the first thing that I'd like to do

Woodward had taken time out --------- [book excerpt] ------------ to watch John D. Ehrlichman's appearance on ABC-TV's Issues and Answers.  On TV, Ehrlichman resembled a snarling prune, he thought, one eyebrow cocked high, the other low.  He was saying that everything in the papers about the Nixon campaign's program of political espionage and sabotage involved "a lot of charges, not much proof, not any proof. . . ."  He suggested that the McGovern campaign was somehow responsible for the allegations which people were reading in their newspapers and hearing on television.

Reminding the audience that the election was only three weeks away, Ehrlichman said this was the "mud month," when political charges would be thrown around.  He was not personally aware of any campaign of political espionage mounted by Republicans in or out of the administration, he said; certainly nobody in the White House had known anything about Watergate in advance.  He couldn't "affirm or deny" the charge that Chapin was involved with Segretti.  But, he added, it was important to distinguish between the Watergate bugging, which "involves a crime," and such activities as "finding out what the other fellow's schedule is."  Political pranks, said Ehrlichman, that kind of thing, "has been in American politics as long as I can remember."

Woodward and Bernstein concluded that Ehrlichman was perhaps the only high White House aide clean enough on Watergate to be safely trotted out before the TV cameras.  Haldeman sure as hell couldn't be sent out -- not after the Chapin story.  Both felt certain that Ehrlichman's appearance signaled that he was clear. 

Maybe Deep Throat had been wrong when he said Ehrlichman had ordered Howard Hunt out of town. ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
'Til Eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I'd save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
that you're the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them

I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
through time with

===================
{book excerpt:  All The President's Men.  Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  Copyright 1974.  Simon & Schuster.  New York, New York.}
{song:  "Time in a Bottle" -- a hit single, singer-songwriter Jim Croce.  On the 1972 album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim on the ABC label.  Also included on the 1974 greatest hits collection, Photographs and Memories.}

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