New Watergate book says John Dean ordered break-in

Reuters ^ | May 19, 2008 | Steve Holland

[tlb]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new book on the scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon alleges that White House counsel John Dean ordered the infamous Watergate break-in in 1972, a charge Dean strongly rejected.

James Rosen, a Fox News Channel correspondent in Washington, made the charge based on interviews and an exhaustive review of documents for "The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate."

Dean called Rosen's assertion "pathetic."

Rosen quoted from a 1990 interview from another central Watergate figure, Jeb Magruder, that "the first plan that we got had been initiated by Dean."

To help build his case, Rosen quoted from a statement that Magruder made in a legal deposition in 1995 about "Gemstone," Watergate planner G. Gordon Liddy's code-name for the burglary:

"Question: 'Is it true that John Dean was one of the people in the White House that was pushing for the Gemstone plan?'

"Magruder: 'Yes.'

"Question: ... Is it, in fact, truthful that you and John Dean had prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in?'

"Magruder: 'Yes."'

Dean told Reuters, "I hope this book is being sold as fiction, for if it is not, readers are being defrauded."

"His conclusions are pathetic. Rosen has simply ignored all the sworn testimony to the contrary, including my own," he said.

Rosen's book also alleges that the doomed wiretapping was deliberately sabotaged by the CIA.

Rosen says he had a rich trove of previously undiscovered information to scour for his book, including 5,000 pages of executive session testimony by key witnesses before the Senate Watergate committee, including Dean, Magruder, James McCord, E. Howard Hunt and Alexander Haig.

[bvw]

Wikipedia:

Dean chronicled his White House experiences, with a focus on Watergate, in the memoirs Blind Ambition and Lost Honor. Blind Ambition would become the point of controversy many years after its publication.

In 1992, he hired famed attorney Neil Papiano and brought the first in a series of defamation suits against G. Gordon Liddy for claims in his book Will and St. Martin's Press for its publication of the book Silent Coup by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. Silent Coup alleged that Dean was the mastermind of the Watergate burglaries, and the true target of the burglaries was to seize information implicating Dean and Maureen Biner (his then-fiancée) in a prostitution ring. After hearing of Colodny's work, Liddy issued a revised paperback version of Will supporting Colodny's theory. This theory was subsequently the subject of an A&E Network Investigative Reports series program entitled The Key to Watergate in 1992. Liddy's defense team focused on allegations that Blind Ambition was ghost written by Taylor Branch, a charge that Dean denies to this day.

In the preface to his 2006 book, Conservatives Without Conscience, Dean strongly denied Colodny's theory, pointing out that the Colodny's chief source (Phillip Mackin Bailley) had been in and out of mental institutions. Dean settled the defamation suit against Colodny and his publisher, St. Martin's Press, on terms which Dean stated in the book's preface he could not divulge under the terms of the settlement, other than stating that "the Deans were satisfied." In the footnote to this portion of the preface, Dean stated that the federal judge handling the case forced a settlement with Liddy.

... Dean frequently serves as a guest on the MSNBC show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann ...

Says something about Olbermann, more or less.

[LS]

See my comments on this book, above.

[weegee]

This has been something GG Liddy has discussed for many years on his radio show. Hasn’t he been pointing the finger at Dean?

[San Jacinto]

Thanks for the post. I will be reading this book.

In 1991, Silent Coup was published (Colodny and Getlin, St. Martin's Press). It exposed the Washington Post/Woodward/Bernstein version of Watergate as deeply flawed. Sixty Minutes was to feature the book, but canceled the segment at the request of their buddies over at the Post.

Silent Coup laid out the facts showing that John Dean was a sniveling, ambitious, corrupt little worm who was eager to exploit the paranoia of the Nixon Administration by using his position as White House Counsel to become a conduit for secret intelligence and dirty tricks to curry favor with the higher-ups. When the deal blew up in his face, he was able to adroitly convince Halderman /Erlichman that John Mitchell was the one pushing the scheme while allowing Mitchell to assume Halderman/Erlichman were behind the operation. He then secured a sweetheart deal from the prosecutors and the Dems by helping them nail Nixon. He has become a darling of the Left since then.

This new book will undoubtedly be discredited by the MSM as a right-wing hack job and will probably not be able to overcome such attacks simply because Watergate is now such ancient news, but it will be of great interest to those of us who have continued to be interested in how this story was played in the late 1970's, including how easy it was for John Dean to dupe the public with the help of very willing accomplices in the media.

[LS]

See my post, above, on my experience with this.

[Lancey Howard]

If I remember correctly, Liddy interviewed the authors of that book who claimed that Dean’s wife was a hooker and that the breakin was ordered BY DEAN to investigate her and who ‘knew’ her

Yep. That's in part what led Dean to sue Liddy. G said he actually learned a lot of things he never knew before that were documented in 'Silent Coup'.

[Lancey Howard]

I was in college at the time and followed the Watergate news very closely. During the summer I would come home from my job and immediately plant myself in front of the TV to watch the hearings (yeah, I was a politics nerd even back then).

One thing that always nagged at me was how quickly Dean flipped. I mean, it was a mind-boggling complete 180. One day the Democrats were calling him a sleazy, lying bastard and the next day the Republicans were calling him a sleazy, lying bastard.

(Ironically, I believe both sides were correct.)

Dean’s fingerprints are all over the break-in. As another poster pointed out, the break-in made no sense on the face of it. It never did. The only question about the ‘72 election was how big of a landslide Nixon would get. Mo Dean is the link.

[21twelve]

Yep - “Silent Coup” is an excellent and entertaining read and VERY well documented. It has been awhile since I've read it - but grab it to look up things when something prompts me in the news. There was a news story a few years ago about an Admiral that was accused of dealing in military arms. He said something like “It is preposterous, unbelievable, that I would be involved in something like this”. His name sounded familiar and he was in Silent Coup, in the chapters on how the military was going around the state department on certain matters. In the book, when accused of this, he used almost the exact same quote forty years earlier!

[databoss]

didn’t GGL make this assertion a decade ago?...Mo Dean was on a call girl list in DNC HQ so Dean got the perfect patsy in attack dog (GGL) to do a black bag job...

[kathsua]

Wasn’t there an earlier book suggesting the same thing? I believe it suggested Dean was concerned that his then girl friend had a room mate who was linked to a possible prostitution ring operating out of the Democrats headquarters.

[expatpat]

You can’t rely on Wikipedia for anything the least bit controversial.....

[infowarrior]

He would sell his soul to save his hide.

Would? I beg to differ, but he already *has*...

the infowarrior

[bvw]

You are right. It was wrong to pass along info about it, from Wiki or not -- the story is a mess, stinks. Still, passing along more crap makes the mess worse. And the stuff in Wiki in messy matters like this can't be repeated there's no way to evaluate the truth of it -- having posted it under my handle -- it is something I regret. I need a shower!

Thanks for the advice. I'll repeat no more from Wikipedia, and attempt to check and cut off the rumor-impulse I obviously have had a weakness with.

[expatpat]

No, you are too hard on yourself. I intended only to offer a caution, not to criticize your posting it.

[okie01]

[John Dean] would sell his soul to save his hide.

If I'm not mistaken, he already has.

[bvw]

Thanks! Still ...despite the demon shown above, I meant it about Wikipedia and rumor passing. The first should be checked on non-controversial issues before using, and not passed along for anything even a little buzzed up, and rumor crap even on "public" individuals should not be passed along, period.