"It's hard to believe that a man of your intelligence could have been involved in so much complicated complicity and knew nothing about it."
—Senator Herman E. Talmadge
"What a liar."
— Senator Daniel K. Inouye, muttering to himself but picked up by a live microphone.
However injudicious, those conclusions reflected the frustrations of the Senate Watergate committee as the seven Senators grappled futilely with the superbly prepared, unyielding testimony of a long-awaited witness: John D. Ehrlichman, President Nixon's former domestic affairs adviser. Bobbing and weaving with both body and word, the confident and combative Ehrlichman admitted to not a single impropriety, regretted nothing, professed to have had an amazing unawareness as the scandal gradually engulfed the White House. Through four days of surprisingly ill-focused questioning, the loquacious aide insisted upon a similar uncomprehending innocence on the part of his boss, Richard Nixon.
If the Senators learned little that was new about how the wiretapping and burglary of the Democratic national headquarters had been plotted and how laws had been willfully broken in order to conceal all evidence pointing toward Nixon's associates, they learned more than they seemed to want to about Ehrlichman's personal and political ethics.
This amoral view from just outside the Oval Office embraced burglary as legal in safeguarding national security even when not specifically authorized by the President, job overtures to a judge handling a politically charged trial as proper, snooping and tailing to determine the sexual and drinking habits of candidates as legitimate practices in political campaigns. Stealing psychiatric records, recording phone calls from friends seeking advice, arranging for a former Cabinet officer to avoid confronting a grand jury—all were unobjectionable to Ehrlichman.
In his chilling concept, it does not matter that there is both a law and an ethic to protect every man's conversations with his psychiatrist. Nor does it matter whether such information serves any legitimate purpose; Ehrlichman expressed doubts about psychiatry. If Government wants it, there ought to be a way to get it. After all, insurance adjusters, any private detective, seem to find a way to bribe a nurse or pose as a doctor. Why not the White House?
Easily the most defiant and least contrite of all the Watergate witnesses thus far, Ehrlichman's mastery of the situation was impressive, his debating skill sharp, his language fascinating, his face an all-too-expressive reflection of his inner disdain and contempt for his questioners. When the nomination of the hapless L. Patrick Gray as FBI director was doomed, Ehrlichman did not urge its withdrawal, but suggested coldly: "We ought to let him hang there. Let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind."