A Tale Told by an Innocent

...He came across irregularities in a deed of Federal land for a geriatric center in Austin, Texas, only to be hushed by President Nixon, who had apparently made some commitment to former President Johnson...

...Nevertheless, looking back with less anger than is warranted, Mollenhoff writes such wistful lines as these: "The need for public accountability was most difficult to explain to this obsessively secret man [Haldeman...

...So perhaps it is not surprising that although there are some lessons to be learned from Clark Mollenhoff's 11 months as in-White House investigator, or ombudsman, in this book, it is not clear that he has learned them...

...The doggedness required of them may militate against introspection...

...press spokesman, was "not really interested in knowing whether the Administration was right or wrong on an issue," There was apparently relief all around when Mollenhoff left the White House in May 1970, writing President Nixon that his decision was "in no manner an opposition to your policies...

...another was his obtaining tax data on Governor George Wallace's brother, which—to Mollenhoff's indignation—he was forced to pass on so that it could be leaked to the press...

...But when his ethical standards conflict with his political position—as happened during the Nixon Administration—there is no doubt about his choice, and the travail turns his passion into the rage of disillusionment...

...Mollenhoff was told his ombudsman duties were being divided between a young lawyer brought in from the Justice Department, John Dean III, and a White House special counsel named Charles Colson...

...Indeed there is a Candide-like quality about Mollenhoff: He is the well-intentioned innocent, wandering through a wicked world, never fully grasping the nature and source of the wickedness...

...It is highly sensitive...

...He went to the defense of A. Ernest Fitzgerald, discharged from his Pentagon position after disclosing concealment of a massive overrun, only to discover mysterious forces aligned against Fitzgerald and—in a subsequent Watergate disclosure—the channel from the Air Force to Colonel Alexander Butterfield in the White House...

...or why, when he reported one irregularity, Halde-man said that "I should keep posted on it and let President Nixon know if there were any developments that might cause political embarrassment...

...Mollenhoff says he didn't believe Dean and Colson "represented the strength, the independence, or the integrity" the job called for...

...Had Nixon not indicated, before his election, that he wanted to be the first President to establish a White House ombudsman as "a watchdog on government corruption...

...Each account of frustration ends with the suggestion that the Nixon official family was too hung up on Executive privilege, too obsessed with secrecy...

...It doesn't occur to the author that if the Nixon people were secretive, it was not because they were afflicted with a mysterious malady, but because they had a lot to be secretive about...

...Had Mollenhoff not, in 1968, talked long and intimately with Richard M. Nixon about corrupt Presidents, about the evils of secrecy and Executive privilege...

...One example was his work in countering allegations against Judge Clement Haynsworth, Nixon's nominee to the Supreme Court...

...John Mitchell and I have it under control...

...Each one, though, seemed to raise an inexplicable problem...

...He didn't seem to understand why his White House superiors failed to share his enthusiasm for the discovery of an Administration scandal...

...Those who remember Mollenhoff bellowing at President Nixon on television may not have understood that he was voicing not simply journalistic impatience, but the anger of a man who had served this President, believing him to be more upright than the tarnished ones of the past...

...He identified Major General Carl Turner, U.S...

...Ron Ziegler...

...The big, hearty, long-time Washington correspondent of the Des Moines Register and Tribune is a contented reporter when his work allows him to combine both his conservative political stance and his concern for official rectitude—say, in pursuit of James Hoffa or Bobby Baker...

...He was rewarded with a reply that said, "I am sure this experience has demonstrated to you that we are trying to come to grips with the great issues of our times in an honest and forthright manner...

...Chief of Marshals, as having been involved in Vietnam service club scandals, only to run into Attorney General John Mitchell and his deputy, Richard Kleindienst, whose "air of resentment carried the implication that I had created the Turner problem.' He uncovered plans to release former Teamster President James Hoffa from prison, only to be told by John Ehrlichman, "The President does not want you in this...

...Had the President-elect not drawn Mollenhoff to the bosom of the new Administration with a mandate to apply his ideas of "preventive" investigation...

...He discovered that Peter M. Flanigan, Presidential assistant for commercial matters, had benefited from a Treasury waiver permitting a foreign-registered tanker to engage in coastal trade, only to realize that "neither Flanigan nor Halde-man appreciated my interference in rescuing the Administration from a series of confrontations.' Some of Mollenhoff's activities were appreciated...

...But Mollenhoff never did quite comprehend what was really happening to him...

...Reviewed by Daniel Schorr CBS News, Washington Investigative reporters, to coin a generality, do not make the best philosophers...

...Swallowing some early disappointments—a lower rank than expected, a swift finesse that deprived him of access to the President and put him on the other side of the Haldeman-Ehrlichman "Berlin Wall"—Ombudsman Mollenhoff started his investigations and had some signal successes...