Word: ellsbergs
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There is the fact that the President improperly offered Ellsberg trial judge Matt Byrne the position of FBI director--an apparent bribe aimed at getting a verdict against Mr. Ellsberg...
Quite apart from that colloquy, Ehrlichman ran into a buzz saw of committee questions when he claimed that 1) he had not authorized the burglary, 2) it was necessary because FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had resisted an effective probe of Ellsberg out of friendship for Louis Marx, the wealthy father of Ellsberg's wife, and 3) "foreign intelligence" was involved in the Ellsberg case because copies of the Pentagon papers had been given to the Soviet embassy. Ehrlichman was on thin ground on all three points...
...memo sent from Young and Krogh to Ehrlichman before the burglary indicated that Ehrlichman had approved "a covert operation ... to examine all the medical files still held by Ellsberg's psychoanalyst." Ehrlichman's handwritten caution: "If done under your assurance that it is not traceable." Ehrlichman argued that he had not had burglary in mind. "Covert" meant only that he did not want the operation identified with the White House. He blandly suggested that there were all kinds of ways of handling the job that were routine, such as getting another doctor, a nurse or nurse...
...that it was almost impossible to check out, other than ask the Soviets about it-and that would have been a waste of time." The report also surfaced in another form. A convicted Boston murderer claimed that the man he had killed had got some of the papers from Ellsberg in a blackmail scheme and had sold them to the Russians. FBI officials have dismissed this as a story designed to get the murder conviction overturned...
Embattled but giving no ground, Ehrlichman ran into new hostile questions when he defended his two talks with Judge William Matthew Byrne, when the latter was presiding over the Ellsberg trial, about a possible appointment as FBI director. Ehrlichman said that he had done so at Nixon's direction: he had told the judge the matter was not "urgent" and could be discussed later, but Byrne had not objected to talking about it then. They had met once at San Clemente and later in a Santa Monica park. On both occasions, Ehrlichman said, the judge had expressed "a strong...