By John W. Dean | Viking Adult | $35 | 746 pages | 2014

Senator Howard Baker once said that he thought Richard Nixon had 72 hours to save his presidency after the Watergate break-in on June 17, 1972 — the three days between the arrests at the Watergate and Nixon’s return from Key Biscayne to Washington. If he had dug out the facts, fired those responsible, and made full disclosure to the nation,
Baker thought that Nixon would have finished his second term and avoided the scandals known collectively as Watergate.

As John Dean’s new book makes clear, however, such a forthright approach was not in Nixon’s nature. Instead, Nixon and his loyalists subjected the country and themselves to two years of cover-up, conspiracy and controversy. Even today, four decades later, the story both fascinates and repels. While Nixon confided to an aide at one point that Baker “would never amount to anything” and “had a character flaw,” history has concluded that the converse was true.

Dean’s latest work is in many respects a bookend to his Blind Ambition (1976), which told the cautionary tale of his rise and fall as White House counsel under Nixon. The Nixon Defense is based on transcripts of more than one thousand White House conversations taped by the infamous Nixon taping system — less than half of which had ever been transcribed before. (Dean and a team of graduate student researchers undertook this Augean task.) This rich source material contributes some significant new information but also tends to trap the author (and reader) in the hothouse that was the Oval Office under siege. One often longs for a broader view of events or a judicious editor to pare away the unnecessary detail. And, as anyone who has spent time with a trial or deposition transcript can attest, literal transcription does not often serve literary style.

Nevertheless, the Watergate tale remains riveting. The break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the early hours of Saturday, June 17, 1972, was actually the second burglary by G. Gordon Liddy’s and Howard Hunt’s team of Cuban operatives. The first, on May 28, had installed the DNC bugs; the second was intended simply to fix a malfunctioning device. Their discovery by a hotel security guard, along with the arrest of their accomplice James McCord, the security director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President’s (CRP), garnered headlines in the Washington Post and lit the fuse for the biggest scandal in American political history. As is now clear, the cover-up began immediately and drew in White House Counsel Dean, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, Domestic Policy Advisor John Ehrlichman, former Attorney General and CRP Chair John Mitchell, Special Counsel Charles Colson, acting FBI Director Pat Gray, and a host of others within days. Much of the cover-up was driven by Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s fear of discovery of other activities by Hunt and Liddy when they served as the White House “Plumber’s Unit,” including the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office in September 1971. When the burglars demanded hush money, others were drawn more deeply into a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

While Dean does not believe that Nixon had advance knowledge of the break-in, he makes a convincing case that Nixon was deeply involved in efforts to use the CIA to stymie the FBI’s investigation within a matter of days. Ironically, Dean concludes that these initial efforts — a major count in Nixon’s eventual impeachment — were not designed to protect the Watergate burglars but merely to deflect investigation into an entirely legal anonymous campaign contribution routed through a Mexican bank.

From a “third-rate burglary,” Watergate quickly spread to encompass the Donald Segretti dirty tricks campaign, the Ellsberg break-in, the wiretapping of NSC staffers and press, the so-called Huston Plan for vast domestic surveillance, the Nixon “enemies list,” political use of the IRS, and the surreptitious taping of the Oval Office, the President’s EOB office, and Camp David. As the Washington Post, Watergate Special Prosecutor, and District Judge John Sirica pressed for the facts, White House and CRP staffers resorted to perjury before the grand jury, in the burglars’ trial, and before the Senate Watergate Committee to stifle the truth. When Dean began cooperating with prosecutors and the Committee, and with the almost-accidental disclosure of the tapes, the cover-up came apart. When the Supreme Court rejected the claim of executive privilege and ordered the tapes disclosed to the district court and Senate Watergate Committee, the involvement of the highest officials in the White House came to light.[1] Just a few days after the “smoking gun” tape of June 20, 1972, was released, showing Nixon discussing use of the CIA to thwart the FBI, the House Judiciary Committee voted articles of impeachment and Nixon became the first President to resign. Eventually, Haldeman, Erlichman, Mitchell, Magruder, Dean, Kleindienst, Kalmbach, Hunt, Liddy, Colson and others were convicted or pled guilty.[2]

After all the journalism, memoirs, and history written about Watergate, any reader must ask what a new volume adds to our understanding of the events and personalities. The Nixon Defense focuses almost exclusively on the cover-up, literally taking us behind closed doors at the White House as the President’s men weave their tangled web. Certainly Dean brings a unique perspective and a unique primary source to the story. The trade-off, however, is the lack of overall perspective and the nagging feeling that Dean is still writing his own defense, with axes to grind even after forty years. For the Watergate buff, The Nixon Defense is an often-fascinating review of the scandal. For a more general reader, however, the classic Woodward and Bernstein volumes or more academic treatments may be a better introduction. Either way, it seems clear that history has rejected the Nixon defense and regards its architect not as the victim of a political vendetta but as the source and inspiration for all the misdeeds remembered as Watergate.

Notes

1. Nixon v. United States, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).
2. See, e.g., United States v. Haldeman, 559 F.2d 31 (D.C. Cir. 1976); United States v. Mardian, 546 F.2d 973 (D.C. Cir. 1976); United States v. Erlichman, 546 F.2d 910 (D.C. Cir. 1976); United States v. Chapin, 515 F.2d 1274 (D.C. Cir. 1975); United States v. Barker, 514 F. 2d 208 (D.C. Cir. 1975); United States v. McCord, 509 F.2d 334 (D.C. Cir. 1974); United States v. Liddy, 509 F.2d 428 (D.C. Cir. 1974).

GARY C. SHOCKLEY is a shareholder with the Nashville office of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz PC and a member of the Tennessee Bar Association Board of Governors.