John Wesley Dean III (b. October 14, 1938) was
White House Counsel to U.S.
President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. As White House Counsel, he became
deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent
Watergate scandal cover up, even referred to as "master manipulator of the cover up"
by the FBI.[1] He was convicted of multiple felonies as a result of Watergate, and went on to become a key witness
for the prosecution, resulting in a reduction of his time in jail. Dean is currently an author, columnist, and commentator on
contemporary politics.[2] He is a registered independent
supporting impeachment of President Bush.[3]
Early life and career
Dean was born in Akron, Ohio. He attended Colgate
University majoring in English literature, and then The College of
Wooster, earning a bachelor's degree in political science in 1961. He received a law degree from Georgetown University in 1965. After graduation, he joined a Washington, D.C. law firm.
He was subsequently employed as the chief minority counsel to the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee in the United States
House of Representatives. A National Commission on the Reform of Federal Criminal Law was
created in 1967: Dean was appointed its associate director. He volunteered to write position papers on crime for Nixon's
presidential campaign in 1968. The following year he became an Associate Deputy at the office of the Attorney General of the United States in the Nixon administration and in July, 1970
became counsel to the president after the previous holder of this post John Ehrlichman
became the president's chief domestic adviser.
"Master manipulator" to star witness
On February 28, 1973, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding his nomination to replace
J. Edgar Hoover as Director of the FBI. Armed with newspaper articles indicating the
White House had possession of FBI Watergate files, the committee chairman, Sam Ervin,
questioned Gray as to what he knew about the White House obtaining the files. With almost no provocation, and in a hearing not
even related to Watergate, Gray stated he had given reports to Dean and had discussed the FBI investigation with Dean on many
occasions. Gray's nomination failed and now Dean was directly linked to the Watergate cover up.
On March 23, the Watergate burglars were sentenced with stiff fines and jail time; Dean
hired an attorney and began his cooperation with Watergate investigators on April 6.
On April 22, Nixon requested Dean put together a report with everything he knew about the
Watergate matter and even invited him to take a retreat to Camp David to do so. Coupled with
his sense of distance from Nixon's inner circle, "The Berlin Wall" of advisors H.R.
Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Dean sensed he was going to become the Watergate
scapegoat and despite going to Camp David, he returned to Washington without having completed
his report. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, the same date he also announced the resignations of
Haldeman and Ehrlichman.
On June 25, Dean began his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee in which he implicated many administration
officials, including himself, Nixon fundraiser and former Attorney
General John Mitchell, and Nixon himself. He was the first administration
official to accuse Nixon of direct involvement with Watergate and the resulting cover up, in press interviews as well as his
testimony. Such testimony against Nixon, while damaging to the president's credibility, had little impact legally, as it was
merely his word against Nixon's. Nixon vigorously denied all accusations against him that he authorized a cover up, and Dean had
no proof beyond various notes he had taken in his meetings with the president. It was not until the existence of secret White
House tape recordings was made public and those tapes could be analyzed that Dean's accusations were proved to be true.
Watergate trial
Dean pled guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge
John Sirica on November 30, 1973. He admitted supervising payments of "hush money" to the Watergate
burglars, notably E. Howard Hunt, and revealed the existence of Nixon's enemies list. On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. However, when Dean
surrendered himself as scheduled on September 3, he was diverted to the custody of U.S.
Marshals and kept instead at Fort Holabird (near Baltimore, Maryland) in a special "safe house" holding facility primarily used for witnesses against
the Mafia. He spent his days in the offices of the Watergate Special Prosecutor and testifying in
the trial of Watergate conspirators Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian, and
Kenneth Parkinson, which concluded on January 1,
1975. Dean's lawyer moved to have his sentence reduced, and on January
8, Sirica granted the motion, adjusting Dean's sentence to time served.
Life after Watergate
Dean retired from investment banking in 2000 and became an author, lecturer, and columnist for FindLaw's Writ online magazine. He resides in Beverly Hills, California.
Dean chronicled his White House experiences, with a focus on Watergate, in the memoirs Blind Ambition and Lost
Honor. Blind Ambition would become the point of controversy many years after its publication.
In 1992, he hired famed attorney Neil Papiano and brought the first in a series of
defamation suits against G. Gordon Liddy for claims in his book Will and St.
Martin's Press for its publication of the book Silent Coup by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. Silent Coup alleged Dean was the
mastermind of the Watergate burglaries and the true target of the burglaries was to seize information implicating Dean and
Maureen Biner (his then-fiancée) in a prostitution ring. After hearing of Colodny's work, Liddy
issued a revised paperback version of Will supporting Colodny's theory.[4] This theory was subsequently the subject of an A&E
Network Investigative Reports series program entitled The Key to Watergate in 1992. Liddy's defense team
focused on allegations that Blind Ambition was ghost written by Taylor Branch, a charge that Dean denies to this day.[5] In the preface to his 2006 book, Conservatives
Without Conscience, Dean strongly denied Colodny's theory, pointing out that the Colodny's chief source (Phillip Mackin Bailley) had been in and out of mental institutions. Dean settled the defamation suit against
Colodny and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, on terms which Dean stated in the book's preface he could not divulge under the
terms of the settlement other than stating that "the Deans were satisfied." In the footnote to this portion of the preface, Dean
stated that the federal judge handling the case forced a settlement with Liddy.[6]
In 2001, Dean published The Rehnquist Choice, an exposé of the White House's selection process for a new Supreme Court
justice in 1971, which led to the accession of William Rehnquist to the United States'
highest court. Three years later, Dean authored a book heavily critical of the administration of George W. Bush, entitled Worse than Watergate, which
calls for the impeachment of Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney for lying to the
Congress.
His latest book, released in summer 2006, is titled Conservatives
without Conscience, a play on Barry Goldwater's The Conscience
of a Conservative. In it, he asserts that post-Goldwater conservatism has
been co-opted by people with authoritarian personalities and policies (citing data from Robert
Altemeyer). According to Dean, modern conservatism, specifically in the Christian Right, embraces obedience, inequality,
intolerance, and strong intrusive government, in stark contrast to Goldwater's philosophies and policies. Using Altemeyer's
scholarly work, he contends that there is a tendency toward ethically questionable political practices when authoritarians are
placed in positions of power, and that the current political situation is dangerously unsound because of it. Dean cites the
behavior of key members of the Republican leadership — including George W. Bush,
Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and Bill Frist — as clear evidence of a relationship
between modern right-wing conservativism and this authoritarian approach to governance. He places particular emphasis on the
abdication of checks and balances by the Republican Congress, and of the dishonesty of the conservative intellectual class in
support of the GOP, as a result of the obedience and arrogance innate to the authoritarian mentality.
After the revelation that George W. Bush authorized NSA wiretaps
without warrants, Dean asserted that President Bush is "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense".[7] On March 31, 2006, Dean testified before the Senate Judiciary
Committee during hearings on censuring the president over the issue. Sen. Russell
Feingold (D-Wis.), who sponsored the censure resolution, introduced Dean as a "patriot" who put "rule of law above the
interests of the president." In his testimony, Dean asserted that Richard Nixon covered up Watergate because he believed it was
in the interest of national security. This sparked a sharp debate with Republican South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who repeatedly asserted that Nixon authorized the break-in at Democratic headquarters.
Dean finally replied, "You're showing you don't know that subject very well." According to Washington Post reporter Dana
Milbank, "Spectators laughed, and soon the senator was sputtering mad."[8]
In the 1979 TV mini-series, Blind Ambition, Dean was played by Martin Sheen. In the 1995 film, Nixon, Dean was played by
David Hyde Pierce. In the 1999 film Dick,
Dean was played by Jim Breuer.
Dean frequents as a guest on the MSNBC show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann'', and the Randi
Rhodes Show on the Air America radio network.
Books
- Dean, John W. (1979). Blind Ambition (Reissue Ed.). Pocket. ISBN
0-671-82343-4.
- Dean, John W. (1982). Lost Honor. Stratford Press. ISBN
0-936906-15-4.
- Dean, John W. (2001). The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon
Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2607-0.
- Dean, John W. (2002). Unmasking Deep Throat. Salon.com. ISBN
0-9721874-1-3.
- Dean, John W.; Schlesinger, Arthur M. (2004). Warren G. Harding (The American
Presidents). Times Books. ISBN 0-8050-6956-9.
- Dean, John W. (2004). Worse than
Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-00023-X.
- Dean, John W. (2006). Conservatives without Conscience. Viking Adult. ISBN
0-670-03774-5.
- Dean, John W. (2007). Broken Government. Viking Adult. ISBN
0-670-01820-1.
Notes
- ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of Planning and Evaluation. .
FBI Watergate Investigation:
OPE Analysis. July 5, 1974. File Number 139-4089. p.11
- ^ Rothschild, Matthew. "An Interview with John Dean," Progressive Magazine (2006-05-20)
- ^ Rothschild, Matthew. "An Interview with John Dean," Progressive Magazine (2006-05-20)
- ^ Bates, Stephen. "Flipping His Liddy", Slate.com, 5 Feb 2001.
- ^ Dean, John Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet: Using Blog Forums, Open Source
Dictionaries, and More, Findlaw, September 9, 2005. Taylor Branch's website states: "Blind
Ambition (ghostwriter for John Dean) (Simon & Schuster: 1979)" under the heading "Past Writing".
- ^ Dean, John Conservatives
Without Conscience, Viking, 2006.
- ^ Jackson, David. "War-powers debate on
front burner", USA Today, 28 Dec 2005.
- ^ Milbank, Dana. "Watergate Remembered, After a Fashion", Washington Post, 1 Apr 2006.
Sources
- Sussman, Barry (1992). The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate
(3rd Ed.). Seven Locks Press. ISBN 0-929765-09-5.
- The Watergate Files. The Watergate Files presented by The Gerald R. Ford Museum & Library. Retrieved on
March 6, 2005.
- The Key To Watergate (1992) Barbara Newman Productions (for A&E Network's Investigative Reports
series).[1]
External links
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