New Watergate Book Praises John Mitchell, Blames John Dean
A much-awaited revisionist book about Watergate is being released. But, while it shifts the blame a bit between some of President Richard M. Nixon’s men concerning their responsibility for the 1972 political break-in that eventually forced Nixon from office in 1974 and put top aides in prison, the bottom line is essentially the same, one expert says.
Regardless of exactly what the reader believes, “If there were any vestigial doubt that Nixon led a band of blackguards, this book removes it,” writes columnist Robert Novak in an upcoming review in the Weekly Standard.
Mitchell, like many of the other men Nixon surrounded himself with, was a liar, a “nasty piece of work,” writes Novak, who also reported about the former attorney general. “The Nixon administration was filled with world-class liars, including the president himself, and Mitchell was not the worst of them,” Novak continues.
The new book, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate, is written by James Rosen, a Fox News Channel correspondent in Washington. Previously, many have theorized that Mitchell, who died in 1988, ordered the June 17, 1972 political break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, as part of ongoing dirty-tricks tactics in the president’s 1972 re-election campaign.
However, Rosen’s book says John Dean, then White House counsel for President Richard M. Nixon, played a bigger role in planning the Watergate break-in than has previously been believed, reports Reuters.
Dean himself, though, says that isn’t true: “I hope this book is being sold as fiction, for if it is not, readers are being defrauded,” the tells the news agency concerning such claims.
It wasn’t the break-in itself but the subsequent Watergate cover-up that eventually forced Dean, other top presidential aides and the president himself from office. Although Nixon was never charged, Mitchell, like Dean, was criminally convicted in the cover-up conspiracy. It also featured a number of other lawyers, either convicted or suspected, including Nixon.
Of all the co-conspirators, Dean was probably the most forthcoming, eventually testifying in detail at the Watergate hearings prior to Nixon’s resignation about both his own role in the conspiracy and what he alleged to be others’ participation.
Mitchell, according to Rosen, staunchly insisted until his death that “The CIA was behind the whole thing.”
Additional coverage:
Fox News: “Who Planned Watergate? New Book Turns Old Story on Its Head”
Washington Times: “Dour, stern—and framed”
