17 Corporate Crime Reporter 26(11), June 30, 2003

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN DEAN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA

John Dean believes that the President -- George Bush, not Richard Nixon -- has a serious problem

"President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem," Dean wrote recently. "Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation. Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false.

In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war."

Dean wrote those words in an article titled "Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?" for the on-line journal Findlaw.com.

Given Dean's pivotal role in the impeachment of his former boss, Richard Nixon, the article created a buzz in legal circles.

We interviewed Dean on June 24, 2003.

CCR: What law school did you graduate from?
DEAN: Georgetown in 1965. Shortly thereafter, I went to work for the House Judiciary Committee. That was from 1965 to 1968. I was chief minority counsel of the House Judiciary Committee. After that I was then the associate director of the National Commission for Reform of the Federal Criminal Laws. I happened to draft the bill creating the Commission. At the first meeting of the Commission, Senator Roman Hruska asked that I become one of the Commission's directors.

CCR: What was the result of that Commission?
DEAN: They issued a report, with a suggested rewrite of the federal criminal code -- they made it into a modern code, as opposed to the patchwork that it was and is now. And in 1973 or 1974, the Justice Department tried to get it enacted, but it was not successful.

CCR: Who headed that Commission? And when did you leave the Commission?
DEAN: Former California Governor Pat Brown was the chairman. He was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson.

While I was with the Commission, the 1968 Presidential campaign was going on. On New Year's eve day, I received a call from the Deputy Attorney General-designate, Richard Kleindienst.

He asked whether I would meet with the Attorney General designate, John Mitchell. And I did. They asked me to take a position in the Department of Justice as the associate deputy attorney general. I accepted and I was in charge of legislation, and Congressional relations. That was in 1969. I was at the Department of Justice until July 1970. Then I went over to the White House as counsel to the President.

CCR: How did you get the White House job?
DEAN: Good question.

CCR: I noticed that in your book Blind Ambition that in prison, you told a Mafia don that you kissed a lot of ass to get that job.
DEAN: Your taking my facetious comment to a hit man, something he would understand, and making it into a bit more of a reality that is correct.

Obviously, as any young person, I did my fair share of kiss up to my superiors. But that isn't how I got ahead. Rather I worked hard at performing well at my work.

And that's how I succeeded. The way I ended up at the White House was I had a lot of contact with White House aides.

For example, John Mitchell didn't like to do a lot of public appearances. From time to time I was sent over to the White House to do media briefings, or work with the White House staff on developing legislation.

So, they got to know me at the White House.

When John Ehrlichman left the job of the counsel to the President, they were looking around deciding who to fill it, and they settled on me.

CCR: How long were you White House counsel?
DEAN: A little over 1000 days -- from July 1970 to April 1973.

CCR: Why did you leave?
DEAN: I left because the President asked for my resignation?

CCR: Why did he ask for your resignation?
DEAN: Because of Watergate. In a nutshell, I had told the President that the Watergate cover-up was going to blow-up, it was going to collapse, that he had a cancer on his Presidency, was the way I put it to him, and he didn't want to hear what I had to say. But what I told him did happen, and when it hit the fan, he realized that he had to ask not only for my resignation, but for White House chief of staff Bob Haldeman's and his top domestic affairs adviser John Ehrlichman's resignation. He was doing it to save himself. But it didn't work.

CCR: How many of your colleagues in the White House were convicted of crimes?
DEAN: I have never counted them.

CCR: What were you convicted of?
DEAN: I plead to a one count conspiracy charge.

CCR: What was your sentence?
DEAN: I was sentenced to two to four years in prison. But in fact, I was in the witness protection program.

It turned out to be 120 days, which I spent in a safe house in Maryland, and was driven to the Watergate Special Prosecutor's office almost every day.

CCR: You cooperated with federal investigators?
DEAN: I wasn't turned by the government, if that is what you mean. I went on my own to the prosecutors. I told my superiors what I was going to do before I did it. I told Haldeman and Ehrlichman that I was going to the U.S. Attorney.

CCR: Could the U.S. Attorney have made the case they made without you?
DEAN: The U.S. Attorney couldn't make the case with anybody. It was over their heads. They didn't make the case. It was turned over to a special prosecutor.

CCR: You cooperated with the special prosecutor.
DEAN: I did.

CCR: Could the special prosecutor have made the case without you?
DEAN: I doubt it. But the case was really made before the Senate Watergate Committee, and the prosecutors picked it up from there. I hired a very savvy defense attorney, Charles Norman Schafer. He practices out in Maryland.

Charlie had been in the Bobby Kennedy Department of Justice. He worked on one of the task forces that prosecuted Jimmy Hoffa, among others. I knew Charlie.

Occasionally he joined myself and others hunting. We used to go to a duck blind we leased down on the Eastern Shore. I respected him. I realized I didn't know the criminal law, even though I helped rewrite hunks of the criminal code -- that was highly academic executrices -- nothing practical or real world about it at all.

Charlie knew one of the assistant U.S. Attorneys and went to him and cracked a deal. He said -- I'll let you talk to Dean off the record. You can make your own decision. Charlie said -- I think Dean's a witness. But it has to be off the record.

The reason we insisted it be off the record was that I knew that the White House had been learning everything through the Department of Justice.

If the conversations weren't off the record, then the White House would know about everything. I proceed very slowly with the assistant U.S. attorneys for I was not sure how it would all play out.

In fact, it didn't play well. As the Nixon tapes now show, the information I provided the prosecutors went right back to the White House. And the President, even though he had fired Haldeman and Ehrlichman, was passing my information on to them.

When Charlie and I learned the prosecutors had breached our agreement, we just stopped dealing with them. That's when I went to the Senate Watergate Committee.

CCR: How soon after you left the White House did Nixon leave the White House?
DEAN: He didn't leave until August 1974. I left in April 1973.

CCR: What did you do after you left Washington?
DEAN: I came back to California, where my wife is from.

I wrote a book, Blind Ambition. I went back to night school and studied accounting and business and then became involved with private investment banking.

I had a number of partners and myself and we bought and sold small and middle market businesses.

But I promised myself when I turned 60, which I did a few years ago, I would start writing full time, which is what I am now doing.

CCR: Did your involvement with Watergate have any effect on your business?
DEAN: No. It never had any effect on my business at all. While I was writing the book, I was also lecturing.

I was still very high profile. Then as my profile lowered, it became easier to do business.

CCR: The litigation surrounding Watergate continued years later. You sued the authors of a book titled Silent Coup: The Removal of a President.

The book suggests that you masterminded the Watergate burglary to obtain documents linking your wife and a roommate to an alleged prostitution ring. What was the result of that lawsuit?
DEAN:The book was a fraud. It is remarkable it was ever published. The source for the revisionist account was a man who may have been the worse source ever in the annals of defamation law.

The defendants spent $15 million fighting us, however. When they realized they were not going to succeed, and they couldn't win by trying to outspend me, they settled.

CCR: What did that cost you?
DEAN: A lot of time.

CCR: Did the settlement cover yours costs?
DEAN: I'm not allowed to talk about the settlement. But I can say that we are satisfied by the settlement. I had a significant out of pocket expense.

CCR: Why was that book written?
DEAN: It was a hoax. It was written to make money. It became a rally point for some of the old gang of mine, trying to get back at me for testifying honestly about Watergate. It was a revenge book.

CCR: What about Nixon, in a nutshell?
DEAN: Very complex man. Had strong points, weak points, good side, and a dark side. Unfortunately, we look at him through the lens of Watergate, which puts out of focus anything that he did which was good. He did do good things, but there is no question -- he had a corrupt Presidency.

CCR: People say that he was the last liberal President.
DEAN: They say that with regard to his domestic policy, which he didn't pay much attention to.

CCR: He proposed a negative income tax --
DEAN: That was all people around him who were pushing moderate ideas which he was comfortable with.

CCR: You write an article for Findlaw.com an article every other week.

On June 9, you wrote one titled "Missing Weapons of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About the Reason for War an Impeachable Offense?" Since that article was published, more evidence has emerged about the deception. What is your argument?
DEAN:I didn't have an argument, nor did I answer my own question. I raised the question and took it as far as I could. Theoretically, it well could be an impeachable offense to lie and take a country to war.

The problem is that many of President Bush's predecessors have done just that -- if indeed he has lied.

Given the dynamics of impeachment law, which were so altered by the Republicans during the Clinton impeachment undertaking, we have a more current standard that President Bush has to be judged by. But it is still all hypothetical. We don't have all of the facts yet.

CCR: Clinton was impeached for lying about an extramarital affair.
DEAN: He was impeached for lying during a civil deposition.

CCR: It was about his extramarital affair. We are looking at the question of whether Bush lied to take a country to war -- arguably a more serious offense.
DEAN: I would say very arguably.

CCR: What are the chances that Bush will be impeached?
DEAN: We don't have all of the facts. We do know that there is the potential that Bush did lie.

Let's go back to the dynamics of impeachment. I actually spent more time back in Washington during the Clinton impeachment than I have during the past 30 years.

I was hired by MSNBC to be a commentator. So I followed it pretty closely. The Republicans did grease the machinery of impeachment. They made it much easier to roll that great cannon out than ever before.

At the time, I thought it was a foolish thing to do. They may well regret having rolled it out so easily. There is the possibility that if there is a change in the control of the Congress, you could have an impeachment.

Or if moderate Republicans joined with Democrats, you could also have an impeachment inquiry.

CCR: Was the Nixon impeachment a justified impeachment?
DEAN: Nixon was not impeached. Nixon resigned before he was impeached. The House Judiciary Committee had only completed its inquiry, voted on articles of impeachment, prepared its report, but before it was filed and submitted to the House, Nixon resigned.

CCR: Were the Nixon articles of impeachment justifiable?
DEAN: Absolutely. There is no question. The standard to which Nixon was being held had direct applicability to what we are looking at right now. A couple of the articles of impeachment cited Nixon's misuse of the FBI and the CIA. The CIA has a charter, which makes it clear that the CIA is to make its intelligence evaluations free of political influence. There has always been a concern that someone would try and influence its intelligence findings. If in fact there was political pressure, it is not only a potential impeachable offense, it is also a potential violation of the federal criminal code.

CCR: On a scale of justifiable impeachments, on a scale of one to 10, and let's say Nixon's was 10, how would you rank the Clinton impeachment?
DEAN: If you look at impeachable offenses, and high crimes and misdemeanors, I'm not sure I would put Nixon at 10. I could certainly put him at around eight.

CCR: Where would you put lying about the reason for war?
DEAN: It is a fact intensive question, but we don't have the facts. To take it hypothetically is dangerous, if not unfair. If the President told Cheney to go out and get the CIA turned around, and do a 180, and he is directly influencing the CIA, that is one set of facts. If the President had information that is given to him, and it's close but no Corona, but he takes the best spin on it, and goes with that, that's a how different set of facts.

CCR: Paul Krugman in today's New York Times says this: "There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war." Do you believe that is true?
DEAN: I think that is probably true.

CCR: Krugman says that while there may be a kernel of truth in everything that they say, when you back up, you see a pattern of deception.

There might have been an early tie between Saddam and Al Qaeda, but there was no evidence of an ongoing relationship. Is that going to be enough to support an impeachment?
DEAN:Impeachment is always a political action. It is a quasi-legal action. It is a political action dressed up to have the appearance of a legal undertaking.

CCR: The Democrats have said nothing about impeachment. You can't find Democrat who has called for impeachment.
DEAN: Any Democrat who did would be foolish. There is no basis at this point to call for anything.

CCR: Well, you agree with Krugman that there is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war.
DEAN: It's a long way between that and saying you should impeach the President. There's still a huge distance. A deception isn't necessarily a lie. That doesn't make it a crime.

That is not necessarily a high crime and misdemeanor.

So, I don't think you can leap immediately from deception to impeachment. I don't think you can leap from deception to intentional falsehood. It all depends on the facts. I can't push it that far.

CCR: Are you still a Republican?
DEAN: I've been a registered independent ever since I moved to California.

CCR: You were a Republican while working with Nixon.
DEAN: I was, although I never voted a straight ticket.

CCR: Did you support this President?
DEAN: What do you mean?

CCR: Do you support him? I'm trying to figure out your politics.
DEAN: I don't know that I want to use your interview to express my politics.

CCR: Is there strain of Republicanism in the country today that would support Bush's ouster?
DEAN: I don't have a clue.

CCR: You said that impeachment is a political action. So, is the country ready for an impeachment?
DEAN: Look at what the Republicans had to do to try and march Clinton into a trial. The country clearly did not want Clinton impeached.

The Republicans said -- to hell with the country. And they impeached him.

When it got to the Senate, they realized they would be in deep trouble if they convicted this man for this offense. Cooler heads prevailed. And it was so conspicuously partisan in the House. There was no reasoning. I can't tell you how many Republicans who I knew and talked with, and I visited with many of them at the time. And they said -- John, this is payback time. They intentionally wanted to mar President Clinton.

I was embarrassed for the House Judiciary Committee, for whom I had worked and served, and watched them bend over backwards in being fair with Nixon.

I thought the Republicans embarrassed themselves terribly and set a terrible precedent with Clinton.

They have changed the game of impeachment. They have made it much more available as a way to get after a President.

The other thing Bush has going for him, and that is the difficulty of initiating impeachment proceedings. The House Judiciary Committee has virtually no capacity to undertake investigations of any kind.

During Watergate, they relied on the Watergate Special Prosecutor's material. Had they not had that material, and the work of the Senate Watergate Committee, there is a good possibility they could have never prepared articles of impeachment against Nixon.

During the Clinton impeachment, the House Judiciary Committee relied on Ken Starr's investigation.

Without that investigation, they probably would have gone nowhere. But Ken Starr's office became, in essence, the investigative body for the House Judiciary Committee.

There is no longer an independent counsel. There is no special prosecutor who has been appointed to investigate this.

So, the likelihood of information being developed upon which an impeachment case can be built is right now pretty slim. Simply stated, there is no machinery to do it.

Even when the House Judiciary Committee has impeached federal judges, they have relied on outside investigations. The judge has typically been indicted and convicted of something. The Justice Department already has a complete file on the case.

It is just one of those things, and the impeachment machinery has never been institutionalized. They fumbled the effort to impeach Andrew Johnson.

And part of the problem was that they didn't have good material. And Johnson prevailed on many of the factual issues because the House had it wrong.

CCR: There is no evidence that Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States with weapons of mass destruction.

This was the linchpin argument that the Administration used to justify war with Iraq. Ari Fleischer said this is the reason we are going to war.

Well, let's say they find weapons, but they find no evidence of an imminent threat, are we in the same ballpark for purposes of impeachment?
DEAN:Again, the machinery of impeachment is extremely difficult to make operative.

But as I said earlier, the Republicans have certainly made it easier than it was before the Clinton proceedings.

CCR: But is it an impeachable offense?
DEAN: Any member of Congress can drop in a bill of impeachment. That starts the process. But it will be referred to the Judiciary Committee and nothing will happen.

There is no political momentum for it at this time. And as I said, the Judiciary Committee really has no machinery to investigate it. If the House Intelligence Committee came up with some very damning evidence that hadn't been made public, but that sufficiently showed some potentially impeachable offense, that could be turned over to the House. But we're talking hypotheticals. You are asking -- if we find nothing more than it wasn't an imminent threat, would that be the basis for impeachment? Probably not.

CCR: The President said that Saddam's weapons posed an imminent threat. Let's say that he knows that in fact it was not an imminent threat.
DEAN: How will you establish that?

CCR: In your article, you wrote this: "Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison.

If the Bush administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize or the public to support military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed."
DEAN:I stand by that statement.

CCR: Would that be an impeachable offense?
DEAN: It depends on the facts. You are asking me to speculate and I don't know.

CCR: What makes an offense an impeachable offense?
DEAN: It has to be a high crime and misdemeanor.

CCR: And what makes it a high crime and misdemeanor?
DEAN: That's whatever the House and Senate say it is.

CCR: It depends on the political will of the Congress.
DEAN: Absolutely.

CCR: And at this point, the political will is not there because the Congress is controlled by a group of partisan Republicans.
DEAN: At this point, that is correct.

CCR: What about political reaction against the administration on this issue so that they lose political support next year?
DEAN: That could very well happen.

CCR: What is your political judgment as to what the Democrats have to do to beat Bush next year on this issue?
DEAN: We don't have enough time left in this interview to discuss that.

CCR: Is there a candidate out there who can capitalize on this issue to beat Bush next year?
DEAN: On this issue alone, no. The issue is not there yet. The American people don't believe that they have been deceived into war. And I'm not sure they care.

CCR: Is there a John Dean within this administration who would move the issue?
DEAN: Probably, but whether he would or not, I don't know. It is not a road I could recommend anybody take.

CCR: Why not?
DEAN: It is not a pleasant path to take.

CCR: Why do you say there might be somebody in the administration who would cooperate with an outside investigator to get to the bottom of this?
DEAN: That could by anybody who has a conscience.

CCR: What makes you believe that someone like that exists in this administration?
DEAN: I want to believe that somebody out there has a conscience -- to give you a self-serving answer.

CCR: Would you describe yourself as a liberal Republican?
DEAN: Labels don't work terribly well for me. I'm a pragmatist.

CCR: Do you believe the right has taken over the Republican Party?
DEAN: Republicans run the spectrum.

CCR: Are you are Kevin Phillips Republican?
DEAN: What is a Kevin Phillips Republican?

CCR: Do you know Kevin Phillips?
DEAN: Sure I know him. He and I were at the Justice Department together. He worked for John Mitchell.

CCR: So you know his politics. Are you're a Kevin Phillips Republican?
DEAN: I know his politics. I want to hear what you say his politics are?

CCR: Populist, questioning the corporate control of the party Republican.
DEAN: I have read most of his books. I agree with him on some things and disagree on others.