mr. john dean. john dean served as council to the president of the united states from 1970 to 1973. before becoming white house council, he was chief minority council to the judiciary committee of the u.s. house of the representatives, an associate director of law reform commission and associate deputy attorney general at the u.s. department of justice. his undergraduate studies were at colgate university with majors in english literature and political science followed by a graduate fellowship at american university to study government and the presidency. he entered georgetown university law school where he received his j.d. with honors in 1965. mr. dean recounted his days at the nixon white house in two books "blind ambition" and "lost honor." after retiring from a business career as a private investment banker, he returned to writing best-selling books and lecturing as well as becoming a columnist. he currently rights for justia.com. his books include the rehnquist choice, warren g. harding, worse the secret presidency of george w. bush, conservatives with conscious, broken govern

mr. john dean and our panelists alexander butterfield and scott armstrong. [ applause ] . >>> this is really a unique panel this morning. take a special delight in being able to moderate. i'm the guy who thought i was taped. scott's the guy who thought there might be taping. alex is the guy who knew there was taping. they have been together once before almost 40 years ago where they sort of, one, brought this information to the public, but also realizing the importance n historical importance of what they were doing, they paused to make a record of it. that record was recorded many years later in the journal of american history which is a fairly detailed account. it tease march 1989 addition, if anybody is ever interested in going through every detail. what i thought would be interesting this morning is to reminisce about that where we can short of serve as your fact witnesses this morning. if you were in the audience last night, jill vulner did a wonderful job of providing a chronology of events, many of them touching on the tapes because the tapes will become the central issue in the water

mr. lehrer posed. i asked john dean to start if you don't know what the crime was, you don't know why there was an investigation. john, will you tell us a little bit about the first week after june 17th, 197 2rk bungled break in here in this building? >> as you know, tim, i have trouble looking at that week from the time i lived it to the time i looked back on it. today i know an awful lot more about that week than i did at that time. i can't help but look at it from hindsight. the cover up really starts within moments of the white house learning about the fact that five men have been arrested here in this building wearing business suits, rubber gloves, money stashed in their pocket and that they're from the re-election committee. the deputy trekker to have the re-election committee gets an update very quickly as to what's going on tells mcgruder that he's got to get back to washington immediately. does that. they put out a press release very quickly at the re-election committee that is a totally bogus account. one of t

mr. dean. his former colleagues -- >> he is under investigation. >> no, he's not under investigation. he has denied being under investigation. this has been an issue in the race where he's been connected to this john doe investigation in milwaukee and you're right, his former aide is under criminal investigation. walker himself is not under criminal investigation. >> you know, jim dean, i'm reading reports where he's actually said, has alluded to the fact he is but keep going. >> you know these are not the issues. this is just smokescreen by mr. barrett. look, the issue is union power. curbing public union power. you know it, i know it, bob costa knows it, the whole world knows it. i want to ask you your opinion, okay, you're part of this union movement. why is it that half the membership of afsme has left, dropped out, as soon as the union dues were made voluntary, not mandatory, half the membership in the last year just dropped out of the state and local unions. that tells me they're probably going to drop out of the democratic column also. >> well, i would caution you on that, larry. 30% of union members in ohio used to vote republican. that was until last year, when governor kasich tried to pa