Word: ehrlichman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...John Ehrlichman once asked Richard Nixon to cut back on his drinking. That was easy compared with what Nixon asked Ehrlichman to do: persuade Henry Kissinger to see a psychiatrist...
Domestic and political oddities abounded in the Nixon White House, at least as recalled by Ehrlichman, 56, in his third book, Witness to Power. The catty memoir will not be in bookstores until next month, but newsworthy tidbits began surfacing last week after the publisher, Simon & Schuster, sent advance galley proofs to 22 friends and journalists who might supply prepublication blurbs...
Most of the press attention centered on Ehrlichman's claim that Chief Justice Warren Burger "on several occasions" attended White House meetings at which "Nixon, [Attorney General John] Mitchell and I openly discussed with the Chief Justice the pros and cons of issues before the court." The topics, contends Ehrlichman, included school busing at a time when the issue was about to come before the Supreme Court. While Nixon apparently stressed his antibusing views to Burger, the Chief Justice clearly was not swayed. He ended up writing a pro-busing opinion in the North Carolina case then pending. Still...
...Ehrlichman, a convicted Watergate coconspirator, took meticulous notes on White House and other high-level meetings. His account includes devastating characterizations of many of the people around Nixon. Burger had "aggrandizing tendencies" and wanted to give an annual "State of Justice" address to Congress, Ehrlichman writes, with prime-time television coverage similar to that of the President's State of the Union speech. Vice President Spiro Agnew, in Ehrlichman's view, "wasn't too bright." Gerald Ford "had achieved his maximum potential in the Congress. When he became President, he exceeded it obviously...
...Ehrlichman describes Kissinger and his wife Nancy as "the tenders of a flame: the historical reputation of Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger, the Nobel laureate. They stand four-hour shifts, alert to attack, shielding the flame with their bodies and souls." Actually, Ehrlichman contends, Nixon became so tired of Kissinger's frequent threats to resign and his National Security Adviser's continual denunciations of Secretary of State William Rogers that he considered firing Kissinger...