"the ability of the government to go back to taps collected years earlier to look for material with which to influence potential witnesses in the present"

[coderman]

see also: http://www.reddit.com/user/ellsbergd

from thread:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vahsi/i_am_pentagon_papers_leaker_daniel_ellsberg/ceqjvcl?context=3

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PulvisEtUmbraSumus

When did you first become aware that there had been an attempt to
seize your medical files from Lewis Fielding's office, and what was
your reaction to the administration going that far?

In general, how aware were you of surveillance and character
assassination attempts against your person, such as the attempts to
tie you to communist groups in Minnesota as per this conversation
between Nixon and John Mitchell?

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ellsbergd

WOW! That link is absolutely fascinating! (Even though I don't have
the time just now to go through it in detail, as I will shortly).
Thank you for the link! I have to ask, where is it from, where did you
get it (on the White House transcripts)?

Well, in answer to your question, I just became aware of some
surveillance on me (BEFORE the Pentagon papers came out) ten minutes
ago, from your link. I was being surveilled because I was a witness in
a criminal trial of draft resisters, some of the Minnesota Eight.
Their very good lawyer has been accused, I don't know on what basis,
of having been a Communist. And that allegation was not of particular
significance to the DOJ UNTIL, months later, he was associated with
me, after the Papers came out. Likewise, the president is heard
discussing with Haldeman on these transcripts the need to go back over
earlier (illegal, warrantless) wiretaps--of journalists and White
House officials, on which I was overheard--to see what might look
significant now, in light of the release of the Pentagon Papers.

That's what I've been talking about in earlier answers: the ability of
the government to go back to taps collected years earlier to look for
material with which to influence potential witnesses in the present.
(See their interest in the allegation that the wife of one journalist
may have been accused of shoplifting in her past). So people who have
"nothing to hide" should ask themselves if that is equally true of
their spouses or children, or neighbors, who could possibly be turned
into informants by threat of their private lives being revealed. (The
Cuban CIA assets who burglarized my psychoanalyst's office were
interested in my children and wife as much as me, a reporter who
interviewed them was told; they had been told of the precedent of
Alger Hiss' step-son who was crucially deterred, at Hiss' insistence,
from testifying in his defense at his trial on a crucial point,
because he would have been questioned about his alleged
homosexuality).

My analyst later apologized to me for not telling me about the
break-in--which he was sure was aimed at me, by the White
House--because his lawyer had advised him not to "get involved." So I
didn't know about it until it came out in my courtroom, thanks to John
Dean's revelation. All for the best. If he had told me and we had
raised it in the court-room, the plumbers would not have been kept on
the White House payroll (via CREEP) and would not have been ordered
into the Watergate. Nixon would have stayed in office, and the war
would have continued for years.