The Watergate Hearings, 50 Years Ago: Truth Was Not Up for Debate . This appears to have been well understood by McGahn and his lawyer, and I have read news accounts that McGahn has explained this concept to President Trump. For those of you who lived through Watergate, his name is synonymous with the political intrigue of the 1970s. Copyright 2008 NPR. [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". The mainstream media narrative about Watergate is a grotesque and fantastic distortion of historical fact. 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. 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. [15], Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on October 19, 1973. Former Trump officials have been criticized for waiting to express their misgivings over what was happening in the White House until after they left and made book deals. John Dean's statement to the House Judiciary Committee on June 10, 2019, as prepared for delivery. Dean is now the last man standing from that era, He is the last connection between this nation's authoritarian past and present. 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). 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. With his plea to felony offenses, Dean was disbarred as a lawyer in Virginia and the District of Columbia.[18][19]. that Nixon's motivation for preventing Dean from getting immunity was to prevent him from testifying against key Nixon aides and Nixon himself. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. WATERGATE: This is much like Richard Nixons attempt to get me to write a phony report exonerating the White House from any involvement in Watergate. Mr. Trump asked Comey to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation by saying so to the public. WASHINGTON, June 27 Following is the transcript of a White House memorandum analyzing John W. Dean's. testimony on Watergate, as read during the Senate Water gate committee's hearings to day by . Watergate, the Bipartisan Struggle for Media Access, and the Growth of Cable Television. 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. In reissuing Blind Ambition, which spent six months on the New York Times bestseller list and has been out of print for over two decades, author John Dean has added a powerful new Afterword, an extended essay in which he explains with the new clarity why (and how . [28] On March 31, 2006, Dean testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee during hearings on censuring Bush over the issue. Dean cites the behavior of key members of the Republican leadership, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich and Bill Frist, as clear evidence of a relationship between modern right-wing conservatism and this authoritarian approach to governance. 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 . Petersen provided Nixon with confidential information from the prosecutors and the grand jury proceedings. 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. . Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Collins, the last time I appeared before your committee was . II, P.117); McGahn discussed matters with others (e.g. Dean's first wife is Karla Ann Hennings, whom he married in 1962. 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. Nixon chose not to disclose the information he did have in order to protect his friend Mitchell, believing that revealing this truth would destroy Mitchell. . . March 23, 1973: The McCord letter is made public by Judge Sirica in open court at McCord's sentencing hearing. 6; cf. Credit. [26], His next book, released in 2006, was Conservatives without Conscience, a play on Barry Goldwater's book The Conscience of a Conservative. It also led to the creation of the PBS NewsHour.. Ultimately, he became a witness for the prosecution. 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. [21] This theory was subsequently the subject of the 1992 A&E Network Investigative Reports series program The Key to Watergate.[22][23]. OLC Op. 9 Jun 2017. 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 . 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. In both situations the White House Counsel was implicated in the coverup activity. If the Watergate scandal happened today, Dean believes Fox News and other conservative outlets would give more oxygen to Nixons defenders and perhaps enable the disgraced president to at least finish out his term instead of resigning. Meanwhile, John Dean (Dan Stevens) was reportedly aware of the break-in plans and later tried to cover it all up. Check out this great listen on Audible.com. [33], In speaking engagements in 2014, Dean called Watergate a "lawyers' scandal" that, for all the bad, ushered in needed legal ethics reforms. (Following Coxs firing, a dozen plus bills calling for Nixons impeachment or creating a special prosecutor were filed in the House. 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. Feb. 1, 2019. A full cast of characters is available in our Gavel-to-Gavel exhibit. The Mueller Report explains in Vol. Let me briefly address the ethics question. John W. Dean was legal counsel to president Nixon during the Watergate scandal, and his Senate testimony helped lead to Nixon's resignation. You cant look at Watergate today without looking through the lens or at least a filter of the Trump presidency, Dean said. Don McGahn represented the Office of the Presidency, not Donald Trump personally. 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. . 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 . [Emphasis added.]. 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 W. Dean, former counsel to President Nixon, reflects on the much-anticipated testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was interested in meeting with Dean and planned to do so a few days later, but Cox was fired by Nixon the next day; it was not until a month later that Cox was replaced by Leon Jaworski. 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. John Dean was born in Akron, Ohio, and spent a significant part of his life in Marion. When Dean read that testimony in the summer of 1973 in front of a massive TV audience, he became the face of the Watergate conspiracy for most of America, according to Garrett Graff, author of Watergate: A New History.. After we settled the case, I started agreeing to do television, Dean said. [15] A sharp critic of studying memory in a laboratory setting, Neisser saw "a valuable data trove" in Dean's recall. Blind Ambition was ghostwritten by future Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Taylor Branch[20] and later made into a 1979 TV miniseries. . Mea Culpa welcomes back a very special guest, John Dean. I was always interested in government. Dean's testimony to the Senate the year before implicated Nixon in the Watergate affair. I dont think its an emotion that Donald Trump could ever muster.. . Dean a young, highly ambitious, Porsche-driving, tassel-loafer-wearing lawyer when he joined the ultra conservative Nixon minions ended up getting fired in 1973 once it became clear he would implicate the president in the cover-up. For a short amount of time, President Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen was set to appear before the House Oversight Committee to give public testimony relating to . This reporting out provision provides lawyers with leverage to stop wrongdoing if the client fails to take appropriate advice. The press statement was false. The investigation revealed that Nixon had a tape-recording system in his offices and that he had recorded many conversations. 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. Dean married Maureen (Mo) Kane on October 13, 1972. Now he thinks Donald Trump is even worse", "Former White House counsel for Nixon: Trump scarier than Nixon", "John Dean warns Gates's testimony may be 'the end' of Trump's presidency", "Watergate Figure John Dean Says Rick Gates' Testimony Could Be The End Of The Trump Presidency", "Here Is What Brett Kavanaugh Said About Sexual Misconduct In His Hearings", "Kavanaugh hearing: John Dean warns of a Supreme Court overly deferential to presidential power", "John Dean: If Kavanaugh's confirmed, a president who shoots someone on Fifth Avenue can't be prosecuted in office", "Former Nixon White House Counsel Case Against Kavanaugh", "Richard Nixon's White House counsel says Jeff Sessions' ousting 'like a planned murder', "Watergate's John Dean Explains How Trump Planned Sessions' Firing 'Like a Murder' And Details How Mueller Could Protect the Probe", "House Judiciary Committee sets hearing on Mueller report with Nixon White House counsel John Dean", "Dems to call Watergate star John Dean to testify on Mueller report", "Nixon's Watergate lawyer says Trump's 2024 bid is 'a defense of sorts' against Jan 6 indictment but it won't matter because the committee has an 'overwhelming case', John Dean testifying at the Watergate Hearings, Worse Than Watergate: Former Nixon Counsel John Dean Says Bush Should Be Impeached, Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Dean&oldid=1136144627, 20th-century American non-fiction writers, 21st-century American non-fiction writers, Lawyers disbarred in the Watergate scandal, People convicted in the Watergate scandal, People convicted of obstruction of justice, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from May 2021, BLP articles lacking sources from May 2021, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from May 2021, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2021, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2021, BLP articles lacking sources from October 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 28 January 2023, at 23:30.

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