audience to has not read the book why do liberals not follow the same pattern of authoritarian following? >> to give you a lot of answers when i looked through bob all-out myers material in the original academic form i had to have a copy of the demi's guide to statistics to get myself through the material when he realized i became a serious student he was very helpful and that one point* i got to know him well enough i looked at my material and then everybody can understand and made it available for free if you

google the authoritarian us and put down for a short dr. dr. bob, you will get to his book. he raises a lot of the questions that you raise in the book and i think that is the fastest way to get you some simple answers to a complex question. . .

on her. it was a very difficult thing. she was not a washingtonian, she was not somebody who ever wanted to be a public person -- >> host: and you were married for less than a year. >> guest: yes. we'd been dating for a while, but we had been married for a very short period of time. she is a very private person today and does, you know, when -- as a result of being attacked by liddy and the other revisionists, it's just driven her to be almost invisible. she doesn't want to see anybody, doesn't want to have any interactions with the public at all. and that's a shame because she, she had a nice little, she had fun doing washington type fiction and other fiction.

but that ended when they drew her in as a watergate participant when she's a total noncombatant. so she said, that's it for me for public life. i want none of it. >> host: paul is joining us from springvail, maine. go ahead, please. >> caller: john, you may recall in an article that tom wolf wrote for playboy, he said, who could ever have imagined that richard nixon would turn out to be richard nixon? i want to thank you for all of us for having been john dean. we needed you then, and we need you now. i've enjoyed your insights into the washington scene for now coming up on 40 years. i have a couple quick questions. i understand there's a story that in may of 1970 we went to def con i during the nixon

administration, and there's nothing you can google on it. i haven't been able to find it anyway. also, bill cohen who was bill clinton's secretary of defense has also said the same thing about cheney, do you feel that we have missed an opportunity by not holding this last administration's feet to the fire? and finally, what's your take on sarah palin? >> guest: on def con i've heard the same thing, on sarah palin i'm a spectator, i don't know. there are certain nixonian qualities about ms. palin, but, you know, that's still unfolding. the centerpiece of your question was, what was that? you don't remember either. it was the important part i was saving for last. paul u are you doctor? >> caller: yes. holding the bush administration -- >> host: that's right. i'm going through some of the other e-mail questions, so thanks, paul.

>> guest: thank you, paul. paul, that's very important, and it's unfortunate it's not happened. it's very troublesome. i'm watching right now, as i'm sure you and others are, that we're seeing because nobody is being held accountable, a total rewriting of what happened. rove is doing it, others are doing it. rove is coming out and saying, well, waterboarding's fine. these are horrendous war crimes, and they're going to write their own history of these events. so they won't ever -- there won't ever be any accountability for these actions. they will maybe be given precedent that gives them a legitimacy. these, to me, are, they pale in comparison to nixon's activities. while, yes, he did push the imperial presidency while he, yes, used the presidency for political purposes, i can't imagine nixon in his darkest moment permitting torture.

i had, i worked with him on the melei situation, he did that by the rules. but torture, we're talking, you know, something as others get around the world as i do is just absolutely having tremendously negative impacts on this country and its image. so it's a travesty not only, you know, as i say, it's a very serious war crime. it also violates our constitution as cruel and unusual. so i don't, you know, the fact that obama has decided, apparently, in his looking forward and not looking back that he's going to give these people all a pass, i think we've left a very serious future problem to be dealt with. >> host: let me follow up because from your book, "broken government," you say, quote, conservative republicans love to talk about checks and balances inherent in the separation of powers. they simply are not good at

employing them for they've allowed their constant reach for power to dictate conduct whether in or out of power. >> guest: exactly the point. exactly the point. they, you know, they are good rulers. they're good at winning elections. you know, they've gone to the extreme, too, now. and this, this is actually almost calls -- as i was rereading because i don't tend to reread my books but i thought i ought to be familiar with them before we talked today, i was thinking and reading the "conservatives without conscious" that needs to be extended to explain because it just flows right into the tea party movement. and how, you know, the problems that are there that are not recognized and are just being sort of brushed aside. i like to go with the mainstream tends not to go, and the fact that we're not dealing with

torture is deeply disquieting to me anyway. >> host: well, franklin ford, one of your critics, said this about "worse than watergate," he said it could have transsended some of the limitations of the bush-bashing again re. >> guest: well, that's one of them i thought i had reached. i read that review, and i scratched my head, and i said, maybe he didn't read it as closely as i thought i'd written it because that's part of the group i tried to reach, and i've tried to reach with all my books is being sort of a centerrist myself that it'll appeal to the others. so i didn't get it with his review, but i, i tend to look at reviews only when i'm writing my next book. to see what reaction they're

having. >> host: tom is joining us from nebraska. welcome to the program. >> caller: good afternoon. thank you for the wonderful program. i asked mr. dean a question in history when his "blind ambition" was released then. it's an honor to speak with him. a couple quick questions. what is his impressions looking back now at -- [inaudible] what is his thoughts about president nixon's efforts on health care, and i lastly just want to say as an historian or history major, it irritates me when people discuss the chicago '60 election. kennedy would have won the election if nixon had carried illinois which people never seem to pay attention to. thank you so much. >> host: thank you for the call. first, sam irvin. >> guest: agreed. sam irvin was, you know, i think that it was a unique opportunity for him. he was a very colorful character. he was fair, he was, he had the

wisdom to hire sam dash who put together a very careful set of hearings. they developed, you know, basically all the information that gave the big picture. he educated the public as to the events. the prosecutor's files are just loaded with those hearing documents as to the basis of where they started, so he did all the groundwork. to really uncover what was going on and why it was happening. >> host: the other topic was health care and as we've been seeing in this debate, there was a moment in the nixon white house where we could have had health care. >> guest: right. and kennedy would later say that he wished he'd accepted nixon's deal when he offered it. because we would have had health care a long time ago before the late senator passed away. but that was in the domestic

policy area. i had very almost incidental dealings with that, i was just aware of the fact from some of the material in the white house that nixon, who again, was very progressive in a lot of his policies -- >> host: well, you write in the book china and the epa as two examples. >> guest: exactly. they're wonderful examples. in fact, most conservatives are very uncomfortable with nixon because he was considered by many the last liberal president. >> host: we'll go to phil joining us from baltimore with john dean. good afternoon. >> caller: yes. good afternoon, mr. dean. i had a question. you did a lot of research about deep throat and about just the whole information that deep throat gave to bob woodward. i was wondering, it seems apparent in your discussions with keith olberman and others that some information was more focused on emanating from the white house, and i was wondering if you were the person that was

actually giving mark phelps the information that phelps was giving to woodward, and if it wasn't you, do you know who it might have been been? >> guest: i was gone by then. the information he gets from the white house is in november of '73. the book that you just saw there is one of several efforts to uncover deep throat. i don't know why i got fixated. it was a good mystery story in my book "lost honor." it weaves all through the book and composes the entire last chapter. where i came down and said haig could be a potential, but with i really couldn't sort it out. i looked at my methodology, and there was wrong with it. the problem was the clues just couldn't take you to where you needed to go. and i think that jim mann, for example, a former washington post reporter who came as close

as anybody to pinning phelps did so based on his dealings with woodward on the wallace shooting. where felt was, indeed, working with the white house. he was right there and helped a lot. so i think that helped mann put together two and two and come up with, he thought, it had to be somebody in the fbi and could well be felt. so i wasn't his source in the white house. the part i was referring to on countdown was the fact that the last story is about the fact that one or more tapes have a potential erase sure onyx son's -- on nixon's secret tapes. on "the washington post" story as opposed to the book when you compare the two, all five sources in "the washington post" story are white house sources. since we now know it's felt, it

strikes me -- and that seems to be the only piece of information that felt gave to woodward is because felt -- woodward doesn't know where felt got this information. and it may have been that felt said, listen, i heard from somebody in the white house, and i'll tell you how that could happen, that one or more of the tapes might have erasures. and then they got four other sources that confirmed that, so they may legitimately all be from the white house. now, what happened? when rose woods discovered that she had erased what she thought was five minutes and then later turned out to be 18-and-a-half minutes, i'm sure he talked to friends in the white house, and there were people. there were a group of women down in the basement of the eob who were all friends of rose's. they were take assignments from her, if there wasn't room in the west wing, they would do their

work in the eob. the liaison guy is also down there, and he's very friendly with them all, because these are the same women, some of them, who do all the clearance procedures for cabinet members and white house aides and do all this sort of work. it could have very easily just come up in a conversation where one lady said to haines, god, we're now dealing with, you know, a potential erasure problem with th%atvñlelwpñkj3ñ0ñ

>> host: inside? >> guest: not inside though. in fact -- [laughter] it took me an hour because of the easter crowd and the cherry blossoms to get from memorial bridge to my hotel.

[laughter] >> host: let me go back to the rehnquist choice. abe appointed by lyndon johnson explained why he resigned. was he forced out? were there are dirty -- there dirty tricks at play? what was going on? >> guest: yeah. i tried to explain in "the rehnquist choice" how nixon saw the potential to get appointees while he was still running for office. when, first of all, earl warren announced that he was departing, clearly seeing earl warren not being somebody who trusted richard nixon, they'd had, they'd been at it politically for years -- >> host: both from california. >> guest: both from california. and so, and earl warren a very savvy guy politically and seeing it thinking that lyndon johnson could fill the chair while he was, you know, still there before nixon could win the election and get inaugurated. didn't happen.

nixon passed the word through ehrlichman to bob griffin in the senate, pily buster. been a -- filibuster. been a lot of comment about the fact that there'd never been a filibuster by republicans of a supreme court nominee when there were threats of a filibuster during the bush years or some of the other times it's come up where it really starts with nixon and fortess. what johnson was going to do was put fortez in the chief justice chair, so he would be putting, in essence, two people on the court to, because of the way the chairs were shuffling. >> host: and this is 1968. >> guest: '68, right. during the height of the campaign. so the filibuster prevents

fortess from getting the chair, and that kills thorn berry. so fortess stays seated. meanwhile, mitchell -- and one of the things that comes up during the confirmation hearing, on a pure tip from somebody in washington that fortess has received income -- >> host: about $15,000. >> guest: about $15,000 which is about half of his salary as a justice. you know, here's a man who'd been making, you know, lots of money as a very successful washington practitioner, won on the court and he's probably strapped. he's got his wife who's in, fortess or arnold and porter, fortess was gone, and so she's working. anyway, to cut that story to the bone what nixon picks up is that there's somebody else that is supplying money to fortess, a

fellow by the name of wilson who's under indictment by the justice department. so they make what i read as a bluff play to force fortess to retire, and they do it by threatening to open a new grand jury where they'll bring fortess' wife and his partner, paul porter, before the grand jury and cause them who knows what kind of half sock. it's an -- havoc. it's an investigation that johnson's department of justice had looked as settled, so mitchell is reopening it, and it was clearly, to me, a ploy to force fortess off the court. and then they were going to go after bill douglas, try to force him off. and when douglas learned that, he just dug in and said as long as i live, i'll be on this court. rather than give them the opening. so, yes, there was that move, and i'm convinced that fortess

hadn't committed a crime, that he didn't want the grief for his wife. he could go back to private practice and did. and that nixon got a seat as a result of it. >> host: paul is joining us from las vegas. welcome to the program. >> caller: hi, steve. hi, mr. dean. happy easter. steve, you do a wonderful job with the interviewing both here and on washington journal,nd, mr. dean, i've read several of your books and enjoyed them very much. a quick story and a question. i'm usually successful in striking up conversations with seat mates on plane rides, but about six years ago a beautiful woman sat down next to me, obviously, very wealthy, and i was unable to get much of a conversation going with her. she was courteous but quite distant, and i put that down

later to the fact that i had a book on my lap which i'd read a little bit of, and that book, of course, was "worse than watergate." [laughter] so -- >> host: paul, who was your seat mate? >> caller: i don't -- she was, obviously, a wealthy young woman from seattle. might have been a microsoft millionaire's wife or somebody like that. >> guest: those are my readers. [laughter] >> caller: but, well, this one, i don't think she appreciated the book. it was just a guess on my part, but i think an educated guess. in any event, i'd like to know your opinion on bush very gore if you haven't already discussed it -- i missed the first hour -- and thanks again for a wonderful program. >> host: well, we haven't discussed it, so thanks for bringing it up. >> guest: it was a travesty. it was one of those decisions, i think, the court will rue for a long time. it was pure judicial activism. it was the court reaching out to

cut short the process that the founders certainly intended for the house of representatives to resolve. not the court. >> host: do you think al gore ultimately would have prevailed? >> guest: not necessarily. not necessarily, but i'm talking about the process. i don't know what would have happened. you never know what kind of deals can be made in the house. we have precedent for things being resofted by -- resolved by the people, if you will, rather than the nonelected judges. so it just, it just was, it was a disruption of, for a group of people who are originalists, this was their creating their own original version of how to resolve a presidential election. i can understand, in another sense, why they did it, that they were afraid of the disruption that might have been caused by the delay in resolving it, but, you know, how many opinions have they written that

they say are precedent for nothing? >> host: this is from jane. she sayses she's from a midwestern state. she says, i don't mean to make both of us feel old, but i was in high school during the watergate hearings. she worked in state government, and she said, i am disillusioned with, quote, the dream unrealized that is having a cadre of public servants that el sates the management and the analysis above "the politico", and she goes on to talk about campaign contributions influencing the process. >> guest: i was having dinner with friends last night with a local lawyer, and we were talking about how the special interests in this city have grown. and they have, i was saying they have grown so, exponentially in this city. the money in this city -- it was a nice restaurant, we noticed everybody was comfortable. this city is not recession-proof because it has a steady employer in the government, and it has

all these special interests who are taking and wining and dining people -- >> host: so it is recession-proof? >> guest: i think it largely is, the city itself. it affected real estate but not if you run a good restaurant, it will stay full because of the business of city. but it is, to me, it -- and it's something i've witnessed. i was on capitol hill before i went to the white house. i was this the justice -- in the justice department dealing with the legislative program, so i had the potential of dealing with lobbyists. they didn't deal with me because, one, there weren't that many in those days, so i've watched this growth from a good distance, but i've watched it steady, i've watched, you know, i have a number of friends who work in law firms that do lobbying. i have former member of congress friends who are delighted they got defeated because they're now making seven-figure salaries in

this city. [laughter] and it is corrupting the system. and as long as it happens, i mean, this isn't the way we, our democracy was designed. we are gaming the system when we let the special interests take control. and you can't get elected today if you don't have somebody bundling the money for you, and you are beholden to that person. you might say you're not, but they sure as hell will get this your office fast when they want to. and it is, it is something that we have to address. >> host: a number of our viewers commenting on your appearances on msnbc, and this is from john in chapel hill, north carolina. the essence of the question is if watergate happened today in the 24/7 cable environment, would things have been different? >> guest: there would have been a lot more of it. if you recall, those who are -- i don't know how old john is -- watergate did get rather extensive coverage. and it was very interesting.

when watergate had first occurred, when the watergate break-in occurred on june 17th of 1972 -- >> host: on a saturday. >> guest: on a saturday, late saturday night, it is a nonstory in the mainstream media until april of '73. the only paper that's covering it is "the washington post." and they're keeping it a front-page story. they didn't crack the story. what they did is they kept the pressure on during watergate, during the whole period where judges are reading about it, prosecutors are reading about it, members of congress are reading about it because it's front-page news in washington. inside the beltway it's a story. i've talked to george mcgovern at length about this. he said, john, i couldn't get two reporters together in this a room to talk about watergate. i was convinced something was astray, and i would tell them about "the washington post." ah, they say, no one cares outside washington. so there was no national attention until haldeman,

ehrlichman and yours truly were sent packing from the white house. and then the national media says, ooh, there must be something here. and at that point it starts getting, becoming a story. at that point it starts becoming a headline every other day. enormous, i mean, shattering headlines. that one copying another and another. the network pick it up at that time, and it becomes nightly news. it's not a two-minute segment, it's a ten, sometimes thirty-minute segment so it did get covered. i'm not sure that cable would have changed it much. i don't know. what would have been interesting would be that the president might have found a defender in fox news. but he might have been too liberal for fox news. >> host: how were you fired on april 30, 1973? what happened? >> guest: well, what happened is the president had asked me to resign on april 16th.

he had passed two letters across the desk. i read them, and i said, mr. president, you're asking me to confess to anything you want to put in these letters. he said, why don't you take them and think about it? i said, i'm happy to leave anytime under any circumstances, i just think that you're not going to resolve this problem if haldeman and ehrlichman don't two too. go too. i've listened to tapes of that period, and they chuckle how the fact that, you know, thai not going -- they're not going to go. this is when i begin to realize i'm being set up as a scapegoat. and a few days after that i released a statement that i've only talked to the press once when i was in office, and that is i had my secretary call to get a message i wanted to make sure that the president god, haldeman got, ehrlichman got and anybody else got that i didn't, didn't do the scapegoat role well. and i figured that was the best way to get the messageo