Haig Said Nixon Joked of Nuking Hill

Transcripts of Phone Talks Are Released by Archives

President Richard M. Nixon jokingly threatened to drop a nuclear bomb on Capitol Hill in March 1974 as Congress was moving to impeach him over the Watergate scandal, according to transcripts of telephone conversations among his closest aides that were released yesterday.

"I was told to get the football," White House Chief of Staff Alexander M. Haig Jr. told Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger less than five months before the president's forced resignation, during a conversation in which the two men exchanged stories about Nixon's increasingly erratic behavior.

"What do you mean?" asked Kissinger, who had called Haig to express concern that the president might unwittingly unleash a Middle East war with his new, get-tough policy against Israel.

"His black nuclear bag," replied Haig. "He is going to drop it on the Hill."

The March 20, 1974, exchange is among 20,000 pages of transcripts of telephone conversations that Kissinger deposited in the Library of Congress in 1976 with the stipulation that they remain secret until at least five years after his death. Kissinger turned the transcripts over to the National Archives in February 2002 after being threatened with legal action by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit group that campaigns against government secrecy. The National Archives reviewed the transcripts for national security and privacy purposes and released almost all of them yesterday.

The transcripts shed light on the extraordinarily complex relationship between Nixon and Kissinger during a turbulent period in American foreign policy, from the bombing of Cambodia in 1970 to the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and diplomatic breakthroughs with China and the Soviet Union. Even as Kissinger attempted to convince Nixon of his loyalty, he adopted a sardonic tone in conversations with Haig and other aides.

In the March 20 transcript, neither Kissinger nor Haig seems alarmed by threats to bomb Congress or "to go after the Israelis" after "he is through with the Europeans."

"He is just unwinding," Haig told Kissinger. "Don't take him too seriously."

On other occasions, as in December 1970, when Nixon proposed an escalation in the bombing of Cambodia, Kissinger and Haig felt obliged to humor the president while laughing at him behind his back. During that episode, Kissinger was still serving as national security adviser, and Haig was one of his deputies.

The Air Force is "not designed for any war we are likely to have to fight," Kissinger told Nixon after the president railed against U.S. pilots for "farting around doing nothing" over Cambodia and "running goddamn milk runs in order to get the air medal." Both men suspected North Vietnamese guerrillas of using Cambodia as a sanctuary and supply line to South Vietnam.

"It's a disgraceful performance," Nixon went on. "I want gunships in there. That means armed helicopters, DC-3s, anything else that will destroy personnel that can fly. I want it done!! Get them off their ass."

"We will get it done immediately, Mr. President," Kissinger replied.