 "Photo: John Gilchrist")
Former adviser to Richard Nixon Egil "Bud" Krogh urged an audience Monday to maintain their own ethical standards regardless of external pressures and conflicting opinions when making important decisions. He spoke as part of a conference hosted by the McCombs School of Business.
Krogh, who will be infamously remembered for his coordination of an illegal search and seizure at a psychiatrist's office, was the first of the officials in the Nixon Administration to serve jail time.
Krogh authorized the break-in of the offices of Dr. Lewis Fielding, who was Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Two days before the break-in, Ellsberg, a former military analyst, had leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top secret report on the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, to the New York Times.
Though he was originally sentenced to two to six years, he only served four-and-a-half months in a Washington D.C. jail, where he came across many of the criminals he helped bring to justice.
Krogh talked about his experiences inside the Nixon Administration, many of which are documented in his book, "Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House."
Krogh recounted one conference he had with Nixon where he disagreed with the president's suggestion to reclassify the act of killing a police officer as a federal crime, but he went along with the other presidential advisers because he felt pressured to be loyal to his superiors.
"I knew that the murder of a police officer is one of the crimes that is most likely to be solved," he said. "Bringing in a federal agent would not only have gotten in the way of the investigation, but it also would most likely have insulted the local police force."
Krogh said that because of his inexperience and subordinate position in the chain of command, he did not feel it was his place to submit diverging opinions.
"I was so predisposed to do what I thought my leader wanted of me that I didn't ever access my own sense of integrity," he said.
Finance senior Samuel Houng said Krogh's lecture helped him realize that ethical decisions are not always black-and-white and that often, poor decisions are the result of small concessions that an individual makes over many years.
"We were at a time of war and the release of these documents really did hurt our country," said Roger Melton, a friend of Krogh's. "But Bud saw a deeper sense of ethics, and it is very important for the future politicians and CEOs at this University to hear his message."
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