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.

Big media's most sacred cow

I know it's been a long time with no posts here. But there are a couple of things of interest.

First, this article offers the best single encapsulation I have seen of the sexual blackmail aspect of Watergate. Neither I nor anyone else can offer absolute proof -- but if you study the John Dean stuff and use a little common sense, you can begin to see that what happened is not at all what was presented during the media "get-Nixon" orgy of investigative journalist triumphalism.

The theory that the Watergate affair sprang, unintentionally, from the bosom of a political sex ring was first proposed by journalist Jim Hougan in his book, Secret Agenda.

The madam, Heidi Rikan, worked out of the Washington's posh Columbia Plaza apartment building, located across the street from the Watergate office complex. Hougan suggests that Rikan's call-girl ring may have been "either a CIA operation or the target of a CIA operation."

Briefly, Hougan's hypothesis is this: The Columbia Plaza girls were servicing a very interesting political clientele: Democratic muckamucks who placed their orders for companionship from a phone inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building. Discovering this fruitful setup, Nixon's henchmen decided to target the Democratic fornicators. But in doing so, they stood a good chance of exposing the heavy breather already bugging the phone lines: the CIA. Ergo, the CIA's moles in the White House (allegedly superpatriotic conspirators James McCord and E. Howard Hunt) were forced to sabotage the Watergate break-ins in order to protect the CIA's highly illegal sex sting from Nixon's overeager burglars.

An illegal CIA sexpionage gambit unintentionally triggering the downfall of Richard Nixon? Say it ain't so!

Does the sexpionage industry go back even further in history than the babes of Watergate? Conspiracy theorist-emeritus Peter Dale Scott is game enough to hazard an affirmative. Employing the semiotics of conspiracy research - wherein names connect to other names, dates, and misdeeds, creating a tableau of suspicion that is usually intriguing, if not always conclusive - Scott has connected the dots.

Most interestingly, the Watergate madam, Heidi Rikan, was a girlfriend of mobster Joe "the Possum" Nesline, whose alleged connection to the Capitol Hill gay sex scandal a decade late aroused the suspicions of Washington detectives.

Assorted boyfriends and former husbands of both Rikan and her sometime roommate, Mo Biner (who married key Watergate figure John Dean, which makes Mo a pivotal character, according to scandal revisionists), were associated with the Quorum, an early 1960s "swingles" club run by Bobby Baker, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson. Scott surmises that all roads led to Baker's club for a reason: the Quorum functioned a lot like the mob-and-intelligence-infested sex traps of the 1970s.

It was Bobby Baker who introduced President Kennedy to an East German bombshell named Ellen Rometsh, whom JFK, true to form, promptly bedded. Scott speculates that J. Edgar Hoover leaked word of this international indiscretion to the press. Whether or not Hoover was behind the leaks, they nearly ignited a global scandal. That's because JFK's nubile Valkyrie also happened to be sleeping with a Soviet diplomat, a coincidence that, if revealed, wouldn't have served Kennedy well at the height of the Cold War. The threat of a "bimbo eruption" with international implications forced Bobby Kennedy into scandal-kibosh mode.

Scott notes that the JFK-Rometsch peccadillo paralleled the scandalous 1962 affair that toppled British war minister John Profumo. Profumo publicly confessed to romping with Christine Keller, a party doll/prostitute working for sexual procurer Stephen Ward. That scandal proved doubly damaging to Profumo because Keller was simultaneously servicing, yes, a Soviet diplomat. And more recent revelations have disclosed that the British intelligence agency MI5 "had been using the Stephen Ward sex ring for some time to compromise the Soviet agent." Scott wonders, did MI5 set out to compromise Profumo as well? Did the hyperlibidinous JFK blunder into a similar sex trap?

Interestingly, there is a more direct connection between JFK's peccadilloes and the MI5-manipulated Profumo affair. During the summer of 1963, Hoover's porous sex files began leaking again, resulting in press reports that a high U.S. official had slept with two members of Britain's Ward-Keeler sex ring, the very ring that toppled Profumo. That high U.S. official, no surprise, was the prodigious JFK. Scott observes that "MI5, as Britain's counterintelligence agency, maintained direct relations with both Hoover in the FBI" and the CIA. Did the Brits help Hoover set up Kennedy for a fall?

Bobby Baker, catalyst of the JFK-Rometsch affair, later boasted that he had in his possession letters from the east Germain woman that could prove embarrassing to the Kennedys, which per Scott, "strengthens the impression of an ongoing, sophisticated blackmail operation" in this nation's carnal capital.

Perhaps. Or maybe it just proves that in Washington eventually everyone gets screwed.

Well, they didn't mention the late John Paisley (CIA Watergate liaision), but you can't have everything....

NOTE: There is, of course, much speculation in the above. However, the facts that are known now show that John Dean became inveigled with a prostitution ring and then sent in White House spooks to help. The official story -- that they were bugging Larry O'Brien's office -- is utterly discredited. Yet it is still taught as "history," and regularly presented as a triumph of journalism.

The story of the century, and we're still fed the wrong version!

But cheer up folks. Big media is losing its stranglehold....

31 Years and Swallowing

On this, the thirty first anniversary of the Watergate break-in, I thought I'd start with an email I wrote last month to a famous blogger, Joshua Micah Marshall.

Subject: Deep Throat (nothing on TPM since last June, I thnk....)
Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 12:04:42 -0400
From: Eric Scheie
To: talk@talkingpointsmemo.com

Reading your column, I wondered why you haven't said anything about that Pulitzer Prize winning journalist's study identifying Deep Throat as John Dean's White House assistant Fred Fielding.

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/03/0422deepthroat.html

By the way, I liked your review of "The Threatening Storm."

Cheers!

Eric Scheie

Mr. Marshall never answered me, and I didn't think he would. I don't think he is interested in Deep Throat. He was interested in it last summer though (in June of 2002). Glenn Reynolds, on the other hand, reported the news about Deep Throat's identity, and the subsequent tantrum thrown by Carl Bernstein (of Woodward and Bernstein fame).

On Watergate's anniversary last summer, while completely sure that "Deep Throat" had to be Pat Buchanan, Marshall nonetheless made an intriguing statement about Deep Throat:

After all this time, why wouldn't this person come forward to get some of the limelight?

It's hard to figure ... unless he was someone still operating in those Republican circles where that sort of disloyalty would be very damning and even career-threatening. That is, unless it was someone like Patrick J. Buchanan.
-- Josh Marshall

How about unless he was someone like John Dean, or his underling Fred Fielding?

Why the silence, Josh?

I don't know whether I'll ever be able to get this story out, the way it should be gotten out, but if you are reading this, I would ask you to please take the time to familiarize yourself with as much of the Watergate story as much as you can, because it is the biggest media scandal of them all -- the coverup of all cover-ups. If you ever wonder where modern journalistic pride and arrogance come from, take a close look at Watergate. If you ever wonder why the people whose job it is to make others come clean can't come clean themselves, take a close look at Watergate. And if you ever wonder why journalists, instead of correcting their lies, instead engage in "damage control" of the sort used by guilty politicians and movie stars -- then please, take a close look at Watergate.

I am not trying to exonerate Nixon, but I don't like being lied to about recent history. If they can lie about something so recent, what does that say about the rest of history? Those entrusted to give us the truth create national mythology instead, treating us like children reading about little George Washington with his cherry tree. John Dean = hero; Richard Nixon = villain.

Whether you're a curious blogger or a member of the public, don't swallow the conventional story. Instead, here are a couple of things you can do for the 32nd anniversary of Watergate:

Please read here as well as here.

Then stream this

You might then ask why the perpetrators of such fraud should continue to be treated as demigods.

UPDATE (June 17, 2004): Seems I was a year off in my anniversary date, so on the 32nd anniversary, I changed this year-old post to reflect that it was written on the 31st anniversary. (A new record for correcting a mistake in a post, but I guess the country's been waiting just as long for Watergate history to be corrected, so I can truly say, "good enough for government work!"

Corporal Punishment for Bad Journalists?

...At Least Jayson Blair Didn't Overthrow the Government!

"No foundation. All the way down the line."

-William Saroyan, "The Time of your Life" (1939)

I have to thank the blog granddaddy again for making me think about what passes for journalism (and what I think is a major factor in the popularity of blog journalism).

Right now, people are all worked up about the Jayson Blair scandal. Certainly, it is regrettable that a journalist was discovered to be making up stories and using fake sources that nobody took the time to check out. But what about the great big granddaddy of modern investigative journalism?

What about Watergate?

Talk to almost any journalist, and you will be told that Watergate has all but defined their profession since the 1970s. The very concept of Investigative Journalism was a direct outgrowth of Watergate, the now-adult spawn of legendary Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.

But suppose -- just suppose -- that Woodward and Bernstein were guilty of journalistic fraud on a scale which would make the Jayson Blair scandal look like a walk in the park?

Watergate -- Woodward and Bernstein's forever enshrined moment of glory -- is the very founding core of modern American journalism. It is nothing less than the journalistic profession's crown jewel.

I know that most people today find Watergate boring. After all, it was more than thirty years ago and most of those guys are dead. Besides, we all know that Richard Nixon was bad, right? Never mind the fact that he ended the Vietnam War and opened relations with China; he was a racist, bigoted, Jew-hating, drunken, telephone-tapping voyeur! Isn't that what it's all about?

That might be the public perception today, and it might be what the kids have been taught in the schools for decades, but if you think Watergate is old and tired, ask any journalist. Not one has graduated from any modern school of journalism without a long course of study and indoctrination, almost forced to sing Hosannas of praise to the name of the Holy Grail of American journalism -- the almighty, all-knowing, all seeing, cult of Watergate!

Imagine if Watergate turned out to be, simply, bad journalism.

I know, I know, Watergate is supposed to be about politics. After all, a president was forced to resign or be impeached. But what really distinguished Watergate from all other American scandals was not the scandal itself -- but the fact that for the first time in history, politics was not controlled by politicians, but by journalists.

That's right; the guys who are supposed to do the reporting actually took hold of the story, the story took hold of the government, and the government was overthrown. All good and fine, and a credit to our First Amendment. UNLESS, of course, that story turned out to be wrong.

Journalism, heretofore something as mundane as reporting, had trumped politics.

Even at thirty one years of age, Watergate as a founding principle of modern journalism has not lost a shred of its importance, because we elect our politicians, and no one elects the journalists who have the power to overthrow them by means of "anonymous sources." (Sometimes with covert help; were Woodward and Fielding actually intelligence operatives from the same Yale fraternity? Such a story would never be reported by mainstream journalists.) Thus, it can be argued, journalists have an even greater responsibility than politicians, because they can overthrow them, but (except for rare cases like Jayson Blair) they cannot be overthrown themselves.

Was Watergate a case of bad journalism? Was bad journalism allowed to overthrow a democratically elected government? Did this really happen in the United States?

Speaking of noteworthy moments in journalism, while everyone was fussing about what should be done to Jayson Blair, it was almost completely lost that one of the great Watergate titans, Carl Bernstein, had publicly and angrily called for the dis-accreditation and SPANKING of another Pulitzer Prize winning journalist! I try to follow all Watergate stories as closely as I can, but had it not been for Glenn Reynolds, I would never have heard about the very revealing spanking outburst.

That is why I blog. Nine years of pleading and begging mainstream journalists to look at the story staring at them in the face was making me bitter. Blogging is better than bitter!

The hopefully thick-skinned journalist William Gaines, recipient of Bernstein's spanking fatwa, had committed the unspeakable crime of identifying the legendary Deep Throat!


What was the big problem? I mean, these guys had never objected to the cottage industry of guessing Deep Throat's identity, and finally someone pinned the tail on the donkey and now they're all upset?

Might it be that the truth comes too close to exposing what was a simple case of BAD JOURNALISM?

The traditional view of the right wing is that Woodward, Bernstein and company were liberal activists who so hated Nixon that they would do anything to get him. That alone does not bad journalism make. You can be blind with hatred towards someone and nonetheless manage to destroy him legitimately and within the rules. But how about a real conflict of interest, where the journalists themselves are involved in their story and thus incapable of any sort of objectivity? Might that be why Bernstein threw his childish tantrum?

I'll take the bloggers any day!

Who was Deep Throat?

Was he really Fred Fielding?

For many years, I have been convinced that Deep Throat was none other than John Dean, and the following is a collection of diaries I wrote when I explored this issue.

Considering that Fred Fielding and John Dean were close friends who ran the White House Counsel's office together, and considering that Dean was the senior partner in the relationship, I think a good case can be made that all the evidence still points to Dean. For, it is well known that in Washington, if you want to get something done which involves skullduggery and deceit, you'd best do it through somebody else. Thus, I think even if Fielding technically was the guy who fed information to Woodward and Bernstein, Dean, under the well established principle of Respondeat Superior, may STILL be the real Deep Throat!

But make up your own minds! In order to help you do that, my Deep Throat Diaries follow....

Read them at your own risk! Then, decide for yourself.

---

EXCERPTS FROM DEEP THROAT "BLOGS"

Sunday, August 13, 2000

by Eric Scheie

Notes On Reading Leonard Garment's "In Search of Deep Throat"

Initial question on leafing through Leonard Garment's In Search of Deep Throat. Why, why, why on earth would Garment make the following statement?

"[I]n the years since Watergate no one has given a rationally persuasive reason why Oliver's phone should have been tapped." Id, at 75.

NOTE TO TODAY'S READERS: For more information on the importance of Spencer Oliver's phone and the contents of the desk drawer in his secretary's office, you should read Silent Coup, and view "The Key To Watergate."(click to stream the video right now)

Does Mr. Garment seriously contend that Colodny has not given a rational reason? or does he contend there is no such book as Silent Coup? So far, I can find no mention of it, or of Colodny's name, anywhere.

Is this fear?

Garment seems well aware of the significance of Hunt's involvement, but he still clings to the Larry O'Brien red herring explanation. He dismisses Dean as a Deep Throat candidate without argument, saying that Dean was so involved in the coverup that he couldn't have been Deep Throat. This misses the point of Dean's coverup, which was not so much to cover up the burglary, but to shift the coverup to others.

The more I think about it, Deep Throat simply has to be either John Dean or no one. Only John Dean would explain this obsession with never talking. I thought about Mr. Garment's opinion that the Washington Post would never jeopardize their entire journalistic reputation on a lie that an informant existed who never did, and I think he may be right. For logically, what would be gained by inventing such a fictional character and then swearing that he was real, and staking your entire name on it? To sell more copies of a book? Woodward might do such a thing, but for the backbone of the journalistic establishment to do so, there would have to be a better reason than beefed up sales of a single book. And what reason is there other than that? It makes no sense at all.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that there was absolutely no Deep Throat. This means that instead of having it made easy for them, Woodward and Bernstein would have had to do a lot more scurrying about, developing many more low-level sources and unscrambling their compartmentalized knowledge, in order to develop the story of the century. The amount of work required without having such a break as the appearance of a Deep Throat would be almost heroic in scope. Would such tireless journalists deliberately downgrade their own performance by inventing a nonexistent character who told them everything they actually had to ferret out by hard work? That strikes me as against the ordinary human tendency to brag about one's accomplishments. And for the Post establishment to go along with and ratify such a lie -- for the sole purpose of selling a book -- borders on the ludicrous.

Furthermore, had Woodward and Bernstein manufactured Deep Throat from a variety of sources, they would have had to do so early on, and kept repeating the story. From what I have heard and read, the manufactured Deep Throat appeared at the time their book was being written. This does not square with Benjamin Bradlee or Katherine Graham's early-on testing of Woodward and Bernstein's sources, and demands that they furnish the intel to their superiors at the Post. From what everyone says, there was a Deep Throat character early on, and I simply cannot see why Bradlee and Graham would have gone along with such a fictional concoction at the beginning -- when the very credibility of the Post was already precarious. They would not have risked the Post's integrity for such an unnecessary and (at the time) gratuitous lie.

So, applying Garment's very reasonable assertions to the composite fictional character theory, I simply cannot see Deep Throat as a character invented late in the game, and to boost book sales.

The hyperparanoia surrounding Deep Throat to this day makes no sense at all unless that character is someone whose disclosure would be very damaging to the Watergate story. The only person who fits the bill is John Dean. Not only that, the personality of John Dean resembles that of Deep Throat in the following ways:

- enjoyment of intrigue

- leading people on

- flair for dramatic paranoia, and exaggerated fantasies, coupled with dire warnings

I also love the way John Dean is such a good sport at playing the endless Deep Throat guessing game. He loves to put on this scholarly look as if he has given the matter a great deal of thought, but just doesn't quite know. He's pretty good at it too, but it doesn't fool me.

I ought to mount a class action suit against the son of a bitch for fraud. Demand back the $9.95 for Blind Ambition, plus interest. [1] I wonder if there is an emotional distress theory...

And what about my time all these years writing to numerous public officials and big media journalists without compensation? Surely the ratling should pay me back for that too. Don't I at least have standing to demand the truth from the guy?

At times like this, I wish my old boss Mel Belli were still alive. He would do anything for a headline, and the money didn't faze him.

[1] If I am not mistaken, the book was marketed as non-fiction. This means that the publisher was under a legal duty to correct mistakes lest they be selling a defective product. If people attending schools or universities received instruction based on Blind Ambition, they too were victims of fraud, and ought to be allowed to recover damages under a class action theory.

---

Sunday, September 6, 1998

by Eric Scheie

(This was my reaction to John Dean's Videotaped Deposition in Tom
Clancy and John Ehrichman's excellent video production, "In the Eye of the
Storm")

Goin' Fishin

Perhaps it was a bad time to see this film (after a horrendous battle with yellow jackets in my yard) but I am in somewhat of a state of shock after finally seeing John Dean's videotaped deposition "performance." That sorry, cowering liar was simply an unbelievable sight to behold. (I hope he was wearing Pampers, for he looked about ready to wet his pants!) He looked guilty as sin, a beaten man. A hooked fish gaffed and tossed onto a dock, flopping around. Quite a contrast to his sneering pretense of media-bolstered self confidence on CNN.

I don't know where John Dean was today, but Watergate Grand Vizier bin-Veniste seems to have replaced him at least temporarily. (NOTE for today's readers: Mr. Ben-Veniste is currently also a member of the 9-11 Commission along with Fred Fielding!)

Then there's the several grand he stole from the safe![2] As I was saying last week, there are degrees of dishonesty, but stealing from friends or allies is the lowest form of theft imaginable. Beneath contempt. It is the same as a guest in your house stealing from you. My low standards are again, highly offended. Yet John Dean seemed to think nothing of it at all -- even when admitting it on tape. Like Eichmann at his Israeli trial, he instead focused on the details of what he did with the money. Had to pay for the wedding! Yard needed landscaping!

As a matter of fact, I need a new roof, right now! Come to think of it, I need landscaping too. I know that I am in no moral position to scream about John Dean being a thief, but still, this is absolutely beyond the pale, and fills me with disgust.

Yet CNN is not bothered by it at all.

I have thought over John Ehrlichman's remarks about Deep Throat (that he was a literary device) very carefully, and I think he is wrong. (However, he may think he is simply letting Haig off the hook out of loyalty -- I have no way of knowing these things.) I reread again Richard Nixon's remarks, and I have to defer to his sounder, more experienced judgment. The man spent more time devoting his considerable mental powers to Watergate than anyone else, and I think his opinion is therefore deserving of more respect. He disagreed with the idea that it was Haig, but also rejected out of hand the idea of a literary device. Nixon was absolutely convinced that there was an inside source -- "It was someone on the inside doing it himself" -- and I agree with Nixon that "there are other candidates, which if you think about hard enough may make sense."

Rather narrows the list, don't you think?

After seeing Dean's on-tape performance, I am more convinced than ever that he is hiding something big time, and is a very, very guilty man. In my opinion, either he is Deep Throat, or there was no Deep Throat. (And the balance of the evidence points to a likely Deep Throat, most likely John Dean.) I wish I could say the case was closed, but...

Next, Mr. Ehrlichman's discussion of the CIA's Georgetown boys connection made me reread Silent Coup's analysis of Bob Woodward. Highest clearances, misleading stories about training and background, etc., etc. A very familiar pattern. Think about the reasons why a man with top secret clearances, an officer who worked as a cryptologist and briefed some of the highest officials in the Pentagon (and even supervised back-channel traffic to and from the White House!) would make the following statement:

He [Deep Throat] thought Bernstein and Woodward might be followed, and cautioned them to take care when using their telephones. The White House, he had said at the last meeting, regarded the stakes in Watergate as much higher than anyone outside perceived. Even the FBI did not understand what was happening. The source had been deliberately vague about this, however, making veiled references to the CIA and national security which Woodward did not understand. All the President's Men, ibid 72-73 (Emphasis added).

Disinformation at its finest! Woodward is really something, isn't he?

Frankly, if John Dean is Deep Throat, I can see why Bob Woodward would want him left out of the book entirely. Too much hassle. Too much fake character construction, making it all the more likely that sooner or later, someone will figure it out and it will all come back to haunt you.

How do you reconcile a background in need-to-know secrecy with a need to sell books? Disinformation is the only available catalyst, and All the President's Men just drips with it. Hell, they may have even had help from the same guy who helped John Dean -- whoever that was. (I wonder if the publisher might supply any clues.) Such collusion! Government, media, even publishers. What a place this non-Soviet Union is!

A couple more things which have bugged me: Howard Hunt told his boss Bob Bennett to "call John Dean at the White House" to get him a lawyer. This strikes me as an extremely unprofessional thing for a man of Howard Hunt's background to do.

Unless, of course, part of his game was to try deliberately to trap as many unwitting people as possible in his web. Luckily for Bennett, he was too smart to fall for it. (Similarly, compare this to Bill Sullivan's sixth sense feeling that John Dean was trying to lure him into a conspiracy via stealth.)

And were I a conspiracy buff myself, I might want to know why the Colby report on Watergate mysteriously disappeared.

(However, such things are beyond my jurisdiction. Besides, I hate fishing expeditions! R.I.P.)


[2] The funny thing about the theft was his attitude about it on tape. In contrast with what looked like real fear and evasion on the Strachan deception, he seemed quite unconcerned, even a little amused, about the theft. His guilty demeanor as to the Strachan questions reveal that he is not a full sociopath, so I can only conclude that his lack of guilt about the theft from the safe is that he feels it is extremely minor in relative terms. Considering that he is talking about grand theft from an employer, such relativism can only mean that what he is hiding (and what he really feels the guilt about) is enormous by comparison.

---

Sunday, August 2, 1998

by Eric Scheie

The Throat Threat

Something I had not made completely clear last month was that I read through all of the references to "Deep Throat" in All the President's Men and to Woodward in Blind Ambition. Note that in the latter, John Dean (or whoever the author is) makes no mention of "Deep Throat."

p. 161 "Maybe Deep Throat had been wrong when he said Ehrlichman had ordered Howard Hunt out of town." (Emphasis added.) I beg your pardon, but who else said that? Who else was in a position to "know" such a lie? If it was John Dean's lie, then Deep Throat could only have been John Dean or someone to whom John Dean had already told the tale about Ehrlichman -- and I don't think there was any such person, not at this early stage in the story.

That Deep Throat told Woodward that Ehrlichman ordered Hunt out of town is the most damning piece of uncontested public evidence pointing toward Deep Throat as John Dean. For, we know now that it was Dean who had ordered Hunt out of the country (if that is what was meant by "out of town" -- which it must be, for there is no other reference to Hunt being ordered out of town OR out of the country, AND Silent Coup, at 185-186 uses "out of town" and "out of the country" interchangeably in this incident). We know that only John Dean had accused Ehrlichman of involvement -- and only John Dean had a vested interest in diverting the blame to Ehrlichman. Thus, Woodward's famous book points toward John Dean as Deep Throat!

Let's play the devil's advocate here. Where else would Woodward obtain such information -- which helped cover only for John Dean?

p. 318-319 While Deep Throat is talking, his words are about vintage John Dean's credibility/ethos/pathos building stuff (President threatened him, Liddy offered to have himself shot, Hunt's blackmail money, etc.)

Throughout All the President's Men, references are never made to direct contacts with John Dean -- only to various "friends" of John Dean, and his "associates." (295,299,306) Yet we know that John Dean, as Richard Nixon said, wanted to cozy up to the media. He cozied up all right. (That is, until he violated a cardinal media rule that you don't rat on your sources!)

(Cf. Blind Ambition: Dean stated that he had never heard of Woodward or Bernstein when the story first broke (p. 91); next Dean conveniently ridiculed Woodward and Bernstein's lumping of Segretti in with the "brownshirts" (meaning who, I just wonder?); and finally, Dean, in the midst of his "going public" phase, claims he doesn't trust Woodward and Bernstein, but notes Bernstein's generous offer to have him put everything on tape for safekeeping in the event of his untimely demise. (p. 289 -- which overlaps with "Deep Throat's insistence that John Dean might be killed. Handy, huh?)

How credible is John Dean's claim (on page 91) that he had "never heard of" Woodward and Bernstein? Was John Dean not the same man who even went so far as to keep tabs on such obscure people as a leftist student in New Haven, CT named "Lenny Davis?" And if John Dean was such an accomplished little dirt digger and go-getter (which he was, from all accounts) why would he go out of his way to advertise his stark ignorance of the two most dangerous reporters in the world?

And as if that's not enough, why would he later add the gratuitous insult about their inadequacy as reporters vis-a-vis Segretti?

It is as if he is going out of his way to say that he never had anything to do with them, never heard of them, they were never any good as reporters, etc.

He's good. But he's not that good!

Surely someone has researched this stuff by now. Is it necessary for me to reinvent the wheel? I cannot prove that Dean was Deep Throat, but this is worth a close look.

Another puzzling aspect of Deep Throat which has bothered me over the years is the total failure of Woodward (and Bernstein) to divulge his identity -- or Deep Throat divulging his identity himself. Many years have elapsed, many of the primary players are dead, and history wants to know what happened. Were Deep Throat dead (which Woodward denies) there would be no reason to continue to conceal his identity. So, quite obviously, someone's identity is still being protected. Why?

I read that Woodward is (according to his ex-wife) "ruthless... extremely ambitious... immensely controlled. All of his passions have been channeled into his ambition." (Silent Coup at 81.)

Bernstein, on the other hand, is not the same type. From what I know about the man, he is the more idealistic of the pair. Instead of riding the wave of Watergate all the way to a life-long successful career, he became withdrawn and alcoholic.

Might it be that Bernstein is possessed of remnants of a conscience?

---

Sunday, July 26, 1998

by Eric Scheie

Here are some notes on Richard Nixon's speculations about Deep Throat, followed by a spontaneous outburst of angst prompted by one of my numerous attempts to question John Dean on one of his television appearances. While CNN claimed that Mr. Dean was available to take calls (and posted a toll-free number to call him), I have never been allowed to ask him a very simple question about Watergate.

One time, when I was waiting to talk to John Dean I was put on hold by CNN for almost 18 hours! (At least they got the bill, and not I!)

Deep Throat "Gags"...

Regarding John Dean's litigation, Ida Maxine Wells will have absolutely no choice but to defend the lawsuit by bringing in John Dean -- and his testimony will be absolutely necessary in order to explore any conceivable issues which might arise in the litigation. Nice idea! He'd have to testify, again, under oath!

No wonder he's cozying up to the media again.

But I have something to say about John Dean which I have never addressed before, and I hope readers will not think I am naïve for raising a rather obvious question.

When I was reading the latest Crowley book about Richard Nixon, the following words positively leaped at me off the page. When Ms. Crowley asked Nixon whether he thought "Deep Throat" was a composite figure or a literary creation, Nixon replied,

"No... The source was one person, a real person. It was one person who thought he had a lot to gain by spilling his guts to those guys. So let's consider motives. It could have been someone who wanted to be president, but that doesn't really work because anyone coming out of my White House after Watergate was not going to win an election. So it must have been someone who thought he could win with the media, someone who was proving his liberal credentials by talking secretly with the Post, someone," he said, pointing a finger in the air, "who wanted a journalism career or media career. And it wasn't Diane [Sawyer]. Whoever it was was just trying to save his own ass, bail himself out from a sinking ship. Dean was a traitor,[3] but the source -- well, he went beyond that." He stopped and shifted his attention back to Silent Coup. "You can see why the press killed the book. They didn't cover it. Any other theories about Watergate just don't make sense." Nixon in Winter, at 398.

Nixon had rejected Haig, saying "It was someone on the inside doing it himself. Haig was close, but I don't think he did it." Id.

Call me crazy, but I think Nixon is not so subtly pointing his finger at John Dean -- whether Nixon knew it at the time or not.

And if it was John Dean, the enormity (indeed, the desperation) of the coverup makes more and more sense.

Don't you love the way they like to ask John Dean to speculate about who Deep Throat was?

John Dean makes perfect sense as Deep Throat unless he has some flawless alibis. And even those might have been manufactured.


Dean as Deep Throat also provides motive for Dean to rat which goes beyond even saving his own ass. [It has always struck me that the mere saving of his ass could have been effected at far less cost to his former associates, even assuming that he was willing to rat. He didn't merely want to save his ass; he wanted to deliver a star performance. He wanted to be the hero of Watergate!]

They had him! He was following orders!

Damn! I knew there had to be a reason for his infuriatingly self-assured attitude (even if he thought no one caught it, I did!) that the big guys would back him all the way, and that this thing was far bigger than he was! They will, because it is!

I hope I am wrong here, but if there is even a chance that Dean was Deep Throat, this thing will be a very, very bumpy ride. The truth may be too devastating for far too many, far too powerful people.

Lots of guys have been whacked for far less. (However, here, we are dealing with cowards, the real enemies from the former Cold War days being mostly as dead as Hiss.)

No wonder that no one has ever divulged Deep Throat's identity!

Even the possibility of something like this is too hot for any politician, any journalist, or anyone close to power.

Oh, and of course I could be wrong about this. I am the first to admit that possibility. But being wrong is the only way to test hypotheses. The other day in a bookstore I flipped through a recent biography on Isaac Newton, which reveals that his breakthrough discoveries resulted from his profoundly superstitious mind which believed in alchemy and the occult.

That means that I am not as superstitious as Isaac Newton, which comforted me to no end. But if being wrong (so long as you are willing to test your ideas) can lead you to new places, then why should I fear being wrong?

Hey -- if I am right about this, and John Dean is Deep Throat, don't you think he ought to really earn his title?

Surely there are some people somewhere who'd be willing to help out.

A few notes (from All the President's Men):

p. 161 "Maybe Deep Throat had been wrong when he said Ehrlichman had ordered Howard Hunt out of town." (I beg your pardon, but who else said that? Who else was in a position to "know" such a lie?

Two and a half hours of television this Sunday morning! [Will John Dean ever end?] God, now I know how those early victims of stultifying Puritan New England churches must have felt. I keep telling myself that this is "for a good cause" -- that I need to "keep informed," and that in any event it is my duty to watch John Dean (he just said how much people enjoyed his "show").

Do you think John Dean is someone who "thought he could win with the media?" Do you think John Dean is someone who "wanted a journalism career or media career?"

Hey, let me interrupt this essay to interject my latest frustration in the only way I can. Again, I must repeat myself:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Out of my long-suffering sense of duty, I called CNN (at 1-888-CNN-0561) and to my absolute amazement, I actually got through to a call screener! They asked for my home number, asked me what I wanted to ask (my question was whether it was true that Mr. Dean had recently said he had not written Blind Ambition, and if so CNN would give apparent credibility to such a man) and put me on hold, during which time I listened to John Dean, and was finally told that they were "no longer taking calls." The screener thanked me and told me to keep listening, and I told her to keep up the good work. She thanked me in what sounded distinctly like a stifled snicker!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

And again,

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

That's all folks!

And to think that I met Wolf Blitzer a few years ago at a cocktail party! What an ingrate!

[3]Here I believe Nixon used the term "traitor" in the sense of loyalty to ones own people, and not traitor in the legal sense. But little did he suspect...

---

Thursday, June 4, 1998

by Eric Scheie

Here's my first analysis of Nixon's thoughts about Deep Throat! It is quite obvious that Nixon came to believe that John Dean was Deep Throat, although he could not say so directly (for obvious reasons involving his personal dignity and former position).

Too Dangerous To Be Believed?

I just found out that Richard Nixon was not only a Silent Coup believer himself, but stated the following:

[John Dean] had a personal stake in covering up the facts, and I didn't know that at the time.

Crowley, Monica: Nixon In Winter, page 297.

Why is it that these things are kept secret from me? [That is a joke!] Ms. Crowley also reports that Nixon refused to attend a Nixon Library event with Len Colodny and G. Gordon Liddy, which is not out of character as he thought that issues would be diverted, the media would seize on the wrong things, etc. He also didn't think Haig was Deep Throat, etc., but I didn't know that Nixon had basically approved Silent Coup's salient points.

Toward the end, he could have fought a little harder, but he probably didn't want to risk looking like a fool and possibly damaging the ethos in history he had spent years trying to reconstruct. So, I understand his hesitancy.

The important thing is that -- contrary to the rest of today's power elite, Richard Nixon believed Silent Coup! [And as he was a primary source, his belief ought to count for something, oughtn't it?]

One more thing before I continue my usual nightly run: I finally found that wonderful biography of Benjamin Franklin by Catherine Drinker Bowen, The Most Dangerous Man in America.

Such men as deserve such titles only come along once in a great while...

---