Salon.com > John W. Dean

“Broken Government”

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:19:00 +0000

In almost four decades of involvement in national politics, much of them as a card-carrying Republican, I was never concerned that the GOP posed a threat to the well-being of our nation. Indeed, the idea would never have occurred to me, for in my experience the system took care of excesses, as it certainly did in the case of the president for whom I worked. But in recent years the system has changed, and is no longer self-correcting. Most of that change has come from Republicans, and much of it is based on their remarkably confrontational attitude, an attitude that has clearly worked for them. For example, I cannot imagine any Democratic president keeping cabinet officers as Bush has done with his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, men whom both Democrats and Republicans judged to be incompetent. Evidence that the system has changed is also apparent when a president can deliberately and openly violate the law -- as, for example, simply brushing aside serious statutory prohibitions against torture and electronic surveillance -- without any serious consequences. Similarly, but on a lesser scale, Alberto Gonzales faced no consequences when he politicized the Department of Justice as never before, allowing his aides to violate the prohibitions regarding hiring career civil servants based on their party affiliation, and then gave false public statements and testimony about the matter. When the Senate sought to pass a resolution expressing "no confidence" in the attorney general, the Republicans blocked it with a filibuster. The fact that Bush's Justice Department has become yet another political instrument should give Americans pause. This body was created by Congress to represent the interests of the people of the United States, not the Republican Party, but since the system of law no longer takes account when officials act outside the law (not to mention the Constitution), Republicans do so and get away with it.

Guessing game

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:56:00 +0000

The Bush administration prosecutes government officials who leak sensitive information, even when that information is not classified -- as I noted in my column on Jonathan Randal. The administration is also prepared to send reporters to jail when they refuse to reveal their sources to a grand jury, as I noted in another column.

I doubt the Justice Department will go after W. Mark Felt -- the 91-year-old former deputy director of the FBI -- even if he is the greatest leaker in American political history. Still, in the context of the administration's stances on leaking, the surfacing of Deep Throat at this time is rather ironic.

Bob Woodward (and Carl Bernstein) have confirmed the Vanity Fair story, identifying W. Mark Felt as their legendary Watergate source. The best-kept secret in Washington, for three decades, is no more.

Why did Ashcroft remove himself from the Valerie Plame Wilson inquiry?

Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:33:00 +0000

Recently, Attorney General John Ashcroft removed himself from the investigation into who leaked the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Since the announcement, there has been considerable speculation as to why this occurred, and what it means.

Some think the move suggests the inquiry will be scuttled -- and Ashcroft is ducking out early to avoid the heat. But that seems unlikely. The new head of the investigation, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is a high-profile, well-respected U.S. attorney who runs one of the more important offices in the country, Chicago's. Fitzgerald is also a close friend of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who announced his appointment. It seems unlikely that Fitzgerald was brought in merely to kill the case.

Others believe that Ashcroft's decision to remove himself suggests that the investigation must be focusing on people politically close to Ashcroft, and that Ashcroft thus pulled out because he knew he would be criticized whatever he did. That is certainly possible.

But as I will explain, I have a slightly different take on what has occurred and why. Here is what the latest positioning of the tea leaves tells me.

The Recent Progress of the Plame Investigation

Three cheers for the Democrats’ filibuster

Fri, 14 Nov 2003 00:28:00 +0000

Most news accounts of the U.S. Senate's planned 30-hour talkathon -- or filibuster, or reverse filibuster, or whatever this exercise in through-the-night speechifying should be called -- have evoked references to Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." But I keep thinking about Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." No question it's theater -- that's why the Republicans are staging it -- but what's the script?

Ostensibly, Senate Republican leaders are forcing this oratorical marathon to highlight the Democrats' success in using the mere threat of a filibuster to block President Bush's ultraconservative judicial nominees. In fact, the Democrats have only used this threat in four instances, with the Senate confirming 168 of Bush's judicial nominees. Still, Republicans are pouting and pissed, even though they played the same kind of serious hardball with President Clinton's judicial nominees.

More vicious than Tricky Dick

Fri, 03 Oct 2003 22:12:00 +0000

I thought I had seen political dirty tricks as foul as they could get, but I was wrong. In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means.

For example, special counsel Chuck Colson, once considered the best hatchet man of modern presidential politics, went to prison for leaking false information to discredit Daniel Ellsberg's lawyer. Ellsberg was being prosecuted by Nixon's Justice Department for disclosing the so-called Pentagon Papers (the classified study of the origins of the Vietnam War). But Colson at his worst could barely qualify to play on Bush's team. The same with assistant to the president John Ehrlichman, a jaw-jutting fellow who left them "twisting in the wind," and went to jail denying he'd done anything wrong in ordering a break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, where the burglars went and looked for, but did not find, real information to discredit Ellsberg.

Worse than Watergate

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 23:01:00 +0000

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Vote of no confidence

Wed, 30 Jan 2002 16:45:00 +0000

By my count, the 36 days following the Nov. 7, 2000, presidential election generated not less than 36 books and one Ph.D. dissertation, plus countless articles and essays. To examine and understand the historic Florida vote count, however, no reasonable person is going to read all this material, excepting perhaps another Ph.D. dissertator. Nonetheless, being an election junkie, I was sufficiently interested to read almost half of them.

Many observers believe that the 2000 presidential election story is over and dead. I don't. Rather, I think these events are going to return to haunt future elections, not to mention the Senate confirmation hearing of the next nominee to fill any vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. For example, after reading these books, I would not be surprised to discover that Enron's political largess was somehow involved in the Florida vote-counting debacle.

Most of the book-length efforts at recounting, explaining, criticizing and justifying the 36-day imbroglio have been ignored. Clearly, some books have been victims of the tragedy of Sept. 11, which rendered Election 2000 irrelevant, passi.

A few candid words about Salon Premium

Mon, 20 Aug 2001 20:51:00 +0000

Let me be a Dutch uncle on the subject of subscribing to Premium and offer some frank advice, a reality check of sorts.

The greatest weakness of Internet users -- all of us -- is our failure to recognize the value of intellectual property. Of course we love free access to information -- the more the better. For years, those of us who are information junkies have been like pigs in mud. It has been fun, but those something-for-nothing days are over. There is a difference between the Internet mantra that "information loves to be free" and free information.

The future of the Internet has arrived. The winnowing and weeding are occurring daily. While there will continue to be a lot of useless (or excess) information that will be free, intellectual property of value is going to cost money. It cannot be otherwise.

Salon is unique. There is no print equivalent at your local newsstand. Nor could there be given the constant updating capability of this medium. This publication is truly a salon -- a place where assorted knowledgeable, if not frequently trendy, people from the arts, letters, politics, media and academy regularly gather to express views about an endless variety of timely topics.

Character assassination

Fri, 15 Jun 2001 16:33:00 +0000

Usually it is fun to review books; that's why I do it. I was looking forward to reading "Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg" by Tom Wells. I'm interested in the subject of this biography. But I find hatchet jobs disquieting. They are not enjoyable to read, nor pleasant to report on. This account of Dan Ellsberg is as unpleasant a read as I can recall in a long while.

Ellsberg, a former Pentagon aide working at California defense think tank the Rand Corp., entered the history books in June 1971 when he leaked the so-called Pentagon Papers, a highly classified study of how the United States became militarily engaged in the ever-escalating war in Vietnam. "Wild Man" is being published on the 30th anniversary of Ellsberg's defiant act, an act that he hoped would end a war. Instead it ended a presidency.

While our nation has no "official secrets act" as England does, President Richard Nixon's national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, got the president so pumped up with determination to nail Ellsberg that the government concocted a criminal case and prosecuted him. With no espionage laws to cover the situation, the heart of the prosecution was charges of theft. However, given the fact that Ellsberg had returned the documents after copying them, even theft was dubious.

Does “Thirteen Days” get it right?

Fri, 19 Jan 2001 18:02:00 +0000

Historians, practitioners of a profession that has been interpreting the truth since the days of Herodotus, are the first to be offended when a filmmaker interprets the truth for dramatic purposes. Then the journalists chime in, followed by those directly involved in the historical events in question, particularly when they are not hired as consultants on the film. Only occasionally do film critics enter the verisimilitude fray, but they may take a stance if there is a sizable complaining chorus of historians or journalists or participants.

So far, Kevin Costner's new film, "Thirteen Days," which portrays President Kennedy's handling of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, has escaped the harsh words of such cinema truth seekers. Besides a glitch on some ads (which featured small photos of planes that were not in service at the time), no historian has contested its history, and no journalist has questioned the account (although Kennedy biographer Richard Reeves has raised appropriate questions). And several of the participants have viewed the film and enjoyed it. But frankly, I'm still holding my breath, because all reality-based films are vulnerable to attacks -- and they can be murderous.

Not for sissies

Mon, 27 Nov 2000 18:51:00 +0000

Consider, if you will, the morass of our presidential election while reading a few observations from Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America," the 19th century classic, which has been newly translated, edited and introduced by Harvey C. Mansfield, a Harvard University political scientist, and Delba Winthrop, his wife, a Harvard lecturer:

" ...one can still consider the moment of the Presidential election as a period of national crisis."

" ...the parties have a great interest in determining the election in their favor, not so much to make their doctrines triumph with the aid of the president-elect as to show by his election that those doctrines have acquired a majority."

"Parties are an evil inherent in free governments."

"In the United States, it is people moderate in their desires who involve themselves in the twists and turns of politics. Great talents ... turn away from power in order to pursue wealth ... It is to these causes as much as to the bad choices of democracy that one must attribute the great number of vulgar men who occupy public office."

“Our Man in Washington” by Roy Hoopes

Tue, 31 Oct 2000 13:00:00 +0000

As a regular reader (and collector) of Washington-based political fiction, I couldn't resist the premise of this first novel: H.L. Mencken and a young sidekick journalist, James M. Cain, investigate corruption (sex, bootlegging and murder) in the Harding administration.

Roy Hoopes, a career Washington journalist, certainly has the credentials to tell this story. The head of white hair he sports in his author photo suggests that he has witnessed his share of mischief in the capital, and there's no doubt he knew Cain, his narrator: Hoopes has written an award-winning biography of Cain, a writer best known for novels that became film classics: "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1934, filmed in 1946 and 1981), "Double Indemnity" (1936, filmed in 1944) and "Mildred Pierce" (1941, filmed in 1945). Cain's short stories, novels and novelettes epitomize the hard-boiled style that flourished in the 1930s and '40s, stories that are fast-paced, sexually driven, violent and melodramatic.

The prosecution won’t rest

Wed, 04 Oct 2000 08:59:00 +0000

Do you remember David Schippers? He was on television, the rumpled looking guy with white hair and a beard, who read a long statement to the House Judiciary Committee advising it to impeach President Clinton for 15 felonies. Then, just when it seemed he'd finished, out of nowhere, he started reciting Longfellow: "Sail on, O Ship of State!/Sail on, O Union, strong and great!/Humanity with all its fears,/With all the hopes of future years,/Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"

Well, I must admit that it was at that point that I could barely watch him any longer. But I did listen, as he explained his recitation. "How sublime, poignant and uplifting; yet how profound and sobering are those words at this moment in history. You now are confronted with the monumental responsibility of deciding whether William Jefferson Clinton is fit to remain at the helm of that ship." To be courteous, let's say I found this cornball ending less than poignant, if not inappropriate, given the reason this 68-year-old attorney was testifying.

Gratuitous advice

Fri, 15 Sep 2000 19:59:00 +0000

If our next president should be a non-reader of books, but a lover of baseball and an occasional autobiography, he should at least give this one a try: "Wait Till Next Year" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, which is only 257 pages. When I happened to mention to a friend how much I'd enjoyed this great historian's book (her works include "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream," "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys," "No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II"), he told me it was his 11-year-old daughter's all-time favorite. Thus, it's perfect. If Goodwin's story of a young girl growing up in the 1950s, with the polio scare, McCarthyism and A-bomb drills at school ameliorated by a father-daughter love affair with the great Brooklyn Dodgers teams (Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanela, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges), is not of interest to the president, he can pass it along to his twin daughters. I hope, however, the unbookish president will tough through these pages, for it's a pretty painless way to acquire a bit of historical perspective.

For the president who enjoys books, these works should not be overlooked: