PERSON: John Dean

White House (Fmr.)

White House Counsel (Fmr.)

John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938) served as White House Counsel for United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. In this position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover-up. He was referred to as the “master manipulator of the cover-up” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He pleaded guilty to a single felony count, in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution. This ultimately resulted in a reduced prison sentence, which he served at Fort Holabird outside Baltimore, Maryland.

Dean is currently an author, columnist, and commentator on contemporary politics, strongly critical of Neo-Conservativism and the Republican Party, and is a registered Independent who supported the efforts to impeach President George W. Bush.

Dean was born in Akron, Ohio, and lived in Marion, the hometown of former President Warren Harding, whose biographer he later became.[3] Thereafter, his family moved to Flossmoor, Illinois, where he attended grade school through the eighth grade. For high school, he was sent to Virginia’s Staunton Military Academy. He initially attended Colgate University, and then The College of Wooster in Ohio, where he obtained his B.A. in 1961. He received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965


Dean married Karla Ann Hennings on February 4, 1962; they had one child, John Wesley Dean IV; they divorced in 1970. Dean married Maureen (Mo) Kane on October 13, 1972

After graduation, he joined a law firm in Washington, D.C. Having gone to prep school, Staunton Military Academy, since defunct, with Barry Goldwater Jr., the son of Barry Goldwater, he was a close friend of the senator and his family. Dean was subsequently employed as the chief minority counsel to the Republican members of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary from 1966 to 1967. Dean then served as associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws for approximately two years.

Dean volunteered to write position papers on crime for Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1968. The following year, he became an associate deputy in the office of the Attorney General of the United States, serving under Attorney General John N. Mitchell, with whom he was on friendly terms. In July 1970, he accepted an appointment to become counsel to the president, after the previous holder of this post, John Ehrlichman, became the president’s chief domestic adviser.

— Wikipedia