LOS ANGELES (Tribune News Service) 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. Im learning things that I had never known about what had happened and why it happened.. 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. June 17, 1972. Rule 1.13 further provides that when an attorney representing an organization encounters ongoing crime or fraud, he or she must first try to solve the problem within the organization, by going up the ladder to the highest authority that can address the problem. Was he hard-nosed and tough? Copyright 2008 NPR. In many ways the Mueller Report is to President Trump what the so-called Watergate Road Map (officially titled Grand Jury Report and Recommendation Concerning Transmission of Evidence to the House of Representatives) was to President Richard Nixon. As Dan mentioned, in the summer of 1973, former White House counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. 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. Neither of the two volumes are formally titled, but the first sentence of the second paragraph, on page 1 of Volume II states its focus: Beginning in 2017, the President of the United States took a variety of actions towards the ongoing FBI investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election and related matters that raised questions about whether he had obstructed justice. Volume II concludes on page 182: [I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. However, the Special Counsels office was unable to reach that conclusion, so the report neither alleges criminal behavior by the president nor, as the report states, does it exonerate him. (SEE MUELLER REPORT, VOL. 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. This is a taped except of Dean as he recalled that meeting with President Nixon. In White House Plumbers, an upcoming HBO limited series, Dean is portrayed by Domhnall Gleeson. 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. ART. Stephen Battaglio writes about television and the media business for the Los Angeles Times out of New York. But Deans inside knowledge on how the bungled burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, ultimately revealed an organized-crime-type mind-set within the Nixon administration has kept him on the contact list of TV news guest bookers for decades. Nixon met with me privately on the evening of April 15, 1973, to try to influence how I would relate the events, particularly our conversation of March 21, 1973, when I warned him of the cancer on the presidency. In the March 21 conversation, I tried to convince him to end the coverup, pointing out that paying hush money and dangling pardons constituted obstruction of justice, and that people were going to go to jail, myself included. It also led to the creation of the PBS NewsHour.. The press statement was false. Dean had originally been a proponent of Goldwater conservatism, but he later became a critic of the Republican Party. We believe Don McGahn is not in a conflict situation in testifying to this Committee, for his duty is to protect the Office of the Presidency, sometimes against the very person in charge of it. In a corporation, for example, the attorney would report up to the board of directors or a special committee of the board. 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. (1981). At first, he shredded incriminating files. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. In his testimony, he implicated administration officials, including Mitchell, Nixon, and himself. 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. Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. [42][43], On November 7, 2018, the day after the midterm elections, Trump forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. [13] It was alleged[who?] He moved to Los Angeles with wife Maureen, took business courses at UCLA and worked as an investment banker during the 1980s. . . Dean did not complete the report. 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. They don't know whether to hire lawyers or not, how they're going to pay for them if they do. Dean then served as associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws for approximately two years. The turning point came with the testimony of former White House counsel John Dean, whose weeklong account of Nixon's . John W. Dean was legal counsel to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony lead to Nixon's resignation. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. In the summer of 1973, the Watergate hearings held the country spellbound. [2] He attended Colgate University and then transferred to the College of Wooster in Ohio, where he obtained his B.A. A full cast of characters is available in our Gavel-to-Gavel exhibit. 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. Again, McGahns testimony about these events, which are described in detail in the Mueller Report, are important for Congress to understand and, as noted later, claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege have been waived (because of disclosure of the Mueller Report authorized by President Trump, and the so-called crime-fraud exception to all privileges). Michael and John dig deep into Watergate, January 6th, and DOJ. Michael and John dig deep into Watergate, January 6th, and DOJ. 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. John Dean's testimony this week before the House Judiciary Committee squarely placed the Mueller report's findings in the historical context of Watergate. But when Dean surrendered as scheduled on September 3, he was diverted to the custody of U.S. 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. He is also the author of three books about television, including a biography of pioneer talk show host and producer David Susskind. [Emphasis added.]. The White House dissembled on the reason for firing Comey, but President Trump later admitted in a television interview that he made the decision because the thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. Mr. Trump made similar remarks to visiting Russians in Oval Office. I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. [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. VS. HALDEMAN, 559 F.2D 31 (D.C. CIR. Featuring New Interviews with John Dean, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein . [33], In speaking engagements in 2014, Dean called Watergate a "lawyers' scandal" that, for all the bad, ushered in needed legal ethics reforms. But on March 21, 1973, he went to the Oval Office and told Nixon there was "a cancer " on the presidency that would take them all down they didn't . Dean concludes that conservatism must regenerate itself to remain true to its core ideals of limited government and the rule of law. 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. Gjon Mili . Former White House Counsel John Dean's testimony in the Watergate investigation helped topple Richard Nixon's presidency. John Dean's statement to the House Judiciary Committee on June 10, 2019, as prepared for delivery. Since 2011, I have been using the mistakes I made as a young White House lawyer to teach this rule of ethics with a continuing legal education partner, Jim Robenalt, who is here today. . Stated a bit differently, Special Counsel Mueller has provided this committee a road map. 5; 3, cl. 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. They all would have expected to be out and that may put you in a position thats just . Dean is a pretty good gem," Nixon confided to Haldeman on March 2, 1973. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness. In the 1979 TV mini-series Blind Ambition, Dean was played by Martin Sheen. 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. [26], His next book, released in 2006, was Conservatives without Conscience, a play on Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative. No one has sought to control this narrative more than former White House Counsel John Dean. II, P. Thats for sure. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. And I hasten to add that I learned about obstruction of justice the hard way, by finding myself on the wrong side of the law. [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. Silent Coup alleged that Dean masterminded the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate coverup and that the true aim of the burglaries was to seize information implicating Dean and the former Maureen "Mo" Biner (his then-fiance) in a prostitution ring. Feb. 1, 2019. [8][pageneeded], On January 27, 1972, Dean, the White House Counsel, met with Jeb Magruder (Deputy Director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, or CRP and CREEP) and Mitchell (Attorney General of the United States, and soon-to-be Director of CRP), in Mitchell's office, for a presentation by G. Gordon Liddy (counsel for CRP and a former FBI agent). It helped to reshape the public understanding of Watergate.. It may just be too hot. He's penned five books about Watergate and 10 books in total; including his most recent tome, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and his Followers. [16], Neisser found that, despite Dean's confidence, the tapes proved that his memory was anything but a tape recorder. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. 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. Before that, I am so deep in the weeds of Watergate. In 2006, Dean testified before the Senate Judiciary Commit . Liddy was ordered to scale down his ideas, and he presented a revised plan to the same group on February 4, which was also left unapproved. Marshals and kept instead at Fort Holabird (near Baltimore, Maryland) in a special "safe house" primarily used for witnesses against the Mafia. Spectators laughed, and soon the senator was "sputtering mad". Since we began, we have presented over 150 programs throughout the United States, reaching somewhere between 45,000 to 50,000 attorneys. Dean served as White House Counsel for President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. The Oval Office exchange between the President and Haldeman was on June 23, 1972, six days after the after the arrests at the Watergate complex. This year Dean will be celebrating another anniversary 50 years of marriage to his wife, Maureen. Dean's testimony before the House was watched by some 80 million Americans. 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. If the problem cannot be solved internally, Model Rule 1.13 provides that an attorney may report out, despite his or her confidentiality, what is going on, despite his duty of confidentiality or the attorney-client privilege. And youre gonna have the clemency problem for the others. Despite Deans courageous decision to testify against a sitting president, the series does not give him a free pass for his role in the Nixon administrations nefarious activities. This press statement put a coverup in place immediately, by claiming the men arrested at the Democratic headquarters were not operating either in our behalf or with our consent in the alleged bugging attempt. Ari Emanuel lets his AI alter ego open Endeavors earnings call, WGA chief negotiator David Young replaced due to illness ahead of key talks with studios, Hidden, illegal casinos are booming in L.A., with organized crime reaping big profits, Look up: The 32 most spectacular ceilings in Los Angeles, 19 cafes that make L.A. a world-class coffee destination, Best coffee city in the world? [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. An . in 1961. [11], 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. He is mentioned in the report on 529 occasions, and based on the footnotes he was interviewed at various lengths by the FBI on not less than 9 occasions: July 24, 2015, December 11, 2015 and April 1, 2016 (thus three occasions before Mr. Trump was elected), and July 7, 2017, January 19, 2018, February 16, 2018, March 2, 2018, October 22, 2018, and March 20, 2019 (and on six occasions after Mr. Trump was elected). [14], 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. MUELLER REPORT RE EFFORTS TO CONTROL ATTORNEY GENERAL SESSIONS (PP. Items included in the Television News search service. Each days hearings are broken up into multiple parts, which are linked together and named as such. This is based on my count of FBI 302 reports cited in the Mueller Report. The book claimed Dean had learned about the operation from his wife. They don't know what their jeopardy is. You cant look at Watergate today without looking through the lens or at least a filter of the Trump presidency, Dean said. John Dean, former counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, testifies before the Senate committee on the Watergate hearing in D.C. on June 27, 1973. One was destroying evidence. [5], Dean was employed from 1966 to 1967 as chief minority counsel to the Republicans on the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. June 27, 2022 05:36 PM. MUELLER REPORT RE EFFORTS TO INFLUENCE WITNESSES WITH PARDONS ( PP. 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. . Neisser, U. WATERGATE: In 1972, the underlying crime was a bungled break-in, illicit photographing of private documents and an attempt to bug the telephones and offices of the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, with plans to do likewise that same night with Nixons most likely Democratic opponent Senator George McGovern, which because of the arrests of five men at the Watergate, did not happen. 6; cf. John Dean, who served as White House counsel to President Richard Nixon and played a key role in the Watergate hearings in the 1970s, compared the findings in the Mueller report to Watergate . John Dean, President Richard M. Nixon's former . It may further involve you in a way you shouldnt be involved in this. 7 min read. Well, John Dean has a new book. 24-48): When President Trump learned that his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn lied to the FBI and others about his telephone conversations with the Russian Ambassador to the United States regarding U. S. sanctions imposed because of Russias election interference, he met with FBI Director James Comey at a private White House dinner and asked for Comeys loyalty. Why Netflix is dabbling in livestreaming, How strong is Dominions defamation case against Fox News? 74-CCC-7004)", Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet: Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More, "John Dean's Role at Issue in Nixon Tapes Feud", "Watergate's lasting legacy is to legal ethics reform, says John Dean", "John Dean helped bring down Richard Nixon. Dean also told the Senate Watergate committee that if testimony by Jeb Stuart Magruder, a former White House aide, was credible, the President probably had advance knowledge of plans to break into . Dean's testimony to the senators and at the 1974 trial of the chief conspirators (excepting the President) did not get him totally off the hook. The Mueller Report explains in Vol. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. In the 1995 film Nixon, directed by Oliver Stone, Dean was played by David Hyde Pierce. WATERGATE: I am aware of no evidence that Nixon was involved with or had advance knowledge of the Watergate break-in and bugging, or the similar plans for Senator McGovern. Watergate-John-Dean-June-25-1973 . And if the cancer was not removed, the president himself would be killed by it. [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. In that posit. Yet President Nixon knew that offering such pardons or giving pardons to try to control witnesses in legal proceedings was wrong. Mr. McGahn has expressed concern about being caught between two branches of government in responding to this Committees subpoena for his documents and testimony. PRESIDENT: You cant do it, till after the 74 elections, thats for sure. Search by keyword or individual, or browse all episodes by clicking Explore the Collection below the search box. 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. Cognition, 9 (1981)1-22 Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in the Netherlands John Dean's Memory: A case study ULRIC NEISSER" Cornell University Abstract John Dean, the former counsel to President Richard Nixon, testified to the Senate Watergate Investigating Committee about conversations that later turned out to have been tape recorded. John Dean's memory: A case study. PRINTING OFFICE, 1974); AND SPECIAL COUNSEL ROBERT S. MUELLER, III, REPORT ON THE INVESTIGATION INTO RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, VOLUMES I AND II (WASHINGTON, D.C: GOV. 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." Yeah. Accuracy and availability may vary. Elizabeth Holtzman, a former member of Congress who served on the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, said in her interview he was an essential part of the criminal enterprise. Dean himself talks about how he crossed a moral line early in his White House tenure. 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. After four months, however, the Watergate trial judge, John J. Sirica, reduced his sentence to time . Dean was also receiving advice from the attorney he hired, Charles Shaffer, on matters involving the vulnerabilities of other White House staff. [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. The point is: Richard Nixon knew he could not use his pardon power, unrestricted as it is in Article II, for the improper purpose of gaining the silence of witnesses in legal proceedings. Eight years ago, we created a course called The Watergate CLE. John Dean Predicts Criminal Case Against Trump After 'Powerful' New Testimony. Well, John Dean has a new book. MCGAHNS DILEMMA TESTIFYING BEFORE THIS COMMITTEE. In Watergate, the lesson learned was that no person, even the President, was above the law. Dean's testimony before the House was watched by some 80 million Americans. He chronicled his White House experiences, with a focus on Watergate, in the memoirs Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). I learned this fact from Robert Kutak, with whom I had a friendship from our days when we worked as staffers for Congress. John W. Dean was legal counsel to president Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony helped lead to Nixon's resignation. It also prompts the interview subjects to note how the public based their opinions on Watergate on an agreed upon set of facts, a major difference from todays polarized and partisan media landscape.