A new book by John Dean digs deeper into the machinations that felled an American president 40 years ago and left an imprint on the practice of politics today.
Dean traces the political scandal from the Watergate office-building break-in to Richard M. Nixon’s resignation with the aid of 600 secretly recorded conversations that had previously only been listened to by those at the National Archives.
Dean got them transcribed for “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,” arguably the most complete narrative. It tells how a smart, savvy man with a proven history of political resilience let a bungled burglary destroy his presidency.
“People in Washington (D.C.) throw Watergate around and really don’t have a clue about it,” Dean said in a phone interview. He was the White House lawyer whose Senate testimony helped force out Nixon. “This will tell them. It fills the gaps. To me, there is no unanswered question about Watergate.”
For some there is still one gap — who’s responsible for erasing 18 and one-half minutes of conversation between Nixon and H.R. “Bob” Haldeman three days after the break-in.
Dean offers a short list of suspects. But at this point it doesn’t seem necessary because the subject matter is crystal clear, given all the conversations those two would have in the ensuing months.
“I have concluded that, in the end, while there is no absolute proof about who did it, there really is no mystery at all about what was erased,” Dean writes in the book. “And then who did it is not as important as what was erased.”
Dean’s hands aren’t clean, and in May 1973 he informed Nixon of cascading events which threatened to envelop the president in a political crisis.
His reward? Nixon began trying to lay the blame on Dean and use his counsel as a shield against the unceasing bombardment of revelations that eventually collapsed his presidency.
Dean knew Nixon’s motives then and had them reconfirmed by what he heard on the additional tapes. There’s no anger.
“Not at all,” he said. “I know how the story ended. I just let the tapes tell the tale.”
Political reporter Jerry Cornfield’s blog, The Petri Dish, is at www.heraldnet.com.
