But we couldnt do it. After all, at the time Dean summoned the deputy director to the Executive Office Building, Haldeman and Ehrlichman had already met directly with CIA Director Richard Helms, importuned him to use the agency to block the FBIs nascent Watergate investigation, and been rebuffed. The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch! (Woodward has more recently praised Fords act as one of courage.) The story of Watergate has until now been typically told from the vantage point of the Oval Office and the Washington Post newsroom. In 1973, John Dean was the star witness in the Watergate hearings. *** 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". Even though he was referred to as the master manipulator, by the FBI, he pleaded guilty and his prison-sentence was reduced. What happened is, the editors got real excited, interesting wanted to make it more intriguing. This is demonstrated by mounds of evidence uncovered by writers starting with Jim Hougans inSecret Agenda. What else, in the corpus of old or new tapes, was stricken, condensed, rendered inaccurately? Hell, the first plan that we got had been initiated by DeanThe target never came from Mitchell.. The latter, who died in May, was the critical link in the chain-of-command for the Watergate break-in. 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. All these things that people are going to watch and go, Yeah, that didnt happen Gregory said. So if the soft curves and round, plump nipples offend your sense of historical propriety, just take a deep breath and think of it as documentary evidence because that's what it is. John Dean on Capitol Hill on 10 June 2019. 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.). ), But in your book, you say exactly the opposite. 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. 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. 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. Nixon lost the confidence of fellow Republicans and, facing impeachment, resigned in August 1974. Perhaps people would learn from history if it were served up as a cheeseburger instead of an undressed arugula salad., White House Plumbers is a descendant of another HBO Washington series: the caustic comedy Veep. Huyck and Gregory were mainstays of that satires writers room and Mandel was a showrunner. Then as now, D.C. is a rigged town, with very different rules for Republicans as against Democrats. What happened? Mitchell was the first (and only) U.S. Attorney General to end up in jail. McCord dragged out the operation and left so many clues it was impossible the burglars would not be caught. Dean was set free immediately after trial without ever having spent a single night in a jail cell. Well, at least you can't say you haven't been warned. 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.). 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. The inaugural mission by the Plumbers was a June 1971 break-in at the Beverly Hills office of Daniel Ellsbergs psychiatrist, in a fruitless search for information to discredit Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Season 1, Episodes 6 and 7 of Gaslit focus on the Senate hearings beginning on May 17, 1973. 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. He wants them now. In later testimony to Congress, Dean explained: I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed that the president himself would be killed by it.. John Wesley Dean III appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee in June 1973. Well, a post-president cant be indicted when hes pardoned.. Dean was out of the country on the day of the Watergate break-in but instantly guessed who was behind it. Not so much Trump but now the whole Republican party has shifted into this authoritarian stance. The problem of Deans self-interest recurs throughout The Nixon Defense and fatally undermines it as a work of scholarship; at more than 700 pages of text and source notes, Opus de Self-Justifio would have been the more apt title. But we only get the HBO series with Liddy and Hunt as a Deep State Laurel and Hardy. What's more, he's publishing now his latest book about Watergate ("The Nixon Defense"). The Watergate story really begins in 1969, when Nixon took office. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resign over Watergate. Indeed, the White House called him the cover-ups mastermind, The Times reported in June 1973. 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. Please enter your email address. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. But John and Maureen Dean are married. But at a time when a former president has been indicted on charges of funneling hush money payments to an adult film star, does Watergate still shock? On Monday, Mr. Dean, who lives in Los Angeles, did not respond to an email from The Times seeking comment. All Rights Reserved. White House Plumbers is centered primarily on two men who planned the Watergate break-in, played by Woody Harrelson, far right, and Justin Theroux, fourth from right. He left the role in 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. Its become a fact of life.. In the series, John Dean ends up in jail which is exactly what happened in real life. Anyone can read what you share. When President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a full pardon in September 1974, Bernstein exclaimed to Woodward: Youre not gonna believe it. The photographer who covered the event asked her if she'd like to do something a little more interesting, and as so often happens, one thing led to another. Here's what we know about him. And what motives are driving this project? In your testimony to the Committee, which I reviewed, let's just take two issues. All rights reserved. But Nixon was at best a peripheral figure. 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. And he occasionally works to explain away uncomfortable moments on the tapes where his own conduct, stubbornly resistant to his deep massage of the record, interferes with his long quest for rehabilitation. The CIA however, and the Pentagon separately, did not trust Nixon and had quietly organized their ownspy operations against him. But rather than publish complete verbatim transcripts of these excavated conversations, The Nixon Defense presents a highly selective prose narrative of the first half of the Watergate scandal, heavily salted with edited quotations from these new transcripts. The Watergate Scandal is so deeply embedded in the psyches of Americans that anytime something remotely Offers may be subject to change without notice. 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. We are far more polarised today than we were. 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.. Gradually they and others would trace a complex web that connected operatives known as the plumbers to the Committee to Re-elect the President (Creep) to senior White House officials and, finally, to Nixon himself. 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. Taylor Branch denied making up anything in Blind Ambition. In a February 1990 interview, he was asked about the fateful moment when he ordered G. Gordon Liddy to re-enter the DNCs Watergate officethe ill-fated mission whose disruption by the police touched off the great scandal. A pivotal figure in the Watergate investigation, John W. Dean, was dragged back into the limelight on Sunday with President Trumps defense of the current White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II. Imagine if Robert E. Lee had outlived Ulysses S. Grant by 45 years and determinedly made use of each new communications platform in that time framethe telegraph, the direct-dial telephone, radio, the talkiesto smooth out his account of Appomattox. 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? 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. I knew enough of the criminal law to know this is either extortion or bribery. 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. . He has spent most of his career writing books about the Nixon administration. ET. These White House Plumbers carried out the break-in of Daniel Ellsbergs psychiatrist office, on the hunch that Ellsberg was a Soviet agent, as opposed to just being a world-class jerk. 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. James Rosen thinksHunt, McCord and otherswere trying to infiltrate Nixons circle before the 1968 campaign even began. All your Watergate was for nothing, Hunts wife, Dorothy (Lena Headey) tells her husband after Nixon wins re-election in a landslide in 1972. Thats not in any way to excuse the many stupid things Richard Nixon and his cronies did. Russell, you might guess, was also the security man for Heidis Columbia Plaza brothel, and he was apparently looking to get paid by everybody on both sides. 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. 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. Mitchell and his wife, Martha, opted for separation in September 1973 months after Martha gave a testimony to the U. S. Senate Watergate Committee. If were hoping to achieve anything, its to get people interested in history in general by making it entertaining. 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. Lost your password? A: RightI thought this was a good popular and commercial explanation of the events, a good portrait and dramatization of it, butits not absolutely accurate. People were shocked that people were breaking in and planting bugs, whereas nowadays that would seem like small potatoes.. They just absolutely did what authoritarian followers do: click their heels, salute, Yes sir!, That leaves him fearing for the future of American democracy. Theres just no choice. 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). But its much easier to write a long statement than it is a short one so I just let it flow. . Hes a deplorable man, he said. Trump, a total incompetent, is bungling and botching his handling of Russiagate.. Dean/Colodny Interview Transcript and Tape - January 5, 1989. Its over. He also famously told Nixon in a conversation taped by the president in the Oval Office, We have a cancer within, close to, the presidency, that is growing. As the Watergate investigation intensified in 1973, Mr. Dean cooperated with the Senate committee. CIA people doubtlessly were told to sabotage the operation. Wed been at battle. Of the Washington Post, he sneers, Much of their information was wrong; and he accuses the celebrated Judge John J. Sirica, who presided at both major Watergate trials, of acting as both prosecutor and judge and of practicing judicial extortion with his heavy sentencing. He wasnt who I thought he was. Now a grandfather living in Beverly Hills, California, he quips: My speciality, I guess, is presidents in deep trouble., But if something like Watergate happened in the 2020s, he does not believe it would necessarily bring down a president again. For his part, Mr. Dean has long maintained his colleagues sought to make him a scapegoat. His main theme in books and speeches is to sound the alarm about presidential abuses. So this means that John Dean either lied under oath or is lying to his readers in his autobiography. He did not go to prison, serving four months at Fort Holabird, a former Army base in Baltimore. THE DEEP STATE, MARK ONE: The Watergate Cover-up Never Ends. And if all else fails, they can always call you crazy-which is what happened to a young lawyer named Phillip Bailley, one of the principal witnesses to this roundly ignored bit of American history. Dean also told prosecutors about another break-in a year earlier in Los Angeles. Dean got fired from his role as the White House counsel on April 30, 1973. Haldeman, and domestic-policy chief John Ehrlichman. Im sad to say, you probably have a lot of people that have no idea that there was Watergate, he said. The scandal reaches the White House, as senior White House aides H.R. I didnt know much about Hunt; I was 11 when this went down.. 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. Hunts team, including James McCord, ex-CIA, and Alfred Baldwin, McCords ex-FBI friend, began bugging the DNC offices. Despite Deans claims, no evidence has surfaced to suggest that either Haldeman or Ehrlichman ordered him to meet with Walters (not once but thrice); indeed, the evidence suggests Dean was operating without their knowledge. (modern). This is the true story of betrayal at the nation's highest level. Case in point: Dean repeats his longstanding claim that Haldeman or Ehrlichman, Nixons two closest White House aides, either instructed or approved my every move in Watergate. This is demonstrated by mounds of evidence Its not over. It definitively supports "Silent Coup's" theory that the call girl ring was the reason for the Watergate break-in. 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. This was the gang that couldnt shoot straight. LOS ANGELES On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the The interview was so damaging to Dean that he tried to kill it by having me, Click on Book to View the Evidence Package, Authors Note: Dean took complete ownership of "Blind Ambition.". At the end of April 1973, with the walls closing in, Nixon aides HR Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned and Dean himself was forced out. I had actually scratched my cornea. 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. Deans distortion of this tape is markedand telling. When the supreme court ruled against him, that was it. In this, there are no jokes., The situation is organically absurd, he continued. Dean was no bystander, no Brutus seduced by power, but a Cassius, a lead actor in the crime. The Watergate break-in and cover-up was the result of the disastrous interaction of John Dean with the CIA. I have never really worn contacts since I had that experience., Dean read from a mammoth prepared statement that took almost the entire first day. 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. Did John Dean go to jail after Watergate? Still. In Even today, as we go about celebrating the fortieth anniversary of that long-ago political scandal, there is a nasty little argument among Watergate scholars, not to mention all the others who have axes to grind, over what role, if any, she played. John Dean speaks on the 1972 Watergate break-in and why he has never been more concerned about US democracy than now, Ive never escaped Watergate, says John Dean, as once again he allows the years to melt away, the old faces to crowd in and the secret tapes to whirr in his mind. WebNixon. 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. 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. I dont think people are that interested in Watergate, but they are certainly interested in the questions of a deep state and questions of the weaponization of the federal government, Naftali said. According to History, Dean was the first member of the Nixon administration to mention the taping system former U.S. President Richard Nixon had installed in the White House. Naively imagining that the proposal would mollify his enemies, Nixon said he would turn over the relevant recordings to Senator John C. Stennis, a conservative Democrat from Mississippi. The series portrays G. Gordon Liddy (Theroux, left) and E. Howard Hunt (Harrelson) as devoted to their cause and somewhat pathetic. He has also been called upon by the media and Congress to provide expert analysis during scandals in the Clinton and Trump administrations. 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. But this is no Veep II: White House Plumbers is as sad as it is funny. Wary that he would be turned into a scapegoat, Dean began cooperating with Senate investigators. Rikan was roommates with Mo Biner, the gal Dean would later marry. I'll tell, let me tell what the st-, I can go through that process for you. 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.. But in the new book, he frames the exchange thus: While I could not play the sycophant, as [special counsel Charles] Colson did, nor could I be a brittle and nasty son of a bitch, like [associate counsel] Tom Huston, both of whom I knew Nixon admired, I could play the admiring staffer in my own way, which I did with a couple of appreciative remarks, such as Thats an exciting prospect.. 2000- watergate.com New episodes of Gaslit air Sundays at 8 p.m. EST on Starz. Okay? 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. 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. Ever since then, Deans true role in Watergate has attracted vigorous debate. 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. Deans treatment of the tapes themselves is no less misleading. Now an investment But Nixon was at best a peripheral figure. Dean has never been more concerned about American democracy than he is now. 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. You will receive a link to create a new password via email. But unknown to Dean, this wasnt any ordinary high-dollar D.C. brothel. Indeed, Hunt and Liddy are portrayed as being slightly pathetic, but also sympathetic, if in a bumbling kind of way. 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. 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. It's how she got her start, you see-moonlighting as a nude model while still serving as a private in the U.S. Army in Washington, D.C. Not long after she arrived at her duty station in the nation's capital, she was named "Miss Fort Myer." People may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. In factand not counting the previously quoted conclusion of the WSPF that Dean exercised somewhat more discretiongetting Kalmbach into the picture than he has admittedthere were at least two other, and likely many more, overt acts that Dean committed in furtherance of the Watergate conspiracy, undertaken without informing his superiors and cagily withheld both from the prosecutors, at key junctures, and from readers today. A man who called himself Deep Throat was the driving force behind breaking the Watergate Scandal. Those are the things that really happened.. 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". Finally, Dean tells us that Haldeman reminded the president of Magruders skill as a liar. In reality, Haldeman told the president that Magruder had clarified his memory.. While Dean stated in the foreword to Blind Ambition that writing the book required him to review an enormous number of documents as well as my own testimony, he later admitted: Im going to be very honest with you. 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.
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