Customer Reviews

An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate

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I had'nt thought much about "Watergate" for many years,but found Magruder's book in a used book Dept. I couldn't put it down once I started reading it. I think it shows, if nothing else how easy one can be blinded by ambition, and become embroiled in a bad situation by trying to please ones superiors. My hat is off to Magrudeer, he was very candid and made no excuses for his behavior except to look back in disgust at his actions. If one lives long enough, and has normal inter-action with human nature, one will have at least one experience in which the old indian saying becomes reality "never judge until you've walked a mile in his moccasins"

After having worked for Rev. Magruder in the mid to late '80's, I know the man personally and know that he wrote this book with nothing but fact and truth in mind. For anyone else reading this book, An American Life will be interpreted individually, but Jeb is truly one of the Watergate Eight that paid dearly, both professionally and personally, for his actions in the Watergate scandal. This is a book worth reading that will help today's youth understand how power, profession and politics from the '70's were used by both parties for gain in Washington.

I enjoyed this book, as I typically enjoy political memoirs. I'm glad that Rev. Magruder has found a measure of peace. My suggestion is to read this work along with the memoirs of others involved in Watergate. The shift in perspective was (for me) informative.

Jeb Stuart Magruder was a minor official in the Nixon White House and a player in the Watergate scandal. In 1974 his book "An American Life - One Man's Road to Watergate" was published. Reading it over 35 years later I was struck by the apparent objectivity of his opinions and observations. I was expected a very guarded self-serving - cover your backside - tract written in lawyer language. Instead he apparently felt that all his Watergate transgressions were already public knowledge so there was nothing to be gained by parsing the truth.

He admitted he lost his moral compass in his efforts to serve the goals as set down by the President. Although there is no justification for committing a crime anyone who has worked in an organization must ruefully acknowledge that there is a strong tendency to "do whatever it takes" to prove you worth and value to that organization.


I would recommend this book for several reasons:

Magruder is a good writer. He kept my interest with his candid observations of the diverse individuals he worked with and descriptions of his White House re-election campaign duties.

The first 55 pages are a biography with emphasis on his various political campaign activities, family and jobs descriptions. This could be very dull but his life story is interesting considering where he ended up - in jail.

The author admits he was not one of the central players in the Watergate fiasco. Nonetheless he did have a good seat to observe and his comments are helpful to understand Watergate and the subsequent cover-up.


A couple of items of passing interest for those considering reading this book:

Mr. McGruder was named after his father's favorite civil War general but is not related. He is related to John Bankhead Magruder who served as one of Robert E. Lee's generals.

McGruder includes several reprints of internal White House guidelines he was given as a new employee.

Magruder's first major political job was managing the successful 1962 primary campaign of Donald Rumsfeld for the Republican nomination, preparing for the congressional election in the 13th district of Illinois, to the United States House of Representatives. Rumsfeld subsequently won the congressional election.

Jeb Stuart Magruder would tell you that he did wrong and is heartily sorry for having offended thee. But his sort-of biography, "An American Life : One Man's Road to Watergate," is nothing more than an attempt to downplay his role in one of our nation's biggest scandals. Like his fellow conspirator, John Dean, Magruder likes to take the "I know I did wrong, but they did more wrong" tack. Magruder admits he got sucked into the morass that was Watergate, but his explanations come off as that of a whining child, laying most of the blame on the feet of G. Gordon Liddy and John Mitchell. "An American Life" is not entirely a throwaway--like Dean's "Blind Ambition," it provides insight into the thinking of the second-level bureaucrats who tried to further their careers by doing the dirty work. But Nixon's memiors and John Ehrichman's "Witness to Power" are much more enlightening and enjoyable to read.

"An American Life" was my favorite book from the 1970s (and I finally get to review it decades later). The proof of this is that I remember whole passages almost verbatim over a period of some thirty years (see "quotes" below).

The origins of Magruder's involvement in Watergate are clearly laid out in Chapter 1, "Starting Out." His parents were wealthy heirs, until the Great Depression wiped out their families financially, and "my mother felt that life was harder for her than it should have been." As a result, the parents pushed Jeb and his brother to achieve the success that they had missed. "F. Scott Fitzgerald's stories of poor men who wanted to be rich struck very close to the reality of my own life."

What happened next followed logically. After leaving school, Magruder became a dedicated, if job hopping, careerist. He made several deft corporate "political" moves but quit his job (in Chicago) when he felt that the next step up the ladder was blocked by someone about his age. The result was that he ended up in California, where he met Nixon's people.

A meeting with H.R. "Bob" Haldeman led him to the White House where "finally, I had a job I loved, one that could be a springboard to unlimited success." As a result, he was willing to do just about anything, including playing "dirty tricks" such as inundating a radio station with complaints about a speaker critical of Nixon "staged" from various points in the country.

After taking part in Watergate and being incarcerated, Magruder realized the error of his ways, and sought redemption by putting his life on a firmer footing. "It can be a good life, for me and my family."