John Ehrlichman History

July 12, 1974

John Ehrlichman, former top aide to President Richard Nixon, and three others were convicted of conspiring to violate a citizen’s civil rights. Ehrlichman had approved a recommendation for a covert investigation of Daniel Ellsberg in 1971 by writing on a memo: "If done under your assurance that it is not traceable."
Looking for information to discredit Ellsberg, agents of Pres. Nixon’s re-election campaign broke into the office of his psychiatrist. Ellsberg, a former Defense Dept. analyst, had been responsible for public release of The Pentagon Papers, a collection of documents outlining the U.S. history and strategy in Vietnam, that had been classified as secret to avoid public scrutiny.