John Daniel Ehrlichman was an American political aide who served as the White House Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon.
22 Facts About John Ehrlichman
2.
John Ehrlichman was a key figure in events leading to the Watergate break-in and the ensuing Watergate scandal, for which he was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury, and served a year and a half in prison.
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John Ehrlichman was born in Tacoma, Washington, the son of Lillian Catherine and Rudolph Irwin John Ehrlichman.
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John Ehrlichman's family practiced Christian Science.
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John Ehrlichman was an Eagle Scout, recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, graduated from Santa Monica High School in 1942, and attended the University of California, Los Angeles, for a year prior to his military service.
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In World War II, John Ehrlichman received the Distinguished Flying Cross as a lead B-17 navigator in the Eighth Air Force.
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John Ehrlichman's uncle was president of the Municipal League, and Ehrlichman was active, supporting its efforts to clean up Lake Washington and to improve the civic infrastructure of Seattle and King County.
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John Ehrlichman remained a practicing lawyer until 1969, when he entered politics full-time.
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John Ehrlichman worked on Nixon's unsuccessful 1960 presidential campaign and his unsuccessful 1962 California gubernatorial election campaign.
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John Ehrlichman was an advance man for Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign.
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John Ehrlichman was Counsel for about a year before becoming Chief Domestic Advisor for Nixon.
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John Ehrlichman created "The Plumbers", the group at the center of the Watergate scandal, and appointed his assistant Egil Krogh to oversee its covert operations, focusing on stopping leaks of confidential information after the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
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John Ehrlichman spoke with the hijackers of Southern Airways Flight 49 on November 10,1972, via telephone.
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White House Counsel John Dean cited the "Berlin Wall" of Ehrlichman and Haldeman as one of the reasons for his growing sense of alienation in the White House.
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Unlike his co-defendants, John Ehrlichman voluntarily entered prison before his appeals were exhausted.
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John Ehrlichman was released from the Federal Correctional Institution, Safford, after serving a total of 18 months.
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John Ehrlichman applied for a pardon from President Reagan in 1987.
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John Ehrlichman wrote several novels, including The Company, which served as the basis for the 1977 television miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors.
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John Ehrlichman served as the executive vice president of an Atlanta hazardous materials firm.
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John Ehrlichman died of complications from diabetes in Atlanta in 1999, after discontinuing dialysis treatments.
21.
In 2016, a quote from John Ehrlichman was the lede for an anti-drug war article in Harper's Magazine by journalist Dan Baum.
22.
Baum states that John Ehrlichman offered this quote in a 1994 interview for Baum's 1996 book, Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, but that he did not include it in that book or otherwise publish it for 22 years "because it did not fit the narrative style" of the book.