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.

To read more, go here. 

"The Day Elvis Met Nixon"

When I returned from dropping off my roommate Jess to Orange County, I found that a book I ordered from the Richard Nixon Library had arrived.

It is a chronicle of the meeting at the White House between President Richard Nixon and the King of Rock 'N Roll Elvis Presley. It is by former Nixon assistant Egil "Bud" Krogh.

Here's the book:

"We Were There When Nixon Met Elvis"

Above, Nixon and Elvis, one of the most requested photographs from the National Archives. National Archives photo.

Here's an interesting video of a discussion of how the historic meeting between President Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley at the White House took place.

Above, from left, Jerry Shilling, Bud Krogh and Timothy Naftali.

The video is posted on YouTube by the U.S. National Archives. The description of the video is as follows:

In commemoration of the 75th birthday of Elvis Presley, the National Archives presented a discussion about the meeting between Elvis and President Richard Nixon at the White House on December 21, 1970. Timothy Naftali, Director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, hosts a discussion with Egil Bud Krogh, Assistant to the Counsel to the President, and Jerry Schilling, veteran music industry professional and long-time friend of Elvis Presley. Krogh and Schilling were present in the Oval Office and now offer their eyewitness accounts of the meeting, along with on-screen projections of related photographs, memos, and correspondence in the holdings of the National Archives.