Crazy Rhythm.

• Author: Clinton, Kate

I moved to Washington, D.C., this year, and found myself immersed in stories of political corruption and scandal. For background, I read books about Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and the late Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa.

Anyone interested in a primer on Presidential corruption should consult Stanley Kutler's Abuse of Power (Free Press)--an edited and indexed guide to the new Nixon tapes. Kutler, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, joined Ralph Nader's Public Citizen in a long legal battle and won the release of the tapes from the Nixon estate and the National Archives. The result is a powerful document, conveniently arranged with explanatory introductions to each chapter.

Here are Nixon and the Watergate conspirators plotting not only the cover-up that ultimately led to the President's downfall, but all their other astonishingly brazen dirty tricks: spying on George McGovern and Ted Kennedy, paying off the Watergate burglars, and siccing the IRS on various private citizens, including, in Nixon's words, "the Jews . . . please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors to the Democrats. . . . Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?"

A good companion to Kutler's book is Crazy Rhythm (Times Books) by Leonard Garment, Richard Nixon's attorney during Watergate, and one of his trusted advisers throughout his Presidency. Garment, a self-described "liberal Jewish jazz musician from Brooklyn," attempts to explain how he got to the Nixon White House and why he stayed.

The explanation is less satisfying than the story-telling. After reaching what seemed to be the high point of his life playing tenor saxophone with the Woody Herman band, Garment found financial success boredom, and depression working at a Wail Street law firm. He befriended Richard Nixon, who joined the firm in 1963 as a rainmaker, determined to boost his public image and launch a new Presidential run. Garment helped Nixon argue a fascinating Supreme Court case--Hill v. Time, Inc.--and, as the Nixon campaign machine got cranking, seized his chance to escape the dull, gray world of Wall Street for a front-row seat in the Nixon Administration.

Garment plays a minor role in a vast array of political events--from negotiations with the Soviet Union and Israel, through the major school-desegregation efforts of 1969 and 1970, to diffusing the conflict between police and the protesters who took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs...