This summer, Americans are being treated to a rehashing of the individuals and events involved in the Watergate Scandal, which was kicked off with a foiled burglary at the offices of the Democratic National Committee on June 17, 1972. As we approach its 50th anniversary, most Americans already know that things ended rather badly for President Nixon: two dozen members of his administration were convicted and sent to prison, and he was forced to resign in disgrace.
But there’s a lot the public still doesn’t know about what really went on between the 1972 break-in and Nixon’s 1974 resignation. I was there, working behind the scenes as deputy counsel on President Nixon’s Watergate defense team. Unfortunately, I can tell you the public is not likely to be better informed by much of the programming set to debut around the anniversary.
The chief reason for this is that corporate media has chosen as their Watergate Whisperer the chief architect of the scandal: John Dean, who has spent years trying to deflect from his own wrongdoing by passing himself off as a whistleblowing hero. Dean is front-and-center in a CNN documentary that promised to dish the dirt on what Dean calls “the criminal conduct of Richard Nixon and his top aides.” Dean even headlined a screening of the film at the National Archives earlier this month.
