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If Ehrlichman's credentials on domestic matters are slightly thin, Henry Kissinger's background in foreign affairs is impeccable. Kissinger, a Harvard scholar of defense and foreign policy, has suffered three staff resignations over the Administration's Cambodia venture, but his remains a solid shop. His 42 professionals are just that, and they provide Nixon with the same quality of technical exposition that he gets from his Council of Economic Advisers under Paul McCracken.
In some ways, Kissinger has an easier relationship with Nixon than Haldeman or Ehrlichman; he does not have to fend off unhappy Congressmen, and his specialty is Nixon's pet preoccupation. "The old man," says a Nixon aide, "doesn't give a damn about parks and stuff, relatively speaking. He's not interested in mobile homes or farm problems. He wants to talk to Henry Kissinger about foreign policy, and he expects the Germans to keep people away from him so he can do it." Kissinger has more experience in Washington than his two colleagues, since he was a defense-policy consultant under both Kennedy and Johnson.
Kissinger's dominance of foreign affairs has produced dire strain between him and the Department of State. No one at State bothers any longer to describe relations between Kissinger and Secretary Rogers as cordial. One State official complains: "Making decisions secretly and at the highest level has always tended to cut out contributions based on specific, regional expertise, and this is happening more frequently and seriously than ever before." The post that Kissinger fills was created by John Kennedy when he became impatient with the cumbersome State Department; he called State "a bowl of Jell-O." Nixon has continued and expanded the office.
Muse Together
Ehrlichman, who should know, says of Attorney General John Mitchell: "The President seeks his advice even on fairly mundane and minor details." "They muse together," says another observer. The special relationship between Nixon and Mitchell, according to Richard Kleindienst, Mitchell's No. 2 man at the Justice Department, results because Nixon knows that Mitchell is totally without political ambition, values his judgment, and respects his decisiveness. Mitchell is Nixon's lawyer in the broadest sense. Says Kleindienst: "To be a good lawyer, your client must have absolute confidence in you, and you must be absolutely honest. Very few people fit that definition. John Mitchell is one of them."
Mitchell is characteristically laconic about his contacts with Nixon. "Sometimes I see him a couple of times a day or more," he says. "Other times I go three or four days without seeing him. There's no set schedule, and it's hard to