In 1974 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Kissinger repeatedly sought to minimize his interest at this period
in the White House wiretap program.

"After May of 1970," he said, "I had no basis for knowing
whether a tap had been initiated or was continuing....
I construed my instructions from Mr. Haldeman to mean
that my tangential connection with the program was being terminated."

Kissinger testified that in mid-October of 1970, when a second
wiretap was authorized for Hal Sonnenfeldt, who was then Kissinger's
closest personal friend on the NSC staff, his role was even more tangential.

" ... it is hard to imagine the flood of material that goes
across my desk. I am apt to look at something and say this is for
somebody else and throw it into my out basket. Most of these
documents are not noted for extraordinary precision."

The less-than-precise document in question in Sonnenfeldt's case,
however, was an FBI summary of a wiretap on the Israeli Embassy in
which Richard N. Perle, an aide to Senator Henry Jackson,
was overheard discussing classified information
that had been supplied to him
by someone on the National Security Council staff.

Hoover, following normal practice with sensitive materials
from embassy wiretaps, had sent the document to Kissinger.

Kissinger hesitated a few days. Then, despite his insistence
that he was out of the internal-security business after May of 1970,
he forwarded the material to Haldeman, who immediately telephoned Hoover,
according to FBI documents, and ordered that the FBI be assigned to
determine which NSC staffer was in contact with Richard Perle.

www.theatlantic.com/issues/82may/hershwh2.htm