Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House Review

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Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House ReviewAt a time when we are governed by an administration that whole-heartedly believes "the ends justify the means", it is crucial to step back and look at history; to see where that motto has failed again and again. Bud Krogh writes an insightful and extremely timely account of his time in the White House under Nixon and his direction of the "Plumbers"--created to seal up real (or perceived) leaks that were threatening our national security.
After the 2000 elections, Krogh wrote an open memo, published in the Christian Science Monitor, to Bush's new staff--VP Cheney, Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld--all of whom Krogh had worked with under Nixon in the 1970s. He said as he watched them raise their right hands and swear to uphold the Constitution, it brought back a flood of memories for him when he stood before Nixon and swore to the same oath.
"As I pondered what the new Bush staff would encounter, I realized that I might be able to help by writing a memo to them about one of the central ideas that I had not understood as well as I should have when I was on the White House staff...the absolute imperative to maintain one's sense of integrity in the face of enormous pressures to get results at any cost."
Krogh explains how a good person, raised in the right way, given all the advantages of a young American male, could end up pleading guilty to depriving another of his civil rights and going to prison. Loyalty to his superiors, including Nixon, overshadowed his oath to uphold the Constitution and that lead him to orchestrate the illegal break-in of Dr. Louis Fielding's Psychiatric office in California for the express purpose of stealing Daniel Ellsberg's personal file to try to discredit him. Ellsberg had leaked the "Pentagon Papers" to the press and Nixon believed this to be a serious national security threat.
History has remembered Watergate as the downfall of Nixon's administration, but through Krogh's easy-to-read narrative of the events leading up to Watergate, we find that the break-in and burglary of Dr. Fielding's office was the "seminal event in the chain of events that led to Nixon's resignation".
Obviously, Krogh's letter to the Bush staff has gone largely unheeded as we learn almost daily about unwarranted wiretapping; holding prisoners without cause; torture at Abu Graib and Guantanamo Bay; Rove; Libby; the list goes on and on.
Who was it that said "those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."?
At the end of his book, Krogh has created a model called the "integrity zone"; steps that each individual in public or private life can take to ascertain whether the path they have chosen is one of integrity or convenience. With three questions: Is it whole and complete? Is it Right? Is it good? one can quickly figure out if they're standing on solid ground or standing at the edge of a slippery slope. After the events of 9/11, if the Bush administration had stopped to ask those questions, we may well be living in a vastly different world than the one we live in today.
For anyone who is concerned about today's political environment and interested in where we've come from and how we got here, this is a must read. I think Krogh is an appropriate person to get this message across. It speaks volumes about who Bud Krogh is as a man of integrity that Daniel Ellsberg wrote the forward and calls him a friend today.
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The Final Days Review

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The Final Days ReviewThis is an amazing account of the last few months of the Nixon presidency leading up to his eventual resignation. The first half of the book deals in larger chunks of time, but by the time the second half begins, each chapter encompasses a single day. As in ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN by the same authors, the reader may find the onslaught of different names to be intimidating; fortunately, the cast of characters list at the beginning of the book helps a lot. All the people involved are treated with a lot of respect, and their motivations are made very clear throughout with only a few exceptions.
Unlike ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, this is not told from the viewpoint of the two authors. Through interviews and other methods, the two journalists have reconstructed what they believe those last few months to have been like. The result is an amazing and richly detailed look at the aftermath of one of the most important scandals in recent US history.
One of the real strengths of this book is that it allows the reader to see how the scandal affected many of the different people that were close to the President -- his aides, his family, the lawyers defending him, congressmen, fellow Republican leaders, etc. We see how his team tried (and eventually failed) to fight the accusations made at President and how his staff continued to get the work done even as he retreated farther and farther into himself.
Before I read ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE FINAL DAYS, I really didn't know too many particulars about the whole Watergate scandal. I highly recommend this pair of books to anyone looking for detailed, yet highly readable sources of information.The Final Days Overview

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The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon Review

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The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon ReviewThis is the clearest, most concise, most accesible book on Watergate I have ever come across. Its most important feature is providing the reader with a deepr understanding of Watergate beyond the mere surface aspects of the cover-up, but instead lets one understand the implications the Nixon Administartions activities had for the nation. At times, the book may seem too partisan, and the large "cast of characters" can be hard to juggle. These minor criticisms aside, it as an important book to read, particlulary for young people in light of the recent Clinton impeachment hearings, so that they may judge for themselves whether or not that scandal in fact had the gravity and import of Watergate.The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon Overview

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