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. He wants them now. Wed been at battle. The Watergate break-in and cover-up was the result of the disastrous interaction of John Dean with the CIA. 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.. Hunt is a relatively bland character, particularly compared with Liddy, whom Mandel described as anut-ball. But Harrelson found himself fascinated by, if not terribly sympathetic to this shadowy symbol of the Watergate era. .and you can say that I was the editor and, um . In the series, John Dean ends up in jail which is exactly what happened in real life. 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. 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. Forty years later, the former wunderkind is still suffering that death, over and over again, doomed to an eternity of evidentiary sifting and kneading. (Larry O'Brien, Chairman of the DNC and alleged target of the Watergate break-in. Naturally, Dean never trains on himself the unsparing ex post facto scrutiny he applies to his ex-colleagues. Indeed, the White House called him the cover-ups mastermind, The Times reported in June 1973. Hes Back in the Spotlight, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/us/politics/john-dean-watergate-facts-bio.html. 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. This panicked Dean, who met with the federal prosecutors to insist they bury Bailey, who was sent to an insane asylum. You can just write completely straight dialogue and let it sit there, and it will be funny., White House Plumbers Revisits the Fringes of Watergate, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/arts/television/white-house-plumbers-hbo-watergate.html. The Watergate scandal forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency in August 1974. 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. 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. He did not go to prison, serving four months at Fort Holabird, a former Army base in Baltimore. Is it, in fact, truthful that you and John Dean had prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in?. But we couldnt do it. 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. 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 wasnt who I thought he was, says Dean. He just discovered late in his presidency the enormous powers he does have as president. McCord dragged out the operation and left so many clues it was impossible the burglars would not be caught. 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. This is demonstrated by mounds of evidence uncovered by writers starting with Jim Hougans inSecret Agenda. 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. It wasnt just Stenniss infirmities, of course, that rendered Nixons proposal laughable at the time; it was the suggestion that the president, by then identified as an actor in the Watergate saga, could be trusted to appoint the sole arbiter of the critical evidence in the case. 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. Deans distortion of this tape is markedand telling. Make no mistake. . 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. Given Deans advanced age, The Nixon Defense should mark his final stab at shaping the record of Watergate; but I wouldnt bet on it. 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. Please enter your email address. He clearly wanted to engage in criminal behaviour and he would blame everybody but himself. 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. Then he looked into the operationHeidi Rikanwas running right there next to the Watergate at the Columbia Plaza. 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. 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. His main theme in books and speeches is to sound the alarm about presidential abuses. In it the man who helped bring Nixon down draws a direct line from the Watergate break-in on 17 June 1972 to the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, taking stock of a half century that has seen the media fragment, the Republican party embrace authoritarian tendencies and presidents become less accountable. A 2009 post on nixontapes.org, states that Nixon's White House Counsel, John Dean, said the break-in was executed following a tip that claimed the Democrats were engaging in potentially-illegal fundraising activities: "Dean's new revelation is that the origin of the Watergate break-in was a "tip" that Nixon received about an alleged Democratic James Rosen is an investigative reporter for the Sinclair Broadcast Group in Washington and the author of, among other books. pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice on Oct. 19, 1973, 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. 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. 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. Anyone can read what you share. Its become a fact of life.. Late in life, he continues to try to reviseWatergate history in his own favor. A man who called himself Deep Throat was the driving force behind 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. 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. But first Dean got a haircut. Dismissed by the White House press secretary as a third-rate burglary, the break-in set off a chain of events that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in August 1974. When President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a full pardon in September 1974, Bernstein exclaimed to Woodward: Youre not gonna believe it. 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. 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. 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. I had done an interview with Walter Cronkite and my hair was curling over my shoulders. He captivated the attention of Americans, though, with his televised testimony in June 1973 before the Senate Watergate Committee. Mitchell and his wife, Martha, opted for separation in September 1973 months after Martha gave a testimony to the U. S. Senate Watergate Committee. Season 1, Episodes 6 and 7 of Gaslit focus on the Senate hearings beginning on May 17, 1973. Yet elsewhere in the same deposition, Magruder unmistakably continued to implicate Dean as the author of the DNC mission. This is extremely important because the false information contained in "Blind Ambition" directly contradicts his sworn testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee. I'll tell, let me tell what the st-, I can go through that process for you. And Dita Beard! 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. 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.. If Trump gets through with zero accountability, then the system is deeply flawed and a lot of that is probably traceable to the Ford pardon.. Still. All rights reserved. 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. Weekend Edition revisits None of this appears in The Nixon Defense. 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. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst also resigns, and John Dean, the White House counsel, gets fired. 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. Thats not in any way to excuse the many stupid things Richard Nixon and his cronies did. 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. In your testimony to the Committee, which I reviewed, let's just take two issues. Liddy presented a preliminary plan f The supreme court ordered the release of a smoking gun tape confirming Deans claim that Nixon told aides to order the CIA to shut down the FBI investigation into the burglary. There has been no shortage of Washington intrigue and scandal since Nixon resigned, including the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, the impeachments of presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and the Iran-Contra arms-for hostages scandal that shadowed Ronald Reaganssecond term. He served his prison sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Ala., a minimum-security federal prison. Big Media never tires of repeating two enormous lies -- their versions of Joe McCarthys investigations and the Watergate Scandal. Dean spent four months in jail. Hunts wife later died in a plane crash, and the series nods (but only nods) to an old conspiracy theory We didnt want to Oliver Stone it, Gregory said that it might not have been an accident. The Rient memorandum did not surface until 1997. Starz's 'Shining Vale' Tells the Strange Tale of a Writer Will There Be a Season 2? But we only get the HBO series with Liddy and Hunt as a Deep State Laurel and Hardy. 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. What Magruder had to say in March 1973 about the origins of the DNC operation was of critical interest to the president. John Dean on Capitol Hill on 10 June 2019. He called inthe two [campaign] lawyers, yesterday, and said: Heres the situation. Well, at least you can't say you haven't been warned. He is also a teacher and regular on the lecture circuit. 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. 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. WebJohn Dean served as the White House Counsel for former president, Richard Nixon and is best-known for his deep-seated association in the events leading up to the Watergate crimes and the ensuing, Watergate scandal. He was released on parole for medical reasons in January 1979. John Dean testifying for the second day before the Senate Watergate Committee. He said he was sure that President Nixon not only knew about the Watergate cover-up but also helped try to keep the scandal quiet. President Richard Nixon might have gotten away with it if it weren't for John Dean. This is the true story of betrayal at the nation's highest level. 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. Frequently Dean interrupts his running narrative of the new tapes to tell us what other speakers were thinking when they spoke. They just absolutely did what authoritarian followers do: click their heels, salute, Yes sir!, That leaves him fearing for the future of American democracy. If you experience technical problems, please write to, Secret Agenda. Theroux said he felt conflicted as he portrayed Liddy. That even so angry, litigious, and dishonest a character should suffer so sad a fate should offer, to the charitable among us, some reason to feel sorry for John 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. Liddy had an odd fixation with the Nazis; at one point we see him raising his arm in a Nazi salute. I know, that's why I came -don't you - I wanted to be fair this is a difficult enough book to write and you don't nor -. Literally you just said, "Ya know, we didn't have much to do with Larry O'Brien." 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. Start your risk free trial with unlimited access. ET. Now, 40 years later, then some, Dean will return to Capitol Hill to testify before a different Congress about a different president. 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. 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. 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. Luckily talk radio and the internet came along and changed things. 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. The Watergate break-in and cover-up was the result of the disastrous interaction of John Dean with the CIA. 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. He was convicted and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison in 1975, which commenced on June 22, 1977. ~ Len Colodny, Pull up the searchable PDF of Chapter 6, "The President's Private Eye" from "Silent Coup". 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. How many bites at the Watergate apple should one central participant be accorded? This was the gang that couldnt shoot straight. It definitively supports "Silent Coup's" theory that the call girl ring was the reason for the Watergate break-in. The Watergate story really begins in 1969, when Nixon took office. agent played by Justin Theroux. Dean was appointed as the White House counsel in 1970. 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. It would be very different today, primarily because of Fox News, which would be mounting a fulsome defence of him. In this, there are no jokes., The situation is organically absurd, he continued. John Wesley Dean III appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee in June 1973. Thats not in any way to excuse the many stupid things Richard Nixon and his cronies did. Too bad. I cant imagine, in a similar situation, Trump complying with a court order from the supreme court saying turn over your tapes., Dean was working for the justice department when he was recruited to the Nixon White House. First, he told the president everything, and then just two weeks later he went to the prosecutors and offered to testify against the President. Ever since then, Deans true role in Watergate has attracted vigorous debate. 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. Taylor Branch denied making up anything in Blind Ambition. 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. The president had ordered you to go ahead immediately, and you are not to stall anymore. 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. 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. 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.). People were shocked that people were breaking in and planting bugs, whereas nowadays that would seem like small potatoes.. Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, KY. Just ask Hunter Biden. Deans initial reaction was different. Nine months into the mushrooming scandal, Dean bargained for immunity and won himself a lenient prison term by delivering the sensational, if deeply flawed, The HBO series wont tell you any of this, but its easy enough to find out. I knew enough of the criminal law to know this is either extortion or bribery. Dean has since been able to listen back to the conversation thanks to Nixons secret recording system at the White House. It was a barber I had never been to and it was last-minute. 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. That, of course, is the question before us. Nothing was happening at the DNC. 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. 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. WebIn a 245-page statement, which Dean read on June 25 to the special Senate committee investigating Watergate, he implicated Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman in acts of perjury and obstructing justice. Mitchell was the first (and only) U.S. Attorney General to end up in jail. Now an investment View Chapter 6, "The President's Private Eye" from "Silent Coup", Silent Coup - Paperback and E-Book Edition, White House Call Girl: The Real Watergate Story. Well, a post-president cant be indicted when hes pardoned.. Offers may be subject to change without notice. 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. The heart and soul the psyche of the show is about these two men and the way their decisions and choices they made had wider ramifications for themselves and their families, she said. We are far more polarised today than we were. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. New episodes of Gaslit air Sundays at 8 p.m. EST on Starz. It was frankly too good a title at 31 years of age to pass up, although I knew I would be doing the grunt work.. Wary that he would be turned into a scapegoat, Dean began cooperating with Senate investigators. This Hero Helped Break the Watergate Scandal Which Led to Nixon's Resignation.
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