John Dean: Holy Hero or Serial Perjurer?


I haven't updated this for awhile, and I thought I'd add this post -- a sort of long book review quote, really -- because it offers a quick summary for people who don't have time to read Silent Coup or Secret Agenda.

What follows is excerpted from a 1997 discussion of Silent Coup on the 25th anniversary of Watergate:

The reason this carefully documented book has been given the silent treatment is because it demolishes the Woodward-Bernstein explanation of who was behind the Watergate break-in.

Here is the Colodny-Gettlin thesis that is rarely mentioned when Watergate is discussed in the press or on TV. In 1972, the FBI searched the office and home of a Washington attorney named Philip Bailley and seized address books which listed the names, nicknames and phone numbers of hundreds of women. One of them was Maureen Biner, whose nickname was listed as "Clout." She was given that nickname because she was the live-in lover of White House Counsel John Dean. On June 9, 1972, Bailley was indicted on Mann Act charges, and a story about the discovery of a call girl ring run by Bailley and staffed by government employees was on the front page of The Washington Star.

John Dean immediately called the U.S. Attorney, saying he was calling for the President. He demanded that he be shown all the documentary evidence so he could tell whether anyone in the White House was involved. The U.S. Attorney complied and even allowed Dean to photocopy the address book.

Three days later, Liddy was ordered to organize Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972. Colodny and Gettlin claim that this order originated with John Dean and that the main target was the desk of a DNC employee who, they believe, kept names and photos of the call girls for the convenience of important Democratic visitors. This would explain why one of the burglars, Eugenio Martinez, had the key to that employee's desk when he was caught. The idea was to remove any evidence that could be used to embarrass John Dean and his wife to be.

G. Gordon Liddy is enthusiastic about "Silent Coup," saying that for the first time he understood who was really behind the Watergate break-in and why. He thought his orders were coming from John Mitchell, the former Attorney General, who was running the Nixon reelection campaign. The revelation that they were really originating with Dean, fitted with Liddy's observation that no one at the re-election committee seemed to be taking any interest in the matter. It also explained the genuine bafflement in Nixon's voice when he discussed the burglary later, in Oval Office conversations that were captured on tape.

New tapes obtained by Colodny, who is being sued by Dean, show Dean's culpability in the coverup to the very eve of his decision to turn against Nixon. In a March 29, 1973, conversation, Dean tried to dissuade Nixon aide John Ehrlichman from appearing voluntarily before a grand jury to clear his name. Dean apparently feared that Ehrlichman's testimony could expose his own involvement.

And in a March 16 talk with the President, Dean stated, "There's nothing in the FBI files that indicates anybody in the White House was involved." He told Nixon that writing a report clearing the White House was "a good exercise and a drill that is absolutely essential we do." Within days Dean volunteered testimony to prosecutors and the Senate in an effort to save his own neck.

The "Silent Coup" portrayal of John Dean as being the driving force behind the Watergate break-in did not sit well with The Washington Post and those who had assumed that Woodward and Bernstein had gotten to the bottom of Watergate. It makes Nixon appear to be a victim of Dean's machinations rather than the architect of the operation. It provides a motive which escaped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who rode to fame and riches on the Watergate story. Understandably, no reporter's ego would survive if he was shown to have missed the "why" of such a monumental story. By playing the role of repentant sinner, John Dean became a hero to the media, not a villain. And it was Dean, Woodward and Bernstein, not Liddy, Colodny and Gettlin who had starring roles in network TV interviews during the anniversary.

What never ceases to amaze me is to see the word of John Dean (who under oath disavowed his book Blind Ambition) being portrayed as Holy Writ.

Watergate was the "Big Bang" of modern political hypocrisy.