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26 Apr 08
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When you’re appointed to a position at higher levels of government, the document that represents your commission opens with this statement: “Reposing special trust in your integrity, prudence, ability, I do appoint you ...”—and then goes on to describe the position to which one is appointed.
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My own integrity was tested in the White House while I was Deputy Counsel to then-President Nixon, and appointed to co-chair the “Plumbers,” a team tasked with discrediting Dr. Daniel Ellsberg. He was an antiwar activist who released classified documents about the US Vietnam War strategy to two major newspapers. We were also supposed to track down any other “leaks” of classified documents. But in carrying out our assignment, we broke the law.
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I chose to plead guilty and willingly accept any sentence the court would impose because I felt I needed to do that in order to reestablish my own sense of integrity.
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About 15 years ago, I began to think through what had led to the breakdown in legal and ethical conduct while I was in government. And I realized those words “Reposing special trust in your integrity” weren’t always taken seriously.
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I began to examine what the idea of integrity really signifies. The definition of the word derives from the root integer, which means “whole.” An integer is a whole number. From this, I worked out three questions I could ask to keep my bearings under pressure.
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The first question is primarily intellectual, or analytical: “Is it [the proposed action] whole and complete?”
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The second question addresses the moral dimension to integrity, which we often associate with honesty and uprightness. It asks: “Is it right?”
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The third question, fundamentally spiritual in nature, is this: “Is it good?”
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I added this third question just a few years ago, because I felt that integrity also means “perfection, an unimpaired state.” Since God is good, this question really asks, “Is the proposed action Godlike?” Whenever I’m under enormous pressure or the stakes are high, I’ve found that’s the time to be still and to ask those three questions. And my experience has taught me that when you can answer them affirmatively, you’re safe.
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I realized that it was important to acknowledge the mistake I’d made, take responsibility for it, and pay the legal consequences, so I could reestablish my innocence as I went forward.
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Mrs. Eddy made a very interesting observation where she asked, “If you commit a crime, should you acknowledge to yourself that you are a criminal?” And her answer was, “Yes.” I’ve learned in my study and practice of Christian Science that to recognize a sin aids you in destroying it. I had to be clear about the abuse of power that I’d engaged in, so I could honestly say, “That’s not the kind of thought with which I want to be associated any longer.” Then I had to take responsibility for it and be willing to pay the full legal consequences.
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To the extent that I’m clear in consciousness about that truth, then the path unfolds before me. And that’s what actually happened. Within two weeks of my pleading guilty, a good friend told me that one of the most respected Seattle lawyers, William L. Dwyer, was willing to talk to me about representing me in the attorney discipline process. When he took my case, he said we were going to take “the long view.” We needed to find ways for me to make amends—to show that I’d understood what went wrong and to take steps to correct it—and that it could take years.
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it took us seven years from that moment until I was eventually reinstated by the court to the practice of law. But it all came together because of that farsighted, long-term view.
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Now some 30 years have passed. It’s not necessarily pleasant to bring these events back into the public discourse. But to me, the lessons of Watergate are still relevant because breakdowns in integrity and abuses of power are so very much in the news these days. They still need healing in government, in sports, in the professions—in just about any human activity.
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In many situations, the premium on winning is so high that it overrides a person’s inner sense of what’s right and wrong. You get swept up in an almost mesmeric state, and you can become so identified with a leader, or with a group and its “groupthink,” that you lose your individual ability to see and perceive what’s going on.
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There are also other threats to our integrity that come in the form of vanity, or sometimes arrogance or hubris—“I can do anything!” Or immaturity. But we all have within us, from God, the essential qualities that keep us safe, such as humility and meekness.
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The challenges and the threats that come along may change. But to stay absolutely anchored in what we know is right and good and constitutional is a perennial lesson and a demand. The only requirement, as I see it, is for each individual to stay tightly connected to his/her deepest sense of what is right and what is good—to one’s own highest sense of integrity.
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After serving prison time, Bud Krogh spent five years teaching graduate school and rebuilding his record of integrity. In 1980 he was readmitted to the bar in Washington State. He currently practices law, teaches, and trains others based on what he learned through his experiences.
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