Egil "Bud" Krogh Dies At 80

Above, President Nixon, Elvis Presley and Egil "Bud" Krogh in the Oval Office in 1971. White House Photo.

Egil "Bud" Krogh, who orchestrated the meeting between President Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley, died January 18.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Egil “Bud” Krogh Jr., 80, a lawyer and Nixon aide who co-chaired the secret White House “Plumbers” unit and was sentenced to prison after approving a break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, died Jan. 18 at a hospital in Washington. Krogh had suffered a stroke in 2015. 

A former deputy assistant to the president and undersecretary of transportation, Krogh was the first member of the Nixon administration sentenced to prison for his conduct in the White House. He later called the Ellsberg episode “a meltdown in personal integrity” and spent years teaching and lecturing about ethics, atoning for his crimes and teaching others how to avoid what he described as a historic error in judgment. 

“If you compromise your integrity, you allow a little piece of your soul to slip through your hands,” he wrote in a memoir, “Integrity” (2007), with his son Matthew Krogh. “Integrity, like trust, is all too easy to lose, and all too difficult to restore.”

Above, Krogh's book cover on the Nixon-Presley meeting.

Krogh had appeared with Presley associate Jerry Schilling at several public programs to discuss the meeting between Nixon and Presley. He also wrote a book about the meeting.

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