president s daily activities. our thing was a machine, and i knew my place. it really reflected a lot about richard nixon, the degree to which he wanted things controlled. it literally was from 6:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night every day of the week and saturdays and sundays, too. and that pace was unremitting, totally consuming for somebody like me. i was very tough on people feeling that i had to be. there is something about the presidency that i ve been ridiculed from my picking up the navy term of zero defects that you have to operate as close to zero defect as you can.
ourselves in or whatever it might be. i think a lot of younger staff people here find that he can far excel than in terms of energy and stamina. i took a camera on all my trips, a super 8 and i have quite a collection of film. john ehrlichman, a lawyer that went on the campaign tour will have an advisory role. i think this first year we ll see as basically the time of reform. ehrlichman is chief of affairs and under study. i was not a nixon person going in, probably if some college friend invited me to go advance for john kennedy, i might have gone. there were very few illusions
i think i changed during the time i was in the white house. i m not sure whether it was for the better. probably it s not in the time that i was there. when you first go in there, at least when i first went in there, i asked a lot of hard questions, why are we doing it this way? what s the justification for this program, why are we spending this money, why does this fellow work here, you know, those kinds of things. after a couple of years, i i felt like i was defending the status quo rather than
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know in my own head precisely what i did and why i did it. okay. and i know that i made some mistakes. i deeply regret those mistakes. as richard nixon s right-hand man he was the one most often recorded on the tapes, and they destroyed him. i had the rare privilege for four years serving on the white house staff under one of the greatest presidents. chief of staff hr haldeman found guilty on the watergate trial. do you regret what happened and what you did? oh, sure. the country lost motion, a lot of the good things we were working on in the way of domestic reforms were lost in the mess. you can t help but regret aftermath of that. a lot of good people had their lives spoiled in the process.