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This interview contains many serious contradictions between Dean’s
Senate testinony and his book. Including his advising Nixon to
use the CIA to block the FBI. The event that would end Nixon’s Presidency.

He discusses his role laid out in the book, of Haldeman ordering him to investigate in 1971 the link between Howard Hughes and Larry O’Brien the alleged target of the watergate break in.

Dean clamied that “shit” was put in his book by his editors to make the book more interesting.

Len Colodny

When that happens, you can talk lawsuits. Or you can think about why your image is what it is among a broad spectrum of observers (some admiring, some not, some simply ambivalent). You can accept that it goes with the territory (especially after one becomes a public figure). Or you can fling mud at those who comment on your actions. Or you can chill, except in the cases of the most egregious and outrageous actions.

I had not anticipated this response when I read Luke Nichter’s essay. I didn’t pick up on any negative motivations in Luke’s piece, just a desire to sort out some of the issues related to Watergate and books and speeches about Watergate. He’s a historian — that’s what historians do. (I would love to see other Nixon historians come to Luke’s defense, including, yes, Stanley Kutler.)

Points of law related the right to post audio clips aside, I’m not at all convinced it was necessary to use the threat of lawsuits against Luke. But hey, we all decide how we roll. To each his own. Actions and decisions which pick up pluses from some observers can pick up minues from others.

This situation with Dean, his speech at the Nixon Presidential Library, and the aftermath does present the Nixon Foundation with some opportunities. The jury still is out on whether the Foundation and NARA can work together to ensure that RN’s tapes and documents are released according to law. I’m less optimistic that that can occur than I was a year ago. For one thing, John Taylor no longer is involved in the process. And I had come to see John as someone who had matured into a person who understood that blame games don’t always pay off. And might even be counterproductive.

My other concern centers on the fact that there has been a change of administration in Washington since I started reading this site and using it to assess the Nixon Foundation and Nixonites. I see flashes or anger or resentment in some of the essays posted here on TNN since the election. Perhaps I’m just reflecting on what previous archivists went through, but to me, anger and resentment point to potential difficulty in working with NARA. Nixon’s lawyers once tried to paint the Supervisory Archivist in charge of Nixon tapes processing as biased against RN. But it was not his fault that RN said and did what he did. And that the records came into NARA’s care. Argue bills of attainder and laws and regulations all you like. But treat NARA’s managers and the staff they supervise with the fundamental respect their mission deserves.

I was disappointed that no one representing the Foundation commented on Bob Bostock’s essay here on TNN in June on Tim Naftali and Dean’s speech. I can’t even tell whether representatives of the Foundation read the comments posted there. I would like to think that NARA and the Foundation will be able to work through archival disclosure issues. Still, since reading Mr. Bostock’s essay, I’ve come to worry whether reactions to current political conditions and a possible backlash against NARA, not for its archival actions, but because of resentment against the current head of the executive branch, will affect those efforts. Crossing my fingers that this is not where the Foundation is headed! Dean’s actions already disappointed me, I hope the Foundation’s don’t, as well. At any rate, I’m following how the Foundation reacts to Dean and to NARA with great interest.