Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. 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. The coverage includes testimony from James McCord and E. Howard Hunt, two of the men arrested for breaking into the Watergate complex; John Dean, White House counsel from July 1970 to April 1973, who detailed the extent of the Nixon administrations involvement in the burglary and subsequent cover-up; Chief of Staff H.R. In 1973, John Dean was the star witness in the Watergate hearings. Check out this great listen on Audible.com. 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. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. His testimony during the Watergate scandal helped bring down Nixon. 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. Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. Ehrlichman said, John, youll have better job offers after Nixon gets reelected. Yeah, making license plates.. He's penned five books about Watergate and 10 books in total; including his most recent tome, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and his Followers. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. In 2006, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating George W. Bush's NSA warrantless wiretap program. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, the same day he announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman. (See U.S. In the summer of 1973, former White House Counsel John Dean testified as part of the Senate's investigation into the Watergate break-in. The targets of the hacking were the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, from which information was stolen and released to harm the Clinton campaign and in turn would help the Trump campaign. In Starz's new Gaslit, premiering Sunday, central Watergate figure John Dean is played by Dan Stevens. 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. 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. 8. [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. 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. Dean had originally been a proponent of Goldwater conservatism, but he later became a critic of the Republican Party. After listening to Nixons March 21, 1973 secretly recorded conversation with me, Jaworski pursued more tapes as vigorously as had Cox. Model Rule 1.13 provides that a lawyer representing an organization represents the entity and not the individuals running the entity. 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 . 98-103): According to the report, in June 2017 after emails setting up a June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians became known in the White House, the President engaged in efforts to prevent disclosure of the emails and then dictated a false or misleading statement characterizing the meeting as about adoptions in order to protect his son, Don, Jr. WATERGATE: On the weekend that the Nixon reelection committee men were arrested in the DNC offices at the Watergate, Nixons campaign manager, and former attorney general, John Mitchell, along with his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman and former White House Counsel, John Ehrlichman, drafted a false press release about the men arrested at the Watergate. [3], Dean married Karla Ann Hennings on February 4, 1962; they had one child, John Wesley Dean IV, before divorcing in 1970. Brownell, K. (2020). In the 2022 TV mini-series Gaslit, Dean was played by Dan Stevens. He admitted supervising payments of "hush money" to the Watergate burglars, notably E. Howard Hunt, and revealed the existence of Nixon's enemies list. Dean then served as associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws for approximately two years. The Watergate Hearings, 50 Years Ago: Truth Was Not Up for Debate . Senator Barry Goldwater, in part as an act of fealty to the man who defined his political ideals. 1973, Nixon fired Dean. 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. It's written with Bob Altemeyer, and it's titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers. DEAN: Im not sure that youll ever be able to deliver clemency. After the burglars' arrest, Dean took custody of evidence and money from the White House safe of E. Howard Hunt, who had been in charge of the burglaries, and destroyed some of the evidence before investigators could find it. A former key witness in the Watergate investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon says indictments are on their way to Donald Trump. Like Comey, Cox was charged with investigating wrongdoing by the President and his advisors and Cox refused an ultimatum from the White House to limit his access to the secret White House tapes by accepting written transcripts, prepared by the White House and verified by a near deaf senior member of the U.S. Senate, former judge John Stennis, rather than allowing Cox to listen to the tapes. Its the White House in the remarkable city at the top of the government. Nixon said, And, ah, because these people are playing for keeps, . The Watergate Hearings Collection covers 51 days of broadcasts of the Senate Watergate hearings from May 17, 1973, to November 15, 1973, and seven sessions of the House impeachment hearings on May 9 and July 24 30, 1974. [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. June 1, 2022 1:43 PM PT. 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 . And if the cancer was not removed, the president himself would be killed by it. Blind Ambition was ghostwritten by future Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch[20] and later made into a 1979 TV miniseries. The Mueller Report explains in Vol. Reaction to Liddy's plan was highly unfavorable. 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). from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. 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. [9], In late March in Florida, Mitchell approved a scaled-down plan. Evidence: In a taped interview for the book "Silent Coup", when Dean was . Watergate Lawyer John Dean Predicts Legacy Of Jan. 6 Investigation Into Trump. Anchors Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer provided summaries, commentary, and interviews to supplement each broadcast. MUELLER REPORT RE APPOINTMENT/REMOVAL OF THE SPECIAL COUNSEL (PP. Five men are arrested while trying to bug the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate, a hotel and office building in Washington, D.C. A day later, White . . [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. This year Dean will be celebrating another anniversary 50 years of marriage to his wife, Maureen. 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. I think Richard Nixon had a conscience, said Dean. 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. Granted immunity, Dean laid out in stunning detail . [10][pageneeded]. An . He's penned five books about Watergate and 10 books in total; including his most recent tome, Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and his Followers. Dean is known for his role in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal and his subsequent testimony to Congress as a witness. Copyright 2008 NPR. They don't know if they're a part of a conspiracy that might unfold. Desperate mountain residents trapped by snow beg for help; We are coming, sheriff says, Newsom, IRS give Californians until October to file tax returns, Californias snowpack is approaching an all-time record, with more on the way, Column: A transgender patients lawsuit against Kaiser is a front for the conservative war on LGBTQ rights, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President,, Nixon hated PBS, but his Watergate scandal gave the fledgling network a major hit, From Chris Rock to the SAG Awards. I was always interested in government. The press statement was false. But Dean understands how its not so easy to walk away from the center of power. White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman later claimed that Nixon appointed Dean to take the lead role in coordinating the Watergate cover-up from an early stage and that this cover-up was working very well for many months. The Mueller Report offers a powerful legal analysis that, notwithstanding the fact the pardon power is one of the most unrestricted of presidential powers, it cannot be used for improper purposes. . 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 . Trumps demands for unyielding loyalty from staff and statements such as asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes that would overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in the state rival what was heard on Nixons tapes, but were delivered with far less discretion. I learned this fact from Robert Kutak, with whom I had a friendship from our days when we worked as staffers for Congress. Will Dominion-Fox News lawsuit be different? One of the major clarifications that came about through the new ABA Model Rules was with respect to an attorneys obligations when representing an organization. On April 17, 1973, Nixon told Assistant Attorney General Henry Petersen (who was overseeing the Watergate investigation) that he did not want any member of the White House granted immunity from prosecution. 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. He was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice and sentenced to one to four years in prison. 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. In July 1973, evidence mounted against the president's staff, including testimony provided by former staff members in an investigation conducted by the Senate Watergate Committee. Former White House counsel John Dean, a key figure in the Watergate scandal that toppled former President Richard Nixon, testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled, "Lessons from . All believed that they could rely on the President to offer clemency under the Presidents pardon power. Yet President Nixon knew that offering such pardons or giving pardons to try to control witnesses in legal proceedings was wrong. [5], Dean was employed from 1966 to 1967 as chief minority counsel to the Republicans on the United States House Committee on the Judiciary. He said, "It's a nightmare. 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. Paramount to pay $122.5 million to settle lawsuit over CBS deal. [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. II, P. He is also the author of three books about television, including a biography of pioneer talk show host and producer David Susskind. John W. Dean (center) with his wife, Maureen, and John's lawyer, Charles N. Shaffer, in 1974. June 25, 1973: White House counsel John Dean recounts his meetings with President Nixon to the Senate Watergate Committee: "I began by telling the President that there was a cancer growing on . [21] This theory was subsequently the subject of the 1992 A&E Network Investigative Reports series program The Key to Watergate.[22][23]. The Jan. 6 committee's hastily scheduled hearing for Tuesday "better be a big deal," said a key Watergate scandal figure. For several reasons I believe he should testify. He was trying to shape my future testimony. Howard Hunt told me it would have exonerated Prez Nixon. The following year, he became an associate deputy in the office of the Attorney General of the United States, serving under Attorney General John N. Mitchell, with whom he was on friendly terms. II, P. 52), and McGahn is the only witness that the Special Counsel expressly labels as reliable, calling McGahn a credible witness with no motive to lie or exaggerate given the position he held in the White House. (MUELLER RPT, VOL. John W. Dean was legal counsel to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony lead to Nixon's resignation. [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". After four months, however, the Watergate trial judge, John J. Sirica, reduced his sentence to time . . If it was a county sheriff they wouldnt [stay], Dean said. To the extent Mr. McGahn wishes to assert Executive Privilege or the Attorney-Client privilege, he can do so, but those privileges were waived regarding the material plainly set forth in the Mueller Report. 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. Part of his decision to cooperate with investigators was self-preservation, as he believed he was being set up to take the fall for the White Houses handling of the scandal. . And politically, itd just be impossible for, you know, you to do it. . Feb. 1, 2019. After his plea, he was disbarred. A few specific examples of the Mueller findings and the Watergate parallels (HEADER CITES ARE TO VOLUME II): MUELLER REPORT RE MICHAEL FLYNN (PP. President Nixons direct interference with the Department of Justice, while facially proper under his Article II constitutional powers, was for the improper purpose of obstructing the investigation. Watergate, the Bipartisan Struggle for Media Access, and the Growth of Cable Television. 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. Records are described at an item level and all records contain brief descriptions and subject terms. I always envisioned going in and out of government. The Watergate "master manipulator" said the former president is in trouble after the latest revelations. He had only a limited attorney-client privilege when interacting with the President and advisors and the privilege belongs to the Office in any event. The coverage includes testimony from James McCord and E. Howard Hunt, two of the men arrested for breaking into the Watergate complex; John Dean, White House counsel from July 1970 to April 1973, who detailed the extent of the Nixon administration's involvement in the burglary and subsequent cover-up; Chief of Staff H.R. 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." Cox had been appointed after President Nixon fired his Attorney General Richard Kleindienst in April 1973 and the Senate insisted a special prosecutor be appointed by Kleindiensts replacement, Elliot Richardson. 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. John W. Dean on the second day of testimony in front of the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973. In a corporation, for example, the attorney would report up to the board of directors or a special committee of the board. 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. Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. Weekend Edition revisits audio from Dean's testimony. 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. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. The books present documents, reliable sources, and official Watergate testimony by John Dean as persuasive arguments. With his plea to felony offenses, Dean was disbarred as a lawyer in Virginia and the District of Columbia.[18][19]. But there is no question Mr. McGahn was a critical observer of these activities. PRINTING OFFICE, 2019). According to the Mueller Report, President Trump directed Mr. McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed on June 17, 2017, over purported conflicts of interest. 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.