John Ehrlichman
John Ehrlichman was a prominent advisor to President Richard Nixon during the late 1960s and early 1970s, notably serving as his assistant for domestic affairs and director of the Domestic Policy Council. Born in 1925 in Tacoma, Washington, Ehrlichman had a distinguished military career in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, earning accolades for his bravery. After the war, he pursued legal studies and became involved in Nixon's political campaigns, eventually joining the Nixon administration following the president's 1968 election victory.
Ehrlichman played a significant role in implementing various liberal initiatives, including the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. However, he is perhaps best known for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, which involved covert operations aimed at discrediting political opponents, including breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. His actions contributed to a culture of secrecy and manipulation within the Nixon administration, leading to his eventual conviction for conspiracy, perjury, and obstruction of justice, for which he served eighteen months in prison.
After his release, Ehrlichman transitioned to writing, producing novels that drew on his experiences during Watergate. He also authored a controversial account of the era in his book, "Witness to Power: The Nixon Years." Ehrlichman passed away in 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia, leaving behind a complicated legacy intertwined with one of the most significant political scandals in American history.
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John Ehrlichman
Politician
- Born: March 20, 1925
- Birthplace: Tacoma, Washington
- Died: February 14, 1999
- Place of death: Atlanta, Georgia
Biography
A central figure in the Watergate scandal, John Ehrlichman was an advisor to President Richard Nixon from 1968 to 1973. Ehrlichman was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1925. His father, a Jewish immigrant from Austria, was killed while flying as a pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. Ehrlichman joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943, and he won the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal for the bombing missions he flew over Germany.
After the war, Ehrlichman went to the University of California at Los Angeles, where he met and became friends with Bob Haldeman. After he graduated college in 1948, Ehrlichman went to Stanford University Law School, graduating in 1951. While employed as an attorney in a Seattle, Washington, law firm, Ehrlichman worked on several of Nixon’s political campaigns. When Nixon was elected president in 1968, Ehrlichman joined his college friend Haldeman as a presidential advisor.
Ehrlichman rose to become the assistant to the president for domestic affairs, and then director of the Domestic Policy Council. He was able to enact some of the more liberal social and economic initiatives on Nixon’s agenda. Ehrlichman, for example, played a central role in establishing the Environmental Protection Agency.
More memorable, however, was Ehrlichman’s association with the notorious covert group of men called “the plumbers” who broke into a psychiatrist’s office to obtain information that could be used to discredit one of the psychiatrist’s patients. The patient, Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg, had leaked American military documents about the Vietnam War to The New York Times. Nixon, afraid that people were out to ruin him, cultivated a Machiavellian atmosphere that implied tactics, such as break-ins, were necessary.
The plumbers twice broke into offices of the Democratic National Committee, the second time to repair malfunctioning wiretaps. After they were caught, the connection between the plumbers and the Nixon White House began to emerge. Ehrlichman and Haldeman became a “Berlin Wall” as they tried to sequester Nixon from other advisors and cover up evidence of his link to the Watergate break-in. One strategy Ehrlichman advised to distract attention from the investigation, and simultaneously thwart an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was an effort to sabotage the confirmation of FBI director L. Patrick Gray.
The tactic of shielding Nixon from other advisors made Nixon lawyer John Dean suspicious that he would be set up to take the blame for Watergate. He testified before the Senate Watergate Committee, impugning Ehrlichman and Haldeman, who resigned shortly thereafter. For his participation in the Watergate break- in, Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice, and other charges in 1975 and served eighteen months in prison.
After his release, Ehrlichman wrote thinly disguised novels with Watergate-like intrigue. Critics praised his prose in The Company, published in 1976, and The Whole Truth, published in 1979. The realism of these novels prompted reviewers to exhort Ehrlichman to publish an expose about Watergate. He wrote his account of the Watergate era in Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (1982), but critics panned the book as trite and bilious. Ehrlichman died of complications from diabetes in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1999.