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The Nixon Defense What He Knew and When He Knew It John W Dean 9780670025367 Books

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The Nixon Defense What He Knew and When He Knew It John W Dean 9780670025367 Books

John Dean is a man with a mission, one that has lasted him most of his adult life. This comprehensive tome is the sort of documented, primary evidence that is only done by someone who’s got a large stake in setting the historical record straight. Dean is that man.

It goes to show that even though the First Amendment has become narrower in some ways, what with the NSA helping itself to all of our phone records and no reporters or photographers being permitted in war zones anymore, yet in some ways it has become much broader. If you are curious about these transcripts yourself, you can get onto the website Dean offers at the very beginning of his missive, or you can do as I did, and go to YouTube. I don’t know whether all of the transcripts are there; I wasn’t on a mission with a scope as large as Dean’s, and there were so many, many hours of taped conversation, but YouTube has so much material, some of it historical and/or arcane. But during my surf I did note that there was a lot of what would previously have been considered restricted material there. It wasn’t just the resignation and the Checkers speech; it was a tremendous amount of data. Send out your thanks to the gods of technology, which is what made Dean’s newer and more comprehensive transcription possible.

I was in high school during the Watergate scandal, and I wasn’t in Seattle then, but in a nearly 100% Caucasian,mostly affluent Republican suburb outside Portland, Oregon. My high school peers said things like, “Oh well of course he lied, but he’s still a better president than McGovern would have been”, and “Wow. Rose Mary Woods. Now there’s loyalty!”

My own father, a conservative Republican, scowled at my sister and me as we avidly viewed the presidential resignation speech. He poured himself another, another and yet another glass of bourbon and shook his head, telling us that the president was a fine man who had been viciously hounded by a liberal press. So, for those of us who lived through this American political saga, it’s about context.

For those who seek less detail than is included here or want a novel-like story arc, I would recommend “All the President’s Men”, which is a briefer and less repetitive narrative told by one of the investigative journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal. For those who are sticklers for detail, either for academic or professional reasons or because, like me, you are addicted to Watergate material, this will be a deeply satisfying read.

To put it another way: if, like me, you had to get a copy of The Pentagon Papers and read what the US government tried to suppress, then you also ought to read this book.

At first, I thought Dean’s tone was a little too plaintive, given that he had cooperated in a cover-up himself, albeit under protest, for nearly a year. Once I got into the trial material and saw the vindictive and purposeful way Richard Nixon and those who worked for him set about to “destroy Dean”, I no longer felt that he protested too much. The machinations of Nixon’s revenge are worth a thesis unto themselves, so I will let that bit go and move on. You’ll have to read the book if you want more about Nixon’s vengeance.

What did Nixon know? I started to provide it in bullet points here, and realized it was just no fun that way. Let me say this much: Dean does answer the question. Nobody living knows more about this subject than John Dean. It has become his life’s work. If you invest yourself in 700+ pages of text, you will not come away feeling cheated, unless you skim and miss things. I didn’t.

It was not only Nixon’s self-righteous attitude when it was clear that he was legally and morally wrong that I found disturbing, but also the tone. The racist and sexist remarks that punctuate the conversations he has with his highest-level advisors cannot simply be written off as relics of that point in history. It is appalling.

What is equally appalling is that upon learning of the burglary at the Democratic headquarters, Nixon, Haldeman and Ehrlichman find no moral objection to what has been done; hell, they’ve authorized far worse things, as we later learn. No, what disturbs them is how badly the job was done, how unprofessional the burglars were. It sounds like something out of a Godfather sequel.

And it just gets worse. By the time Dean decides that Nixon cannot be redeemed and goes to the prosecutor to explain what has happened and try to gain immunity, we see Nixon vow first not to speak to him and to fire him as White House counsel; then to “destroy” him, which is ugly but can have multiple meanings, literal and figurative…and then ultimately Dean must enter a witness protection program for awhile because of the mountains of death threats that are received daily. Dean’s counsel wants to know whether Nixon would try to have him killed, and at first Dean, who did not ruffle easily, thought not. But then he mused that it was possible the president would arrange something through his pal, Bebe Rebozo.

I had heard from friends who had read more than I had that Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were serious thugs. This transcript and the brief paraphrasing that connects its pieces (not unlike Sheehan’s Pentagon Papers) makes all of it quite real. This man was supposedly the leader of the “free world”! He used public monies to bring down retribution on his enemies (his own word), and used other people’s tax dollars to fund a remodeling and extension of his home in San Clemente. He continually revised the truth according to what was convenient for him.

At first, I wondered: did the guy have some sort of psychiatric disorder that made him unable to process clearly? But as the story unfolded, I could see exactly how well he tracked events. His temperament and loyalties were ever-changing and always in line with his own self-interest. He could not, absolutely could not bear for the burglary scandal to touch his dear friend and former law partner, John Mitchell, who headed up the Committee to Re-elect the President. Absolutely not! It was unthinkable, but only until the jig was obviously up. And when Mitchell had to be sacrificed, then Nixon just didn’t talk to him anymore. That was it, over, done. And then, everything was Mitchell’s fault; his old friend was more like a waste basket by the door. When you see a problem, toss it onto the Mitchell pile. He did it.

Then of course he had other two best friends, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, who were the only people he still trusted (and though this book is about politics, I found it interesting that the First Lady is never mentioned; he doesn’t eat dinner with her, doesn’t have her out on the presidential yacht…we hear from Tricia and Julie, his daughters, during the peak of crisis, but the guy’s wife was practically invisible).

But Haldeman and Ehrlichman should not be culpable for all the illegal things they had helped him plan and execute, and so he decided that his counsel, John Dean, should serve as the go-between, so that everything that was told to Nixon by Dean would (he thought) be covered by attorney-client privilege. And this is when Dean begins to squirm, as things that are illegal, immoral, and untenable are sent via him as the presidential filter. At first he just does what the boss says; then he starts to tentatively warn him that he’s getting into some deep water here; and eventually he is laying it on the line, and Nixon tells him that of course, those discussions never occurred, and these things never happened.

Later, when Dean realizes that he cannot work with Nixon without breaking the law, he goes to the prosecutor, hoping to avoid prison. Then, Dean is no longer the guy Nixon trusts, and in fact every bad thing anyone who ever worked for Nixon ever did, is said to have been done by Dean. It is a fascinating transformation. And the way Nixon first clings to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and seems to actually be a little afraid to fire them, but he then is ready to lay blame at their door (while suggesting to Haldeman on the side that he can pardon him when the whole thing is over). Fascinating. It is so dreadful that I found myself tempted to add this book to my “horror” shelf.

Here’s the obvious analogy I see: when people go to the zoo, some of them want to see the giraffes, the hippos, the monkeys, and then they get their cotton candy and take the kiddies home.

But others have to visit the small dark building where the reptiles slither around.

And so it is with Nixon buffs: we cannot help but be transfixed by that which seems so sinister, so repulsive to our own humanity. We look because we can’t stand not to look. Once we look, we cannot look away.

Dean’s revenge is in having the last word about what was done during that terrible time, and in making absolutely plain what the truth is. He is painstaking in using new technology to improve the historical record. Payback is sweetest when you are absolutely correct, and if there is a theme to this publication, there it is. And now most of the ugliest players are dead and cannot come back to wreck havoc upon the living anymore. May they rot where they lie.

If like me you cannot look away, read Dean’s record of this criminal conspiracy to cover up covered up obstructed justice by the man who held more power than any other politician, and by his loyal minions. The repetition of the conversations in some ways is entirely appropriate because it shows the level of obsession, and in particular, of Nixon’s obsession with the power that his presidency provided, at least for a time, and how badly the public’s trust and resources can be misused and abused.

If you read it at night, you may want to leave the light on when you go to sleep. Nixon is dead, but you just never know who the hell is out there.


Tags : The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It [John W. Dean] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>Based on Nixon’s overlooked recordings, New York Times</i> bestselling author John W. Dean connects the dots between what we’ve come to believe about Watergate and what actually happened</b>   Watergate forever changed American politics,John W. Dean,The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,Viking,0670025364,(John Wesley),,(Richard Milhous),,1913-1994,1938-,American Government - Executive Branch,American Government - National,Biography & Autobiography Presidents &Heads of State,Dean, John W.,History - U.S.,History United States 20th Century,History United States General,History of the Americas,Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999,Nixon, Richard M.,POLITICAL SCIENCE American Government Executive Branch,POLITICAL SCIENCE American Government National,POLITICAL SCIENCE History & Theory,Political Science,Political Science Corruption & Misconduct,Political leaders & leadership,PoliticsInternational Relations,Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000,Regional History,U.S. History - 1970s,U.S. President,USA,United States - 20th Century,United States of America, USA,Watergate Affair, 1972-1974,c 1970 to c 1979,c 1970 to c 1980

The Nixon Defense What He Knew and When He Knew It John W Dean 9780670025367 Books Reviews

Excellent recount of that crazy era and of the man who thought he was above it all. That is was written by someone so close to all the action makes it all the more validating. I wish more people would read books on history, both ancient and recent. If so, we might not have a president right now who thinks he is above it all. Here we go again! Thank you Mr. Dean. This book should be required reading in every sixth grade class.
Years ago I read All The President's Men, and listened to or watched numerous documentaries, so the names and historical timeline of Watergate are very familiar. I was in my 20s and paying attention during the unfolding of this scandal. After recently seeing John Dean in a political forum and being impressed, I decided to read his Blind Ambition. That lead me to The Nixon Defense published in 2014, based upon the tapes and other declassified diaries, journals, memos, and official records. It was a page-turner and provocative read for me. And an amazing insight behind the curtain, the power of the presidency. John Dean is a precise and thorough writer, he assumes the reader is paying attention and following along. Anyone intrigued by present and past US political history will enjoy and learn something from both of these books. I don't read political novels, truth is stranger than fiction.
Let me begin with a disclaimer that I voted for Richard Nixon for president in 1972, All I can say is thank goodness for John Dean. In 1973 he exposed the extent of Nixon and his closest advisers' involvement in the Watergate Cover-up, which led ultimately to Nixon's resignation. In 2014 he published this book which is a compilation of all the taped conversations between Nixon and his aids regarding Watergate. As the years recede, the sharp edges of events sometimes soften. Each year, Nixon loyalists such as Pat Buchanan, Ben Stein and Geoff Shepard trot out the old canards that Watergate was a minor offense and Nixon's resignation was the result of a left wing conspiracy to overturn the election of 1972 and damage the Republican Party. What a bunch of baloney! Dean's latest book, based on Nixon's own words on the tapes at the National Archives show that from the beginning Nixon was scheming with his staff to stop the investigation by the FBI (obstruction of justice) and conspiring to encourage perjury of key players and to pay hush money to those arrested in the break-in. Further, instead of a "third rate burrglary" Watergate was just one more effort by the Nixon re-election committee to manipulate and control the candidate selection process of the Democratic Party to insure Nixon faced their weakest candidate, insuring a Nixon mandate. As a historian of the period, I am convinced that Nixon wanted his landslide so that he could reorganize the Federal government, making the presidency much more powerful in a way that would have significantly altered the separation of powers and checks and balances of the Constitution. It was to be the most blatant attempt since FDR tried to pack the Supreme Court to aggrandize the powers of the presidency. We should be grateful for Mr. Deans actions in 1973 and his writing in 2015. Thank you, Mr. Dean. This is a substantially large book and at times the conversations are a bit turgid, but it provides a comprehensive understanding of how Richard Nixon brought on his own downfall.
John Dean is a man with a mission, one that has lasted him most of his adult life. This comprehensive tome is the sort of documented, primary evidence that is only done by someone who’s got a large stake in setting the historical record straight. Dean is that man.

It goes to show that even though the First Amendment has become narrower in some ways, what with the NSA helping itself to all of our phone records and no reporters or photographers being permitted in war zones anymore, yet in some ways it has become much broader. If you are curious about these transcripts yourself, you can get onto the website Dean offers at the very beginning of his missive, or you can do as I did, and go to YouTube. I don’t know whether all of the transcripts are there; I wasn’t on a mission with a scope as large as Dean’s, and there were so many, many hours of taped conversation, but YouTube has so much material, some of it historical and/or arcane. But during my surf I did note that there was a lot of what would previously have been considered restricted material there. It wasn’t just the resignation and the Checkers speech; it was a tremendous amount of data. Send out your thanks to the gods of technology, which is what made Dean’s newer and more comprehensive transcription possible.

I was in high school during the Watergate scandal, and I wasn’t in Seattle then, but in a nearly 100% Caucasian,mostly affluent Republican suburb outside Portland, Oregon. My high school peers said things like, “Oh well of course he lied, but he’s still a better president than McGovern would have been”, and “Wow. Rose Mary Woods. Now there’s loyalty!”

My own father, a conservative Republican, scowled at my sister and me as we avidly viewed the presidential resignation speech. He poured himself another, another and yet another glass of bourbon and shook his head, telling us that the president was a fine man who had been viciously hounded by a liberal press. So, for those of us who lived through this American political saga, it’s about context.

For those who seek less detail than is included here or want a novel-like story arc, I would recommend “All the President’s Men”, which is a briefer and less repetitive narrative told by one of the investigative journalists who uncovered the Watergate scandal. For those who are sticklers for detail, either for academic or professional reasons or because, like me, you are addicted to Watergate material, this will be a deeply satisfying read.

To put it another way if, like me, you had to get a copy of The Pentagon Papers and read what the US government tried to suppress, then you also ought to read this book.

At first, I thought Dean’s tone was a little too plaintive, given that he had cooperated in a cover-up himself, albeit under protest, for nearly a year. Once I got into the trial material and saw the vindictive and purposeful way Richard Nixon and those who worked for him set about to “destroy Dean”, I no longer felt that he protested too much. The machinations of Nixon’s revenge are worth a thesis unto themselves, so I will let that bit go and move on. You’ll have to read the book if you want more about Nixon’s vengeance.

What did Nixon know? I started to provide it in bullet points here, and realized it was just no fun that way. Let me say this much Dean does answer the question. Nobody living knows more about this subject than John Dean. It has become his life’s work. If you invest yourself in 700+ pages of text, you will not come away feeling cheated, unless you skim and miss things. I didn’t.

It was not only Nixon’s self-righteous attitude when it was clear that he was legally and morally wrong that I found disturbing, but also the tone. The racist and sexist remarks that punctuate the conversations he has with his highest-level advisors cannot simply be written off as relics of that point in history. It is appalling.

What is equally appalling is that upon learning of the burglary at the Democratic headquarters, Nixon, Haldeman and Ehrlichman find no moral objection to what has been done; hell, they’ve authorized far worse things, as we later learn. No, what disturbs them is how badly the job was done, how unprofessional the burglars were. It sounds like something out of a Godfather sequel.

And it just gets worse. By the time Dean decides that Nixon cannot be redeemed and goes to the prosecutor to explain what has happened and try to gain immunity, we see Nixon vow first not to speak to him and to fire him as White House counsel; then to “destroy” him, which is ugly but can have multiple meanings, literal and figurative…and then ultimately Dean must enter a witness protection program for awhile because of the mountains of death threats that are received daily. Dean’s counsel wants to know whether Nixon would try to have him killed, and at first Dean, who did not ruffle easily, thought not. But then he mused that it was possible the president would arrange something through his pal, Bebe Rebozo.

I had heard from friends who had read more than I had that Mitchell, Haldeman and Ehrlichman were serious thugs. This transcript and the brief paraphrasing that connects its pieces (not unlike Sheehan’s Pentagon Papers) makes all of it quite real. This man was supposedly the leader of the “free world”! He used public monies to bring down retribution on his enemies (his own word), and used other people’s tax dollars to fund a remodeling and extension of his home in San Clemente. He continually revised the truth according to what was convenient for him.

At first, I wondered did the guy have some sort of psychiatric disorder that made him unable to process clearly? But as the story unfolded, I could see exactly how well he tracked events. His temperament and loyalties were ever-changing and always in line with his own self-interest. He could not, absolutely could not bear for the burglary scandal to touch his dear friend and former law partner, John Mitchell, who headed up the Committee to Re-elect the President. Absolutely not! It was unthinkable, but only until the jig was obviously up. And when Mitchell had to be sacrificed, then Nixon just didn’t talk to him anymore. That was it, over, done. And then, everything was Mitchell’s fault; his old friend was more like a waste basket by the door. When you see a problem, toss it onto the Mitchell pile. He did it.

Then of course he had other two best friends, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, who were the only people he still trusted (and though this book is about politics, I found it interesting that the First Lady is never mentioned; he doesn’t eat dinner with her, doesn’t have her out on the presidential yacht…we hear from Tricia and Julie, his daughters, during the peak of crisis, but the guy’s wife was practically invisible).

But Haldeman and Ehrlichman should not be culpable for all the illegal things they had helped him plan and execute, and so he decided that his counsel, John Dean, should serve as the go-between, so that everything that was told to Nixon by Dean would (he thought) be covered by attorney-client privilege. And this is when Dean begins to squirm, as things that are illegal, immoral, and untenable are sent via him as the presidential filter. At first he just does what the boss says; then he starts to tentatively warn him that he’s getting into some deep water here; and eventually he is laying it on the line, and Nixon tells him that of course, those discussions never occurred, and these things never happened.

Later, when Dean realizes that he cannot work with Nixon without breaking the law, he goes to the prosecutor, hoping to avoid prison. Then, Dean is no longer the guy Nixon trusts, and in fact every bad thing anyone who ever worked for Nixon ever did, is said to have been done by Dean. It is a fascinating transformation. And the way Nixon first clings to Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and seems to actually be a little afraid to fire them, but he then is ready to lay blame at their door (while suggesting to Haldeman on the side that he can pardon him when the whole thing is over). Fascinating. It is so dreadful that I found myself tempted to add this book to my “horror” shelf.

Here’s the obvious analogy I see when people go to the zoo, some of them want to see the giraffes, the hippos, the monkeys, and then they get their cotton candy and take the kiddies home.

But others have to visit the small dark building where the reptiles slither around.

And so it is with Nixon buffs we cannot help but be transfixed by that which seems so sinister, so repulsive to our own humanity. We look because we can’t stand not to look. Once we look, we cannot look away.

Dean’s revenge is in having the last word about what was done during that terrible time, and in making absolutely plain what the truth is. He is painstaking in using new technology to improve the historical record. Payback is sweetest when you are absolutely correct, and if there is a theme to this publication, there it is. And now most of the ugliest players are dead and cannot come back to wreck havoc upon the living anymore. May they rot where they lie.

If like me you cannot look away, read Dean’s record of this criminal conspiracy to cover up covered up obstructed justice by the man who held more power than any other politician, and by his loyal minions. The repetition of the conversations in some ways is entirely appropriate because it shows the level of obsession, and in particular, of Nixon’s obsession with the power that his presidency provided, at least for a time, and how badly the public’s trust and resources can be misused and abused.

If you read it at night, you may want to leave the light on when you go to sleep. Nixon is dead, but you just never know who the hell is out there.