For the Record (1)

September 16, 1980

As two former high FBI officials went on trial on charges they approved illegal break-ins in a hunt for fugitive radicals in the early 1970s, one of their lawyers said it is "very likely" Richard Nixon will be called to testify in their defense. Mr. Nixon apparently could be useful in describing a 1970 telephone conversation he had with the late FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, about a plan for conducting illegal break-ins, mail openings, and wiretaps to find fugitive members of the terrorist Weather Underground group.