First ‘plumber’ to admit Watergate role also set up bizarre Nixon-Elvis meeting
Egil ‘‘Bud’’ Krogh, who has died aged 80, was the head of the ‘‘plumbers’’ unit in the Nixon White House who coordinated the burglary of the office in Beverly Hills, an incident that, in his own eyes, paved the way for the more notorious Watergate break-in. He became the first staff member to plead guilty to his part in the Watergate scandal, and the first to go to jail.
A former deputy assistant to the president and undersecretary of transportation, Krogh was the first member of Richard Nixon’s administration sentenced to prison for his conduct in the White House. Later, he became a campaigner for integrity in public life and also wrote a memoir chronicling the bizarre encounter in 1970 between Nixon and Elvis
Presley, which inspired the 2016 film Elvis & Nixon, featuring Colin Hanks as Krogh, who persuades a thoroughly dubious Nixon that meeting Presley would be a good idea.
Egil Krogh was born in Chicago and brought up in Portland, Oregon, then Seattle. He dropped out of university to join the US Navy, and served during the Vietnam War. Back in the US he studied law at the University of Washington and, in 1969, Nixon’s future presidential counsel, John Ehrlichman – a family friend – offered him a job as his deputy in the White House.
In July 1971, after the leak of the Pentagon
Papers by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Krogh agreed to co-direct a top-secret Special Investigations Unit, nicknamed the ‘‘plumbers’’, to stop leaks that could undermine Vietnam peace negotiations.
A month later, after Ellsberg’s psychiatrist Lewis Fielding refused to give records to the FBI, Krogh arranged for three ‘‘burglars’’ to break into his office in Beverly Hills. The office was ransacked, but the intruders failed to find Ellsberg’s medical records.
The public perception is that the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Building, and the White House’s subsequent attempts at cover-up, was the principal cause of Nixon’s downfall, but Krogh later said it was with the Fielding break-in that the White House ‘‘crossed the Rubicon’’ into illegality.
By the time of the Watergate burglary, it seems that Krogh was beginning to have moral qualms. In December 1971 he had been removed from the plumbers’ unit after refusing to wiretap a government employee suspected of leaks.
Yet he lied to a Watergate investigator about the activities of his fellow plumbers, Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, and in February 1973 was rewarded with the job of undersecretary of transportation. In May, however, he decided to submit an affidavit to the judge handling Ellsberg’s prosecution for leaking, admitting his, Liddy’s and Hunt’s roles in the Fielding break-in.
At first he argued that national security had justified both the break-in and his false statements. In November, however, he pleaded guilty to the most serious charge of conspiracy, and early the next year was jailed for two to six years, serving 41⁄2 months.
After leaving prison, he taught ethics at Golden Gate University and worked for a Republican congressman. Disbarred from law in 1975, he was reinstated in 1980 on the recommendation of Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski, who was impressed by his integrity at his trial.
He led a quiet life as a partner with a Seattle law firm until 1994, when he published
The Day Elvis Met Nixon, in which he related how the pop star turned up unannounced at the White House gate early one December morning in 1970. He handed the guard a letter requesting that Nixon make him a secret ‘‘federal agent at large’’ so he could use his influence to help with ‘‘the hippie elements’’ and persuade young people to resist drugs.
Presidential aide Dwight Chapin showed the letter to Krogh, who thought a meeting might be good for the president’s image.
A memo was whisked off to Nixon’s notoriously ruthless chief of staff HR Haldeman, who scribbled on it: ‘‘You must be kidding’’, but approved the meeting. Presley entered the Oval Office in a purple crushedvelvet jacket and flapping lapels. He had brought Nixon a Colt .45 and seven silver bullets in a commemorative box, but that was confiscated by the Secret Service.
Elvis asked the president if he could have a badge from the federal Bureau of Narcotics. Nixon turned to Krogh: ‘‘Can I get him a badge?’’ Krogh proceeded to arrange it.
Priscilla Presley, Elvis’ wife at the time, recalled that ‘‘with the federal narcotics badge, [Elvis believed he] could legally enter any country both wearing guns and carrying any drugs he wished’’.
Krogh’s notes written after the meeting described how Presley had been ‘‘studying Communist brainwashing’’ and ‘‘indicated to the president in a very emotional manner that he was ‘on your side’ ’’. His most vivid memory was of the singer putting his arm around Nixon and hugging him: ‘‘I thought to myself, this is the last meeting they’ll let me schedule, because you don’t hug Nixon.’’
Bud Krogh’s three marriages were dissolved. He is survived by partner Nancy Hansen, and by three sons and a stepdaughter. –
‘‘I thought to myself, this is the last meeting they’ll let me schedule, because you don’t hug Nixon.’’
Egil Krogh on Nixon’s meeting with Elvis