--- description: Forty years after his boss resigned, he’s back with The Nixon Defense based on the Watergate tapes title: John Dean on the Nixon Defense and the Watergate Tapes image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b92c50dfaf1a01e/69869ce755a8595c13a81e95/john-dean-portrait-the-nixon-defense.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Politics](/section/politics/) ## Politics Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [10 Questions](/tag/10-questions/) ## 10 Questions Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # 10 Questions With John Dean  by [Massimo Calabresi](/author/massimo-calabresi/)  ## Massimo Calabresi Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief. Jul 24, 2014 10:48 AM CUT  David Cason Design  by [Massimo Calabresi](/author/massimo-calabresi/)  ## Massimo Calabresi Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief. Jul 24, 2014 10:48 AM CUT **May I turn on a recording device?** Absolutely. **You recruited G. Gordon Liddy to run President Nixon’s dirty-tricks campaign and were intimately involved in the cover-up. Why should a reader pay for your judgment on Watergate?** These tapes do refresh recollection of things I had totally forgotten about … Anybody who wants to take the time to listen to the tapes will get a confirmation of exactly what I’ve said. I have no reason at this late date to try to distort anything, other than to really understand what did happen and why. **Your book reminds us that the major players in Watergate were either incompetent sociopaths or malevolent egomaniacs. Is that the point?** I was trying to figure out how somebody as savvy as Nixon could have screwed up as badly as he did. It shows how a combination of his character and his decisionmaking were just a disaster. **The underlying premise of the book is that he knew less than the public imagines he knew.** What struck me is that in the early days, he’s relatively passive and certainly not running the cover-up … He knows about everything from the payoff money to pretty actively suborning perjury, but compared to his later role, he’s not deeply involved. **Comparatively minor exertions of presidential power, like signing statements, are now read as threats to democracy. Did Watergate permanently poison the public faith in the presidency?** I’ve had many people tell me over the years they think Iran-contra was much more serious than Watergate … Nixon in his darkest day wouldn’t have authorized torture post-9/11 … People label things like signing statements as Nixonian. Well, Nixon didn’t issue that many signing statements, and they weren’t particularly provocative. The short answer is, I don’t think it has damaged the presidency, but it has left a watermark, and I think it will be a long time before it is breached. **Impeachment has resurfaced under President Obama. What is it about impeachment post-Watergate that people keep reaching for it?** \[During the President Clinton impeachment\] I heard a recurring statement from people that this was for Nixon, this was to get even … I think today it’s just an echo of what happened with Clinton. \[Democratic House member\] John Dingell may be the only one that remembers Watergate. **Does the case of Edward Snowden and NSA surveillance show that post-Watergate limits on the presidency are working or that they’re not working?** I find interesting the comparison between Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg, \[whose Pentagon Papers leak\] provoked so much of Nixon’s anger and effort to deal with leaks. The Obama Administration has been much more aggressive than \[Nixon’s\] in dealing with leaks. **Nixon personally authorized the Brookings Institution burglaries and other crimes in response to Ellsberg’s leak.** Nixon only prosecuted one leaker … What Obama has done more aggressively than Nixon and more aggressively than Bush even is prosecute journalists and leakers … I’m sure Nixon is smiling. **Should demolition of the Rosslyn, Va., garage where Mark Felt, a.k.a. Deep Throat, met Bob Woodward be blocked?** I was never in the garage, but I can’t imagine making it a monument to anything. **Is there going to come a time, you think, when it won’t be possible to profit on the legacy of Watergate anymore?** I’m not sure I’ve ever profited on the legacy of Watergate. What I’ve done is the research that no one else is willing to do. –Massimo Calabresi ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3028052/10-questions-with-john-dean/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3028052/10-questions-with-john-dean/"},"headline":"10 Questions With John Dean","datePublished":"2014-07-24T10:48:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T09:19:10.726Z","description":"Forty years after his boss resigned, he’s back with The Nixon Defense based on the Watergate tapes","url":"https://time.com/3028052/10-questions-with-john-dean/","keywords":["10 Questions"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b92c50dfaf1a01e/69869ce755a8595c13a81e95/john-dean-portrait-the-nixon-defense.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Massimo Calabresi","jobTitle":"Calabresi is TIME’s Washington bureau chief.","url":"https://time.com/author/massimo-calabresi/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0b92c50dfaf1a01e/69869ce755a8595c13a81e95/john-dean-portrait-the-nixon-defense.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"John Dean Portrait The Nixon Defense","caption":"John Dean Portrait The Nixon Defense","creditText":"David Cason Design","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/10-questions/","name":"10 Questions"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3028052/10-questions-with-john-dean/","name":"10 Questions With John Dean"}}]}] ```