Kissinger called J. Edgar Hoover and told him it was time to move forward on a project they had discussed: wiretaps of Laird, Laird’s senior military assistant, and three NSC staffers, including Morton Halperin. Thus did the FBI learn about such things as Mrs. Halperin’s concern for the surgery of a relative in New York, and the Halperin boys’ favorite playmates—and that, when reporters asked Mr. Halperin to leak Kissinger statements, he steadfastly refused. The tap on Mel Laird was more productive; from it Kissinger drew a bead on the activities of a hated bureaucratic rival. What he didn’t find was any leakers. So he had wiretaps extended to encompass two more NSC staffers. A reporter was next. This time, however, it wasn’t Kissinger working through the FBI. The president wanted to monitor Henry Kissinger. So John Ehrlichman called on John Caulfield, a new addition to the White House staff, a former detective on New York’s version of the Red Squad who’d known Nixon since he’d protected him on the campaign trail in 1960. Caulfield called a friend, who’d worked sweeping Nixon’s hotels for bugs during the 1968 campaign. Together, they cased the target’s Georgetown town house and told Ehrlichman the job would be difficult. Ehrlichman insisted they try anyway, because national security was at stake. So they scrounged up some phone company credentials and shimmied up a pole to affix a bug to the reporter’s phone wire. He was Joseph Kraft, the same journalist who’d lectured his fellow media professionals to stop coddling liberals. But he also was Henry’s favorite journalist friend, and Nixon needed to know what his foreign-policy right-hand man was up to. Meanwhile, Kissinger was also working toward opening an entirely separate channel to glean what secrets Nixon might be keeping from him.