Along with fielding e-mails here at our site, I also help out with the public account of The Common Ills and there are a lot of people who want to question and argue.
Due to the fact that so many US outlets have pulled out of Iraq, C.I.'s now increasingly relying on Arabic press and, as she's noted many times, one of the most ridiculous questions coming in is, "How do I know you're translating that correctly?"
How do you answer that? "Because I am"? (She's also tried, "Learn Arabic and then check me.")
Last week, she did an entry in the morning on War Crimes and War Criminals. It was probably my favorite of the week and for lines like this one, "There is no such things as a little bit of War Criminal or some level of War Criminal that falls under the heading 'scamp.'"
Scamp. That one still cracks me up.
In the entry, she notes the need for a 'hero' to be declared and how that impulse can run astray:
John Dean participated in many of the Watergate Crimes (I'm not calling Dean a War Criminal, I'm talking about Watergate). When it became uncomfortable for him, he got honest. It's a little too late to take back the spying and the law breaking he took part in, the unconstitutional acts. He's a felon. Somehow, in the '00s, he became a hero to some on the left. In a Phyllis George moment, Amy Goodman tried to pair him up on air with one of his many victims Daniel Ellsberg. John Dean may have paid for his crimes behind bars, but that hardly makes him a hero.
Four e-mails came in insisting that was not the case, insisting that, when the left covered John Dean, they noted the truth.
Well I went hunting. I grabbed the October 2006 issue of The Progressive. Matthew Rothschild interviewed John Dean for Progressive Radio (click here for that) in April. In October, he used some of that interview for an article in the magazine.
He's a figure out of the history books: the man who helped bring down Richard Nixon. But here he was in the flesh, looking tan and relaxed. John Dean was in Madison, Wisconsin, giving a talk this spring entitled "Executive Power: Worse Than Watergate?" And while he aimed at Bush, he dished about Nixon. On Dean's very first day as White House counsel, the President called, angry about a negative newspaper story on Vice President Spiro Agnew, Dean said. Nixon told him to get the IRS to audit the reporter. Dean didn't know how to proceed, and said he was troubled by the demand, but went ahead anyway. He said he didn't go ahead, though, with the plan to firebomb the Brookings Institution. This scheme, the brainchild of G. Gordon Liddy, was designed to destroy a copy of the Pentagon Papers that was stashed there. Dean had to fly out to California to convince Nixon's aide John Ehrlichman to call off the plan, since, Dean said, arson and possibly murder could be traced back to the White House. After many years in the private sector running a successful mergers and qcquisition business, Dean is now relishing the writing life. He does a regular column for Findlaw.com. His previous [. . .]
In four paragraphs, Rothschild never can tell you that Dean went to prison or that he's a felon. And in 2006, Watergate's ancient history for many. By contrast, Wikipedia notes the basic in their first paragraph:
John Wesley Dean III (born October 14, 1938) was a White House Counsel to United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. As White House Counsel, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover up. He was referred to as "master manipulator of the cover up" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[1] He pleaded guilty to a single felony count in exchange for becoming a key witness for the prosecution. This ultimately resulted in a reduction of prison sentence, which was served at Fort Holabird outside Baltimore, MD.
Rothschild also acts like Dean being a columnist at FindLaw.com means something. It does, just nothing great. As a convicted felon, Dean is no longer an attorney. He can still make money off his degree by writing columns. Again to Wikipedia:
Dean pled guilty to obstruction of justice before Watergate trial judge John Sirica on November 30, 1973. He admitted supervising payments of "hush money" to the Watergate burglars, notably E. Howard Hunt, and revealed the existence of Nixon's enemies list. On August 2, 1974, Sirica handed down a sentence of one to four years in a minimum-security prison. However, when Dean surrendered himself as scheduled on September 3, he was diverted to the custody of U.S. Marshals, and kept instead at Fort Holabird (near Baltimore, Maryland) in a special "safe house" holding facility primarily used for witnesses against the Mafia. He spent his days in the offices of the Watergate Special Prosecutor and testifying in the trial of Watergate conspirators Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson, which concluded on January 1, 1975. Dean's lawyer moved to have his sentence reduced, and on January 8, Sirica granted the motion, adjusting Dean's sentence to time served, which wound up being four months. With his conviction for felony offenses, Dean was disbarred as a lawyer, so could no longer practice law.
Gee, the things Dean did are things Rothschild regularly rails against . . . except when speaking to Dean. From pages 33 through 36, read them and weep as Rothschild treats convicted felon John Dean as a reliable witness and never raises his conviction or any of his crimes.
Tell me again about how when the left brought John Dean into the tent throughout the '00s, they told the truth.