My latest read – Integrity

What can you learn from a Nixon staff lawyer who pleaded guilty to approving the break-in of Dr. Lewis Fielding’s office in 1971?  Plenty to my surprise.  Egil Krogh’s Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House is a story of how ‘national security’ and political zeal triggered Watergate.  Krogh even closes the book with an open letter to W. Bush’s illegal wiretapping to demonstrate that our nation’s politicians and their staff have forgotten Watergate’s 40th anniversary is just a couple years away….clearly the lesson has been forgotten as well.

Krogh joined Nixon’s White House team after working in a Seattle law firm with John Ehrlichman.  Ehrlichman served Nixon as a senior consultant in the 1968 Presidential campaign and was rewarded with the role as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs. Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman dominated the Nixon White House like no other executive staff.

Krogh was responsible for approving the break-in at Fielding’s office in order to dig up damaging evidence against Daniel Ellsberg who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.  Ellsberg served on Kissinger’s staff.  This event was the first of many illegal break-ins designed by G. Gordon Liddy’s Operation Gemstone.

Ellsberg wrote the introduction to Integrity.

Shortly thereafter Nixon’s men would invent a Special Investigative Unit, a Nixon/GOP “police force” known as “The Plumbers” to fix the leaking of government documents to the media.

It was not a total surprise to learn Liddy was willing to kill during the Fielding break-in.  Thankfully that did not happen but proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the zealots who were working for Nixon. Even Howard Hunt’s team from Miami did not ask to be paid to break into Fielding’s office — they saw it as a patriotic act.

Krogh shared his experience, soon after leaving prison about seeking out and meeting Dr. Fielding to express his remorse for his role authorizing the Plumbers to break into of his office and deprive him of his rights as a citizen.  I was surprised to learn how far and deep this man was moved to heal, to apologize to those he damaged in in the name of “national security” and to fully accept his actions as his own.  Clearly Krogh has come full circle.

He was one of the very few to actually plead guilty and accepted his sentencing before testifying so as not to look like he cut a deal for a shorter jail term.  Even Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski was moved to address Krogh’s determination to take responsibility for his own actions while speaking at Berkeley almost 15 years later.  Krogh was teaching and happened to be in the audience.  A terrific story is told about this event.

Krogh’s story indicates Nixon’s entire political downfall occurred in a period of just 7 weeks.  Krogh under estimated the lack of discipline Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy would display in their actions as Plumbers.  He even wrote an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about the Fielding break-in that has for the most part faded into history compared to the Plumbers second mission: Watergate.

A closing chapter covers his life after losing his license to practice law and his long road to regaining the support of the Washington law professional organization in order to regain his license in the 1980s.  He led a much different life after jail, even sharing how he was hiking up Mount Everest when news of Nixon’s resignation was revealed.  He has also established a leadership consulting company while practicing law.

Tags: Egil Krogh, E. Howard Hunt, Watergate, political espionage, Nixon, scandal, G. Gordon Liddy, John Ehrlichman, Dr. Lewis Fielding, Pentagon Papers, illegal wiretapping, Plumbers, reading