Life is funny
© 2004 Christopher Key
The year was 1971. I was a young journalist on the East Coast. Still bitter from my experiences in Vietnam, I was out for revenge against the government that had sent me there.
Egil ‘Bud’ Krogh was only a few years older than I. He was White House Deputy for Domestic Affairs.
Another young man, Daniel Ellsberg, had written a government critique of the Vietnam War that eventually became known as The Pentagon Papers. He leaked it to the New York Times without permission.
This act outraged the Nixon administration and Krogh was appointed to head up a group called the Special Investigations Unit. Their charge was to find information that would discredit Ellsberg. Among the members of that unit were G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt.
Krogh, believing he was acting in the best interests of national security, authorized a break-in at the offices of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Nothing incriminating was found, but the unit, unofficially known as The Plumbers, would go on to mastermind the break-in at Democratic campaign headquarters, located in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC.
Thus began one of the most infamous political scandals in American history that would result in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
I was in the right place at the right time and covered Watergate as a pool reporter for a group of television stations. It helped make my career as it did for many other journalists. By the time the denouement had taken place, I was offered a job with CBS. That meant going to either Washington or New York. I was, and am, a small town kid. I have no idea why I was able to summon the wisdom to turn down that offer, but I did. God knows, I didn’t have much wisdom at that stage of my life.
Interestingly enough, Egil Krogh also was having to make a similar choice. On a visit to Williamsburg, Virginia, he had what he describes as an epiphany. The sheer weight of American history caused him to question what he had done as head of The Plumbers.
That epiphany caused him to plead guilty to felony charges resulting from the break-in at the offices of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. It was the first crack in the stonewall that the Nixon administration had erected against the burgeoning Watergate scandal. He was sentenced to prison by Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski and was disbarred. The prison time, he now believes, gave him the time to reflect on what he had done and why.
To make a long story short, he rehabilitated himself to the point where Jaworski eventually wrote three letters to support his readmission to the bar. Since that time, Krogh has practiced law in Seattle and has now written a book about his experiences.
I was obsessed with Watergate even after Nixon’s resignation. The scandal gave me the opportunity to exact my pound of flesh from the government. I wrote about it extensively and even now have a large collection of books by journalists and participants in Watergate.
Things were simpler then. Everything was black and white. Anyone in the Nixon administration was a bad guy and all of us journalists were the good guys. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would have lunch with Egil Krogh.
Recently, Krogh came to speak to the Bellingham City Club, of which I am a member. I was fortunate enough to sit at the same table as our guest speaker and had the opportunity to converse with him before and after his presentation.
He is a soft-spoken gentleman who has learned humility the hard way. I introduced myself and mentioned that I had covered Watergate. We shared some memories of that time. Krogh is still a consummate political operative in that he remembered my name and mentioned it in his address to the group. I knew what he was doing, but it was still flattering to be mentioned by a man who was in such a high position.
He spoke of how political operatives can become insulated from outside influences by their loyalty to a cause. He cited the Orwellian concept of groupspeak, the secret language shared by insiders designed to exclude those not of the inner circle. He spoke of hubris, that pride and arrogance that has been central to dramatic tragedies from time immemorial.
Krogh was so unfailingly honest about his own failings that I found myself immensely charmed by a man I once considered an enemy. After his address, I told him how grateful I was that we had both matured to the point where we could see shades of gray. Two men who had been so diametrically opposed in political beliefs could not only share lunch, but come to admire each other. In the process, I was able to admit to him that I had done things as a journalist that I was ashamed of. Unlike Krogh, I never went to prison for those failings. Technically, I never broke the law.
But, as he pointed out, there are two things to be considered in any action. The first is whether or not it is legal. The second of which is whether it is morally right. He is forthright enough to admit that what he did as head of The Plumbers was neither legal nor morally right.
I admire anyone who admits his mistakes and takes responsibility for them. Egil Krogh is such a man. He sent a letter to members of the Bush administration after the election. Many of them are his friends and colleagues, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and others. In that letter, he cited his own experiences and cautioned them about hubris. He warned them about seeing a mandate where there was none. He also admitted that no one at cabinet level ever saw his letter, as far as he knew.
I asked him if he agreed with his colleague John Dean’s assessment that the Bush administration was “Worse than Watergate.” Krogh said he didn’t think so, but in a follow-up question, he admitted that there was a tendency toward insularity and groupthink that was precisely what led to the downfall of the Nixon administration.
Krogh said that the appointment of presidential advisors to major cabinet posts was something to be concerned about because the president would likely not hear opinions that differed from his own.
Those of us who read and understand history can draw our own conclusions. But this journalist learned an important lesson from Egil Krogh. Ask yourself constantly if what you are doing is legal. Even more importantly, ask yourself if what you are doing is morally defensible. This is just as important for journalists as it is for politicians.
It is also vitally important in the business world. Too often we divorce our ideals from our practices by saying, “Well, that’s just business. It’s not personal.”
Egil Krogh shows us that it is, indeed, personal. The decisions we make as politicians or businesspeople or journalists have consequences. Somehow, we have to grok the fact that morality, doing the right thing, is not something we can somehow put aside from our everyday lives. If we are to make this a better, sustainable world, morality has to pervade everything we do. Not morality in a narrow ideological sense, but morality in the context of what is right for humankind and the planet as a whole.
If a firebrand journalist and a conservative political operative can find common ground over lunch, there is hope for us all.
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