In World War II, Ehrlichman received the Distinguished Flying Cross as a lead B-24 navigator in the Eighth Air Force.[8] Earlier in the war, his father joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as an instructor pilot in 1940 and was killed in a crash in Torbay, Newfoundland (later Canada, from 1949) on May 6, 1942.[4] After a short time back in southern California, Ehrlichman joined a Seattle law firm, becoming a partner, practicing as a land-use lawyer, noted for his expertise in urban land use and zoning.His uncle was president of the Municipal League, and Ehrlichman was active, supporting its efforts to clean up Lake Washington and to improve the civic infrastructure of Seattle and King County.He and close friend H. R. Haldeman, whom he had met at UCLA, were referred to jointly as "The Berlin Wall" by White House staffers because of their German-sounding family names and penchant for isolating Nixon from other advisors and anyone seeking an audience with him.Ehrlichman created "The Plumbers", the group at the center of the Watergate scandal, and appointed his assistant Egil Krogh to oversee its operations, focusing on stopping leaks of confidential information after the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971.Ehrlichman was defended by Andrew C. Hall[12] during the Watergate trials, in which he was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury, and other charges on January 1, 1975 (along with John N. Mitchell and Haldeman).Multiple family members of Ehrlichman (who died in 1999) challenge the veracity of the quote: The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw repeated in social media for the first time today does not square with what we know of our father...We do not subscribe to the alleged racist point of view that this writer now implies 22 years following the so-called interview of John and 16 years following our father's death, when dad can no longer respond.But there are also signs that Nixon wasn't solely motivated by politics or race: For one, he personally despised drugs – to the point that it's not surprising he would want to rid the world of them."[23]John Ehrlichman was portrayed by J. T. Walsh in the film Nixon, and by Wayne Péré in Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.
Appearing on British TV discussion programme
After Dark
in 1987