John Dean
From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project
John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938 in Akron, Ohio) was White House Counsel to U.S. President Richard Nixon from July 1970 to April, 1973. As White House Counsel he became deeply involved in the Watergate scandal cover up, even referred to as "master manipulator of the cover up" by the FBI.Template:Fn, and went on to become the star witness of the Watergate prosecution.
Dean attended The College of Wooster and qualified with a bachelor's degree in 1961. He subsequently attended Georgetown University and qualified with a law degree in 1965. He joined a Washington, D.C., law firm after graduation.
He was subsequently employed as the chief counsel to the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee in the United States House of Representatives. A National Commission on the Reform of Federal Criminal Law was created in 1967: Dean was appointed its associate director. He volunteered to write position papers on crime for Nixon's presidential campaign in 1968. The following year he became an Associate Deputy at the office of the Attorney General of the United States in the Nixon administration and later became counsel to the president after the previous holder of this post John Ehrlichman became the president's chief domestic adviser.
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"Master manipulator" to star witness
On February 28, 1973 Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding 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 the committee chairman, Sam Ervin, questioned Gray as to what he knew about the White House obtaining the files. With almost no provocation, and in a hearing not even related to Watergate, Gray stated he had given reports to Dean and had discussed the FBI investigation with Dean on many occasions. Gray's nomination failed and now Dean was directly linked to the Watergate cover up.
On March 23 the Watergate burglars were sentenced with stiff fines and jail time; Dean hired an attorney and began his cooperation with Watergate investigators on April 6.
On April 22 Nixon requested Dean put together a report with everything he knew about the Watergate matter and even invited him to take a retreat to Camp David to do so. Coupled with his sense of distance from Nixon's inner circle, "The Berlin Wall" of advisors H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Dean sensed he was going to become the Watergate scapegoat and refused. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, the same date he also announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman.
On June 25 Dean began his testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee in which he implicated many administration officials, including himself, Nixon fundraiser and former Attorney General John Mitchell, and Nixon himself. He was the first administration official to accuse Nixon of direct involvement with Watergate and the resulting cover up in press interviews as well as his testimony. Such testimony against Nixon, while damaging to the president's credibility, had little impact legally, as it was merely his word against Nixon's. Nixon vigorously denied all accusations against him that he authorized a cover up, and Dean had no proof beyond various notes he had taken in his meetings with the president. It was not until the existence of secret White House tape recordings was made public and those tapes could be analyzed that Dean's accusations were proved.
Watergate trial
Dean pled guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on October 19, 1973. He admitted supervising payments of "hush money" to the Watergate burglars, notably E. Howard Hunt, and revealed the existence of Nixon's enemies list. On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. However, when Dean surrendered himself as scheduled on September 3, he was diverted to the custody of U.S. Marshals and kept instead at Fort Holabird (near Baltimore, Maryland) in a special "safe house" holding facility primarily used for witnesses against the Mafia. He spent his days in the offices of the Watergate Special Prosecutor and testifying in the trial of Watergate conspirators Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson, which concluded on January 1, 1975. Dean's lawyer moved to have his sentence reduced, and on January 8, Sirica granted the motion, adjusting Dean's sentence to time served.
Life after Watergate
Dean chronicled his White House experiences, with a focus on Watergate, in the memoirs Blind Ambition and Lost Honor. Blind Ambition would become the point of controversy many years after its publication.
In 1992 he hired famed attorney Neil Papiano and brought the first in a series of defamation suits against G. Gordon Liddy for claims in his book Will and St. Martin's Press for its publication of the book Silent Coup by Len Colodny. Silent Coup alleged Dean was the mastermind of the Watergate burglaries and the true target of the burglaries was to seize information implicating Dean and Maureen Biner in a prostitution ring. After hearing of Colodny's work Liddy issued a revised paperback version of Will supporting Colodny's theoryTemplate:Fn. This theory was subsequently the subject of an A&E Network Investigative Reports series program entitled The Key to Watergate in 1992.
Liddy's defense team focused on allegations that Blind Ambition was ghost written by Taylor Branch. Dean admitted that Branch took over the sections of the book regarding Watergate using Dean's testimony and other materials and "dramatized" it.Template:Fn. He did not admit to any inaccuracies but admitted he had never read Blind Ambition from "cover to cover" or checked all of its facts.Template:Fn. The suit was dismissed although Dean has threatened to renew it given Liddy's victory in another defamation case.Template:Fn
In 2001, Dean published The Rehnquist Choice, an exposé of the White House's selection process for a new Supreme Court justice in 1971, which led to the accession of William Rehnquist to the United States' highest court. Three years later, Dean authored a book heavily critical of the administration of George W. Bush, entitled Worse than Watergate, a polemic which calls for the impeachment of Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney for lying to the Congress.
Dean is now an investment banker in Beverly Hills, California, as well as an author and lecturer. In 2005, he returned to his alma mater, The College of Wooster, to speak. He is also a part-time contributor on FindLaw with his next book due to be released in Summer 2006 entitled Conservatives Without Conscience.
After the revelation that George W. Bush authorised NSA wiretaps without warrants, Dean asserted that President Bush is “the first President to admit to an impeachable offense”Template:Fn. On March 31, 2006, Dean testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee during hearings on censuring the president over the issue. In his testimony, Dean asserted that Richard Nixon covered up Watergate in the interest of national security. This sparked a sharp debate with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham”Template:Fn.
Notes
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of Planning and Evaluation. FBI Watergate Invesgiation: OPE Analysis. July 5, 1974. File Number 139-4089. p.11 [1]
- John W. Dean deposition on September 12, 1995 in Maureen K. Dean and John W. Dean v. St. Martin's Press et al United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Case No. 92 1807 (HHG)
External links
- Democracy Now! interview with John Dean
- Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More, by John Dean, September 9, 2005, Findlaw
- 1983 Audio Interview with John Dean - RealAudio
Copyright
"Original data received from Wikipedia on April 22, 2006. Credit given to original authors can be seen Here."
