This is the second of two stories about John Dean, former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon.
With federal prosecutors and a dogged press corps closing in and the Watergate cover-up spreading through Richard Nixon's administration like an oil slick, made a decision: "I said [to Nixon], 'I can't lie. I don't know how to. I'm not good at it.'"
Dean resigned in April 1974 and was among the first White House conspirators to come clean about Watergate. Testifying before the Senate and the American people in the nationally televised Watergate hearings, he revealed what lay behind White House parlance like "demonstration intelligence" and "campaign coordination;" political sabotage, burglary, perjury, hush-money and lies had been emanating from the highest office in the land.
On Tuesday, Dean gave a lecture at the University's Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, where he commented on his role in the scandal. On Wednesday, he visited a UT class on Watergate for a three-hour discussion, in which he elaborated on his thoughts on Watergate, the press and politics.
"I can't tell you exactly where I crossed the line in Watergate," he said in the lecture, explaining that he considered himself a mere middleman. "I wasn't trained in criminal law."
Dean said the atmosphere in the White House didn't immediately strike him as overly secretive or conducive to crime.
"My thought was, 'Here I am, playing in the big leagues; I don't know how the big leagues really work.'"
His concerns grew, though, as the Watergate cover-up developed.
"My gut was telling me, 'Don't do this,' but I liked my job," he said. "My antennae might have quivered sooner if I had practiced criminal law ... [But] it felt all wrong ... Why were we paying [hush] money? Why were we doing it in secret?"
These concerns, Dean said, prompted him to check criminal statutes, where he found that he and others had engaged in criminal activity.
Dean was only 31 years old when he was hired as White House counsel in 1969. His job placed him just outside the president's inner circle of adviser, though he had little contact with Nixon until the Watergate cover-up intensified in the spring of 1973. He famously advised the president, under mounting pressure from the press and government investigators, "We have a cancer within - close to the presidency - that's growing."
Nixon repeatedly dismissed and evaded Dean's advice.
Dean said his mind-set at the time was, "I'm stunned. I try not to say what's really on my mind, which is 'You dumb s.o.b., don't you realize what you're doing here?' But you just don't do that with the president."
The class discussion also touched on the press' role in Watergate.
While Dean has devoted much attention to identifying "Deep Throat," The Washington Post's legendary anonymous source, on Wednesday, Dean downplayed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's effect on the Nixon administration.
"Nobody cared," Dean said. "Notwithstanding what you read in 'All the President's Men', no story they wrote gave us any trouble at all."
Dean said Tuesday night that he's been tracking the accuracy of Deep Throat's leaks as more information on Watergate comes to light.
"Maybe as much as half the information Deep Throat gave Woodward is dead wrong," Dean said at the lecture. "If Deep Throat is giving information that Deep Throat couldn't possibly have had, then what does that make of Woodward's journalism?" Dean later told the Texan.
As for the bias of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Dean claimed on Wednesday that politics seriously influenced the proceedings.
"If the Republicans were in the majority in the House and Senate, there would have been no Watergate."
Dean's testimony in the Watergate hearings was televised to millions of Americans, and several UT faculty members retained strong impressions of the man and his confessions. College of Liberal Arts Dean Richard Lariviere introduced Dean on Tuesday with a nod to the ubiquitous coverage the Watergate hearings received: "All of us who were adults at that time remember his testimony before the Senate Select Committee."
Professor Steven Isenberg, who along with David Oshinsky teaches the class Dean visited, has vivid memories of Dean's testimony. "I used to watch the hearings day and night, twice over. Then in the mornings I'd read the transcripts in The New York Times," he said. "One man standing against the presidency is a daunting task, but he seemed to have an armor of quiet confidence and a naturally prodigious memory," Isenberg said.
In spite of his extensive testimony, Dean got a relatively stiff sentence of 1 to 4 years for conspiracy to obstruct justice and to defraud the government. He served four months of his sentence.
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