YouSaid · the spoken record

John Dean

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70
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2022-06-16
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2022-06-16
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Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Well, what happened really the way I got closer, I got to know the people of the White House because neither Mitchell nor Kleinst liked to do background briefers at the White House, particularly for the legislative program that they were putting together. They found I was a fast study and they would send me over to do these background briefers where I'm just a spokesman from the Department of Justice. And that's where I meet the White House staff. That's where I meet Haldeman Ehrlichman.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Very fast. And the way I got to the department. New Year's Eve Day, I get a call from Nixon has just won the race and he's putting together his presidency. And I get a call from Richard Kleindest, who is the Deputy Attorney General designate, and he asked if I would come to New York and meet with John Mitchell, the Attorney General designate. They would offer me the 13th level job at the Department of Justice”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Jumped on it and ran with it. And as a result of its passing, he was selected to be on it. And he said to me, he said, we've got this thing now. You got to help me and you got to go down there and make sure this is all Lyndon Johnson's people and Democrats that we don't get in some kind of trouble with this thing. So he twisted my arm to go down and sort of at least be the administrative head of it. I had no background in criminal law at all other than having read that it was a mess. And I agreed it was. So I'm there during the 68 campaign. And there are lots of academics who are feeding stuff in, which I'm in turn sharing with some of the people I know in the That are working with the Nixon campaign.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I wrote on Laha that created the National Commission to Reform the Federal Criminal Laws, and it was the only piece of Republican legislation in a Democratic Congress that got out. And what happened, and I'd just been reading some articles in law journals wherever. And so I went to the legislative office and I said, let's design a law that will clean up a lot of these problems. A guy by the name of Dick Poff from Virginia.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “That's how ironic it is. And I had turned him down. He had offered me the clerkship and never understood why I didn't take it.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I started in my senior year of law school looking on the hill for a job. And the reason I ended up going to that law firm is I didn't find a job I liked. I didn't want to work for a member. I wanted to work for a committee. There's a huge difference being on professional staff of a committee versus being an aide to a member. And I had turned down an interesting clerkship in hindsight. I had been interviewed by Judge John Sarika.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “That's true. But what happened with Nixon is because of Watergate, he never got there. He ended up being in the mess he was in and never became the implementer of his enemies project that he dreamed of being.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Of staff. And it's as I have said, it is the most embarrassing comment on all the recordings I have. I have 37 conversations with Nixon.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “This was my first meeting with him during Watergate. It's my first meeting with him where it's basically he and I talking Haldeman is there.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Project that Nixon had. That was a bomb I dropped the second day of my testimony knowing there'd be an overreaction to it and knowing that really little was done in that area. It got way overplayed and has historically been never very well corrected.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “The elective route never attracted me. I knew there was a whole other appointed route that one could travel up the chain. And I'd always promised the senator when I got my first job at the House Judiciary Committee, when we first talked about it after I told him I was there and he said, you've got to promise me that you won't stay in government more than five years. And I said, why is that? He said, well, he said, I've seen too many guys like you who have lots of ability and should be in and out of government and not make a career of government. And so I made the promise. And actually, when I got to my five-year point, I went in and told Haldeman, Chief of Staff at the White House, that I was going to leave government. And he said, no, you're not unless you want to be an enemy of this administration.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “He was a classic liberal, is what he really is. He had, in, for example, had no opposition whatsoever to Rowe. He could not have survived as a conservative in today's Republican politics. He had already turned on the evangelicals before he passed. He was in a real sort of pissy match with them, if you will. He thought they didn't belong in the Republican Party.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Whole thing was just fascinating. It was a world I had known nothing about. You know, it introduced at the high school level. You're fairly impressionable, I guess. And that's where the impressions were made. And I said, hey, I want to follow this up.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Well, I saw this handsome guy who people admired and he got along great with his colleagues. We know that because when he did pass away long after I'd first met him, they had to fill two planes to come out to his funeral. He was very popular, but he was good company. He took up Barry Jr. and I around the Senate, so we saw him in action. And I said, this is a fascinating world. And talk to him. He was of the belief that everybody should do public service. that you just don't bitch about the government. You get in and you work on fixing it.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Exactly. He was a junior senator when I first met him. He was a junior senator, but a very popular one from Arizona. And Barry Jr. and I used to go from Stanton, Virginia up to Washington and stop to see his dad and have a great time with his dad.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “It wasn't by design. I never looked for a job. They all came to me. It's a very curious thing. Yes, I went to Washington. What happened is my roommate in prep school was Barry Goldwater Jr. A lifetime friend”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I don't recall ever being uncomfortable with the fact it was something of an adventure. And then at high school, I went off to private school. So then I was anchored thereafter, if you will. I kind of left home at 13. And my folks did their own thing and I did mine.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “My father was a Carnegie Mellon graduate and had a talent for fixing corporations that manufacturing corporations that were in trouble. He had a lot of practical knowledge, engineering knowledge, but a sixth sense of why a manufacturing company was having trouble manufacturing. He would go in, fix a corporation, and then we'd move on to another one he'd take on. Today he would be a private.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Household, but and we hope it's not 20 million people who already know the story and already have Resolved how they feel about it”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Given the fact that it was a morning hearing this morning, the West, it was very early. Now that isn't what happened in the first hearing when they got 20 million people.”

    2022-06-16 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 494 — John Dean · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source