Talk:John Dean

About to Get Hairy

The more I read about Dean the more I started to call into question some facts. Then I stumbled upon what has been going on in recent years regarding allegations of Dean being the main force behind Watergate and it was done to cover up a prostitution ring he was running with his wife. At first I dismissed this as nutjob stuff but the more I look at it the more it seems to have some merit.

First off, I found evidence that Dean has admitted to not writing his first book, that it was ghost written for him, and that whole sections of it are fabricated. That really set me off because he admitted this in 1995, the author who really did write it has acknowledged it on his own personal website yet the story hasn't seemed to have much traction. The star witness at Watergate admits he didn't write his own "tell all" book on the subject and that parts of it are totally made up and no one seems to care? That bothered me.

Before I get into this I decided to get the source material myself: the books Will by G. Gordon Liddy (certainly to be taken with a grain of salt), Secret Agenda by Jim Hougan which seemed to start this ball rolling after Liddy's book and the latest one, Silent Coup by Len Colodny. The last book has interested me because both Dean and the DNC Secretary also implicated have lost their civil suits against Liddy and Colodny. Also John Ehrlichman ended up doing a documentary/interview video with Tom Clancy as the host that went into some of these issues some and finally, Investigative Reports on A&E did a show called The Key to Watergate covering this material. When Bill Kurtis puts his name on it (I'm a Chicago guy so Bill Kurtis carries a lot of weight with me) that really got me to thinking this isn't the usual conspiracy bunk. Also when I found out that Colodny is a liberal Democrat and has no love at all for Nixon that swayed me quite a bit because I didn't want Nixon apologist stuff.

So, what I've decided to do is get the books, read them, do some follow up research and come back at this article and the other Watergate articles to see how it should all fit. So, for now I think I will leave the article as it is rather than piecemeal revise things before I've done some more work. Once you get interested in this topic it really seems to eat you alive!! For me it all started wanting to flesh out some of the bios on Watergate figures and has snowballed into something else completely. I had always been a believer that Nixon's paranoia coupled with controlling and overzealous trusted aides (Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman) led to his demise. The more I look at it the more it seems this is really a story of ambitious thirtysomethings (Dean, Jeb Stuart Magruder, Egil Krogh and Gordon C. Strachan) who seized some power, mimicked and magnified the personal faults of Nixon, and brought down a presidency. In the case of Dean it could be even more than that.

--Wgfinley 19:04, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So Dean has been accused by some reliable sources of having been the primary planner of the Watergate break-in? Is that what your'e saying? When you say "the main force behind Watergate" it's a little unclear exactly what that entails. That to me seems somewhat far fetched. And how does it connect with his alleged prostitution ring? I'm curious now. -R. fiend 19:14, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Basically it boils down to who ordered the Watergate break in. Dean's story, and the accepted story since he cooperated, has always been that John N. Mitchell ordered it. While Watergate was on the list of plans it wasn't at the time the break-in took place because that DNC office wasn't in full use, the candidate hadn't been picked, etc. In other words it had little practical use as a target for political espionage. Mitchell was no political neophyte, to think he would order that just doesn't seem right. Liddy states that Dean (stating he was acting on behalf of Mitchell) ordered the first infiltration and they successfully planted the bugs, one wasn't working right. Liddy was going to have the burglars go back to repair the defective bug when Magruder turned a simple repair operation into a major photo mission and allegedly the target was a secretary's desk where she was keeping these files on the prostitution ring. It's immense and there's some facts to back it up including a key taped to a notebook one of the burglars had, the key opened one thing -- the secretary's desk. From there it's a whole boatload of information, I need to sift through it some more which is why I'm holding off on doing anything. The major repository for Colodny's research for Silent Coup can be found online at The Nixon Era Center. I've gone through some material there and really want to have at the books some more to try to sort it all out. If you want a decent overview they have that entire Investigative Reports piece available here.[1] It's pretty shocking stuff. This was right after Colodny's book came out but Dean's admission his first book wasn't written by him, etc. --Wgfinley 23:16, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Okay, someone jumped the gun on me a bit with the issues regarding Blind Ambition so I decided to put what I have up there so far. Consider this very much a work in progress as I'm gathering additional information. --Wgfinley 19:29, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• • The prositiution ring seems fishy to me. If it were true, and known by the Nixon administration, why wouldn't they go public with the information to discredit Dean when he became the star witness of the Watergate hearings? -R. fiend 19:51, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• • Nobody knew, Dean was intercepting the files from the FBI on their investigation so he could stay ahead of them. There's a lot to it that really merits research. I think for now saying "these are the claims" and "Dean sued because they claimed that" and "dean lost the suit" is staying factual without getting into whether they are merited or not. The book is extremely well researched and documented so it's not like it's an Oliver Stone conspiracy theory (interestingly Stone never went into why there was a Watergate break-in in Nixon, it would be right up his alley!. I'll keep probing, can't wait until the books show up actually. --Wgfinley 20:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Maureen Dean

I was surprised there was no article on Maureen Dean, John's wife, who has written at least three books herself.

67.142.130.17 (talk) 01:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)Deena67.142.130.17 (talk) 01:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Under the "Personal Life" section, his wife Maureen's maiden name is given as Kane. But, under the "Life after Watergate" section, she's referred to as "the former Maureen "Mo" Biner (his then-fiancée)". This should be clarified and corrected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tfgreene (talk • contribs) 16:49, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. I don't have access to the sources but this glaring contradiction still exists. The article as a whole is pretty abysmal & I do wonder about its neutrality. - Sitush (talk) 16:04, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Biner was her first husband’s last name. 2601:280:4C80:6C00:6CF4:FAE4:21E4:658C (talk) 22:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Once again the Bio Box has been cleansed of any mention of his felony conviction.

Ten years ago we had a discussion on this page about the difference between the biography, and specifically the bio box, for John Dean and that for his fellow convicted Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy.   

Now we see that Dean's bio box has been cleansed of all mention of his conviction, while Liddy's contains both "Criminal status Released when parole came up after 4.5 years in prison" as well as "Criminal charge Conspiracy, burglary, illegal wiretapping" and also "Penalty 20-year imprisonment, later commuted to 8 years by President Jimmy Carter"

Many people accuse Wikipedia of systematic Leftist POV, which I like to think is not true. In the years since working for Nixon Dean has been an outspoken critic of Republican administration and has been employed by left and center-left media outlets as a pundit.

Liddy has had a similar trajectory, only his commentary has been as a right-wing pundit and has taken place on right wing media outlets.

Why do the two convictions as part of the same political scandal merit such disparate treatment from Wikipedia editors? Occam's razor suggests that Liddy is viewed as a bad person, and his convictions are tangible proof of this, while Dean is "one of us" and a rehabilitated guy, who made a few mistakes in his past but heroically brought down Nixon, and so doesn't deserve to the the "felon" label attached to his bio box AT ALL, while Liddy gets it THREE TIMES.

It's not a good look for Wikipedia.

ZeroXero (talk) 15:55, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

fromcott Searle did you live innapa calif my dad nameis Richard Searle is dad name was dave Searle — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.167.214.71 (talk) 09:07, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Removing false claim about immunity

Based entirely on "The Ends of Power," H.R Haldeman's memoir, one user claimed that Dean had tried to get immunity from Nixon. This is false, Dean never tried to get immunity from Nixon, but went to federal prosecutors who denied him immunityThe Watergate Source (talk) 18:18, 30 October 2020 (UTC)