The depth of Deans Watergate insights is partly due to a defamation lawsuit he filed against St. Martins Press. 171-181). His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. 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. I never dreamed I would have to live in this bubble, Dean, 83, said in a Zoom interview from his Beverly Hills home. Legal experts weigh in, ChatGPT who? An obstruction of justice conviction prevented the former White House counsel from practicing law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. WASHINGTON, June 27 Following is the transcript of a White House memorandum analyzing John W. Dean's. testimony on Watergate, as read during the Senate Water gate committee's hearings to day by . 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. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until Ap. 5; 3, cl. 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 Mitchell, Nixon's most trusted adviser and former attorney general, had taken charge of the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP) and authorized the Watergate break-in on 17 . He moved to Los Angeles with wife Maureen, took business courses at UCLA and worked as an investment banker during the 1980s. Former White House Counsel John Dean's testimony in the Watergate investigation helped topple Richard Nixon's presidency. Eisenberg, MUELLER RPT, VOL. And youre gonna have the clemency problem for the others. . HANSEN: John Dean's testimony would prove to be prophetic - perhaps even self-fulfilling. Blind Ambition was ghostwritten by future Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch[20] and later made into a 1979 TV miniseries. 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. 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. 6-7, 122-28, 131-32, 134, 147-48, ET AL):The Mueller Report addresses the question of whether President Trump dangled pardons or offered other favorable treatment to Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone (whose name is redacted so I assume it is him based on educated conjecture) in return for their silence or to keep them from fully cooperating with investigators. He is also the author of three books about television, including a biography of pioneer talk show host and producer David Susskind. Nixon vigorously denied all accusations that he had authorized a cover-up, and Dean had no corroboration beyond various notes he had taken in his meetings with the president. Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was interested in meeting with Dean and planned to do so a few days later, but Cox was fired by Nixon the next day; it was not until a month later that Cox was replaced by Leon Jaworski. VS. HALDEMAN, 559 F.2D 31 (D.C. CIR. Now he thinks Donald Trump is even worse", "Former White House counsel for Nixon: Trump scarier than Nixon", "John Dean warns Gates's testimony may be 'the end' of Trump's presidency", "Watergate Figure John Dean Says Rick Gates' Testimony Could Be The End Of The Trump Presidency", "Here Is What Brett Kavanaugh Said About Sexual Misconduct In His Hearings", "Kavanaugh hearing: John Dean warns of a Supreme Court overly deferential to presidential power", "John Dean: If Kavanaugh's confirmed, a president who shoots someone on Fifth Avenue can't be prosecuted in office", "Former Nixon White House Counsel Case Against Kavanaugh", "Richard Nixon's White House counsel says Jeff Sessions' ousting 'like a planned murder', "Watergate's John Dean Explains How Trump Planned Sessions' Firing 'Like a Murder' And Details How Mueller Could Protect the Probe", "House Judiciary Committee sets hearing on Mueller report with Nixon White House counsel John Dean", "Dems to call Watergate star John Dean to testify on Mueller report", "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', John Dean testifying at the Watergate Hearings, Worse Than Watergate: Former Nixon Counsel John Dean Says Bush Should Be Impeached, Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dean&oldid=1136144627, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, 21st-century American non-fiction writers, Lawyers disbarred in the Watergate scandal, People convicted in the Watergate scandal, People convicted of obstruction of justice, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from May 2021, BLP articles lacking sources from May 2021, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from May 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2021, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2021, BLP articles lacking sources from October 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 28 January 2023, at 23:30. PRESIDENT: No, it would be wrong. He could be embarrassed. One was destroying evidence. . The image of her calmly seated behind her husband throughout the hearings became one of the most memorable tableaus of the 1970s. WATERGATE: This is much like Richard Nixons attempt to get me to write a phony report exonerating the White House from any involvement in Watergate. [21] This theory was subsequently the subject of the 1992 A&E Network Investigative Reports series program The Key to Watergate.[22][23]. Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Collins, the last time I appeared before your committee was . He's penned five books about Watergate and 10 books in total; including his most recent tome, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and his Followers. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. President Nixon's aide John Dean is sworn in before the Senate committee conducting hearings on the Watergate break-in and the conduct of the Nixon administration, on June 1, 1973. He was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and sentenced to one to four years in prison. [27], After it became known that Bush authorized NSA wiretaps without warrants, Dean asserted that Bush is "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense". Copyright 2008 NPR. After his plea, he was disbarred. In addition, it has long been the rule there is no executive privilege attached to criminal or fraudulent activity. [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. [3], Dean married Karla Ann Hennings on February 4, 1962; they had one child, John Wesley Dean IV, before divorcing in 1970. Granted immunity, Dean laid out in stunning detail and intricacy how the President not only knew . 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. [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. (Following Coxs firing, a dozen plus bills calling for Nixons impeachment or creating a special prosecutor were filed in the House. The Real Housewives of Atlanta The Bachelor Sister Wives 90 Day Fiance Wife Swap The Amazing Race Australia Married at First Sight The Real Housewives of Dallas My 600-lb Life Last Week Tonight with John Oliver His coverage of the television industry has appeared in TV Guide, the New York Daily News, the New York Times, Fortune, the Hollywood Reporter, Inside.com and Adweek. His deputy, William Ruckelshaus, also refused to fire Cox and also resigned, with the next man in succession, Solicitor General Robert Bork carrying out the presidents order to terminate Cox. Let me briefly address the ethics question. In the summer of 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. He has been a go-to talking head whenever a presidential scandal is brewing, and the twice-impeached Donald Trump whose desperate attempt to stay in the White House after losing the 2020 election remains under investigation has kept him busy as a CNN contributor. It also came out that Gray had destroyed important evidence Dean entrusted to him. 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. Further compounding the situation in 2018, in response to press reports that McGahn had considered resigning over the direction to fire Mueller, Trump asked another White House official (Rob Porter, also an attorney serving as Staff Secretary) to tell McGahn to dispute the story and create a false record stating that he had not been ordered to have the Special Counsel removed. Anchors Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer provided summaries, commentary, and interviews to supplement each broadcast. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness. Journalists Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Lesley Stahl also offer their recollections on the story that helped make their careers. He chronicled his White House experiences, with a focus on Watergate, in the memoirs Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). But even then your point is that even then you couldnt do it. 1976); AND IMPEACHMENT OF RICHARD NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY (WASHINGTON, D.C: GOV. I think Richard Nixon had a conscience, said Dean. John Dean, the White House counsel to President Richard M. Nixon who was once dubbed the "master manipulator" of the Watergate scandal by the FBI, predicts . The day following Flynns resignation, President Trump in a one-on-one Oval Office conversation with Director Comey said, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go., WATERGATE: In a like situation, when President Nixon learned of his re-election committees involvement in the Watergate break-in, he instructed his Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, to have the CIA ask the FBI not to go any further into the investigation of the breakin for bogus national security reasons. Dean frequently served as a guest on the former MSNBC and Current TV news program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and The Randi Rhodes Show on Premiere Radio Networks. Accordingly, I sincerely hope that Mr. McGahn will voluntarily appear and testify. Marshals and kept instead at Fort Holabird (near Baltimore, Maryland) in a special "safe house" primarily used for witnesses against the Mafia. . Thats for sure. A full cast of characters is available in our Gavel-to-Gavel exhibit. He said, "It's a nightmare. Dean is now the last man standing from that era, He is the last connection between this nation's authoritarian past and present. "A concern . Because, you know, after everybody PRESIDENT: Thats right. [15] A sharp critic of studying memory in a laboratory setting, Neisser saw "a valuable data trove" in Dean's recall. Watergate Lawyer John Dean Predicts Legacy Of Jan. 6 Investigation Into Trump. His guilty plea to a single felony in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution . Dean's testimony before the House was watched by some 80 million Americans. [26], His next book, released in 2006, was Conservatives without Conscience, a play on Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative. On this episode of the Mea Culpa Podcast, Michael Cohen welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. Well, John Dean has a new book. 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. In White House Plumbers, an upcoming HBO limited series, Dean is portrayed by Domhnall Gleeson. John Dean sits with his wife, Maureen, waiting to testify before the Senate Select Committee on Watergate in 1973. The Watergate "master manipulator" said the former president is in trouble after the latest revelations. Stated a bit differently, Special Counsel Mueller has provided this committee a road map. I was always interested in government. An obstruction of justice conviction prevented the former White House counsel from practicing law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Dean then served as associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws for approximately two years. [12], 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. 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. As Watergate broke, Haldeman and John Ehrlichman trusted their bright attorney to control the political fall out after the burglars were arrested, part of which involved him paying them large sums of money. My telling the Senate Watergate Committee of how so many lawyers found themselves on the wrong side of the law during Watergate hit a chord. June 27, 2022 05:36 PM. [Emphasis added.]. If the Watergate scandal happened today, Dean believes Fox News and other conservative outlets would give more oxygen to Nixons defenders and perhaps enable the disgraced president to at least finish out his term instead of resigning. (See Separation-of-Powers Principles Support the Conclusion that Congress May Validly Prohibit Corrupt Obstructive Acts Carried Out Through the Presidents Official Powers, MUELLER REPORT, PP. at 257-258 (discussing relationship between impeachment and criminal prosecution of a sitting President)., Today, you are focusing on Volume II of the report. Dean is a pretty good gem," Nixon confided to Haldeman on March 2, 1973. Mr. McGahn has expressed concern about being caught between two branches of government in responding to this Committees subpoena for his documents and testimony. . MUELLER REPORT VOLUME I: The Mueller Reports finds no illegal conspiracy, or criminal aiding and abetting, by candidate Trump with the Russians. And by early February 1974, this Committee formally commenced impeachment proceedings.) MUELLER REPORT RE TERMINATION OF COMEY (PP. This is based on my count of FBI 302 reports cited in the Mueller Report. As Nixons secret tape recordings reveal, President Nixon knew the statement was false, and suspected (correctly) that his former attorney general John Mitchell had approved the operation. 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. Eight years ago, we created a course called The Watergate CLE. 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. Richard Nixon resigned as president the next year. Mr. Trump asked Comey to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation by saying so to the public. I had some unsolicited offers that I really wanted to explore. WATERGATE: Nixon used the possibility of presidential pardons to keep witnesses from fully testifying in legal proceedings, a practice that was condemned in the Articles of Impeachment drawn up by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974. Traduo Context Corretor Sinnimos Conjugao. In reissuing Blind Ambition, which spent six months on the New York Times bestseller list and has been out of print for over two decades, author John Dean has added a powerful new Afterword, an extended essay in which he explains with the new clarity why (and how . After four months, however, the Watergate trial judge, John J. Sirica, reduced his sentence to time . Secondly, I believe as an attorney, he has an ethical obligation to testify. 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 . John Dean Predicts Criminal Case Against Trump After 'Powerful' New Testimony. John W. Dean was legal counsel to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony lead to Nixon's resignation. The hearings, recorded by the National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT), were broadcast each evening in full, or gavel to gavel, by PBS stations across the nation, so that viewers unable to watch during the day could view the complete proceedings at home. 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. A few specific examples of the Mueller findings and the Watergate parallels (HEADER CITES ARE TO VOLUME II): MUELLER REPORT RE MICHAEL FLYNN (PP. The Watergate hearings were produced by the National Public Affairs Center for Television (NPACT), public televisions Washington hub for national news and public affairs programming. This revised plan eventually led to attempts to eavesdrop on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., and to the Watergate scandal. John Dean, a former White House counsel who . In that posit. Michael and John dig deep into Watergate, January 6th, and DOJ. Yeah. Dean, an executive producer on the CNN project, helped wrangle some of the participants, including Alexander Butterfield, now 96, the deputy chief of staff who dropped the bombshell that Nixon had a taping system in the White House, which ultimately led to the presidents resignation in August 1974. We also talked with Michael Frisch, a friend who is the Ethics Counsel at Georgetown University Law Center. Its the White House in the remarkable city at the top of the government. His testimony attracted very high television ratings since he was breaking new ground in the investigation, and media attention grew apace, with more detailed newspaper coverage. Dean also appeared before the Watergate grand jury, where he took the Fifth Amendment numerous times to avoid incriminating himself, and in order to save his testimony for the Senate Watergate hearings.[12]. 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. The Mueller Report also refers to corroboration of McGahn as a witness in that he made contemporaneous notes on occasions (e.g., MUELLER RPT, VOL. [16], Neisser found that, despite Dean's confidence, the tapes proved that his memory was anything but a tape recorder. [13] It was alleged[who?] Watergate, the Bipartisan Struggle for Media Access, and the Growth of Cable Television. 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." All believed that they could rely on the President to offer clemency under the Presidents pardon power. He was trying to shape my future testimony. I met with Kutak and his commission to provide my own insights. II, P.117); McGahn discussed matters with others (e.g. I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. All rights reserved. MCGAHNS DILEMMA TESTIFYING BEFORE THIS COMMITTEE. Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Collins, the last time I appeared before your committee was July 11, 1974, during the impeachment inquiry of President Richard Nixon. President Richard Nixon speaks on the White House lawn prior to his trip to China in 1972. II, P. Continuous coverage of the Watergate hearings in 1973 drew big audiences and viewer contributions. Gavel-to-Gavel: The Watergate Scandal and Public Television, The Watergate Files Exhibit, Ford Library Museum, Covering Watergate: 40 Years Later with MacNeil and Lehrer, PBS. His silence is perpetuating an ongoing coverup, and while his testimony will create a few political enemies, based on almost 50 years of experience I can assure him he will make far more real friends. 1973, Nixon fired Dean. Since we began, we have presented over 150 programs throughout the United States, reaching somewhere between 45,000 to 50,000 attorneys. This reporting out provision provides lawyers with leverage to stop wrongdoing if the client fails to take appropriate advice. Chapter 14 in the book titled "The Lies, The Thefts," divulges the entire memorandum John Ehrlichman, Nixon's Domestic Affairs Advisor, wrote to Treasury Secretary David M. Kennedy and makes for an interesting read. Certain aspects of the scandal came to light before Election Day, but Nixon was reelected by a landslide. untenable at some point. [24] Also in 2006, Dean appeared as an interviewee in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, about the Nixon administration's efforts to keep John Lennon out of the United States. Haldeman and Chief Advisor for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, two of President Nixons closest advisors, who denied there was any White House wrongdoing; Alexander Butterfield, a former minor White House aide who revealed the existence of a secret audio tape-recording system that documented Oval Office conversations; and Rep. Barbara Jordan, a freshman member of the House Judiciary Committee, whose eloquent opening statement at the impeachment proceedings resonated throughout the hearing room and the nation. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) He spent his days at the offices of Jaworski, the Watergate Special Prosecutor, and testifying in the trial of Watergate conspirators Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson, which concluded in December. The book claimed Dean had learned about the operation from his wife. On their second break-in, on the night of June 16, hotel security discovered the burglars. Well, John Dean has a new book. John Dean, while not a fact witness . 62-77): President Trump called Director Comey multiple times, against the advice of Don McGahn, to have him confirm that he, Trump, was not personally under investigation. I havent and maybe Im not creative enough, Dean said. Were friends. Dean's testimony before the House was watched by some 80 million Americans. Neisser, U. But he was told by his immediate boss, John Ehrlichman, that his post-White House career would be difficult if he left. 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. Dean a young, highly ambitious, Porsche-driving, tassel-loafer-wearing lawyer when he joined the ultra conservative Nixon minions ended up getting fired in 1973 once it became clear he would implicate the president in the cover-up. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, the same day he announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. His co-editor was Goldwater's son Barry Goldwater, Jr.[31], Historian Stanley Kutler was accused of editing the Nixon tapes to make Dean appear in a more favorable light. John Dean's memory: A case study. Yet President Nixon knew that offering such pardons or giving pardons to try to control witnesses in legal proceedings was wrong. After we settled the case, I started agreeing to do television, Dean said. This is part one of John W. Dean's testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee. MUELLER REPORT RE EFFORTS TO PREVENT OR DISTORT DISCLOSURE OF THE JUNE 9, 2016 TRUMP TOWER MEETING (PP. They don't know what they're looking at. 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. [1] His family moved to Flossmoor, Illinois, where he attended grade school. In the 1999 film Dick, Dean was played by Jim Breuer. In 2001, Dean published The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court, an expos of the White House's selection process for a new Supreme Court justice in 1971, which led to the appointment of William Rehnquist. Paramount to pay $122.5 million to settle lawsuit over CBS deal. [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.
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