Whether it was the Secretary of State, a bevy of ambassadors, CIA area specialists, American military officers, or arms controllers, Nixon and Kissinger bypassed and deceived them all. For that small circle of people surrounding the president, the breach of procedural norms had become a way of life. As the cover-up of Watergate slowly peeled away, there was a tendency among observers to differentiate this sordid tale of domestic misdeeds from the more prestigious management of “national security.”
