But I do not feel it can work out in a way that will permit me to stay. I have thought it through and reached a conclusion that it makes sense for me to get out for a while.”

Kissinger: “It is in my interest to have you satisfied if you stay. That is why I want to talk to [Attorney General John] Mitchell and the president. If they feel we cannot tailor something right now, then I would like to keep a hold on you and bring you back later. I can’t believe that a man as talented as you cannot be helpful in a period of great national urgency.”

The FBI transcript reports that after a long pause I said, “Well.”

I followed up with a memo outlining the conditions I needed to have satisfied to stay at the NSC. Kissinger told me he was ready to approve my conditions, which included new responsibilities, but felt obliged to discuss it first with his two most senior assistants. I warned Kissinger they would likely oppose my receiving the additional responsibilities and would resign if I got them.

Kissinger held back-to-back meetings, first with his two assistants and then with me. When I entered his office, Kissinger was sober.

“They both said as soon as I finished that they would resign immediately if I announced your new responsibilities,” he told me. Kissinger paused and then finally said the words I had worked for months to elicit: “I accept that you are leaving.”

He asked me to continue working for him as a consultant, and I agreed. But in late April 1970, when Nixon launched a full-scale ground invasion of Cambodia, I ended my relationship with the administration. On May 6, I wrote to Kissinger expressing my opposition to the escalation of the war and resigning my position as a consultant.

A week later I finally received a letter from Kissinger, confirming that I would no longer be available to the NSC for possible future consultations.

I was now free to act, speak and write in opposition to the war in Vietnam. And I did.

Despite my resignation, the wiretap on my home phone continued for another eight months. My family and I would later sue Kissinger for violating our right to privacy, and after two decades of litigation I accepted a written apology from him.

Only years later would I learn the coda to my resignation — this time from a transcript of a 1972 discussion between Nixon and Kissinger of my efforts to end the Vietnam War, details of which they learned from the FBI wiretap.

Nixon: “Jesus! We still have Halperin. Son of a bitch. What’s happened to him?”

Kissinger: “Well, I fired Halperin in July of ’69.”

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