Word: ehrlichmans
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Rough talk and confrontational tactics did not come naturally to Ehrlichman. But every presidential assistant is tempted to purchase greater influence by humoring a President's moods. Ehrlichman overcompensated. To the mounting protest demonstrations, the leaks and the drift of the dissenters into extralegal activity, Ehrlichman responded with a zeal that was sometimes excessive...
Toward me, Ehrlichman showed a mixture of comradely good will and testy jealousy. Inevitably he resented the contrast drawn between us by the media. He had been associated with Nixon for too long for the President to tolerate on his part social contacts and attitudes that in my case were treated as a congenital defect. Torn between his prohibited predilections to conciliate and his political survival, Ehrlichman adopted a supercilious manner. Outsiders considered it a mark of arrogance; its real fount was ambivalence...
...received a phone call from the President. He said that the refusal to grant immunity would throw "the fear of God into any little boys" who might attempt to escape their responsibility by dumping on associates. Nixon asked out of the blue whether he should fire Haldeman and Ehrlichman; he was heartbroken, he said, even to have to ask the question. I was dumbfounded; if Nixon held that view, he must be in mortal peril. Not possessing any basis for judgment, I ventured a formulation from which I never deviated: whatever would have to be done ultimately should be done...
Agnew came in as I was putting down the telephone. In a somewhat contemptuous, unfeeling manner, Agnew said that Nixon was kidding himself if he thought he could avoid firing Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He would be lucky to save himself...
...April drew to a close, in almost every conversation, Nixon asked me in his elliptical manner whether Haldeman and Ehrlichman should resign, without giving me any reason for it. It was a strange query. Not once did Nixon tell me his version of events. He maintained in private the same posture he had adopted in public, that every revelation...