U.S. Must Yield Wiretap Logs on Reporter

A federal judge ordered the government Friday to expunge records of an illegal wiretap the Nixon Administration placed on the home telephone of a New York Times reporter.

U.S. District Judge John Lewis Smith ordered the government to give Hedrick Smith the wiretap logs of 138 conversations that were monitored over 89 days in 1969.

The judge, ruling that most of the calls were personal conversations between family members and friends, said any copies of the logs “shall be expunged from any government files.”

“I didn’t feel the government had any right to retain any records that it had gained illegally,” Smith said. “I felt personally violated,” he said of the wiretap, which monitored his daughters’ conversations with friends as well as his calls.

The order covers logs of telephone calls that were monitored between June 4, 1969, and Aug. 31, 1969, on Smith’s home telephone.

Exception to Ruling

The only exception to the judge’s ruling are documents that are already part of the public record: four summaries of telephone conversations that Smith had with a government official, a foreign ambassador and the late W. Averell Harriman, diplomat and financier.

These documents became public during the trial of Smith’s lawsuit against former President Richard M. Nixon and top Administration officials, including former Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell, former National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger and former presidential aides John D. Erlichman and H. R. Haldeman.

Kissinger asked the FBI to place the illegal wiretap after Smith reported the details of the Administration’s fallback position for negotiations with Japan over the return of Okinawa. The wiretap was authorized by Mitchell.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here ruled the wiretap was illegal because it was conducted without a warrant, but it held that Nixon and the other Administration officials had immunity from being sued for damages.