Nixon's Secret (91 page)

C. The Very Slippery John Dean

You wouldn’t know it from reading the book, but John Dean is a convicted felon, disbarred and sentenced to a prison term of one to four years for his role in the Watergate scandal. He conveniently omits this, along with any mention of the myriad of criminal acts of which he has been accused.

Conrad Black, in his excellent Nixon biography, characterized Dean as the slipperiest of the Watergate figures. Here are some examples of how Dean appears to mischaracterize actions or to twist them to support his own point of view:

•     Omits mention of his own efforts to determine if Colson was involved in approval of Liddy’s plan (p. 32).

•     Admits to being “desk officer” for cover-up, but represents himself as a mere transmitter of messages between the people at CRP (Mitchell, Magruder, LaRue, Mardian, etc.) and his White House superiors (Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and President Nixon) (pp. 181 and 240).

•     Tells the president about the hiring of Liddy as CRP’s general counsel, while omitting any mention of Liddy’s all-important campaign intelligence plan (p. 269).

•     Alleged comment to Haldeman following the second meeting in the attorney general’s office:

   Haldeman first repeats Dean’s recollection of his comments after the second meeting on the tapes, but it appears to have been presented as a way to help Haldeman (p. 349).

   Dean also appears to claim that Kleindienst told the president that Dean had thought he had turned the whole Liddy thing off by his comment during that second meeting (“that this should never be discussed in the AG’s office”) (p. 412).

   Claims that Haldeman told him after his report of the second meeting not to do anything, just to stay away from it (p. 427). (Dean responded under oath in depositions (when it was pointed out that it was not possible for him to have seen Haldeman after this second meeting, as claimed) that perhaps he had seen Haldeman after the first meeting. He claimed that he had a clear memory of what was said, but could not pin down the precise date. But none of his story makes sense unless it occurred after the second meeting. Haldeman ultimately concluded, as he wrote in his book, that he had Dean had been lying all along.)

•     Asserted that “[n]o one on the [Ervin] committee made any suggestion whatsoever about my testimony” (p. 619), right after having admitted to having had secret meetings with Sam Dash (p. 617). This is “so Dean”: could he be distinguishing Dash, a committee staffer, from actual members of the Ervin Committee? (It’s a question of what the meaning of “is” is!).

•     Obliquely claims he did not work with Magruder on his perjury (p. 464). This phrasing also is “so Dean.” In his deposition, he appeared to deny that he suborned perjury because he was not advocating that Magruder lie; he was only helping him prepare to do so. Yet, he asserts in his book that Nixon, due to knowledge and assent to Magruder’s perjury, was himself guilty of conspiracy to suborn perjury (p. 119).

•     Said that he had continued to hope that his colleagues would come forward to confess their own involvement (p. 484), which (without his having admitted having done so) is presumably his explanation of why he didn’t mention their involvement to prosecutors until after many meetings had occurred.

•     Essentially skipped any real discussion of his March 21, 1973, evening meeting with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the president, as well as the subsequent meeting the next afternoon that included John Mitchell, perhaps because their content is not consistent with Dean’s story line. This is where Dean confirms that he can and will prepare a Dean Report, which the president can share with the Ervin Committee—and will be used as the basis for closed hearings on testimony from current and former White House staffers. It is the president’s salutary response to Dean’s disclosures on the morning of March 21. Dean also asserts that he was sent to Camp David the day after the March 22 meeting and only after he had arrived was he asked to write a report (p. 340). This is directly conflicted by the tape transcript, particularly the one prepared by the House Judiciary Committee (at HJC, p. 158). There also is a wonderful quote about a Dean conversation with Haldeman’s assistant, Larry Higby, where he said “I can’t do a damn thing on the report, but I’ve got sixty pages of working out my own defense, and it’s beautiful” (which certainly rings true, even though Dean denies having said it) (p. 518).

•     Time and again Dean assures us that Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell were convicted of perjury for their testimony before the Ervin Committee, without mentioning that such perjury charges were brought only against Haldeman and Mitchell and were almost all peripheral to the central Watergate story (p. 634).

•     It appears that the original rationale for Dean talking with a criminal lawyer may have been explained as a way to gain specific criminal legal advice to protect everyone (p. 359).

•     Dean’s defense as “the fall guy” (p. 424).

•     Says he only revealed the Enemies List stuff in response to a question from Senator Weicker (p. 619), without mentioning that he was Dean’s neighbor, had met secretly with him in his negotiations for Senate immunity as Watergate unfolded, and that Weicker had bought Dean’s townhouse in 1973, so that Dean could move to Los Angeles.

•     Denied removing any documents from the White House (p. 434), but later admitted to providing Houston plan to Sirica (p. 542) and Plumbers stuff to Silbert (Footnote 24, p. 547). Query whether this also related to documents about other of the White House Horrors: the Townhouse Project, the Milk Producer’s campaign donations, the president’s personal taxes, and the NSC wiretaps—all of which some believe were removed by Dean over the weekend of April 21. Also, Shaffer threatens to bring RN in on “other things” (p. 520).

•     Attempts to explain why he went to Ervin Committee instead of working with the prosecutors (p. 441), but the fact remains that he was offered immunity by Ervin and not by prosecutors.

•     Describes his September 15, 1972, meeting with Nixon and Haldeman, without any mention that he had mischaracterized it rather dramatically in his Ervin Committee testimony (p. 155).

•     While preparing his own transcripts of the White House tapes took over four years, Dean blithely accuses Nixon of not even bothering to review his own tapes in assembling the facts for his own Watergate defense. Dean then goes on to say that the president’s efforts to save himself amounted to a cover-up of the cover-up (pp. 341–342).

•     There is a good deal of back and forth, without any specificity, regarding Nixon’s possible actions following their March 21 meeting:

   Dean asserts that Nixon, in their conversation, instructed him to pay Hunt, which is certainly not true, since Dean did nothing following the meeting. Further, they discussed Hunt’s demand as remaining unmet when Dean, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the president gathered at 5 p.m. that same evening (p. 498).

   Yet, Dean also says that Haldeman and the president talked about Hunt’s last payment, “since it involved him,” without further explanation (p. 430).

   Dean also asserts that Nixon had built his entire defense around not knowing anything before their March 21 meeting, but later admitted in his
Memoirs
that he knew more before that date than he had admitted (p. 540).

D. Outright Factual Errors

There are a surprising number of factual errors on items where Dean should have known better, which suggests that Dean either didn’t write parts of the book or didn’t read the galley proofs (as he apparently didn’t do with regard to his first book, where much of the supposed dialogue turns out to have been added, allegedly without review by Dean, by his ghostwriter, Taylor Branch):

•     In describing Elliott Richardson’s background, the book fails to mention that he had been Secretary of HEW, which was the most long-lasting and significant of Richardson’s prior cabinet-level positions (p. 530).

•     Claims that Buzhardt was Haig’s roommate when they were at West Point (p. 551), but Haig’s book indicates Buzhardt was a year ahead of him and that Haig hardly knew him (Haig, p. 340).

•     Says that Krogh pleaded guilty to two perjury counts (Footnote 9, probably at p. 319 and mistakenly omitted). While Krogh was indicted for perjury, he pleaded to a single felony count of violating Dr. Fielding’s civil rights.