been in new york when the, he accepted or requested and accepted my resignation and declared haldeman and ehrlichman the two finest public servants he'd ever had to accept the resignation of. it's interesting, in writing his memoir nixon says, i'm the only one that tried to warn him. he said haldeman never came in, ehrlichman never came in, and he realized with hindsight that i tried to warn him that he really -- >> host: the cancer in the presidency line. >> guest: the cancer on the presidency. and that was only, you know, i was just starting to get into watergate, and i just wanted to bring him up and make him know that he had a real problem. >> host: we'll two go to steve joining us from maryland. welcome to "in depth" on booktv, steve. >> caller: thank you. mr. dean, i'd like to just ask you two questions. one is with all the millions of man hours and time spent on

watergate there's never been an answer for, one, who directly ordered the break-in? they say jeb magruder, but everything i've read about magruder is he's very passive and a follower and wouldn't have done it by himself. and the second is, why bug chairman larry o'brien's office? i've never heard a credible explanation for that. >> guest: i hadn't either. i have gathered information over the years and just added a new 30,000-word addition called "the end of the story" to "blind ambition" where i was able to sift through the hard evidence. not what people remembered, not what they thought, but what actually happened. and what's clear is that nixon created a situation where the only person, only place they could get what they wanted was in the dnc. and jeb many griewder did give -- mcgruder did give the

order. >> host: next is bev -- dennis from bethpage, new york. go ahead. >> caller: yes. i hope i can get some time because i do wait 30 days as everybody should. i have an opinion of the tea party movement and the progressivism, the so-called progressivism of mr. nixon. the tea party movement, they're not tea partiers. it's a lynching party. it's racist, and i -- it's one of the wings of the republican party. i call it the republiclan wing. as far as mr. nixson, he was not a progressive. he had a democratic congress which was probably very veto-proof, so i wouldn't give

mr. nixon that credit. as far as his health care plans, i believe he was going to do what obama did today as far as i'm concerned. >> host: okay. >> guest: well, let me, let me just make one comment that onyx son's progressivism. on domestic policy what he did is he turned it over to his key domestic advisers, john ehrlichman in particular, and said, just don't get me ray rested. do what you think is necessary and good politically. so a lot of the progressivism that is tagged to nixon is actually aides. but you can't say that the china initiative was not progressive. that's the sort of thing that pre-nixon conservatives and republicans would dare never have done.

>> host: one of the names in "pure goldwater," hillary rodham. what was the connection between hillary rodham and barry gold water, and you also talk about a visit she made in arizona in 1996. >> guest: right. hillary rodham was a goldwater girl when she was growing up in 1964. and she, obviously, this was one of her first introductions to presidential politics. she, what's -- what i found interesting was there was a -- i didn't put it in because the copyright belongs to bill clinton, but bill and hillary clinton became close to barry goldwater in his retirement years. bill clinton and the president, and barry goldwater talked on the telephone, they exchanged communications, and at one point

hillary visits him in phoenix. at another point bill clinton, i think, is one of the last people to see him when he's in the hospital. they liked him, and he liked them. when hillary clinton was being attacked by conservatives, goldwater first sent a message to his colleagues back in washington to back off, this was just uncalled for, and then sent another message to some local people who were, one was campaigning for congress, i think, at the time who was attacking hillary. the funny outcome of this is that the arizona republicans came out to see the senator and said, listen, senator, we don't know what you're doing, but what you're doing you've got to stop. you know, we built this big

building downtown, it's the barry m. goldwater republican headquarters of arizona. you keep doing what you're doing with the clintons, and we're going to take your name off that building. and the senator, of course, being the senator said, you keep doing what you're doing, i want you to take my name off the building. >> host: we'll go to charles next from illinois with john dean. welcome to the program. >> caller: hello. i'd like to ask mr. dean if he could comment on the family of secrets by russ baker where he reiterates the charges that were in the lawsuit as a copyright 2009 book, if the he's going to bring suit against him too? >> guest: i'm still looking at mr. baker. he's somebody i hold in minimum high respect because he's not a terribly solid journalist. so i'll just leave it at that. >> host: next is marion from erie, colorado.

go ahead, please. >> caller: hi, good morning. this is a wonderful program and thanks to you both. i have a specific question, and it has today with the watergate tapes and specifically a moment -- and i've only read the transcripts, so i'm asking mr. dean to flesh out this moment. where my picture, at least, is that president nixon is sitting on one side of the desk and mr. dean is sitting on the other. and the president twice says, you realize that if one person tells this story, the whole thing could come down. and mr. dean says, yes, i know that. and the president reiterates this, and mr. dean says again, i'm aware of that or words to that effect. it's been a while since i read it. and i'm wondering if at that moment, in that moment of conversation whether you had the sense that he knew it was you or

whether you knew and he didn't that it was going to be you? [laughter] and it's just such a shakespeare yang, dramatic moment. at any rate, i'll hang up. >> host: thanks, marian. we'll get a response. >> guest: you know, the best thing it's -- actually, without listening to that particular segment of tape, it would be hard for me to give you a very accurate answer, and it may well be in the voice on the tape. you can actually listen to these tapes, and it sounds like you're talking about the march 21st tape. from the little bit i picked up. and there's some place if you go to www.hpol -- that's hpol.org -- you can find tapes or a couple other sources that have them, but that's a good one. >> host: we'll go to bill joining us from brookline, massachusetts.

you're next. >> caller: hi, fellas, how are you? can you hear me? >> host: yes, we can. >> caller: in the january 1980 issue of harper's magazine, a fellow by the name of jim hogan wrote an article called the mccord file later expanded to a book called "the secret agenda." i guess the essence was that mccourt sabotaged the break-in observation. have you heard about the author of the book? >> guest: yeah, i have. i address -- he's one of the, he's sort of the godfather of the watergate revisionists. he was the first. he operated fairly early when the story of watergate was quite familiar, and, therefore, was not as dramatic in changing it. but other revisionists who have followed have picked up where he left off. i explain in this new afterword to "blind ambition" how these

revisionists accomplish their revisionism. so if you're interested in that, you can find it there. as far as mccord goes, he's placing mccord with a level of intelligence and cunning that i don't think mccord ever had. it would be, it would have been impossible for him to do. in fact, 90% of what hogan is suggesting strikes me as highly improbable. so i think if you want to understand what these revisionists are doing, that's -- i tried to address that in doing this afterword to "blind ambition." >> host: margaret from manchester, new jersey. go ahead, please. >> caller: good afternoon, gentlemen. mr. dean, you're one of my heros in american politics, and it's a pleasure to speak to you. i've recently read a book called "the 40 years' war" written by

be len and tom shackman. i don't know if you're familiar with it. >> guest: i'm familiar with -- i've not read the book. i'm familiar with the writers. they were defendants in my lawsuit, and i find them dubious in their authenticity. >> caller: okay. i wondered about them because i had never come across them until i saw them on book notes, as a matter of fact, one weekend, and i delved into their book. so my question really was all the plots and intrigue that they describe -- >> guest: you have no idea what this man can concoct. he has never seen two people together he's not convinced are deep into some national conspiracy. >> host: let me go back to bob haldeman. he wrote a diary, an almost daily diary that totaled about

75,000 words. have you read ha? >> guest: uh-huh. >> host: what surprised you or what did you learn? >> guest: it's a wonderful book. what's interesting is because he was worried about the prosecutors getting that material, he put it with the presidential papers, and it was, therefore, protected. clearly, it was probably an obstruction of justice done it because he had a subpoena requesting a lot of that information that could have answered a zillion questions during watergate. it comes out, as you know, long after the fact. it's, his discipline in doing it is remarkable. he does it virtually from day one until his last day there. it's varying degrees of length. i think he did it particularly he realized after they put the taping system in they needed some way to get back into this material, and these little summary notes would be very helpful. it also is quite revelatory in,

for example, no one was ever sure if john mitchell had actually admitted to anybody he had authorized the watergate break-in. he, on march 28th of 1973, he admits it to me. he's doing it to put pressure on me to get, to lie. he's taken me off into another office to have that conversation. that same day he admits the same thing to bob haldeman, and haldeman puts it in his diary. so there's little things like that that those of us who understand the implications of some of this material that would pass the normal reader. but, you know, there are lots of little nuggets like that in that book which makes it a very important book. >> host: one timeline question. you're appointed as the counsel to the president july 1970. >> guest: right. >> host: september of '71, just about 14 months later, you're thinking of leaving. bob haldeman has a conversation with you.

what happened? >> guest: well, i'd been on vacation, i'd been thinking about it. a couple things were at play there. i never asked senator goldwater to help me find a job anywhere, but once i'd taken the job at the house judiciary committee, he'd said to me one night, you've got to promise me something. you've got to promise me you'll start your way out of government and be out within your fifth year. i said, why? he said, well, he said, i've just seen too many guys come here, go to work, never leave. it's awful easy to stay. you've got a lot of potential, you've got to get out. and i said, done. i'll promise you that. my fifth year came up then, but something else had come up. this is the year, '71 is when the pentagon papers were leaked. this, those of us who had gotten together in the year since have realized this is when everything changes at the nixon white house.

it really, the lights go out. it gets dark. it really is not a very pleasant place to work. nixon's mood changes, everybody's mood changes. and so after getting out and taking a brief vacation in september, i came back, and i said, it's time to leave. so i went in to see bob haldeman. i said, i had stopped in new york because i'd had some inquiry, had a couple very nice job offers that intrigued me, one was to become a short-term assistant or deputy general counsel and then be boosted up to general counsel of a shipping, worldwide shipping line, and the other was a wall street job that, as an investment banker that intrigued me very much. both out of politics, something i'd wanted to do, something different. and i explained that to haldeman, and he said, john, you can't leave. you owe it to us to stay. you leave, you'll burn your bridge with us. you need to keep that bridge open. and after it's over, you're even

going to get better offers. didn't mention i might be making license plates somewhere, but he really, in essence, said you can't leave. you're going to hurt yourself if you do. i suspect years later he wished he'd let me go. but with i, it was that two things, the fact i had told the senator i was not going to spend a long time in government, and the fact that i had not liked the mood and change and the nature. this is, you know, right after i had flown out in july to turn off the brookings break-in. jack caufield shows up in my office one day, and he says he's been ordered by kohlson to break in and fire bomb the brookings institute. i said, jack, i said, that's insane. i said, don't do anything. and i flew to san clemente, got ehrlichman to turn it off and came back.

croag comes back and says, well, john, there are a lot of people this think you're a little old lady around here. i can't even tell you what they've asked me to do. it was set up the plumbers. so i knew it was time to leave. i thought it was time to leave. >> host: did you ever apologize to your friend barry goldwater about being caught up in watergate? did you ever have a conversation about your role specifically? >> guest: it was never appropriate to apologize. he always said to me, in fact, i think i recounted in something that after watergate he and i are out with his son and his wife and my wife and barry jr. and his wife on his boat out of newport, and is he's saying that we're up at the helm, and he's saying, you know, john -- barry jr. was there also -- he said, i've looked at this, i'm pretty aware of what's happened. you're the only person, i think, that deserves to come out smelling like a rose. you did the right thing. i know you didn't want to blow the whistle. you tried -- what few appreciate

is that i actually had a plan that i thought if i broke rank, i could force others to do so. they, too, would come forward. they'd tell the truth and this could potentially save nixon. nothing short of that was likely to save him. you just couldn't keep a cover-up going, you couldn't get up with a half truth. it just needed to be laid out. i'm convinced to this day that's the only answer. and had he done it sooner rather than later, had he done it in the march 21st cycle, he might have survived. >> host: margie from mccomb, georgia. >> caller: hi, it's maggie. mr. dean, i've got a couple things to ask you. the supreme court has ruled that our new stations can lie to us, and they do a lot of times. they never told us that georgia started that war which a republican burst out in a hearing, you know, and i also

watch bbc and several other news channels. but my question to you is a lot of the republicans will be in hearing and hear something straight out and then be on c-span the next day going -- [inaudible] then the other day the lady's on there going who ever said we needed oil refineries? and in the hearing that they had when the republicans came out and said that, they said, no, it's not that, it's speculation. my question is my dad's a lawyer. these people are representing us. should there be some law where they can't lie to the people they're representing and they tell us things that aren't true that are against our interests, that are hurting the people that need it most -- >> guest: one of the saddest things that i've seen happen of late, politicians have been known to spin information. this is not new. what is new, in fact, it was so

troubling to me that i had to address it head on. it's an intellectual dishonesty that i think is going to have serious reverberations for conservatives. it's happening too often. i'm seeing it, i saw it first with this watergate revisionism. i also saw it in documents like the torture memos that were written by john yoo. i've seen it in some of his books. in writing "broken government," it got so bad i decided to add an appendix to show people the sorts of activities that are being undertaken by people who know better. and staying with john yoo for a minute, this is an intelligent man. he clerked for lawrence silverman at the u.s. court of appeals, went on to clerk for clarence thomas, was the counsel of the house, senate judiciary committee, is now a berkeley

professor, very prolific writer, and he is distorting information in a very dishonest way. and i think that to do that to make a point and to try to do it for political purposes is very dangerous. and i certainly hope republicans and the authoritarian republican at least, the authoritarian conservative republican, gets off this kick because it's going to backfire on them. >> host: you wrote in the book on warren harding some of the parallels between the teapot dome scandal and watergate. what were they? >> guest: well, there's, the -- first of all, of course, it's the first time we have a special prosecutor. we get in teapot dome two. i want to caveat your mention of teapot dome and harding with the fact that warren harding has nothing to do with it. that's one of the great travesties that he's been tagged with teapot dome when it happens

after he's, it's totally away from him. the one time he learns of the scandal he deals with it aggressively, but yet he bears the burden of teapot dome. >> host: and he dies before he can defend himself. >> guest: and he dies before he can defend himself. but teapot dome is a, is a pure corruption scandal, and the only parallel, really, the strongest parallel is the use of the special prosecutor. they've selected two of them by the department of justice, the attorney general has selected two. in fact; i've read memo by the watergate prosecutors drawing on many of the precedents that were established under teapot dome. it shows we have a remedy less than having to have an independent counsel law that can be used and can be set up. i think sometimes it should. i'm one, for example, who counterunderstand why we're not -- doesn't understand why we're not dealing with torture that way. these are very serious crimes.

they're war crimes, and they're not going to go away. there are foreign governments right now investigating at least seven former bush officials, and if we don't do so, they could well be, you know -- they certainly aren't going to travel abroad, for one thing. but certainly, they could be, theoretically, tried in ab ten shah of crimes. >> host: so how do you think history will judge george w. bush? >> guest: obviously, nixon's famous line that it depends on the historian who writes the history will make the judgment. collectively, i think that he's in for trouble. i think that he gave too much power in the first six years of his eight-year presidency to his vice president. his vice president had an agenda that was to try to overturn anything that was the result of

watergate. these very aggressive actions in the name of fighting terrorism went way over the top. keeping americans frightened to get the mandate to do so are troubling historical potentials. they, they have not, they've never been accountable for many of the activities they undertook, the fact that we went to war in iraq with, on a really bogus reason. those all need to be addressed and will be addressed, and i don't think history's going to be real good to either bush or cheney. >> host: our last call comes to us from kill lean, texas. kirby, you're on the air. go ahead, please. >> caller: hey, guys. you're doing a good job down there today, very entertaining. john dean, i first met you in 1976 when you came to alfred university in upstate new york. you were either hawking your

book or something, but anyhow, i was superintendent of schools in the area, and i sat among about 500 people, and i think most of them wanted to hang you because of what you did to president nixon. now, they perceived it that way, i'm not accusing you. [laughter] what the question is and i have two of them: how could you remain so calm? that is the biggest impression i have of you that night, you seemed so serene. and i thought, this man has been through helland look what he's doing here. he's doing a very calm presentation. i don't know how you did that. >> guest: well, the truth does set you free. >> caller: yeah, that's true. the other question that i really want you to elaborate on this, give me a personal review of what i think is the most fascinating person of the nixon administration and that's john ehrlichman. what was he really like as far as you're concerned?

>> guest: well, john was very bright, he was basically a real estate lawyer who came into the administration because he'd been in the advance operation. he was a classmate of bob haldeman's, the chief of staff. he'd worked during the campaign, he was very bright. he loved domestic policy. that's where he quickly moved from the counsel's chair to become the assistant to the president for domestic affairs. and did a remarkable good, remarkably good job. he was very progressive in his policies, and he was politically sharp. john's mistake was that he made a lot of enemies in washington when he was here. he was abrupt, he didn't have a very good manner with some people, and when he needed help, when he got himself in trouble, he had a reservoir that was pretty deep of ill will from which to draw from and drew deeply.

he made some serious mistakes. he thought he could order a break-in into daniel ellsberg's psychiatrist because the president wanted it without getting explicit directions from the president to do so. he'd go to jail for that. he got involved up to his eyeballs in the watergate cover-up because he'd ordered the ellsberg break-in. people should understand that the cover-up of watergate was lance armstrongly the cover-up -- largely the cover-up before liddy and their friends had gone to the re-election committee and they were being protected for what they'd done while working in the nixon white house. >> host: there is one moment captured in the frost/nixon movie and that's when david frost basically said to richard nixon, why don't you apologize to the american people? i'm paraphrasing, but he never did so. why? >> guest: i don't think he ever thought he'd really done anything wrong. i mean, that -- based on the few people who i know who had

informal, relaxed conversations with him, he thought that was a sign of weakness, he thought he hadn't done anything wrong, and he made some sort of generic i've made mistakes type comments if you recall, and they were mistakes not of the head, but of the heart. so he, he made justifications and rationalizations, and that's about as far -- that's one of the reasons he could have never met with me or dealt with me because he just wasn't good at that sort of thing. i hope he apologized to his family though. >> host: you also wrote in the updated edition of "blind ambition" that had the republicans controlled this town, the house and the senate, the hearings never would have happened. >> guest: absolutely right. no question watergate was very political. no question. what would have happened is the, there would have been some perfunctory action. there probably -- there might not have even -- what's

difficult to figure out is how far the u.s. attorney might have taken things. one of my thoughts in coming forward was it would be handled in front of a grand jury, remain secret forever, and nixon would survive. i didn't look to shoot down nixon. he decided to pick the fight, he just happened to pick the fight with the wrong guy. and the rest, you know, my remembering and believed i was taped and things like that resulted in i got lucky, if you will. otherwise, it could have been very different. but had congress not put the pressure on, it would have, it would have -- nixon would have done all eight years. >> host: what's your next book? >> guest: i've not really talked and still am not going to talk about a look my publisher convinced i should take of richard nixon. i've never really written about nixon. it's only been in passing. he comes up in as many