Watergate whistleblower and former White House Counsel John Dean spoke to an audience Saturday at ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus about his involvement in the scandal that contributed heavily to Nixon’s resignation.
Dean served as the White House Counsel for President Nixon and was one of the first people notified of the Watergate burglaries. In his newest book, “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,” he reveals the transcriptions of the Nixon tapes.
Dean sorted through over 4,000 hours of recordings that came from several different rooms in the White House during Nixon’s short-lived term as president. The final transcript created by Dean consisted of over 6 million words, and Dean said the compilation was no easy task.
“It could take 6-8 hours just to transcribe 10 minutes worth of recording,” he said.
The Watergate Scandal was not the only illegal activity planned by Nixon and his administration, Dean said.
“I also had turned off a prior effort to burglarize and fire bomb the Brookings Institute by the same group,” he said.
Although the Watergate Scandal occurred over 40 years ago and has received much attention since then, Dean’s recent findings shows another side that is often overlooked of the former president. Dean recalled reviewing tapes of the interaction between Nixon and his family.
“There’s just enough that I was able to get a sense about how he interacted with him,” Dean said. “It’s very different from what we all might’ve thought.”
During an attempt to make a peace agreement with North Vietnam in early 1973, instead of contacting his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, the first person Nixon called for advice was his wife, Dean said.
Although Nixon was never impeached, Dean mentioned an interesting fact that pertains to many former U.S. presidents.
“You can find federal statues to prosecute almost any president in the United States,” Dean said. “I just don’t think that we want to go down that road.”
The main reason that kept Nixon from destroying the recordings was because of their economic value, Dean said. After the conclusion of the scandal, Nixon sold the tapes for approximately $18 million.
Dean was appointed to ASU’s Barry Goldwater Chair of American Institutions for the 2015-2016 school year, and this was his final lecture as chair holder.
Former U.S. House Rep. Barry Goldwater, Jr. and Dean have been friends since childhood and remain so. Dean attributed much of his inspiration for becoming active within the government to the father of Goldwater, Jr., former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater.
“He took us to different events in the senate, and it was just a real eye opener,” Dean said.
The revelation of Dean’s experience through the scandal was a monumental time for the United States, ASU Foundation Professor of History Brooks Simpson said.
“The Watergate Scandal led to a growing skepticism about whether our public officials were being honest and candid with us,” Simpson said. “We are now much more suspicious of people in power.”
The event was organized by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which is promoted through ASU.
Dean was the institution’s first speaker in their new ongoing effort to bring in renowned figures that can help spark relevant conversation about society, Richard Knopf, the director of the institute, said.
“The primary motivation was let us get somebody in the political world who can help us develop some conversation about where history meets current affairs,” Knopf said.
During the Q&A portion of the presentation, an audience member asked Dean what his thoughts were on the current Republican presidential candidates in comparison to Nixon, specifically Donald Trump.
“Trump is Nixon on steroids,” he said.
Contact the reporter at Dustin.Quiroz-Clark@asu.edu.
