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If any doubts daunt the regular rhythms of Haldeman and Ehrlichman they show no signs of it in their carefully ordered routines. Both rise early and get to work almost at once. Ehrlichman reaches the White House from his Great Falls, Va., home each morning at 7 and has breakfast in the basement mess. A Chrysler from the White House collects Haldeman at 7:30 in fashionable Kenwood, Md. Appointments Secretary Dwight Chapin is already in Haldeman's car along with Larry Higby, chief of the "beaver patrol" of clean-cut Haldeman assistants—John Brown and Alexander Butterfield are others —who ride herd on staffers to make sure Nixon's orders are carried out. In the car is a copy of the morning news summary that Nixon will see when he gets to his office at 8:30. It has been put together by Speechwriter Pat Buchanan and aides; it averages 30 pages, and once or twice a week includes a summary of magazine comment, editorials pro and con the Administration, and a foreign-press roundup.
While Ehrlichman is already holding his first staff meeting of the day, Haldeman, Chapin and Higby talk over the day's schedule. After they get to the White House at around 8 a.m., Haldeman gets the White House senior staff together for a brisk you-do-this session, anticipating what the rough spots of the day are likely to be. Ehrlichman is there, with Kissinger, and Presidential Counsellor Bryce Harlow, an Eisenhower Administration veteran.
Press Secretary Ron Ziegler comes in later with Herb Klein. Does the President need to see someone today who has not been scheduled? Should someone else be dropped? What should Ziegler tell the press when they ask at the morning briefing about the Cambodian Foreign Minister, Yem Sambour, who says that he wants U.S. troops to stay until the war is over? Indonesia's Suharto has said at a state dinner the night before that he thinks all foreign troops should leave Cambodia; it is agreed that Ziegler will explain that Suharto meant the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, since the U.S. has already said that its men would be out by June 30.
Staffing It Out
Haldeman and Ehrlichman go in to see the President at 9 a.m., fill him in on the results of the staff meetings. Normally Nixon has worked the night before in his private quarters, and he reels off a series of requests to Haldeman. Ask Chancellor Alexander Heard of Vanderbilt University, Nixon's temporary liaison man with academe, how the President can keep in touch with what is happening in the colleges after Heard leaves at the end of June. Get reports from Peter Flanigan, an important Ehrlichman aide who deals with the titans of finance, for the upcoming presidential dinner with business leaders. As Haldeman and Ehrlichman emerge from the Oval Office, Henry Kissinger enters to brief Nixon on foreign affairs. "I come out," Haldeman says, "with two to ten pages of notes. When the President begins his appointments schedule at 10 o'clock, I start in on my own work."
That includes many things. A White House staffer wants to see the President; Haldeman gets the details from Dwight Chapin and decides whether the matter merits a face-to-face meeting. If not, the staffer will be asked to send