Dean has written several books related to Watergate and the overreach of presidential powers. He could be embarrassed. [15], Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on October 19, 1973. 1976); AND IMPEACHMENT OF RICHARD NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY (WASHINGTON, D.C: GOV. John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938) is an American former attorney who served as White House Counsel for U.S. President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. John Dean, the former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, testified Monday that he sees "remarkable parallels" between Watergate and the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report . WATERGATE: In 1972, the underlying crime was a bungled break-in, illicit photographing of private documents and an attempt to bug the telephones and offices of the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, with plans to do likewise that same night with Nixons most likely Democratic opponent Senator George McGovern, which because of the arrests of five men at the Watergate, did not happen. There is no one alive closer to the Watergate scandal than Dean, and now he offers a definitive and deeply personal look at the events that changed his life forever in the four-part documentary series Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal. The program premieres Sunday on CNN. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. I dont think its an emotion that Donald Trump could ever muster.. DEAN: Thats right. Dean also asserts that Nixon did not directly order the break-in, but that Ehrlichman ordered it on Nixon's behalf. [29], Dean's 2007 book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches is, as he wrote in its introduction, the third volume of an unplanned trilogy. By April 15, Nixon tried to tell me he was kidding about finding $1 million in hush money to pay the burglar defendants to maintain their silence. Watergate Hearings: John Dean's Opening Statement (1973) John Dean's statement 2011-04-07T03:55:01Z Maureen "Mo" Dean is known for sitting stoically just behind her husband during the . [21] This theory was subsequently the subject of the 1992 A&E Network Investigative Reports series program The Key to Watergate.[22][23]. Granted immunity, Dean laid out in stunning detail . 88.). John W. Dean (center) with his wife, Maureen, and John's lawyer, Charles N. Shaffer, in 1974. Mueller refutes the dubious contention that when the president exercises his Constitutional powers, he is not subject to federal criminal laws. [4], After graduation, Dean joined Welch & Morgan, a law firm in Washington, D.C., where he was soon accused of conflict of interest violations and fired:[2] he was alleged to have started negotiating his own private deal for a TV station broadcast license, after his firm had assigned him to complete the same task for a client. The program also includes one of the few current day public figures who can fully understand what Dean went through Trumps former longtime attorney Michael Cohen, who went to prison for tax evasion and campaign finance violations. [13] It was alleged[who?] Murdoch has survived scandal after scandal. This is based on my count of FBI 302 reports cited in the Mueller Report. Cox had been appointed after President Nixon fired his Attorney General Richard Kleindienst in April 1973 and the Senate insisted a special prosecutor be appointed by Kleindiensts replacement, Elliot Richardson. The Mueller Report explains in Vol. Now, 40 years later, then some, Dean will return to Capitol Hill to testify before a different Congress about a different president. [5], Dean was employed from 1966 to 1967 as chief minority counsel to the Republicans on the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. Nixon said, And, ah, because these people are playing for keeps, . In June 1973, as a young lawyer on Capitol Hill, I watched White House counsel John Dean testify before Sen. Sam Ervin's Watergate Committee from the row of seats behind the senators. Silent Coup alleged that Dean masterminded the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate coverup and that the true aim of the burglaries was to seize information implicating Dean and the former Maureen "Mo" Biner (his then-fiance) in a prostitution ring. Neither of the two volumes are formally titled, but the first sentence of the second paragraph, on page 1 of Volume II states its focus: Beginning in 2017, the President of the United States took a variety of actions towards the ongoing FBI investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election and related matters that raised questions about whether he had obstructed justice. Volume II concludes on page 182: [I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. However, the Special Counsels office was unable to reach that conclusion, so the report neither alleges criminal behavior by the president nor, as the report states, does it exonerate him. (SEE MUELLER REPORT, VOL. Trumps demands for unyielding loyalty from staff and statements such as asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes that would overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in the state rival what was heard on Nixons tapes, but were delivered with far less discretion. McGahn refused to follow the Presidents order, recalling the opprobrium that met Robert Bork following the Saturday Night Massacre. [46][47], In 2022, Dean said the January 6 Committee had an overwhelming case against Trump.[48]. Ultimately, he became a witness for the prosecution. Thats for sure. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. [17] Dean failed to recall any conversations verbatim, and often failed to recall the gist of conversations correctly. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution . Dean married Maureen (Mo) Kane on October 13, 1972. We were in his Executive Office Building office late on a Sunday night when he got up from his chair and walked to the corner of the room and in a stage-whisper asked me, I was wrong to offer clemency to Hunt, wasnt I? I responded, Yes, Mr. President, that would be an obstruction of justice. As I later testified, at the time it struck me his moving across the office and whispering was to keep what he was saying from being picked up by a hidden microphone in the room. One of the major clarifications that came about through the new ABA Model Rules was with respect to an attorneys obligations when representing an organization. 78-90, 113-133): According to Muellers account, Don McGahn played a critical role in interdicting the Presidents express efforts to fire Special Counsel Mueller. After Comeys testimony to Congress on May 3, 2017, in which he declined to answer questions about whether the President was personally under investigation, the President decided to terminate Comey. PRESIDENT: No, it would be wrong. After four months, however, the Watergate trial judge, John J. Sirica, reduced his sentence to time . .they should call the FBI and say that we wish for the country, dont go any further into this case, period. Continuous coverage of the Watergate hearings in 1973 drew big audiences and viewer contributions. It also led to the creation of the PBS NewsHour.. Feb. 1, 2019. In the 1995 film Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone, Dean was played by David Hyde Pierce. 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 conservatism and this authoritarian approach to governance. After his plea, he was disbarred. WATERGATE: I am aware of no evidence that Nixon was involved with or had advance knowledge of the Watergate break-in and bugging, or the similar plans for Senator McGovern. Accordingly, I sincerely hope that Mr. McGahn will voluntarily appear and testify. 8. June 1, 2022 1:43 PM PT. Dean is a pretty good gem," Nixon confided to Haldeman on March 2, 1973. . Michael and John dig deep into Watergate, January 6th, and DOJ. Gjon Mili . In 1991, the publisher released Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, which included an unfounded allegation that Dean ordered the break-in to remove information about a call-girl ring that serviced Democratic Party members. In this latest book, Dean, who has repeatedly called himself a "Goldwater conservative", built on Worse Than Watergate and Conservatives Without Conscience to argue that the Republican Party has gravely damaged all three branches of the federal government in the service of ideological rigidity and with no attention to the public interest or the general good. If the problem cannot be solved internally, Model Rule 1.13 provides that an attorney may report out, despite his or her confidentiality, what is going on, despite his duty of confidentiality or the attorney-client privilege. Dean concludes that conservatism must regenerate itself to remain true to its core ideals of limited government and the rule of law. For high school, he attended Staunton Military Academy with Barry Goldwater Jr., the son of Sen. Barry Goldwater, and became a close friend of the family. . Model Rule 1.13 provides that a lawyer representing an organization represents the entity and not the individuals running the entity. Dean briefly summarizes the takeaways from Comey's testimony and discusses the response by President Trump and his lawyer. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, the same day he announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. He is mentioned in the report on 529 occasions, and based on the footnotes he was interviewed at various lengths by the FBI on not less than 9 occasions: July 24, 2015, December 11, 2015 and April 1, 2016 (thus three occasions before Mr. Trump was elected), and July 7, 2017, January 19, 2018, February 16, 2018, March 2, 2018, October 22, 2018, and March 20, 2019 (and on six occasions after Mr. Trump was elected). Nixon also sought to influence my testimony after I openly broke with the White House and began cooperating with prosecutors and the Senate Watergate Committee. Ari Emanuel lets his AI alter ego open Endeavors earnings call, WGA chief negotiator David Young replaced due to illness ahead of key talks with studios, Hidden, illegal casinos are booming in L.A., with organized crime reaping big profits, Look up: The 32 most spectacular ceilings in Los Angeles, 19 cafes that make L.A. a world-class coffee destination, Best coffee city in the world? The investigation revealed that Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. Yet events in both 1972 and 2016 resulted in obstruction of the investigations. [30], In 2008, Dean co-edited Pure Goldwater, a collection of writings by the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. [15] A sharp critic of studying memory in a laboratory setting, Neisser saw "a valuable data trove" in Dean's recall. The Mueller Report, like the Watergate Road Map, conveys findings, with supporting evidence, of potential criminal activity based on the work of federal prosecutors, FBI investigators, and witness testimony before a federal grand jury. Dean settled the defamation suit against Colodny and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, on terms that Dean wrote in the book's preface he could not divulge under the conditions of the settlement, other than that "the Deans were satisfied." At first, he shredded incriminating files. Vintage video clips supplement Deans story in the CNN series, showing the news divisions of the three major broadcast networks ABC, NBC and CBS at the peak of their powerful hegemony in the 1970s. Was he hard-nosed and tough? And that destroys the case.. Had I known the trouble I was in, I would have never married her.. Certain aspects of the scandal came to light before Election Day, but Nixon was reelected by a landslide. As Dan mentioned, in the summer of 1973, former White House counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. Dean was later incarcerated for 127 days at an Army base after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice and was in witness protection for 18 months to shield him from ongoing death threats. untenable at some point. And youre gonna have the clemency problem for the others. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. But the CNN series is the first time hes told his story in a documentary, which drills down into how and why Richard Nixon looked for dirt on his opponents and detailed accounts of his criminal actions to cover it up. Despite Deans courageous decision to testify against a sitting president, the series does not give him a free pass for his role in the Nixon administrations nefarious activities. "A concern . The image of her calmly seated behind her husband throughout the hearings became one of the most memorable tableaus of the 1970s. Watergate, the Bipartisan Struggle for Media Access, and the Growth of Cable Television. MUELLER REPORT RE EFFORTS TO PREVENT OR DISTORT DISCLOSURE OF THE JUNE 9, 2016 TRUMP TOWER MEETING (PP. Journalists Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Lesley Stahl also offer their recollections on the story that helped make their careers. In an exchange with me on March 21, 1973, Nixon conceded such a use of the pardon power was improper: DEAN: Well, thats the problem. All except Parkinson were convicted, largely based upon Dean's evidence. He said he had found information via the Nixon tapes that showed what the burglars were after: information on a kickback scheme involving the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. Cognition, 9 (1981)1-22 Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in the Netherlands John Dean's Memory: A case study ULRIC NEISSER" Cornell University Abstract John Dean, the former counsel to President Richard Nixon, testified to the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee about conversations that later turned out to have been tape recorded. The coverage includes testimony from James McCord and E. Howard Hunt, two of the men arrested for breaking into the Watergate complex; John Dean, White House counsel from July 1970 to April 1973, who detailed the extent of the Nixon administration's involvement in the burglary and subsequent cover-up; Chief of Staff H.R. It may just be too hot. ART. Stated a bit differently, Special Counsel Mueller has provided this committee a road map. White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman later claimed that Nixon appointed Dean to take the lead role in coordinating the Watergate cover-up from an early stage and that this cover-up was working very well for many months. President Nixons direct interference with the Department of Justice, while facially proper under his Article II constitutional powers, was for the improper purpose of obstructing the investigation. Since we began, we have presented over 150 programs throughout the United States, reaching somewhere between 45,000 to 50,000 attorneys. He had only a limited attorney-client privilege when interacting with the President and advisors and the privilege belongs to the Office in any event. But Dean understands how its not so easy to walk away from the center of power. Elizabeth Holtzman, a former member of Congress who served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, said in her interview he was an essential part of the criminal enterprise. Dean himself talks about how he crossed a moral line early in his White House tenure. In Starz's new Gaslit, premiering Sunday, central Watergate figure John Dean is played by Dan Stevens. 6; cf. This small piece of testimony, of course, became highly significant for it led to the discovery of the secret White House taping system. Eisenberg, MUELLER RPT, VOL. June 27, 2022 05:36 PM. Liddy presented a preliminary plan for intelligence-gathering operations during the campaign. Dean retired from investment banking in 2000 while continuing to work as an author and lecturer, becoming a columnist for FindLaw's Writ online magazine. Senator Russell Feingold, who sponsored the censure resolution, introduced Dean as a "patriot" who put "rule of law above the interests of the president." Ehrlichman said, If you leave, youll be persona non grata with this administration, so dont take a job where you need any connections to us. Of course, the jobs did want me to have relationships with the Nixon White House. I never dreamed I would have to live in this bubble, Dean, 83, said in a Zoom interview from his Beverly Hills home. President Richard Nixon speaks on the White House lawn prior to his trip to China in 1972. [25] Three years later, Dean wrote a book heavily critical of the administration of George W. Bush, Worse than Watergate, in which he called for the impeachment of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for allegedly lying to Congress. I would like to address a few of the remarkable parallels I find in the Mueller Report that echo Watergate, particularly those related to obstruction of justice. When Colson relayed President Nixons positive response, Hunt pled guilty and the so-called Cuban American defendants followed his lead and pled guilty, as well. Accuracy and availability may vary. DEAN: . Specifically, the burglars were interested in information they thought was held by DNC head Lawrence F. O'Brien. June 17, 1972. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The program, produced by Herzog & Company, delves into the archive of Watergate-related material Dean has accumulated and stored in his Beverly Hills home over the years, including his 60,000-word testimony to a Senate subcommittee originally written in longhand on yellow legal pads. After the burglars' arrest, Dean took custody of evidence and money from the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt, who had been in charge of the burglaries, and destroyed some of the evidence before investigators could find it. Similarly, when President Nixon met with me on April 15, 1973, after my break with the White House, he raised the concern about the Hunt pardon again. Mr. JOHN DEAN (Former White House Counsel): What I had hoped to do in this conversation was to have the president tell me we had to end the matter now. In 1973, John Dean was the star witness in the Watergate hearings. . No one has sought to control this narrative more than former White House Counsel John Dean. Fifty years later, that's how John Dean, the former White House counsel whose marathon testimony before the US Senate's Watergate Committee tipped the dominoes toward the ultimate resignation . LOS ANGELES (Tribune News Service) After John Dean gave his historic 1973 testimony on the Watergate scandal that eventually brought down the Nixon White House, he wanted to move on with his life. The book claimed Dean had learned about the operation from his wife. In it, he asserts that post-Goldwater conservatism has been co-opted by people with authoritarian personalities and policies, citing data from Bob Altemeyer. A former key witness in the Watergate investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon says indictments are on their way to Donald Trump. I was always interested in government.
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