The president had ordered you to go ahead immediately, and you are not to stall anymore. Nixon aide John Dean testifies at 1973 Watergate It would be very different today, primarily because of Fox News, which would be mounting a fulsome defence of him. Dean, who happened to have his molars removed that day, cannot recall any particular emotion. Watergate (For instance, he had supervised payments of hush money to the Watergate burglars.) This is demonstrated by mounds of evidence uncovered by writers starting with Jim Hougans inSecret Agenda. 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. I would recommend Phil Stanfords more recentWhite House Call Girl, which is an excellent introduction to the disaster, but also has a huge amount ofnew details about Heidi Rikan and the Deans. He served his prison sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Ala., a minimum-security federal prison. Dean went into business for a while and tried to leave Watergate behind but a 1991 book that alleged he and his wife, Maureen, masterminded the cover-up prompted him to take legal action. Questioned about these statements in an August 1995 deposition, Magruder claimed he had been quoted out of context. He was released on Jan. 8, 1975. Now an investment This was the gang that couldnt shoot straight. ), But in your book, you say exactly the opposite. Its become a fact of life.. What Magruder had to say in March 1973 about the origins of the DNC operation was of critical interest to the president. In October 1973, with impeachment proceedings looming as a result of the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon proposed a compromise to the courts and to members of Congress, who were demanding access to the secret tapes of Nixons conversations with aides. I did not know that the president had authorised the Brookings operation but I thought it was insane, whoever had authorised it, he says. Former White House aide John Dean is sworn in by the Senate Watergate committee chairman, Sam Ervinon, on 25 June 1973. 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 book also contains the occasional flat-out lie. 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. 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. In the series, John Dean ends up in jail which is exactly what happened in real life. It kept an enemies list. I knew enough of the criminal law to know this is either extortion or bribery. Mr. Dean sat at a table in a tan suit and signature horn rim glasses, his wife, Maureen, behind him and told the senators that Nixon was directly involved in the Watergate cover-up. Watergate didn't bust them up. Ever since then, Deans true role in Watergate has attracted vigorous debate. The president had ordered you to go ahead immediately, and you are not to stall anymore. If you experience technical problems, please write to, Secret Agenda. In a taped interview for the book "Silent Coup", when Dean was confronted with the contradiction between his book and his sworn testimony, he accused his editor of making up the false material in the book. Instapundit Blog Archive THE DEEP STATE, MARK I can hear my frustration with this man and Im waiting for his fist to come down on the desk. Indeed, the White House called him the cover-ups mastermind, The Times reported in June 1973. Dustin Hoffman, left, and Robert Redford portrayed the Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in All the Presidents Men, the 1976 film based on the reporters book. A. officer played by Woody Harrelson, and G. Gordon Liddy, the lawyer and former F.B.I. But newspapers reported on June 10, Heidis lawyer, Phillip Bailey,was arrestedon unrelated prostitution charges with implications to White House employee connections. (Larry O'Brien, Chairman of the DNC and alleged target of the Watergate break-in. 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. But this is no Veep II: White House Plumbers is as sad as it is funny. 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. 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. The Watergate Story (washingtonpost.com) Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA. John Ehrlichman If you're not careful, you might even end up being called a "conspiracy theorist.". It took eight hours to read it.. And in case you haven't figured out the game yet, you might want to take a peek at one of her earlier nude photos, circa 1957 or 58-which is to say, roughly fifteen years before she either did or didn't get involved in the Watergate affair. 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. Watergate As White House counsel, I got the title I didnt get the job, Dean says wryly. None of this appears in The Nixon Defense. David Mandel, who directed the series, said he learned about Watergate when he was growing up from All the Presidents Men, the book and movie about how two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, broke the scandal that brought down Nixon. 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. Lost your password? It was foolish., He adds: Its only later [in March 1973] when Hunt starts extorting me personally for money that I said the same things going to happen to everybody its going to follow us the rest of our lives. 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? He knows he can hurt his enemies and help his friends., He adds: Nixon, who was very bright and understood how the government operated and what the levers of power really are was somebody who also could experience shame and accepted the rule of law. This panicked Dean, who met with the federal prosecutors to insist they bury Bailey, who was sent to an insane asylum. Dean has since been able to listen back to the conversation thanks to Nixons secret recording system at the White House. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Dean was no bystander, no Brutus seduced by power, but a Cassius, a lead actor in the crime. Watergate John Dean Dean went into business for a while and tried to leave Watergate behind but a 1991 book that alleged he and his wife, Maureen, masterminded the cover Now here is the relevant excerpt of the same conversation as published by Stanley Kutler, the (left-wing) University of Wisconsin professor who edited the last compilation of Watergate transcripts, widely used by researchers, entitled Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (1997): HALDEMAN: Magruder has apparently told Dean that hes thought this whole thing through and hes nowno, he didnt tell Dean. While all this was going on, Hunt and the younger Oliver even discussed putting in a bid to buy Mullen. I had just gotten married and I said, Holy cow, were in trouble! So I decided then Ive got to make the cover-up work and thats when I dove in with both feet. Hunt, like Liddy, is a middle-aged man struggling with a flailing career, but he is also navigating a dysfunctional marriage. April 27, 2023, 5:00 a.m. Production on White House Plumbers was delayed by the Covid pandemic, which occurred amidturmoil, division and disruption in the country. 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. A new HBO slapstick tragedy mostly avoids the Oval Office in favor of the men who actually executed the infamous burglary that brought down a president. Users of the sites can examine the evidence contained on the sites, and arrive at their own opinions as to exactly what took place in the demise of the Nixon Presidency. Mr. Trump took issue with the story on Twitter, saying on Sunday morning that Mr. McGahn cooperated with his blessing. Haldeman, and domestic-policy chief John Ehrlichman. In reality, Haldeman told the president that Magruder had clarified his memory.. A man who called himself Deep Throat was the driving force behind People may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Blaming John Dean for His Poor Counsel But John and Maureen Dean are married. Dean struck up a nifty deal, agreeing to serve as a key witness for the prosecution in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. Hunt and Liddy are true believers, serving their president and, in their view, protecting the country from Communism and the political turmoil of the era. What surprised me most is he spent a lot of time conspicuously trying to impress me., On one occasion, Dean recounts, Nixon told him that he was reading a book about President Johns F Kennedys ruthless streak. Richard Nixon. Their revelations shocked the world and forever changed our understanding of politics, of journalism, and of Washington behind closed doors. Dean was out of the country on the day of the Watergate break-in but instantly guessed who was behind it. 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. The first set of DNC bugs was placed May 28, 1972, and notes and transcripts made of conversations by Baldwin across the street in Howard Johnsons. Anyone can read what you share. 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 characters actually were. He is also a teacher and regular on the lecture circuit. 50 years after the Watergate break-in, John Dean relives WebNixon repeatedly declared that he knew nothing about the Watergate burglary, but former White House counsel John Dean III testified that the president had approved plans to cover up White House connections to the break-in. 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. The CIA however, and the Pentagon separately, did not trust Nixon and had quietly organized their ownspy operations against him. Season 1, Episodes 6 and 7 of Gaslit capture the testimonies Martha, John Dean (an attorney who served as the White House counsel between 1970 and 1973), and others gave in front of the U.S. Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. John Dean on Capitol Hill on 10 June 2019. As Dean quotes Ehrlichman saying of him in April 1973: He has an almost unlimited capacity to dredge up anecdotes from a dim and murky past, and were just going to have to handle it one by one. And so we are. But she had as many Republican clients as Democrats. While at one point in the book he describes himself, with a straight face, as a Nixon historian, Dean was Nixons White House counsel and the admitted desk officer of the Watergate cover-up. No, someone would have cracked, just as we did so easily in Watergate. Starz Hightown Has a Surprising Connection to Teen Drama Dawsons Creek, Starz's 'Power Book 2: Ghost' Showcases the Gritty Nature of the Drug Game in New York City. 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. Dean also told prosecutors about another break-in a year earlier in Los Angeles. This months 50th anniversary of the break-in is being marked by books, exhibitions, TV dramas and a four-part CNN documentary series, Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal, narrated by Dean himself. 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. Too bad. Season 1, Episodes 6 and 7 of Gaslit focus on the Senate hearings beginning on May 17, 1973. First and foremost, it was a great story with larger-than-life characters and astonishing twists and turns, Gregory said. Hunts team, including James McCord, ex-CIA, and Alfred Baldwin, McCords ex-FBI friend, began bugging the DNC offices. That was an era in which people could still be shocked that this kind of behavior went on in politics, said Peter Huyck, who created the show with Alex Gregory. Who Was Deep Throat in Watergate? Let's Get Into It Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities It would have consumed his presidency but so I understood it, but in the long run it codified the memo that was prepared then re-prepared during the Clinton presidency, that a sitting president cant be indicted. Dean was appointed as the White House counsel in 1970. He captivated the attention of Americans, though, with his televised testimony in June 1973 before the Senate Watergate Committee. Even the Plumbers creators acknowledge that the Watergate offenses seem quaint compared to, say, Donald Trumps effort to overturn an election that he lost by about 7 million votes. Nine months into the mushrooming scandal, Dean bargained for immunity and won himself a lenient prison term by delivering the sensational, if deeply flawed, In a February 6, 1974, memorandum, WSPF lawyer Peter F. Rient identified 20 instances in which Deans testimony before the Senate diverged materially from what was on the tapes. I had worn contacts during the Cronkite interview and noticed I was just blinking madly. What's more, he's publishing now his latest book about Watergate ("The Nixon Defense"). 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 McCord dragged out the operation and left so many clues it was impossible the burglars would not be caught. Wed been at battle. Liddy also went to prison, in Danbury, Conn. (The reporter who wrote this story also covered his release in 1977; he is in the background over Liddys left shoulder.). Mitchell and his wife, Martha, opted for separation in September 1973 months after Martha gave a testimony to the U. S. Senate Watergate Committee. In this, there are no jokes., The situation is organically absurd, he continued. In 1973, John Dean was the star witness in the Watergate hearings. The blockbuster hearing in June was watched by millions on television. Corporationcampaign contribution to the Republican National Committee. 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. I dont recall John Dean talking to me about GEMSTONE after [February 1972], Magruder testified. In reality, Haldeman was quoting Dean. 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. Hes a deplorable man, he said. 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. Hell, the first plan that we got had been initiated by DeanThe target never came from Mitchell.. But Nixon was at best a peripheral figure. The story of Watergate has until now been typically told from the vantage point of the Oval Office and the Washington Post newsroom. This is the real story of Watergate. It would be incredibly entertaining to have a movie made based on this book; the nasty, sexy, funny truth about Washington, D.C. and how it really worked then and does, to a great extent, now. "White House Call Girl" tells how a call girl operation she was running at the time led to the Watergate break-in, which brought down Tricky Dick Nixon himself. James Rosen is an investigative reporter for the Sinclair Broadcast Group in Washington and the author of, among other books. 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. Big Media never tires of repeating two enormous lies -- their versions of Joe McCarthys investigations and the Watergate Scandal. Look Back at John Dean's Testimony Frequently Dean interrupts his running narrative of the new tapes to tell us what other speakers were thinking when they spoke. Trump is a poster boy for authoritarianism and the authoritarian followers just fell in line. 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. ~ Len Colodny, Pull up the searchable PDF of Chapter 6, "The President's Private Eye" from "Silent Coup". Deans initial reaction was different. When it suits his purposes, the author halts the tape-centric narrative to second-guess virtually all the presidents men: to chide them for broaching a subject not too subtly, to gloat over their convictions and incarceration, to dismiss their recollections as invented after the fact, to boast that my analysis would later prove correctto anoint himself, in short, sole arbiter of what happened in Watergate, renderer of final verdicts. WebJohn Wesley Dean III, Counsel to the President (Official White House Photo) John Dean admits "Blind Ambition", his autobiography, contains false information Why This Is Significant: This is extremely important because the false information contained in "Blind Ambition" directly contradicts his sworn testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee. First working for Ted Kennedys private eye,Carmine Bellino, then in the summer of 1973, ready to appear for George Bush, the new RNC head, to blow the lid off Watergate. A Look Back at John Dean's Testimony : NPR 2000- watergate.com 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. Meanwhile Alexander Butterfield, Nixons deputy chief of staff, had testified that there was a recording system in the White House. Watergate Second, Dean tells us, with studied vagueness, that Magruders new version of what really happened at the Watergate was that the DNC mission, as Dean summarizes, had been cooked up at the White House. In reality, Haldeman had been far more specific: He said Magruder was now charging 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. Why was the second half of Haldemans sentencethe part about the origin of the Watergate break-in, where Magruder identified Dean as the one who set it up and got the planning worked outdeleted from Deans summary? Later that year Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, was disbarred and served four months; he was in the witness protection programme so never went to prison. Ex-stripper Heidi Rikan, aka Kathy Dieter (At the time Silent Coup" was written, we didnt know how she spelled it; Cathy or Kathy), was working for the mob in Washington, DC. 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. It was an actual CIA honeytrap. But, when youre near broke, its amazing how tastes can change. 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. 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. So this means that John Dean either lied under oath or is lying to his readers in his autobiography. Then as now, D.C. is a rigged town, with very different rules for Republicans as against Democrats. 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. If were hoping to achieve anything, its to get people interested in history in general by making it entertaining. The latter gets another bad history treatment this May with HBOsWhite House Plumbers. There are, in fact, those who disagree so vehemently with this version of events that they've sued-unsuccessfully, as it's turned out-to prevent it from being discussed in print. How many bites at the Watergate apple should one central participant be accorded? Weekend Edition revisits WebNixon repeatedly declared that he knew nothing about the Watergate burglary, but former White House counsel John Dean III testified that the president had approved plans to .and you can say that I was the editor and, um . Mr. Dean was White House counsel and a cover-up coordinator. Indeed, Hunt and Liddy are portrayed as being slightly pathetic, but also sympathetic, if in a bumbling kind of way. Dean has never been more concerned about American democracy than he is now. Here is how Dean, employing the first-person (in utterly dreadful prose), summarizes the Nixon-Haldeman conversation in The Nixon Defense: Because [Watergate burglar James] McCord had claimed I was aware of the Watergate break-in, I would be called to the grand jury, and my testimony would not jibe with Magruders. Other cameos of note include the All the Presidents Men star Robert Redford (actually Redfords voice), in a scene where Woodward is heard calling Hunt. 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. I said that is just not a good look; Id better get that neck cleaned up or my mother will be all over me. The Watergate Cover-up Never Ends - American Thinker LOS ANGELES On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the I really liked him, liked playing him, he said, adding: I dont fall in love with his politics or his ethics; I did fall in love with his spirit.. He just discovered late in his presidency the enormous powers he does have as president. Its a slapstick tragedy in the words of Frank Rich, an executive producer for the show, and a former executive producer of Veep. (A former New York Times columnist, hes also an executive producer of Succession.). John Dean - Wikipedia White House Plumbers comes roughly a year after another high-end Watergate series: Gaslit, a stylish Starz thriller that featured Sean Penn as John Mitchell, Nixons attorney general, and Julia Roberts as Martha Mitchell. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst also resigns, and John Dean, the White House counsel, gets fired. The Watergate grand jury heard all about this, and no surprise, the contents of Wells conversations arestill sealed. Watergate The FBI and the CIA let it be known they would not do the black-bag jobs and political capers, they formerly did for the Kennedys and LBJ. He just did some coldblooded stuff back in the day.. 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. All these things that people are going to watch and go, Yeah, that didnt happen Gregory said. Liddy began to think he was being duped when McCord told him they somehow could not record the telephone calls they were hearing. 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. 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. This assertion is offered in support of Deans complaint that Nixon and his men were bent on elevating me from a message-carrier to the mastermind of the cover-up once Dean had turned on them. But Nixon was at best a peripheral figure. Ever since, the gate suffix has been shorthand for scandal, and Watergate has provided fodder for movies, books, podcasts, commentaries and television. *** 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". There, he accused the ghostwriter of Blind Ambition, the future Pulitzer Prizewinner Taylor Branch, of having decided in the case of one critical passageat odds with Deans Senate testimonyto absolutely make it up out of whole cloth., Q: As I recall your testimony, Mr. Dean, when asked about particular passages in Blind Ambition, you have explained them in various ways, as either pure Taylor Branch, out of whole cloth, conjecture, speculation, writers language, reconstruction for the purpose of speculation, brush strokes beyond testimony.. Trump, a total incompetent, is bungling and botching his handling of Russiagate.. In the ward for the criminally insane, no less. He set his private investigators looking intoXaviera Hollander'sblack book. The White House would then prepare summaries of the subpoenaed conversations for investigators, which Stennis could authenticate by listening to the tapes themselves. CIA people doubtlessly were told to sabotage the operation. Then as now, D.C. is a rigged town, with very different rules for Republicans as against Democrats. And for all the attention paid to Watergate over the decades, Plumbers finds some lesser-known corners of this story to explore. Make no mistake. He then publicly turned against Nixon by testifying to the Senate Watergate committee becoming the first White House official to accuse the president of being directly involved in the cover-up.