William Safire's FBI file details grades, wiretaps

[sabra]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON — Conservative columnist William Safire was not quite a B student in college before dropping out and beginning a career that would take him to the White House and earn him a Pulitzer Prize, according to details released in his FBI file.

The FBI this month released nearly 350 pages of documents related to Safire, who died in September at the age of 79. The documents became public after Safire's death and date from 1965 to 1994.

...

Another 175 pages detail wiretapping ordered by the Nixon administration, including the tapping of Safire's phone. Safire later learned about the tapping, and it shaped his feelings about warrantless wiretapping conducted during President George Bush's administration.

...

The bulk of the file is only partly related to Safire, however, and includes an investigation into the wiretapping, which lasted from 1969 into 1971 and was apparently started because of leaks surrounding Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The talks between the U.S. and Soviet Union were on the subject of arms control. The documents show Safire was among more than a dozen people, including some at the White House and four journalists, whose phones were tapped. The wiretap on Safire lasted four months and found nothing.

"I have a thing about wiretapping," Safire said on "Meet The Press" in 2006, describing what had happened to him and referencing wiretapping during the Bush administration. "I didn't like that ... it told me how easy it was to just take somebody who was not really suspected of anything for any good reason and listen to every conversation in his home."

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[Gargoyle22]

1. Like most GOPers he has to be personally affected by s/thing to give a shit.

[Michigan-Arizona]

2. Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[TroglodyteScholar]

4. Ding ding ding ding ding! n/t

[Canuckistanian]

5. Yup

Pure Self-interest WITHOUT the "enlightened" part.

[struggle4progress]

3. LOL! I missed or forgot this: Safire ... Nixon supporter ... wiretapped by Nixon

Safire was such a clever little Nixonite, back in the day: he'd write these centrist-sounding columns with a subtext that always really argued Nixon's POV. Of course, Nixon was such a paranoid mofo, that anything short of outright adulation must have seemed like a subversive attack to him