Nine months into the mushrooming scandal, Dean bargained for immunity and won himself a lenient prison term by delivering the sensational, if deeply flawed, testimonybefore the klieg lights of the Senate Watergate committee (1973), the House Judiciary Committee (1974), and the trial of U.S. v. Mitchell (1974)that helped convict Nixons top former aides: former Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Chief of Staff H.R. No, someone would have cracked, just as we did so easily in Watergate. It would be very different today, primarily because of Fox News, which would be mounting a fulsome defence of him. The Watergate Scandal is so deeply embedded in the psyches of Americans that anytime something remotely By 2009, the New York Times was acknowledging the existence of rival visions of Dean: He was either a flawed but ultimately courageous man reluctantly sucked into the scandal or a primary architect of the cover-up who saved himself by deflecting guilt. In fact, numerous scholars, myself included, have argued that the great mass of evidence that emerged after 1974 shows that Dean was motivated to assume his central role in the Watergate cover-up not because he suffered from blind ambition (the title of his 1976 memoir) but because he wanted to conceal his role in authorizing the ill-fated break-in and wiretapping operation at Democratic National Committee headquarters. 2000- watergate.com Now, four decades later, John W. Dean III, a central figure in the Watergate saga, has arrogated the same authority to himself, with The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (Viking, 784 pp). The Watergate Story (washingtonpost.com) I didnt feel vindication or anything of that nature. We were polarised during Watergate but not to the degree we are today., Dean will be watching this weeks January 6 hearings on Capitol Hill intently but reckons that Republicans, at least, face less accountability than they once did. From sustained immersion in Deans canonthe tapes, the testimony, the books, the articles, the interviews, the lectures, the lawsuits, even the made-for-TV miniseries of Blind Ambition (1979), starring Martin Sheen, in which the alert viewer will find embedded some bizarre clues to Deans true role in Watergatethe picture that emerges is of a tragic figure who never transcended, let alone learned from, the epochal event in which he became embroiled at the age of 34, largely through his own initiatives. The problem, of course, is that Dean is no disinterested party. John Dean - Wikipedia One such act was the furtive trio of meetings Dean held, in late June 1972, with the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, General Vernon Walters. What value this book provides is on the margins. Nixon is seen in these pages relentlessly going over the same terrain, struggling to master the origins, players, and arc of the scandal that would ultimately engulf him. All Rights Reserved. Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities This was the gang that couldnt shoot straight. His testimony and cooperation, though, aided the downfall of Nixon, who resigned on Aug. 9, 1974. And he has used his role in Watergate to make a successful career of writing books and making speeches. Then as now, D.C. is a rigged town, with very different rules for Republicans as against Democrats. James Rosen thinksHunt, McCord and otherswere trying to infiltrate Nixons circle before the 1968 campaign even began. What's more, he's publishing now his latest book about Watergate ("The Nixon Defense"). Nor are Deans displays of triumphalism limited to those who testified opposite him. Production on White House Plumbers was delayed by the Covid pandemic, which occurred amidturmoil, division and disruption in the country. CIA people doubtlessly were told to sabotage the operation. White House Plumbers, premiering Monday, recreates the events that riveted a nation and upended American politics, focusing not on the usual characters no Nixon, Woodward or Bernstein on the screen here but on the men behind the crime. Needless to say, this is not part of the Watergate story that has come down to us over the decades. Finally, at the end, when its clear he is going to do nothing, I say, Well, Mr President, people are going to go to jail for this. He says, Like who? To bring it home, I say, Like me! So he knows his White House counsel thinks hes on his way to jail. He clearly wanted to engage in criminal behaviour and he would blame everybody but himself. Frequently Dean interrupts his running narrative of the new tapes to tell us what other speakers were thinking when they spoke. But the WSPF concluded: Mitchells logs and schedule suggestDean exercised somewhat more discretion himself to forge ahead with getting Kalmbach into the picture than he has admitted.. Im sad to say, you probably have a lot of people that have no idea that there was Watergate, he said. Further, he attacked The Times over the article, saying the news organization had falsely implied Mr. McGahn was a John Dean type RAT. (The Times publicly stated it stood behind the reporting.). But she had as many Republican clients as Democrats. In the barbershop, he just put a bowl on my head and cut it so it was much shorter than people were used to: Oh, hes changing his image!, The same thing with the glasses. It also did not take Dean long to discover that the Nixon administration was doing things differently. If Deans transcriptions are someday made available for verification, and if it is determined that he did not omit relevant materialtall hurdles, for sure, and practices uncharacteristic for Dean, as illustrated abovewe would understand that Nixon appears to have known earlier than we thought about the fitful payments of hush money to the burglars and their attorneys, and about how the whole story was destined to end. The latter, who died in May, was the critical link in the chain-of-command for the Watergate break-in. Dean was appointed as the White House counsel in 1970. Liddy had an odd fixation with the Nazis; at one point we see him raising his arm in a Nazi salute. one issue was the Larry O'Brien, to which you passed over as being a peripheral issue to your office. It is also only fair to point out that virtually all the more conventional Watergate histories-but especially the more-or-less official version as propounded by the Washington Post-dismiss it out of hand as dangerous "revisionist" history. Wed been at battle. George Frampton, another WSPF lawyer, actually concluded that one key meeting Dean had described, deeply damning to Mitchell, apparently didnt take place, adding: We probably would do well simply to omit Deans testimony about this. In the same document, Frampton wrote about California attorney Herbert Kalmbach, the chief fundraiser of the hush money that was delivered to the Watergate burglars and their attorneys. John D. Ehrlichman's and H.R. All rights reserved. He set his private investigators looking intoXaviera Hollander'sblack book. The timing was bizarre. Youre to get it done. Haldeman reminded Nixon that Magruder was a good liar: Hes a hell of a convincing guy, as evidenced by how he got off on the Sirica trial.. President Nixon was implicated as well. ~ Len Colodny, Pull up the searchable PDF of Chapter 6, "The President's Private Eye" from "Silent Coup". .and you can say that I was the editor and, um . White House Plumbers Revisits the Fringes of Watergate Starring Julia Roberts, Sean Penn, and Dan Stevens in the lead roles, Gaslit on Starz offers a glimpse into the extraordinary life of Martha Mitchell, the socialite who was kidnapped in an attempt to stop her from breaking the news about the Watergate break-in. But newspapers reported on June 10, Heidis lawyer, Phillip Bailey,was arrestedon unrelated prostitution charges with implications to White House employee connections. Watergate Season 1, Episodes 6 and 7 of Gaslit focus on the Senate hearings beginning on May 17, 1973. Well, Mussolini ran the trains on time, didnt he but at some expense., Republican primaries offer look into future of Trumpism without Trump, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. In the series, John Dean ends up in jail which is exactly what happened in real life. MAUREEN DEAN FIRE The book also contains the occasional flat-out lie. In your testimony to the Committee, which I reviewed, let's just take two issues. April 27, 2023, 5:00 a.m. Dean also told prosecutors about another break-in a year earlier in Los Angeles. Plumbers is based in part on a book by Egil Bud Krogh Jr., a Nixon White House staff member who served time for authorizing the Ellsberg psychiatrist break-in. If you thought it through now, what would you sayto a direct question, Who told you to go back in [to the DNC]?, Magruders answer: It had to be either Dean or Strachan and probably, in this case, more likely Dean, becauseI wouldnt have [issued the order to Liddy] probably, even if Strachan had told meI would have checked with Dean. Six months later, Magruder went further and claimed that Mitchell, who had been his boss at the Committee to Reelect the President, had played no role in Operation GEMSTONE: All Mitchell did was just what I didacquiesce to the pressure from the White House. The idea that Nixon would have put his fate in the hands of this group is one of the great mysteries of that era.. Not all the Republicans I know are that way but too many of them now think authoritarianism is just dandy because it works, its efficient. John Ehrlichman Easily manipulating Nixons deputy campaign manager, the squishy Jeb Magruder, Dean got him to push a bugging operation into the Watergate offices of the DNC -- Heidis biggest customer contact. Hunt, defeated and incarcerated for his role in Watergate, learns that Nixonhas resignedby overhearing two fellow inmates talking as he is folding T-shirts in a prison laundry. In my book on Watergate, published six years ago, I wrote: The tapes unmasked Nixon not as the take-charge boss of a criminal conspiracy but rather as an aging and confused politician lost in a welter of detail, unable to distinguish his Magruders from his Strachans, uncertain who knew what and when, what each player had told the grand jury, whose testimony was direct, whose hearsay. Not only do the hundreds of hours of desultory conversation recounted in The Nixon Defense confirm this; Dean himself admits it. This panicked Dean, who met with the federal prosecutors to insist they bury Bailey, who was sent to an insane asylum. Nixon aide John Dean testifies at 1973 Watergate Dean claims to have identified several hundred Watergate conversations on tape segments that only he, working with a team of students, has freshly reviewed and transcribed. It kept an enemies list. This is demonstrated by mounds of evidence uncovered by writers starting with Jim Hougans inSecret Agenda. Its not over. The president gave a final victory sign on the South Lawn before a helicopter spirited him away. About to celebrate their 16th anniversary. It was Dean who had reviewed the contents of Hunts White House safe and secreted away his notebooks for later destruction. Well, at least you can't say you haven't been warned. Ever since then, Deans true role in Watergate has attracted vigorous debate. The Watergate break-in and cover-up was the result of the disastrous interaction of John Dean with the CIA. When Ehrlichman moved on,John Deangot to be White House counsel, thanks to his connections to the Goldwater family. Too bad. Despite its star power, that show failed to make much of a ripple in ratings or awards, earning four technical Emmy nominations and no wins. Watergate document.getElementById("year").innerHTML = date; | Terms and Conditions, "The Colodny Collection", is the largest private collection of Watergate and Nixon related materials, including exclusive interviews with almost all the key players in the Watergate scandal. I hope that will turn him but all it does is turn him against me because now Im radioactive., What were Deans impressions of Nixon the man? Magruder was the youthful campaign aide who received the final order to move against the Democratic National Committee, issued to him by a more senior political figureDean himself, as I and others have argued, and as he deniesand transmitted it to G. Gordon Liddy and his squad of ex-spooks, who carried out the operation. I knew enough of the criminal law to know this is either extortion or bribery. For his part, Mr. Dean has long maintained his colleagues sought to make him a scapegoat. For one thing, there were four attempted break-ins at the Watergate, including two unsuccessful dry-runs and a return visit to repair a failed bug. He wasnt who I thought he was. 50 years after the Watergate break-in, John Dean relives Dean/Colodny Interview Transcript and Tape - January 5, 1989. When it appeared that he might be foolish enough to blow the whistle on Heidi and her call girl ring, he was locked up at St. Elizabeth's, the District of Columbia's mental hospital. Consider the following: First, he tells us that Magruder, alarmed by the revived grand jury, simply developed a new version of what really happened at the Watergate, the implication being that Magruders new account was concocted from scratch. Mr. Dean, former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon, was a central figure in the Watergate investigation. (modern). It may have been 6,000 at max. Today the luxury Watergate hotels phone number ends in 1972 the year of the burglary and callers are greeted by a message that begins: Theres no need to break in, as well as recordings of President Richard Nixon. He knew that and he was worried, maybe, I thought presidents shouldnt do things like that. Like Nixon in his claustrophobic Oval Office, rehashing the same suppositions and evasions for hours at a time, to no discernible benefit, Dean continues to wallow in Watergate. The quality of the tapes in general is just awful but Im sitting right over one of the little microphones that had been bored into the desk, so my voice is crystal clear. Unfolding with the suspenseful pace of a le Carre spy thriller, it reveals the personal motives and secret political goals that combined to cause the Watergate break-in and destroy Richard Nixon. WebJohn Dean admits "Blind Ambition", his autobiography, contains false information Why This Is Significant: This is extremely important because the false information contained in And while that may not be a typical career path for an aspiring photographer's model-or stripper, which was Heidi's next big career move-you can see how it might have worked for her. Questioned about these statements in an August 1995 deposition, Magruder claimed he had been quoted out of context. Consider his account of a meeting that President Nixon held with H.R. in Watergate Thats not in any way to excuse the many stupid things Richard Nixon and his cronies did. As it happens, there's a good deal of evidence that a call girl operation Heidi was running in 1972 triggered the infamous break-in that led to the downfall of the thirty-seventh president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon. He has now clarified his memory and figures that hes got tohes now got toif theyre going to haul everybody up [to the grand jury], hes got to clean himself up, too. Similarly, its readers would never know that the staff lawyers on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) privately dissented from the myth that the Nixon tapes wholly corroborated Deans account of Watergate. Dean was convicted of obstruction of justice and served four months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal. He recounted his role in Watergate in Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). After his stint in prison, Dean became an investment banker. The Stennis compromise was ridiculed by Time magazine with a photo of the septuagenarian lawmaker cupping his ear, and the caption: Technical Assistance Needed.. Is it, in fact, truthful that you and John Dean had prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in?. Therell be no end to it and Nixon has got to get out in front of it and we all have got to stand up and account for the mistakes weve made., Dean went to see Nixon in an effort to convince him that the cover-up would destroy his presidency. . Haldeman, and domestic-policy chief John Ehrlichman. Not coincidentally, Olivers dad was a private investigator who worked atRobert Mullen & Co., a CIA front connected to Howard Hughes, and also the daytime employer of Howard Hunt. Alexander Butterfield, who served as a deputy assistant to Nixon between 1969 and 1973, confirmed Dean's hypothesis on July 16, 1973. Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA, and proven in open court with a series of John Dean-Gordon Liddy lawsuits that ended in complete victory 20 years ago inWells v. Liddy. He pauses to tell us when others made false or myopic statements on the tapes. He left the role in 1973. Liddy presented a preliminary plan f Some forty years later, rhetorically at least, that's still the last line of defense for those who would like this story to go away. The scandal reaches the White House, as senior White House aides H.R. Dean got fired from his role as the White House counsel on April 30, 1973. Dean made a deal where he received a reduced sentence for providing key witness testimony and pleading guilty to obstruction of justice. He served four months in prison and was disbarred from practicing law in D.C. and Virginia. Still, some of the higher-level Watergate conspirators didnt actually get a much harsher punishments than Dean. In doing so, he was repeating the story he had told the Senate in 1973, where he had testified that Mitchell was the ultimate authority behind the break-in. www.watergate.com: Home of "The COLODNY COLLECTION", John Wesley Dean III, Counsel to the President (Official White House Photo), *** Page two of the Dean section contains a lengthy interview with John Dean (01/05/1989), in which he contradicts himself on many key subjects, including his role in the famous Nixon "smoking gun tape". . New episodes of Gaslit air Sundays at 8 p.m. EST on Starz. Their revelations shocked the world and forever changed our understanding of politics, of journalism, and of Washington behind closed doors. On Sunday, The Times reported that Mr. Trump, who is said to be obsessed with the role Mr. Dean played as an informant during Watergate, was jolted by the idea that he did not know what Mr. McGahn had shared with the special counsels investigators. Ever ambitious and ruthless, he saw Ehrlichmans investigative team, many of whom had moved over to work for Nixons campaign, as his ticket to bigger things. The Times also reported that Mr. McGahn told people he was determined to avoid the fate of Mr. Dean, former White House counsel for President Richard Nixon. Watergate People were shocked that people were breaking in and planting bugs, whereas nowadays that would seem like small potatoes.. Though Magruder did offer several different versions of events, this claim endured beyond the spring of 1973, long past the point when there was any need for Magruder to clean himself up for the grand jury. Dean himself had to intervene to squash an outlandish plan to firebomb the Brookings Institution, a thinktank in Washington where classified documents leaked by Ellsberg were being stored. Dean was part of a gross conspiracy with John Ehrlichman, Bob Haldeman, (Attorney General) John Mitchell - and with Youre to get it done. And that Magruder has chosen to say he believes [that] to be the actual fact now, and he told these two lawyers this. Haldeman in the Oval Office on the morning of March 27, 1973, when the cover-up was rapidly unraveling. Thats not in any way to excuse the many stupid things Richard Nixon and his cronies did. A. officer played by Woody Harrelson, and G. Gordon Liddy, the lawyer and former F.B.I. The existence of his taping system had been publicly disclosed in July and was swiftly triggering a constitutional clash over executive privilege and its limits in the context of a pending criminal investigation. It turned out that the secretary, Ida Wells, was the call-girl arranger. agent played by Justin Theroux. Offers may be subject to change without notice. He pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice on Oct. 19, 1973, and he was sentenced to one to four years in prison on Aug. 2, 1974. Ive often thought he did that to impress upon me that all presidents are ruthless to a degree because Im the one who had blown up the the plan to firebomb the Brookings Institution. Theres just no choice. At the time I thought it was right and it was understandable because I knew he couldnt govern with Watergate hanging over him. Is it still the riveting tale of malfeasance that it was 51 years ago? HALDEMAN: And that what really happened on the Watergate was that all this planning was going on and Dean set it up and was involved in it and in getting the planning worked out, and they had the plan all set but they were not ready to really start with it, and then Strachan, Gordon Strachan, called him or went through or something and said: Haldeman has said that you cannot delay getting this operation started any longer. Magruder came back to Liddy, claiming it was approved. When President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a full pardon in September 1974, Bernstein exclaimed to Woodward: Youre not gonna believe it. Now, 40 years later, then some, Dean will return to Capitol Hill to testify before a different Congress about a different president. 'White House Plumbers' review: HBO gives Watergate Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resign over Watergate. I didnt even reread my testimony when I wrote my book., Likewise Dean never mentions the 2,000 pages of deposition testimony he gave in September 1995 and January 1996. LOS ANGELES On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. The biggest political scandal of the 20th century, and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, has become a byword for lost innocence and lost faith in institutions. John Dean Explore the scintillating May 2023 issue of Commentary. But it was not until after the president won re-election in November 1972 that Dean felt himself sucked into the cover-up, arranging hush money for the Watergate burglars. Dean has always maintained that John Mitchell authorized the enlistment of Kalmbach. Dismantling decades of lies, Silent Coup tells the truth. THE DEEP STATE, MARK ONE: The Watergate Cover-up Never Ends. While his footnotes frequently cite Blind Ambition, he never mentions that he has elsewhere admitted he never read his own book cover to cover prior to publication. As White House counsel, I got the title I didnt get the job, Dean says wryly. Robert Maheu, one-time Howard Hughes executive and the real-life inspiration for Jim Phelps of Mission Impossible, would often set these up for the agency during his time there. None of this appears in The Nixon Defense. While all this was going on, Hunt and the younger Oliver even discussed putting in a bid to buy Mullen. During that period, Trump attempted to overturn the 2020election, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations were touched off whenMinneapolispolice killed George Floyd, and the violentJan. 6 rioting eruptedat the Capitol, leading to subsequenthearings all of which makes framing a political scandal as a comedy, even a black comedy, a bit of a challenge, even for the crew that brought the world Veep., In Veep, we were going for the hard jokes, Huyck said. Dean recounts Nixon musing aloud about resigning, just throwing myself on the sword, and letting Agnew take it, in April 197316 months before the dawn of the Ford presidency. Whatever Deans true role, there can be no doubting that today, at age 76, he is one of the last surviving major figures of the Nixon presidency and remains, now more than ever, a decidedly interested party in Watergate, with an extant version of the affair, if not several competing ones, that he wishes to see cemented in history. At first the incident seemed comically inept and inconsequential but, when it emerged in court that the lead burglar, James McCord, had worked for the CIA, journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post sprang into action. There it was, the blooming early 1970s, when other Americans his age were practicing EST, enrolling in kung fu courses, listening to the Allman Brothersdoing their own thing!and he was stuck in the West Wing with Haldeman and Ehrlichman, scheming to outsmart the U.S. attorneys office and dying the death of a thousand cuts. What happened? On Saturday, Mr. Dean tweeted: Nixon, generally very competent, bungled and botched his handling of Watergate. While The Nixon Defense is chiefly a vehicle for introducing snippets of new transcriptions by Dean and his researchers, the book also reprises some familiar tapesunless they further inculpate Dean. It was an actual CIA honeytrap. The series portrays G. Gordon Liddy (Theroux, left) and E. Howard Hunt (Harrelson) as devoted to their cause and somewhat pathetic. That's why all that shit got in there. John Dean More importantly, though, the photo should lend some flesh and blood substance to the life of a woman whose ghost has hovered over the Watergate saga for years now. Former White House aide John Dean is sworn in by the Senate Watergate committee chairman, Sam Ervinon, on 25 June 1973. I was never worried about the country and the government during Watergate but from the day Trump was nominated, I had a knot in my stomach and, until he left, I never got rid of it, Dean, 83, tells the Guardian via Zoom from a Washington hotel. The interview was so damaging to Dean that he tried to kill it by having me criminally prosecuted; he failed. Do Watergate meets "Veep" in "White House Plumbers," an at-times-surreal HBO limited series that occasionally feels a little too over the top, mostly because the real-life
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