Crazy Rhythm: From Brooklyn And Jazz To Nixon's White House, Watergate, And Beyond

Leonard Garment, a current mainstay of the unelected elite who all but run Washington, was a close friend and adviser to Richard Nixon for 30 years. Indeed, at the height of Watergate, he was Nixon's lawyer. The part of this book that covers those White House years is elevated above the norm by Garment's honest, human presence--after all, this is the guy who advised Nixon not to destroy the Oval Office tapes. His humanity comes to the fore in the parts that cover his non-Watergate political forays, his pre-law career as a professional jazz musician, and his personal psychological difficulties. Yet, in his account of his life as a Washington fixer, the mark of Milhous is still visible. When he describes being the lawyer for a Reagan administration official who routinely taped phone calls without the knowledge of those on the other end of the line, Garment pooh-poohs the laws banning this practice and is a little too gleeful about the course of action he had his client take: destroying the tapes.