Witness to Power The Nixon Years Author:John Ehrlichman Since his years as White House Counsel and Assistant to the President, John Erlichman has achieved an enviable literary reputation as the author of The Company and The Whole Truth. — Now, at last, he has written the definitive insider's account of the Nixon Presidency -- the frankest, most outspoken disclosure of the events ... more »which began with Nixon's electoral triumph and ended in Watergate.
A fascinating, keenly observed first-hand view of American political reality, Erlichman's narrative describes the struggle for power between the President, his Cabinet, the Congress and the White House staff.
Erlichman tells us the intimate human details of the triumphs and tragedies of the Nixon years -- the Supreme Court nominations, the aborted firing of J. Edgar Hoover, the tension between Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon and the effect of Nixon's rise to power on his wife, his daughters and his brother.
With an unrivaled flair for anecdote and a deep understanding of politics, men and institutions that is rare in any writer, Erlichman describes the big events -- Kissinger's real role in the Paris peace talks, for example -- and the trivial (Nixon's struggle to get more tickets to his own inauguration).
The cast of characters includes:
Henry Kissinger -- who had a spy on his own staff
Al Haig -- who jumped from colonel to four-star general almost overnight
Bebe Rebozo -- who refused to help Nixon get rid of his wife's best friend
Bob Haldeman -- who blew the whistle on Nixon's part in the 1971 break-in
Tricia Nixon -- who thought the President's Ambassador was making a pass at her
Pat Nixon -- who was overwhelmed by the White House and its demands on her.
They are all here, the major and minor actors in the Nixon tragedy, with Richard Nixon himself the central figure of the drama, the enigmatic personality who was at once shrewd, stubborn, sensitive, secretive, endlessly manipulative; the consummate politician who reveled in power but couldn't bring himself to fire an employee personally.
Here at last is the authoritative story of Nixon's relationship with J. Edgar Hoover; of Nixon's attempt to create a Supreme Court in his own image; of the power struggles on the White House staff; of the fall of Spiro Agnew, John Mitchell, Wally Hickel, Bob Finch -- and John Erlichman. We see Charles Colson, John Dean, Murray Chotiner, the master manipulators of the Nixon years, and Erlichman describes the superstars of the Washington press corps, too: Mary McGrory, John Osborne, Dan Rather and many others.
Here, too, is the wonderful, one-of-a-kind record of a political career, written with astonishing candor and flashes of wit by a man who was both a witness to and an actor in Richard Nixon's rise and fall.
More than just another "Watergate book," it is at once a major work of contemporary political history and a moving and compelling autobiography which explores the uses, fascinations and misuses of power -- and the ultimate toll that power exacts from those who hold it. « less