Justice: the memoirs of attorney general Richard Kleindienst.

• Author: Lewis, Eric

If George Babbitt were alive today, he would no doubt come to Washington to save the country for the Republicans. Suffused with "can-do" confidence, George would remain loyal to his political patrons, look people in the eye, attend church regularly, and try to be a man of his word. And if things turned out badly for George, he would write a book like this one.

Richard Kleindienst was the famous also-ran of the Watergate scandal. A Goldwater political operative, he entered the Nixon administration as deputy to John Mitchell at the Department of Justice. He followed Mitchell both as attorney general and as criminal defendant. He exited the administration on the same day as Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He pled guilty only to a misdemeanor and was given a suspended $100 fine and a one-month prison sentence by a sympathetic rightwing judge.

All of these events figure rather peripherally in Kleindienst's memoir. Rather, he organizes the book around the great men and women whom he has known. His appraisals of these people provide insight into the mindset of this modern-dya Babbitt and his predictable downfall.

For Kleindienst, political values are far less important than the superficial personal values of the Republican mandarins: unswerving devotion to administration goals and, upso facto, to the country; strong...