Brezhnev’s car was ‘bugged,’ says Nixon

Press, 7 April 1984, Page 11

Brezhnev’s car was ‘bugged,’ says Nixon

NZPA-Reuter New York Richard Nixon, in interviews to be shown on C.B.S. television next week, says the United States had bugged the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s car and that United States Intelligence keeps a President informed on the sex lives of foreign leaders. Mr Nixon also says he should have destroyed the White House tapes that helped bring bis downfall and says the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex was so clumsily handled that it might have been “deliberately botched

In transcripts released yesterday by C.B.S. Mr Nixon told a former aide, Frank Gannon, his interviewer, that the United States and the Soviet Union frequently “bug” each other’s embassies. He then said: “As a matter of fact, there’s also evidence to the effect that Brezhnev’s car was bugged. Not here in this country, but in the Soviet Union.

“One of the reasons that the release of the Pentagon papers caused great concern in the C.I.A. was that one of the items in the Pentagon papers could only have come from the fact that we had Brezhnev’s car bugged.” Mr Nixon did not say when this took place, nor did he detail the item that caused concern to the Cen-

tral Intelligence Agency.

He described Mr Brezhnev as a ladies’ man and said, “he was always bragging about that. He had a sort of macho attitude.” Mr Nixon said he once passed several beautiful Russian women with Mr Brezhnev and the Soviet leader asked him, “would you want to take one of these with you?” Gannon then asked if Mr Nixon’s Intelligence briefings "tell you whether a leader with whom you are negotiating plays around with women.” Mr Nixon answered, “Oh, yes . . . you’ve got to know what people are interested in.” C.B.S. is reported to have paid SUSSOO,OOO for the right to excerpt three onehour segments from 38 hours of interviews conducted by Gannon with Mr Nixon. C.B.S. released transcripts of the first two programmes. Besides his comments on Mr Brezhnev, Mr Nixon also went over the Watergate scandal.