They just absolutely did what authoritarian followers do: click their heels, salute, Yes sir!, That leaves him fearing for the future of American democracy. 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. Im living in the bubble. James Rosen thinksHunt, McCord and otherswere trying to infiltrate Nixons circle before the 1968 campaign even began. 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. In this, there are no jokes., The situation is organically absurd, he continued. 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. 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.). I knew enough of the criminal law to know this is either extortion or bribery. People were shocked that people were breaking in and planting bugs, whereas nowadays that would seem like small potatoes.. Hunt, defeated and incarcerated for his role in Watergate, learns that Nixonhas resignedby overhearing two fellow inmates talking as he is folding T-shirts in a prison laundry. Kathleen Turner plays the International Telephone and Telegraph lobbyist who, in this telling, is spirited out of Washington at the orders of the Nixon White House so she wouldnt give damaging testimony about an alleged quid pro quo involving an I.T.T. He left the role in 1973. *** 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". 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. 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. Here's what we know about him. On January 27, 1972, Dean, the White House Counsel, met with Jeb Magruder (Deputy Director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CRP and CREEP) and Mitchell (Attorney General of the United States, and soon-to-be Director of CRP), in Mitchell's office, for a presentation by G. Gordon Liddy (counsel for CRP and a former FBI agent). Haldeman in the Oval Office on the morning of March 27, 1973, when the cover-up was rapidly unraveling. But Nixon was at best a peripheral figure. 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. Yet elsewhere in the same deposition, Magruder unmistakably continued to implicate Dean as the author of the DNC mission. It had approved a September 1971 burglary of the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the defence analyst who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam war known as the Pentagon Papers. Along with the Vietnam war, it marked the end of an era in which a presidents words were met with automatic trust rather than default scepticism. 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. 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 -. And what motives are driving this project? 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. 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.). 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. Nixon lost the confidence of fellow Republicans and, facing impeachment, resigned in August 1974. 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. Dean was no bystander, no Brutus seduced by power, but a Cassius, a lead actor in the crime. Dean, who happened to have his molars removed that day, cannot recall any particular emotion. More than two decades after "Silent Coup" was published, Phil Stanford's "White House Call Girl" was published in 2013. Liddy had an odd fixation with the Nazis; at one point we see him raising his arm in a Nazi salute. Explore the scintillating May 2023 issue of Commentary. Eager to cover his tracks, Dean then had Magruder do the June 17 DNC break-in to see what Oliver and the Democrats might know about him. 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.. 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.). 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. What happened? No, someone would have cracked, just as we did so easily in Watergate. None of this appears in The Nixon Defense. Maybe somebody could option Mo Biner Deans 1980s potboiler novel Washington Wives, ghostwritten withLucianne Goldberg, (D.C. really is a small town), the story of a slutty young woman from the wrong side of the tracks, who comes to Washington and is befriended by another woman who runs an international espionage/blackmail operation using a call girl ring at a famous D.C. hotel. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and John Mitchell the trio the Richard Nixon Foundation describes as the architects of the Watergate break-in served 18, 18, and 19 months in prison, respectively. This was the gang that couldnt shoot straight. When Ehrlichman moved on,John Deangot to be White House counsel, thanks to his connections to the Goldwater family. Richard Nixon. 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. His main theme in books and speeches is to sound the alarm about presidential abuses. 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. .and you can say that I was the editor and, um . "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. Given Deans advanced age, The Nixon Defense should mark his final stab at shaping the record of Watergate; but I wouldnt bet on it. Mitchell and his wife, Martha, opted for separation in September 1973 months after Martha gave a testimony to the U. S. Senate Watergate Committee. one issue was the Larry O'Brien, to which you passed over as being a peripheral issue to your office. 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. The sixth of Deans books about the Nixon presidency, and his fifth about Watergate, The Nixon Defense offers a day-by-day account of the scandal over the course of 13 months, from the arrests of June 1972 through the dismantlement of Nixons taping system in July 1973. I can actually hear myself sigh at times, exasperated with the reaction Im getting. WebCounsel to President Nixon, John W. Dean III became famous as the first White House official to accuse the president of direct involvement in the Watergate cover-up. 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. He was trying to do a little tutorial on me.. Ever since, the gate suffix has been shorthand for scandal, and Watergate has provided fodder for movies, books, podcasts, commentaries and television. Nine months into the mushrooming scandal, Dean bargained for immunity and won himself a lenient prison term by delivering the sensational, if deeply flawed, Distractify is a registered trademark. Ever since then, Deans true role in Watergate has attracted vigorous debate. New episodes of Gaslit air Sundays at 8 p.m. EST on Starz. Dean has never been more concerned about American democracy than he is now. I had worn contacts during the Cronkite interview and noticed I was just blinking madly. President Nixon was implicated as well. 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. Enter White House Counsel, John Ehrlichman, Air Force hero of WWII and wealthy Seattle zoning lawyer, but a man totally ill-suited for the sensitive post he was given. 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. 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. While all this was going on, Hunt and the younger Oliver even discussed putting in a bid to buy Mullen. 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.". The book also contains the occasional flat-out lie. agent played by Justin Theroux. 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. Every day would be a new decision as to what he does and doesnt turn over from the Nixon archive. 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. Although Dean has recounted this meeting many times before, this riff on it is new, and it hints at the compulsive score-settling to be found in The Nixon Defense: the delight that Dean, armed with the results of his long trawl through the National Archives, takes in belittling his former colleagues, most of them deceased. In an interview in The Times last year, Mr. Dean said he had warned his White House peers at the time: The jig is up. Theres just no choice. Consider his account of a meeting that President Nixon held with H.R. Mitchell was the first (and only) U.S. Attorney General to end up in jail. 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. Magruder insisted the team go back in. John Wesley Dean III appeared before the Senate Watergate Committee in June 1973. He was one of the first officials in the Nixon administration to speak out. 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. Taylor Branch denied making up anything in Blind Ambition. 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. Copyright 2023 Distractify. Five men had been arrested in the bungled operation to bug and steal documents from the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex a dirty tricks operation aimed at sinking would-be challengers to Nixon in that years presidential election. He captivated the attention of Americans, though, with his televised testimony in June 1973 before the Senate Watergate Committee. Then he looked into the operationHeidi Rikanwas running right there next to the Watergate at the Columbia Plaza. I took him through every problem he had and, to my amazement, he had an answer for everything I thought was a problem. He was convicted and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison in 1975, which commenced on June 22, 1977. 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. 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. In 1973, John Dean was the star witness in the Watergate hearings. 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. On Monday, Mr. Dean, who lives in Los Angeles, did not respond to an email from The Times seeking comment. 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. . Dean has since been able to listen back to the conversation thanks to Nixons secret recording system at the White House. He set his private investigators looking intoXaviera Hollander'sblack book. Finally, Dean tells us that Haldeman reminded the president of Magruders skill as a liar. 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. This panicked Dean, who met with the federal prosecutors to insist they bury Bailey, who was sent to an insane asylum. If I had been told in advance I was going to have to read it all, it would not have been 60,000 words. It was Dean who had reviewed the contents of Hunts White House safe and secreted away his notebooks for later destruction. John Daniel Ehrlichman ( / rlkmn /; [1] March 20, 1925 February 14, 1999) was an American political aide who served as the White House Counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon. 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. What Magruder had to say in March 1973 about the origins of the DNC operation was of critical interest to the president. But we only get the HBO series with Liddy and Hunt as a Deep State Laurel and Hardy. Indeed, the White House called him the cover-ups mastermind, The Times reported in June 1973. Dean also told prosecutors about another break-in a year earlier in Los Angeles. Its become a fact of life.. Anyone can read what you share. 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. 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. That's why all that shit got in there. 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. But Watergate remains a singular chapter in American history that has continued political relevance. Hunts team, including James McCord, ex-CIA, and Alfred Baldwin, McCords ex-FBI friend, began bugging the DNC offices. First, he told the president everything, and then just two weeks later he went to the prosecutors and offered to testify against the President. Dean lies to Haldeman, and lures Nixon in to Dean's cover up of the Watergate break in. 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. If were hoping to achieve anything, its to get people interested in history in general by making it entertaining. Meanwhile Alexander Butterfield, Nixons deputy chief of staff, had testified that there was a recording system in the White House. 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. Plumbers is based in part on a book by Egil Bud Krogh Jr., a Nixon White House staff member who served time for authorizing the Ellsberg psychiatrist break-in. Right, well I never told John Dean what to put in his book, and, ah, that's a lie, L-I-E, that is spelled, L-I-E. Heidi's the name. Dean spent four months in jail. In your testimony to the Committee, which I reviewed, let's just take two issues. All rights reserved. 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. Trump, a total incompetent, is bungling and botching his handling of Russiagate.. 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. The biggest political scandal of the 20th century, and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, has become a byword for lost innocence and lost faith in institutions. He is also a teacher and regular on the lecture circuit. This is extremely important because the false information contained in "Blind Ambition" directly contradicts his sworn testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee. I did not know that the president had authorised the Brookings operation but I thought it was insane, whoever had authorised it, he says. Dean was part of a gross conspiracy with John Ehrlichman, Bob Haldeman, (Attorney General) John Mitchell - and with At those meetings, Dean pleaded in vain for the agency to supply hush money to the Watergate burglars. 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. 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. Okay? 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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