At the Free Library, John Dean takes a deep dive into Watergate

It was the spring of 1973 when I first "binged" on a TV show, though that term was not yet known. I was riveted, like the rest of the nation, to the rebroadcast of the day's Senate Watergate hearings. We watched night after night.

With his sworn testimony, star witness John Dean, legal counsel to President Nixon, took the scandal to the White House door. I remember that his stunning blonde wife, Mo Dean, filled the TV frame right behind him. Who knew they were newlyweds at the time?

Forty years later, Dean is still Watergate's star witness, and last night he revealed his deepest testimony yet to a crowd at the Philadelphia Free Library. A packed house of about 375 people — I saw maybe two people under age 40 — listened to Dean promote his new book, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It, and tell of the new scandals he discovered from digitizing and transcribing 1,000 Watergate tapes.

From what he described, there are no new smoking guns here. (I'm shocked, shocked that an ambassadorship was for sale.) But the new transcriptions mean there are now four million words of Nixon on Watergate. It may seem like too much, but for many of us who watched in real-time as the Constitutional crisis unfolded — and the most powerful man in the world lost his job — we can never get enough.

Dean is 75, still slim and ever a natty dresser, but now he's white-haired and partially bald. He set the tone for the night by opening with a joke on himself and his new glasses.

He said he was recently was approached by a stranger at LAX airport who asked him, "Didn't you used to be Dick Cheney?"
Next he showed an image on a big screen next to him of his wife, who has aged well. "Still Married to Mo Dean," it read. The crowd applauded.

Dean clearly knows what people want to know, and he delivers in the same clear-as-a bell voice, speaking in long paragraphs rather than sentences.

He told the crowd that his editor at Viking wanted to know, as the 40th anniversary of Watergate approached, if there were still any unanswered questions. Dean said he thought about that query and decided it was this: "How could someone as politically shrewd as Nixon have blown his presidency in this way?"

"I think the answer might be in the tapes," Dean said he told his editor.

Thus, he began what is no doubt the deepest dive yet into what the president knew and when he knew it — the famous central question posed by the late Sen. Howard Baker at the Watergate hearing.

Last night, Dean played excerpts from several tapes, and at one point showed an image of Nixon relaxing with his feet on his desk in the Oval Office. He said that was often how the president appeared when Dean was talking to him. As Dean famously told him: "We have a cancer ... close to the presidency" and outlined his case, point by point, Dean says, "Nixon slowly drew his feet off the desk," and planted them firmly on the floor. Thus, in addition to the conversations, we get a glimpse of a very human reaction.

Dean maintains that he wasn't aware at the time of the sound-activated taping systems in the Oval Office, Executive Office Building, Camp David and even a phone in the White House residence. He says he believes Nixon often forgot the systems were there.

As for the famous 18 ½ minute gap in one tape — one that supposedly required Nixon secretary Rose Mary Woods to contort in a way that would make a Circe du Soleil performer jealous — Dean says he is sure of what was once there because other tapes from that week were filled with conversation about the cover-up.

"It is very clear there was a passing reference of some kind that this had to be covered up," he asserts.

Dean says the 1,000 transcribed tapes reveal much detail previously unknown about the scandal — remember, this is a guy selling his book, but it apparently is true — even for those who have deep knowledge of the scandal. And, boy, do the conversations get ugly when the president's men all turn on each other.

Dean sold 38 hardcover books last night, and the line of people who wanted him to sign their books extended down a long hallway. These are all people who, after four decades, still want to know more.

Contact Lillian Swanson at lswanson@citypaper.net