“Witness to Power: The Nixon Years”, by John Ehrlichman

432 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-0671242961

Witness to Power: The Nixon Years by John Ehrlichman is a fascinating depiction of the Nixon Administration as seen by one the many pros who ran the White House under strict instruction from a master politician. As President Nixon’s assistant for domestic affairs, Ehrlichman was known for his fierce loyalty and combative style. He helped formulate the President’s domestic political agenda which included a plan for a guaranteed annual income to fight poverty and wage and price controls to limit inflation (wait, this is a Republican Administration?!). At the same time he directed the White House “plumbers” who, with the purported mission of preventing leaks to unfriendly reporters, used underhanded methods to discredit Nixon’s (many) political foes. The ideal manager, Ehrlichman rarely contested what his chief ordered – like when he directed burglars to break into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press, or when he encouraged FBI Director L. Patrick Gray to destroy documents taken from Howard Hunt’s White House safe that outlined plans to sabotage the Democrats. Amid revelations of the cover-up, Nixon forced Ehrlichman to resign (along with White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman) on April 30^th, 1973. He was later convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and perjury in the Watergate case and of conspiracy in the Ellsberg case and served 18 months in prison. Throughout his time in the White House Ehrlichman time and again did his best to support and to carry out the wishes of the President, occasionally arguing with him, sure, but ultimately always ready when push came to shove to affect Nixon’s desires. In Witness to Power he claims, not surprisingly, that he was unfairly asked to fall on his sword over Watergate and, good soldier that he was, did so, although he considered himself one of the least culpable in the Nixon circle.

This is one of the few books about the period which does not depict the President as an obsessive paranoid but instead as a truly tragic figure capable at times of greatness, but ultimately undone by his associates, all of whom believed, rightly or wrongly, that they were carrying out Nixon’s clear wishes. They may very well have been. Ehrlichman was cool, kept his distance and his objectivity, and was sacrificed (or so he was told; and so he says) for the common good. Ehrlichman was never known for having a sharp wit, a shortcoming obvious in his writing. However, his justification for his confrontational approach to the Senate Watergate Committee rings hollow and (justifiably) he clearly feels bitterness towards the President, who was pardoned for any crimes he might have committed, escaped Watergate scott-free (having to quit your job and head into a cushy retirement because you did illegal things isn’t exactly cruel and unusual punishment) while many of his underlings, carrying out his orders and policies, went to jail (and as you might have guessed, he’s not a fan of John Dean, either). I think Ehrlichman is more culpable than he relates in the book, and he excuses many of Nixon’s actions (who, remember, demanded the resignation of hundreds of his employees after being re-elected in 1972: nice reward for hard work); Ehrlichman dismisses this with the same gravitas as if the President didn’t like his salad dressing and sent the order back. But I also think he did work hard on domestic policy issues and did the President’s bidding, which earned him jail time and the loss of his law license. This is a good look at one man’s experience working for the Nixon White House.