A slender but thoughtful memoir by one of the foot soldiers of Watergate. Coming on the heels of Dwight Chapin's The President's Man, one-time White House staffer Egil Krogh delivers a more rueful remembrance assisted by his son. Krogh, who served a short prison term for his role in Watergate, spent years afterward wrestling with the bad choices he made in committing crimes that sent him to jail and drove Nixon from the White House. The usual ingredients were there: youth, ambition, and a desire to serve a president and country in "an emergency context"--namely, the release of the Pentagon Papers, which Nixon insiders considered threat enough to national security to burglarize Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Not long after, having assembled a crew including G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt (who brought in a merry band of Cuban "plumbers" from the Bay of Pigs days), Krogh oversaw the burglary of the psychiatrist's office. Though the unit operated under the grand rubric the Special Investigations Unit, it was oddly amateurish. There are a couple of ironies involved, too, one a ploy to get the FBI to approve lie-detector tests on suspected leakers, a petition denied by FBI executive Mark Felt, later revealed as "Deep Throat." The author allows that his "absolute loyalty to President Nixon, both personally and to his view of the national security threat, had skewed my perspective." Refreshingly, however, he doesn't try to explain himself away (as does Chapin) but instead writes that it was his term in federal prison that afforded him the opportunity to reflect on "why we so often choose courses of action that inflict harm on those we would help." It's good that he does so, since, as he notes, Nixon never accepted guilt for Watergate and the cover-up that ended his presidency. The author's story is in development for a miniseries on HBO. A reflective, long-overdue apologia for misguided service to a corrupt leader. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The late Nixon aide Egil Krogh (1939--2020) presents, in concert with his son Matthew, this clearly written first-person confession for his role in some of the Nixon administration's crimes. After the Pentagon Papers leak by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, Krogh was made co-director of Nixon's Special Investigations Unit ("the Plumbers"), charged with preventing future leaks, purportedly in the interest of national security. In September 1971 Krogh assented to have the Plumbers break in to the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to look for information to discredit the leaker. Eight months later, the Plumbers would form the core of Nixon's Watergate burglars; by then, Krogh had left the unit, after refusing to use a warrantless wiretap. Krogh was implicated in the Nixon administration's crimes when Watergate broke in 1973; he pled guilty for a reduced sentence (part of his effort to atone, he writes here) and was the first person incarcerated for activities in the Nixon White House. Later, he lectured on accepting responsibility and making ethical choices when loyalty to people and principles conflict. VERDICT General readers on both sides of the political aisle will welcome this instructional, conscience-stricken account and will want to compare the book to the five-part miniseries based on it (to appear on HBO in 2022).--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr.

How does someone regain integrity? Krogh believed in the importance of integrity, but felt he lost his during the unraveling of the Nixon Administration. In July, 1971, press leaks involving Vietnam and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers left the administration reeling. Krogh was approached by domestic advisor John Ehrlichman to work on a special project for Nixon. With a Special Investigations Unit (SIU), Krogh would be entrusted with preventing future leaks and digging for dirt on leakers like Ellsberg. Krogh's past work overseeing the evaluation of narcotics control policy made him seem a good fit for spearheading the SIU (later called the Plumbers), whose break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office set the ball rolling to Watergate. This is a concise and important view of one domino that would topple Richard Nixon's Presidency. With coauthor and son Matthew, Krogh pens a heartfelt mea culpa--soon to be an HBO miniseries--emphasizing that redemption is always possible and integrity not entirely lost, even in the wake of historic scandal.

In this breezy memoir, the basis for a forthcoming HBO series, Egil "Bud" Krogh, who died in 2020, recounts his role as head of the Nixon administration's Special Investigations Unit, whose members later committed the Watergate break-in. Writing with his son, Matthew, a climate change activist, Krogh recalls vetting cabinet nominees as a member of Nixon's transition team in 1968, "long before I understood the seriousness of the many responsibilities I would be given." After defense contractor Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, Krogh's mentor and "surrogate father" John Ehrlichmann tasked him with directing a team, later known as "the Plumbers," to investigate "who was part of the conspiracy." Krogh admits to orchestrating the theft of Ellsberg's psychiatric files, but notes that he was kicked off the Special Investigations Unit before Watergate for refusing to authorize a warrantless wiretap. Ultimately, Krogh suggests that former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy bears much of the responsibility for the break-in. Krogh is an amiable narrator, but he covers well-trod ground here and takes pains to highlight his own naivete. This Watergate history is best suited to completists. (Dec.)