THE NIXON YEARS REVISITED

By Ed Magnuson

Ehrlichman recalls tippling, racism and Kissinger's complaints

John Ehrlichman once asked Richard Nixon to cut back on his drinking. That was easy compared with what Nixon asked Ehrlichman to do: persuade Henry Kissinger to see a psychiatrist.

Domestic and political oddities abounded in the Nixon White House, at least as recalled by Ehrlichman, 56, in his third book, Witness to Power. The catty memoir will not be in bookstores until next month, but newsworthy tidbits began surfacing last week after the publisher, Simon & Schuster, sent advance galley proofs to 22 friends and journalists who might supply prepublication blurbs.

Most of the press attention centered on Ehrlichman's claim that Chief Justice Warren Burger "on several occasions" attended White House meetings at which "Nixon, [Attorney General John] Mitchell and I openly discussed with the Chief Justice the pros and cons of issues before the court." The topics, contends Ehrlichman, included school busing at a time when the issue was about to come before the Supreme Court. While Nixon apparently stressed his antibusing views to Burger, the Chief Justice clearly was not swayed. He ended up writing a pro-busing opinion in the North Carolina case then pending. Still, any out-of-court discussions about a case by a Supreme Court Justice would be a substantial breach of judicial ethics. A spokesman for Burger said the Chief Justice would not comment on allegations from "former litigants."

Ehrlichman, a convicted Watergate coconspirator, took meticulous notes on White House and other high-level meetings. His account includes devastating characterizations of many of the people around Nixon. Burger had "aggrandizing tendencies" and wanted to give an annual "State of Justice" address to Congress, Ehrlichman writes, with prime-time television coverage similar to that of the President's State of the Union speech. Vice President Spiro Agnew, in Ehrlichman's view, "wasn't too bright." Gerald Ford "had achieved his maximum potential in the Congress. When he became President, he exceeded it obviously."

Ehrlichman describes Kissinger and his wife Nancy as "the tenders of a flame: the historical reputation of Dr. Henry Alfred Kissinger, the Nobel laureate. They stand four-hour shifts, alert to attack, shielding the flame with their bodies and souls." Actually, Ehrlichman contends, Nixon became so tired of Kissinger's frequent threats to resign and his National Security Adviser's continual denunciations of Secretary of State William Rogers that he considered firing Kissinger.

Kissinger on one occasion called Rogers "a positive danger to the peace of the world." On another, Ehrlichman claims, "Henry arrived at a meeting wearing that most solemn expression he reserved for discussions of his resignations. 'I shall return to Harvard,' he said." When Ehrlichman asked what was wrong, Kissinger is quoted as replying, "It's Rogers, of course. . .I've discovered he has been holding policy meetings on the Middle East over at the State Department. That I cannot tolerate."

Finally, Ehrlichman writes, "Nixon wondered aloud if Henry needed psychiatric care," and urged, "Talk to him, John." Added Ehrlichman: "I could think of no way to talk to Henry about psychiatric care. I had no confidence that that was what would help Henry, nor could I bring myself to confront Henry with the President's apparent lack of confidence in his mental stability."

Ehrlichman depicts Nixon as deeply resenting all the attention Kissinger was getting in the press. One reason for installing his secret recording system, Ehrlichman quotes Chief of Staff H.R. ("Bob") Haldeman as telling him, was to prove to future historians that Nixon, not Kissinger, had conceived and directed his Administration's foreign policy initiatives.

Ehrlichman claims that the Nixon policies were often designed to appeal to racists. "That subliminal appeal to the antiblack voter was always in Nixon's statements and speeches on schools and housing, and it always bothered me."

More specifically, he contends that "Nixon said he believed America's blacks . . . were genetically inferior to whites." But he quotes The author Nixon: "We should still do what we could for them, within reasonable limits, because it was right to do so."

Recalling the unsuccessful attempt to unseat California Governor Edmund ("Pat") Brown in 1962, Ehrlichman says Nixon made his celebrated morning-after declaration ("You won't have Nixon to kick around any more") because he was suffering from a terrible hangover when he barged into a press conference. Ehrlichman also claims that when he was asked to join the 1968 presidential campaign staff, he said he would do so if Nixon would curtail his tippling. Ehrlichman contends that Nixon agreed, and kept the unusual bargain.

Ehrlichman adds to the J. Edgar Hoover legend by recalling that Hoover once informed Nixon that his agents had come across a report that Haldeman, Ehrlichman and another White House aide, Dwight Chapin, were homosexual "lovers." The FBI dug into the rumor, Hoover told the President, and turned in a report proving that it was unfounded. Ehrlichman suspected that Hoover manufactured the rumor so as to win White House favor by disproving it.

"The wily Hoover, Ehrlichman writes, regaled Nixon and Mitchell during a dinner at the FBI director's home with anecdotes about "bag jobs" in which his agents entered private homes and offices without warrants. When his guests did not protest, Ehrlichman surmises, Hoover felt he had tacit approval to continue the illegal acts.

Ehrlichman somewhat melodramatically recalls how the long Watergate ordeal affected him. Standing in the pilot's cabin aboard Air Force One on a trip with Nixon, Ehrlichman momentarily considered a quick solution: "I could end everyone's troubles by throwing myself against the controls, wedging myself between the pilot's control yoke and the pilot. We'd all be gone in about a minute and a half." Some of the unfortunate former officials portrayed in Witness to Power may wish that Ehrlichman had not dismissed the idea. --By Ed Magnuson

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