John Dean
John Dean | |
---|---|
White House Counsel | |
In office July 9, 1970 – April 30, 1973 | |
President | Richard Nixon |
Preceded by | Chuck Colson |
Succeeded by | Leonard Garment |
Personal details | |
Born | John Wesley Dean III October 14, 1938 Akron, Ohio, U.S. |
Political party | Republican (formerly) Independent |
Spouses | Karla Ann Hennings
(m. 1962; div. 1970)Maureen "Mo" Kane (m. 1972) |
Children | 1 |
Education | |
John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938) is an American attorney who served as White House Counsel for U.S. President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution ultimately resulted in a reduced sentence, which he served at Fort Holabird outside Baltimore, Maryland. After his plea, he was disbarred.
Shortly after the Watergate hearings, Dean wrote about his experiences in a series of books and toured the United States to lecture. He later became a commentator on contemporary politics, a book author, and a columnist for FindLaw's Writ.
Dean had originally been a proponent of Goldwater conservatism, but he later became a critic of the Republican Party. Dean has been particularly critical of the party's support of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and of neoconservatism, strong executive power, mass surveillance, and the Iraq War.
Early life and education
Dean was born in
Dean married Karla Ann Hennings on February 4, 1962; they had one child, John Wesley Dean IV, before divorcing in 1970. Dean married Maureen (Mo) Kane on October 13, 1972.[4]
Washington lawyer
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.[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 then served as associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws for approximately two years.[6]
Nixon campaign and administration
External videos | |
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1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-06-25; Part 1 of 6, 1:07:59, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC[7] |
Dean volunteered to write position papers on crime for
Watergate scandal
Start of Watergate
Watergate scandal |
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Events |
People |
On January 27, 1972, Dean, the
In late March in Florida, Mitchell approved a scaled-down plan. This revised plan eventually led to attempts to eavesdrop on the
Link to cover-up
On February 28, 1973, Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his nomination to replace J. Edgar Hoover as director of the FBI. Armed with newspaper articles indicating the White House had possession of FBI Watergate files, committee chair Sam Ervin asked Gray what he knew about the White House obtaining the files. Gray said he had given FBI reports to Dean, and had discussed the FBI investigation with Dean on many occasions. It also came out that Gray had destroyed important evidence Dean entrusted to him. Gray's nomination failed and Dean was directly linked to the Watergate cover-up.
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. Certain aspects of the scandal came to light before Election Day, but Nixon was reelected by a landslide.[10]
Cooperation with prosecutors
On March 22, 1973, Nixon requested that Dean put together a report with everything he knew about the Watergate matter, inviting him to take a retreat to Camp David to do so. Dean went to Camp David and did some work on a report, but since he was one of the cover-up's chief participants, the task put him in the difficult position of relating his own involvement as well as that of others; he correctly concluded that higher-ups were fitting him for the role of scapegoat. Dean did not complete the report.[11]
On March 23, the five Watergate burglars, along with G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were sentenced with stiff fines and prison time of up to 40 years.[citation needed]
On April 6, Dean hired an attorney and began cooperating with Senate Watergate investigators, while continuing to work as Nixon's Chief White House Counsel and participating in cover-up efforts, not disclosing this obvious conflict to Nixon until some time later. Dean was also receiving advice from the attorney he hired, Charles Shaffer, on matters involving the vulnerabilities of other White House staff.[citation needed]
Dean continued to provide information to the prosecutors, who were able to make enormous progress on the cover-up, which until then they had virtually ignored, concentrating on the actual burglary and events preceding it. Dean also appeared before the Watergate
Firing by Nixon
Coupled with his sense of distance from Nixon's inner circle, the "Berlin Wall" of advisors Haldeman and Ehrlichman, Dean sensed he was going to become the Watergate scapegoat and returned to Washington without completing his report. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, the same day he announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman.
When Nixon learned that Dean had begun cooperating with federal prosecutors, he pressed Attorney General Richard Kleindienst not to give Dean immunity from prosecution by telling Kleindienst that Dean was lying to the Justice Department about his conversations with the president. On April 17, 1973, Nixon told Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen (who was overseeing the Watergate investigation) that he did not want any member of the White House granted immunity from prosecution. Petersen informed Nixon that this could cause problems for the prosecution of the case, but Nixon publicly announced his position that evening.[12] It was alleged[who?] that Nixon's motivation for preventing Dean from getting immunity was to prevent him from testifying against key Nixon aides and Nixon himself.[citation needed]
Testimony to Senate Watergate Committee
This poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. )Find sources: "John Dean" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2018) |
On June 25, 1973, Dean began his testimony before the
Research on accuracy of Dean's memory
When it was revealed that Nixon had secretly recorded all meetings in the Oval Office, famous psychologist and memory researcher Ulric Neisser analyzed Dean's recollections of the meetings, as expressed through his testimony, in comparison to the meetings' actual recordings.[14] A sharp critic of studying memory in a laboratory setting, Neisser saw "a valuable data trove" in Dean's recall.[15]
Neisser found that, despite Dean's confidence, the tapes proved that his memory was anything but a tape recorder.[16] Dean failed to recall any conversations verbatim, and often failed to recall the gist of conversations correctly.[16] Neisser did not explain the difference as one of deception; rather, he thought that the evidence supported the theory that memory is not akin to a tape recorder and instead should be thought of as reconstructions of information that are greatly affected by rehearsal, or attempts at replay.[14]
Criminal trial
Dean pleaded guilty to
Life after Watergate
Shortly after Watergate, Dean became an
In 1992, Dean hired attorney
In the preface to his 2006 book
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. He resides in Beverly Hills, California.
In 2001, Dean published The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court, an exposé of the White House's selection process for a new Supreme Court justice in 1971, which led to the appointment of William Rehnquist.[24] 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.[25]
His next book, released in 2006, was Conservatives without Conscience, a play on Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative. In it, he asserts that post-Goldwater conservatism has been co-opted by people with authoritarian personalities and policies, citing data from Bob Altemeyer. According to Dean, modern conservatism, specifically on the Christian Right, embraces obedience, inequality, intolerance, and strong intrusive government, in stark contrast to Goldwater's philosophies and policies. Using Altemeyer's scholarly work, he contends that there is a tendency toward ethically questionable political practices when authoritarians are in power and that the current political situation is dangerously unsound because of it. Dean cites the behavior of key members of the Republican leadership, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and Bill Frist, as clear evidence of a relationship between modern right-wing conservatism and this authoritarian approach to governance. He places particular emphasis on the abdication of checks and balances by the Republican Congress and on the dishonesty of the conservative intellectual class in support of the Republican Party, as a result of the obedience and arrogance innate to the authoritarian mentality.[26]
After it became known that Bush authorized
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. 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. Dean concludes that conservatism must regenerate itself to remain true to its core ideals of limited government and the rule of law.[29]
In 2008, Dean co-edited Pure Goldwater, a collection of writings by the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, in part as an act of fealty to the man who defined his political ideals. His co-editor was Goldwater's son Barry Goldwater, Jr.[30]
Historian Stanley Kutler was accused of editing his transcripts of the Nixon tapes to make Dean appear in a more favorable light.[31]
On September 17, 2009, Dean appeared on Countdown with new allegations about Watergate. He said he had found information via the Nixon tapes that showed what the burglars were after: information on a kickback scheme involving the
In speaking engagements in 2014, Dean called Watergate a "lawyers' scandal" that, for all the bad, ushered in needed legal ethics reforms.[33]
Dean later emerged as a strong critic of Donald Trump, saying in 2017 that he was even worse than Nixon. He said, "It's a nightmare. They don't know what their jeopardy is. They don't know what they're looking at. They don't know if they're a part of a conspiracy that might unfold. They don't know whether to hire lawyers or not, how they're going to pay for them if they do. It's an unpleasant place."[34][35]
In February 2018, Dean warned that Rick Gates's testimony may be "the end" of Trump's presidency.[36][37]
In September 2018, Dean warned against
On November 7, 2018, the day after the midterm elections, Trump forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign. Dean commented on the removal in colorful terms, saying it "seems to be planned like a murder" and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller likely had contingency plans, possibly including sealed indictments.[43][44]
In early June 2019, Dean testified, along with various U.S. attorneys and legal experts, before the House Judiciary Committee on the implications of, and potential actions as a result of, the Mueller report.[45][46]
In 2022, Dean said the January 6 Committee had an overwhelming case against Trump.[47]
Media appearances and portrayals
Dean frequently served as a guest on the former
In the 1979 TV mini-series Blind Ambition, Dean was played by Martin Sheen. In the 1995 film Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone, Dean was played by David Hyde Pierce. In the 1999 film Dick, Dean was played by Jim Breuer. In the 2022 TV mini-series Gaslit, Dean was played by Dan Stevens. In the 2023 TV mini-series White House Plumbers, Dean was played by Domhnall Gleeson.
Bibliography
- Dean, John W. (1976). Blind Ambition: The White House Years. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-22438-7.
- Dean, John W. (1982). Lost Honor: The Rest of the Story. Los Angeles: Stratford Press. ISBN 0-936906-15-4.
- Dean, John W. (2001). The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-2607-0.
- Dean, John W. (2002). Unmasking Deep Throat. [S.l.]: Salon Media. ISBN 0-9721874-1-3.
- Dean, John W. (2004). Warren G. Harding (The American Presidents). New York: Times Books. ISBN 0-8050-6956-9.
- Dean, John W. (2004). ISBN 0-316-00023-X.
- Dean, John W. (2006). ISBN 0-670-03774-5.
- Dean, John W. (2007). Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches. New York: Viking Adult. ISBN 978-0-670-01820-8.
- Dean, John W.; Barry M. Goldwater, Jr. (2008). Pure Goldwater. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-7741-0.
- Dean, John W. (2009). Blind Ambition: The Updated Edition: The End of the Story. New York: Polimedia. ISBN 978-0-9768617-5-1.
- Dean, John W. (2014). The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02536-7.
- Dean, John W. (2020). Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. New York: Melville House. ISBN 978-1-6121990-5-4.
References
- ISBN 0-8050-6956-9.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-59691-557-2.
- ^ "John Wesley Dean III". Britannica.com. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-671-22161-4.
- ^ "The Nation: How John Dean Came Center Stage". TIME Magazine. 101 (26). June 25, 1973. Retrieved January 26, 2017.
- ^ "John W. Dean III". www.nixonlibrary.gov. Archived from the original on December 31, 2016. Retrieved January 13, 2017.
- ^ "1973 Watergate Hearings; 1973-06-25; Part 1 of 6". Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (WGBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. June 25, 1973. Retrieved January 20, 2018. Episode Guide
- ISBN 0-689-10603-3.
- ^ Blind Ambition, by John Dean, Simon & Schuster 1976; Watergate, by Fred Emery, Touchstone Publishers 1994.
- ISBN 0-8129-0724-8.
- ^ a b Blind Ambition: The White House Years, by John Dean, New York 1976, Simon & Schuster, pp. 196–274.
- ^ 93rd Congress (1974). House Judiciary Committee Hearings: Statement of Information. Washington D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office. pp. 84–86.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "Watergate, Series1:5 Impeachment". BBC. June 5, 1994. Retrieved May 5, 2021.
- ^ a b Neisser, U. (1981). John Dean's memory: A case study. Cognition, 9(1), 1–22.
- ^ Foer, J. (2011). Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything; Penguin.
- ^ a b Schacter, D. L. (1996). Searching for Memory: The Brain, The Mind, and the Past; Basic Books.
- ^ "Virginia State Bar Attorney Records Search (citing to 12 November 1973 revocation of license following hearing of Disciplinary Board, VSB Docket No. 74-CCC-7004)". www.vsb.org. Archived from the original on August 8, 2021. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
- ^ Blind Ambition: The White House Years, by John Dean, New York 1976, Simon & Schuster, pp. 274–390.
- ^ "Taylor Branch | Biography". taylorbranch.com. Retrieved May 2, 2018.
- ^ Stephen Bates (February 5, 2001). "Flipping His Liddy". Slate. Archived from the original on November 15, 2009. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
- ^ Mario Ricciardi (December 27, 2010), The Key to Watergate (pt. 1), archived from the original on November 18, 2021, retrieved May 2, 2018
- : "Blind Ambition (ghostwriter for John Dean) (Simon & Schuster: 1979)" under the heading "Past Writing".
- ^ "Liddy Case Dismissed". CBS News. January 29, 2001.
- ISBN 978-0743233200.
- ISBN 978-0316000239.
- ISBN 978-0670037742.
- ^ Jackson, David (December 28, 2005). "War-powers debate on front burner". USA Today. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
- ^ Milbank, Dana (April 1, 2006). "Watergate Remembered, After a Fashion". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
- ISBN 978-0143114215.
- ASIN B00FO9R8HU.
- ^ Patricia Cohen (January 31, 2009). "John Dean's Role at Issue in Nixon Tapes Feud". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 29, 2011. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
- ^ "'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Thursday, September 17, 2009". NBC News. September 18, 2009.
- ^ "Watergate's lasting legacy is to legal ethics reform, says John Dean". abajournal.com.
- ^ Barabak, Mark Z. (June 1, 2017). "John Dean helped bring down Richard Nixon. Now he thinks Donald Trump is even worse". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
- ^ Buie, Jordan (August 28, 2017). "Former White House counsel for Nixon: Trump scarier than Nixon". The Tennessean. Retrieved June 21, 2018.
- ^ Savransky, Rebecca (February 26, 2018). "John Dean warns Gates's testimony may be 'the end' of Trump's presidency". TheHill. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
- ^ Mazza, Ed (February 26, 2018). "Watergate Figure John Dean Says Rick Gates' Testimony Could Be The End Of The Trump Presidency". Huffington Post. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
- ^ Terkel, Amanda (September 16, 2018). "Here Is What Brett Kavanaugh Said About Sexual Misconduct In His Hearings". Huffington Post. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
- ^ "Kavanaugh hearing: John Dean warns of a Supreme Court overly deferential to presidential power". Washington Post. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
- ^ "John Dean: If Kavanaugh's confirmed, a president who shoots someone on Fifth Avenue can't be prosecuted in office". NBC News. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
- ^ CBS News (September 7, 2018), John Dean testifies on presidential powers at Kavanaugh hearing, archived from the original on November 18, 2021, retrieved June 3, 2019
- ^ "Former Nixon White House Counsel Case Against Kavanaugh". IJR. September 7, 2018. Retrieved June 3, 2019.[permanent dead link]
- ^ Haltiwanger, John (November 7, 2018). "Richard Nixon's White House counsel says Jeff Sessions' ousting 'like a planned murder'". Business Insider. Retrieved November 7, 2018.
- ^ Fenwick, Cody (November 7, 2018). "Watergate's John Dean Explains How Trump Planned Sessions' Firing 'Like a Murder' — And Details How Mueller Could Protect the Probe". AlterNet. Retrieved November 7, 2018.
- ^ Breuninger, Kevin (June 3, 2019). "House Judiciary Committee sets hearing on Mueller report with Nixon White House counsel John Dean". CNBC. Retrieved June 3, 2019.
- ^ Cheney, Kyle (June 3, 2019). "Dems to call Watergate star John Dean to testify on Mueller report". POLITICO. Retrieved June 3, 2019.
- ^ Mitchell, Taiyler Simone. "Nixon's Watergate lawyer says Trump's 2024 bid is 'a defense of sorts' against Jan 6 indictment but it won't matter because the committee has an 'overwhelming case'". Business Insider. Retrieved December 19, 2022.
Further reading
- Colodny, Len; Robert Gettlin (1991). Silent Coup (First ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312051563.
- Sussman, Barry (1992). The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate (Third ed.). Seven Locks Press. ISBN 0-929765-09-5.
- "The Watergate Files". The Gerald R. Ford Museum & Library. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
- "The Key To Watergate". Barbara Newman Productions. 1992. Retrieved July 19, 2011.
External links
- John Dean testifying at the Watergate Hearings WETA-TV Public Television, 1973 Watergate Hearings.
- Worse Than Watergate: Former Nixon Counsel John Dean Says Bush Should Be Impeached Archived November 14, 2007, at the Wayback Machine Democracy Now!, April 6, 2004, interview with John Dean.
- Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More John Dean, Findlaw, September 9, 2005.
- Video of John Dean interview by YouTube.
- "Former White House Counsel John Dean". The Tavis Smiley Show. April 11, 2017. Public Radio International. Retrieved August 26, 2017. Interview comparing Nixon and Donald Trump.
- Spartacus Educational Biography
- Appearances on C-SPAN