In 1968, at the age of 29, Egil “Bud” Krogh joined President Nixon’s staff. He rose quickly through positions of responsibility in the White House, serving as Deputy Counsel, Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Undersecretary of Transportation.

In 1971 he was assigned the task of plugging leaks of sensitive national-defense-related information, starting with the “Pentagon Papers.” As co-director of a Special Investigations Unit known as “the Plumbers,” which the President had impressed upon him was a matter of the highest national security, Bud approved a covert operation to obtain information about the source of the leak, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg. The burglary was to search for evidence at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding. Bud pled guilty to the charge of conspiracy to deprive Dr. Fielding of his civil rights.

By the age of 34, he was serving a prison term at the Allenwood Federal Prison for a serious constitutional crime. He was the first Nixon staffer to plead guilty. To avoid any possibility of receiving a lighter sentence by implicating others, Bud insisted that he be sentenced before testifying before a Grand Jury. It is an all too public example of the difficulties people face when they do not adhere to their own personal sense of integrity.

INTEGRITY is Krogh’s memoir of his experiences—what really went on behind closed doors, of how a good man can lose his moral compass, of how exercising power without integrity can destroy a life. It also tells the moving story of how he turned his life back around.