Word: erlichman
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...documents show that underneath its public statements, the administration was really criticizing public broadcasters for their anti-Nixon viewpoints. A memo to H.R. Haldeman from Clay T. Whitehead, then head of the Office of Telecommunications Policy, reveals a plan to quietly purge public television's anti-administration spokesmen. John Erlichman advised that the "best alternative would be to take over the management of public television and thereby determine what management decisions were to be made...
...real story in The Final Days--the one that no one seems to have noticed or care much about--is that Alexander Haig, the general Nixon brought into the White House after Haldeman and Erlichman "resigned," and Fred Buzhardt, one of Nixon's lawyers, (two men nobody ever voted for), actually ran the White House for about six months in 1974. They--along with lawyer James St. Clair, speechwriter Pat Buchanan, and press hack Ron Ziegler--were the men who became the "palace guard" and executed the Nixon defense, such as it was. They were also responsible, Woodward and Bernstein...
Mayer said he had good relations with Nixon, but he sometimes had problems with Haldeman and Erlichman, who feared the cost of new food programs. Anytime they bothered him, however, Mayer went over their heads to the president. "When the president would make brave speeches, Haldeman and Erlichman always saw them as rhetorical ploys--Nixon said it, but he didn't mean it," said Mayer. "Whether Nixon meant what he said or not, he got stuck with me and I was determined to take some action...
WBCN is good at making even the most serious of political events look like self-parodies, but some of their idle speculations about Watergate rest on too many paranoid assumptions. These assumptions make phrases like the description of Haldeman and Erlichman as "the german shepherds, the palace guards, the leaders of the White House Band," memorable, but they also lack any kind of insightful analysis. That's not to say that exercises in paranoia are bad, "especially then, when all of the facts still weren't out. The record only leaves you wishing BCN would do another show about Watergate...
CONSIDER, EVEN BRIEFLY, the courses Nixon might teach. With his proven ability to judge people guilty before their trials--Charles Manson, John Erlichman, and Bob Haldeman, for example--Nixon would be a sure bet to add a new dimension to Harvard's offerings in jurisprudence. Or consider taking a course on "Meaning and Perception" from a man who divides assertions about objective reality into two categories: operative and inoperative...