Washington Insight SFChronicie NOV 2 1 1972 President Nixon's Loyalty Freak Joseph Kraft .PTHETHE PRESIDENT'S decision to "shake Ehrlichman is a central figure be- the administration has made it cause he sits athwart the line of communi- open season for malicious gossip. Hardly cations with the President on all matters any important figure in the government of internal policy. Propositions on taxes, has escaped censure. the cities, minorities, drugs, the police, Henry Kissinger, the President's chief the environment all go through him. adviser on foreign policy, is accused of In many ways Ehrlich man is ideally conducting the most important interna- fitted for these responsibilities. He is a tional business on a private basis. Bob strong, confident person and he enjoys a Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, close working relation with the President. • is charged with complicity in the Water- He has the, intellectual penetration, and gate affair. the attention span, necessary to under- Secretary of State William Rogers is stand complicated matters that have to be said to know little and do less. The word presented in highly abstract terms. about Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and his deputy, Kenneth Rush, is that they * * * :.are unequal to the task of controlling the IS VIRTUES naturally carry with H them some defects. Ehrlichman has George Shultz at the Treasury is sup- a good relation with the President because posed to be hooked on the ideology of the he has spent his whole political life work- free market. Peter Peterson at Commerce ing with Mr. Nixon. As a result, he tends and Elliot Richardson at HEW are said to to be a kind of loyalty freak. He seems to „be interested only in advancing them- act on the belief that the chief job of selves to the top spot of the State Depart- everybody in town is to work for the ment. greater glory of Mr. Nixon. Thus he has publicly disparaged cabi- Attorney General Richard Kleindienst net officers for being sympathetic to the is written off as too impatient even to departments they head. His relations with read basic documents. John Volpe at the Congress also suffer. High-minded Transportation, Rogers Morton at Interi- Senators report that he treats humanitari- or, George Romney at HUD and Earl Butz an proposals as though they were cynical, . -at Agriculture are dismissed as Secondary self-serving, pork-barrel operations. ligures. All of this makes Ehrlichman a central * * * figure for assessing the reorganization of MIDST this torrent of acid, however, the administration. If he stays where he A barely a drop has been spilled on is, then the reform proposals of the second John Ehrlichman. But Ehrlichman hap- term will predictably run against the ;pens to be the President's closest adviser same unsympathetic public, the same ion domestic affairs. For many reasons he sour Congress and the same internally fa perhaps the most important single per- divided administration which buried the ';'on involved in the shakeup: reform proposals of the first term.