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

Egil "Bud" Krogh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586484672 ISBN 13: 9781586484675

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2007

Synopsis

In 1971, Egil "Bud" Krogh was summoned to a closed-door meeting by John Ehrlichman, his mentor and key confidant of President Richard Nixon, in a secluded office in the Western White House.

Krogh thought he was walking into a meeting to discuss the drug control program launched on his most recent trip to South Vietnam. Instead, he was handed a file and the responsibility for the SIU, Special Investigations Unit, later to become notorious as "The Plumbers." The unit was to investigate the leaks of top-secret government documents, particularly the Pentagon Papers, to the press. The president considered this task critical to national security. Nixon said he wanted the unit headed up by a "real son of a bitch." He got the studious, zealous, and loyal-to-a-fault Bud Krogh instead.

In that instant, Krogh was handed the job that would lead to one of the most famous conspiracies in presidential history and the demise of the Nixon administration. Integrity is Krogh's memoir of his experiences—of what really went on behind closed doors, of how a good man can lose his moral compass, of how exercising power without integrity can destroy a life. It also tells the moving story of how he turned his life back around. For anyone interested in the ethical challenges of leadership, or of professional life, Integrity is thought-provoking and inspiring reading.

About this title

About the Author

Egil "Bud" Krogh made headlines as a Nixon Administration official who went to prison for his role in what would be known as the Watergate scandals. He is a practicing lawyer in Seattle, Washington.

From Publishers Weekly

Although the Watergate scandal covers well-trod ground, Krogh has the perspective to provide a new angle on the Nixon administration and the perpetration of one of the most infamous political crimes in American history. Part of the book's appeal stems from the fact that Watergate itself is not the central focus, since Krogh was no longer involved with Nixon's "plumbers" at the time the scandal occurred. Instead, the political decisions leading up to the creation of the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the motivations of the individuals in that group and the break-in to Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office take center stage in Krogh's account, giving the reader a novel slant on a well known story. From his position as one of three leaders of the SIU (along with E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy), Krogh has a singular vantage point, and 30 years later he's had plenty of time to dissect the ethics and effects of the momentous decisions that led to the Nixon presidency's downfall. Krogh's conclusion is that the crimes have their roots in a breakdown of integrity, giving it wide applicability to the current age of government scandal and high crime.
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Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1586484672
• ISBN 13: 9781586484675
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240