Talk:John Ehrlichman

Major Rewrite & Expansion
I undertook a major rewrite and expansion of the article pouring over numerous sources including several obits, his own book and quotations, and other articles on Watergate. Feel free to have a look and make changes if my wording got convoluted anywhere!

--Wgfinley 08:36, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Did you overlook this: "On April 30, 1973, Nixon fired Dean and Ehrlichman and Haldeman resigned." ? There should be a comma somewhere in there, after either "Dean" or "Ehrlichman." Orthotox (talk) 07:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

San Francisco has just gone clear over.
ALL THE PHILOSOPHER KING'S MEN.(President Richard Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman)(Brief Article) Harper's Magazine, Feb, 2000, by James Warren

From a May 13, 1971, conversation among President Richard Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, and H. R. Haldeman. On October 5, 1999, the National Archives made available to the public 445 hours of previously unreleased Oval Office tapes. The following dialogue was transcribed by Chicago Tribune reporter James Warren.

RICHARD NIXON: We're going to [put] more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family--let people like Pat Moynihan and [special consultant] Leonard Garment and others believe in all that crap. But I don't believe in it. Work, work--throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key.

JOHN D. EHRLICHMAN: The key is Reagan's neutrality. If Reagan blasts this thing and says it's not strong enough on the work-requirement end, that will be very bad.

NIXON: I have the greatest affection for them [blacks], but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.

EHRLICHMAN: The Mexican American is not as good as the Mexican. You go down to Mexico--they're clean, they're honest, they're moral.

NIXON: Mexico is a much more moral country.

EHRLICHMAN: Monterrey, Cuernavaca. Go into slum areas, and by God they come out with clean shirts on a Sunday morning.

NIXON: The church. You find a helluva lot less marijuana use in Mexico than the United States.

EHRLICHMAN: The unions are actually a stronger force down there than the church.

NIXON: For what?

EHRLICHMAN: For conduct and social policy.

NIXON: ... CBS ... glorifying homosexuality.

EHRLICHMAN: A panel show?

H. R. HALDEMAN: No, it's a regular show. It's on every week. It's usually just done in the guy's home. It's usually just that guy, who's a hard hat.

NIXON: That's right; he's a hard hat.

EHRLICHMAN: He always looks like a slob.

NIXON: Looks like Jackie Gleason.

HALDEMAN: He has this hippie son-in-law, and usually the general trend is to downgrade him and upgrade the son-in-law--make the square hard hat out to be bad. But a few weeks ago, they had one in which the guy, the son-in-law, wrote a letter to you, President Nixon, to raise hell about something. And the guy said, "You will not write that letter from my home!" Then said, "I'm going to write President Nixon," took off all those sloppy clothes, shaved, and went to his desk and got ready to write his letter to President Nixon. And apparently it was a good episode.

EHRLICHMAN: What's it called?

NIXON: "Archie's Guys." Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. The son-in-law apparently goes both ways. This guy. He's obviously queer--wears an ascot--but not offensively so. Very clever. Uses nice language. Shows pictures of his parents. And so Arch goes down to the bar. Sees his best friend, who used to play professional football. Virile, strong, this and that. Then the fairy comes into the bar.

I don't mind the homosexuality. I understand it. Nevertheless, goddamn, I don't think you glorify it on public television, homosexuality, even more than you glorify whores. We all know we have weaknesses. But, goddammit, what do you think that does to kids? You know what happened to the Greeks! Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates.

EHRLICHMAN: But he never had the influence television had.

NIXON: You know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. Neither in a public way. You know what happened to the popes? They were layin' the nuns; that's been goin' on for years, centuries. But the Catholic Church went to hell three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That's what's happened to Britain. It happened earlier to France.

Let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn, they root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all. I don't know what they do with them. Look at this country. You think the Russians allow dope? Homosexuality, dope, immorality, are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They're trying to destroy us. I know Moynihan will disagree with this, [Attorney General John] Mitchell will, and Garment will. But, goddamn, we have to stand up to this.

EHRLICHMAN: It's fatal liberality.

NIXON: Huh?

EHRLICHMAN: It's fatal liberality. And with its use on television, it has such leverage.

NIXON: You know what's happened [in northern California]?

EHRLICHMAN: San Francisco has just gone clear over.

NIXON: But it's not just the ratty part of town. The upper class in San Francisco is that way. The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time--it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine, with that San Francisco crowd. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco.

Decorators. They got to do something. But we don't have to glorify it. You know one of the reasons fashions have made women look so terrible is because the goddamned designers hate women. Designers taking it out on the women. Now they're trying to get some more sexy things coming on again.

EHRLICHMAN: Hot pants.

NIXON: Jesus Christ.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Harper's Magazine Foundation
 * From https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/white-house-tapes/498/conversation-498-005, by the way. 162.83.217.82 (talk) 19:32, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Stub on Bohemian Grove
The stub on Bohemian grove was slightly interesting, but incredibly unimformative. Should it be erased or expanded? Also it's kind of out of place and irrelevant, to me at least. Saganatsu 00:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. I am whacking it. Patzer42 05:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Father's role in World War Two
I want to explain how the sources document some things in case someone questions whether it is speculative or individual research.

The articles that discuss the death in the Canadian Air Force do not specify whether the Rudolph Ehrlichman who died was the same one as John Ehrlichman's father, or someone else with the same name.

However, the ancestry.com listing says that John Ehrlichman's father was 33 in 1930, which means that we would have been 45 in 1942, and also gives John Ehrlichman's mother's name, including middle initial.

http://www.iosphere.net/~sullivan/leblanc.htm?vm=r states that the Rudolph Ehrlichman killed in the 1942 crash was (1) from Washington State, (2) 45 in 1942, and (3) married to "Lilian C Ehrlichman". These three points of commonality are sufficient to establish that the deceased is the same Rudolph Ehrlichman as John Ehrlichman's father. 71.109.156.48 (talk) 07:01, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The section "post political life," unsourced material
The section titled "post political life" has a lengthy paragraph of unsourced material between citations 15 and 16. The relevant text reads:

The book portrays Nixon in a very negative light, and is considered [weasel words] to be the culmination of his frustration at not being pardoned by Nixon before his own 1974 resignation. Shortly before his death, Ehrlichman teamed with best-selling novelist Tom Clancy to write, produce, and co-host a three-hour Watergate documentary, John Ehrlichman: In the Eye of the Storm. The completed but never-broadcast documentary, along with associated papers and videotape elements (including an interview Ehrlichman did with Bob Woodward as part of the project), is housed at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.

I'm especially concerned with the unsourced psychoanalytical commentary about Ehrlichman's book being the "culmination of his frustration at not being pardoned by Nixon."

If this statement isn't sourced or edited within 24 hours, I'm going to delete it. It is 6:01 pm central United States time where I am.

Conversation invited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bug1333 (talk • contribs) 23:01, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Opps?
Just spent, no doubt, too much ink re JE who I knew personally from the early ‘80s through late 90s— I even lived with him and his (second) family in Santa Fe. Thought you all would know better than I what would be appropriate and proper to be included in a wiki report. What I primarily meant to offer for your consideration to be incorporated were tidbits and observations which would probably surprise to one degree or another those whose understanding of the man is stereotypically based upon the multitude of scandals and cover ups nowadays encompassed by the term “Watergate.”

The point would be to at least pry open the truth about the character of the man who, like many infamous players in history, evil and meanness co-existed with a surprising degree of humanity in the positive sense of the word—baffling a simple minded, canned understanding of him (as well as many of us and those we know.)

But I fear my relation of observations (and, yes, speculations derived therefrom) was lost because I failed to properly submit it for discussion.

Please let me know if it did not disappear, and if it did, you would deem it worthwhile for me to try again. Thanks. Always Controversial (talk) 07:15, 14 April 2019 (UTC)