John Dean

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John Dean
John Dean, May 7, 1972.
Born	John Wesley Dean III October 14, 1938 (1938-10-14) (age 69) Akron, Ohio

John Wesley Dean III (born 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 Federal Bureau of Investigation (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, strongly critical of conservatism and the Republican Party, and a registered independent supporting impeachment of President George W. Bush.^[2]

Contents 1 Early life and career 2 "Master manipulator" to star witness 3 Watergate trial 4 Life after Watergate 5 Books 6 Notes 7 Sources 8 External links

[edit] 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 J.D. 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.

[edit] "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. 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 administration officials, including Nixon fundraiser and former Attorney General John Mitchell, Nixon and himself. He was the first administration official to accuse Nixon of direct involvement with Watergate and the resulting cover-up in press interviews. 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 secret White House tape recordings were made public and analyzed that Dean's accusations were established as true.

[edit] 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, which wound up being four months. With his conviction for felony offenses, Dean was disbarred as a lawyer, so could no longer practice law.

[edit] 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 that 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.^[3] 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.^[4] 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.^[5]

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 subsequent 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 Bush is "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense".^[6] 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."^[7]

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 frequently serves as a guest on the MSNBC show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and the Randi Rhodes Show on the Nova M Radio network.

[edit] Books

• Dean, John W. (1976). Blind Ambition: The White House Years. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0671224387. 
• 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: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches. Viking Adult. ISBN 0-670-01820-1. 
• Dean, John W.; Goldwater, Barry M., Jr. (2008). Pure Goldwater. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1403977410. 

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of Planning and Evaluation. . FBI Watergate Investigation: OPE Analysis. July 5, 1974. File Number 139-4089. p.11
2. ^ Rothschild, Matthew. "An Interview with John Dean," Progressive Magazine (2006-05-20)
3. ^ Bates, Stephen. "Flipping His Liddy", Slate.com, 5 February 2001. 
4. ^ 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 states: "Blind Ambition (ghostwriter for John Dean) (Simon & Schuster: 1979)" under the heading "Past Writing".
5. ^ Dean, John: Conservatives Without Conscience, Viking, 2006.
6. ^ Jackson, David. "War-powers debate on front burner", USA Today, 28 December 2005. 
7. ^ Milbank, Dana. "Watergate Remembered, After a Fashion", Washington Post, 1 April 2006. 

[edit] 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]

[edit] External links

• 1983 interview with John Dean by Don Swaim at Wired for Books.
• Worse Than Watergate: Former Nixon Counsel John Dean Says Bush Should Be Impeached Democracy Now!, April 6, 2004, interview with John Dean
• Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More John Dean, Findlaw, September 9, 2005
• Video of John Dean interview by Keith Olberman on Countdown with Keith Olbermann about Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience on July 11, 2006, at Crooks and Liars, YouTube
• Spartacus Educational Biography

Preceded by Chuck Colson

White House Counsel 1970-73

Succeeded by Leonard Garment