Eating Krogh

Egil Krogh was the first member of the Nixon Administration to go to jail, convicted for his role in the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. The Ellsberg break-in was ten months before the Watergate break-in that brought down the Nixon Administration, and was a sideshow to that spectacle.

Krogh has written an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times, describing his role and the lessons he learned. Excerpts:

At no time did I or anyone else there question whether the operation was necessary, legal or moral. Convinced that we were responding legitimately to a national security crisis, we focused instead on the operational details: who would do what, when and where ...

The premise of our action was the strongly held view within certain precincts of the White House that the president and those functioning on his behalf could carry out illegal acts with impunity if they were convinced that the nation’s security demanded it. As President Nixon himself said to David Frost during an interview six years later, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” To this day the implications of this statement are staggering ...

I finally realized that what had gone wrong in the Nixon White House was a meltdown in personal integrity. Without it, we failed to understand the constitutional limits on presidential power and comply with statutory law.

He says that he wrote a memo to the incoming Bush Administration in 2001, urging upon them the lessons he'd learned. He concludes, "I wonder if they received my message." Probably not.