Bush is the 'most corrupt president', says Nixon aide jailed for Watergate perjury

John Dean, Richard Nixon's legal counsel who was jailed for his part in the Watergate scandal, has accused the Bush administration of trumping even the Nixon regime in secrecy, deception and political cynicism.

In the latest book to attack the conduct of the current United States administration, Mr Dean says that it has created potentially the most corrupt, unethical and undemocratic White House in history.

His Worse than Watergate, the Secret Presidency of George W. Bush is published this week by Little Brown.

"Bush and [Vice-President Richard] Cheney are a throwback to the Nixon time," Mr Dean, 65, told The Telegraph last night. "All government business is filtered through a political process at this White House, which is the most secretive ever to run the United States.

"This is not in the public's interest. It's in the White House's interest, and the interest of Bush's re-election. The White House is being run like a private business, with the difference that it is not accountable to the shareholders - in this case the voters."

His attack follows a torrid month in which the Bush administration has faced accusations from Richard Clarke, its former chief intelligence officer, that it failed to take the threat of terrorism seriously enough before September 11.

Mr Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, initially refused to testify before a public inquiry into the events of September 11. Under intense pressure, the White House has agreed to let her testify this week.

"As with Nixon," noted Mr Dean, "the concept of executive privilege is being abused. This is about pure politics: do it as long as you can get away with it, and when you can't get away with it any more, yield."

Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?
By John W. Dean

FindLaw Columnist
Special to CNN.com
Friday, June 6, 2003 Posted: 5:17 PM EDT (2117 GMT)

(FindLaw) -- President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. 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.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's statements on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons."

United Nations address, September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

Radio address, October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio speech, October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003

"Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Address to the nation, March 17, 2003

Should the president get the benefit of the doubt?
When these statements were made, Bush's let-me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the world, and many other Americans, doubted them.

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses -- including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the president of the United States? My answer was that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's though. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible revision.

Second, I explained that -- at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton -- statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the president is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Bush administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs -- and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find -- for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.

So where is all that? And how can we reconcile the White House's unequivocal statements with the fact that they may not exist?

There are two main possibilities. One, that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the president has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

A desperate search for WMDs has so far yielded little, if any, fruit
Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the president had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.

During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British and American press reaction to the missing WMDs
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.

New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history -- worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.

Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the Pentagon announced it was shifting its search from looking for WMD sites, to looking for people who can provide leads as to where the missing WMDs might be.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs would indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War intelligence reports
Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of pre-emption —when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons—exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O.J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone else to blame -- informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it -- they may not escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner, R-Virginia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct -- and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

Sen. Bob Graham -- a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- told CNN's Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they finds WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has also contemplated three other possible alternative scenarios:

One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Sen. Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Graham requested that the Bush administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decision making process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggest manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse than Watergate? A potential huge scandal if WMDs are still missing
Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

This administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

Five years ago, John Dean filed suit against me (Len Colodny), Robert Gettlin (my co-author), the publishers of "Silent Coup" and G. Gordon Liddy for 150 million dollars. The documentation produced and the witnesses deposed, especially over the past two years, have created a MOUNTAIN of evidence in support of "Silent Coup's" claim of Dean's prebreak-in involvement in the planning and execution of the "Watergate" wiretapping and burglary.

In my opinion, it has become clear to Dean during the past nine months that he has little chance of winning the lawsuit on the issues. More IMPORTANTLY, my attorneys, prior to Christmas, filed a "SUMMARY JUDGMENT MOTION" requesting a dismissal of this lawsuit by the Court.

This document is of great historical importance. It identifies my sources and the information provided by each source that corresponds to each of the 97 Dean sued-upon assertions of defamation. It serves as a resource for historians and journalists studying the "Nixon years" and the "Watergate" scandal for decades to come.

Let me describe the document to you. The body of the document is between 500 and 550 pages. Attached to it are 754 separate exhibits, spanning between 3,400 and 3,500 pages. The total document consists of nearly 4,200 pages and stands two feet high.

Lots of new evidence is contained in the document, such as information establishing that the true target of the break-in was NOT DNC Chairman Larry O'Brien's office telephone but another telephone in the DNC office complex used, among other things, to contact an ESCORT service for out-of-town male visitors. And there is much, much more.

The February 10th issue of "Insight" magazine reported the following about the filing of the motion.

"In December, Colodny's attorneys dumped a 4,200-page summary-judgment motion into Dean's lap asking U.S. Magistrate Alan Kay to dismiss the case. Dean immediately requested a continuance to respond to the motion. It was a briar patch."

"Even Dean's own words in his best-selling book "Blind Ambition" are being used in Colodny's motion to portray Dean as a liar."

In a last ditch effort to maintain Dean's fictional account of his true role in the "Watergate" scandal, Dean's attorneys made a vigorous attempt to have this document sealed by the court. That would have kept it from the public forever, and Dean's mythical story would continue unchallenged. This effort failed, the truth is out and the "Watergate" history will never be the same again.

After reading the motion, or a condensation thereof, I am sure you will agree with my opinion that "Silent Coup" has won the "Historical Struggle" on these issues. So that you can fully comprehend the substance and content of the Motion, I am publishing the Motion's printed TABLE OF CONTENTS. If you wish to obtain a copy of the Motion itself, please send me an e-mail.

We are looking forward to John Wesley Dean's ANSWER to this motion. He owes that, not to us, but to ALL the AMERICAN PEOPLE.

*****

Liddy Challenges Dean's Version Of Watergate Events
by Len Colodny

When John Dean testified before the Senate Watergate Committee on June 25th, 1973, he read into record an opening statement that exceeded 240 pages. In great detail, he presented his version of the Watergate affair from beginning to end; knowing fully well that G. Gordon Liddy would remain silent. As a result, Dean's version of events remained unchallenged and became the accepted version of the Watergate affair for many years.

In 1980, however, Liddy published his own best selling autobiography and uncovered a whole new set of facts. The book Will portrayed Dean as being much more involved in both the pre break-in plotting and planning and the post break-in cover-up. Liddy painted an entirely different picture then the one Dean crafted for the Senate, for the Courts and in his own 1976 book Blind Ambition.

Following the 1991 publication of Silent Coup, Liddy reissued a paperback edition of Will. The newer edition directly contradicted Dean's version of events and accused him of being a "Serial Perjurer." The result was a lawsuit filed by Dean against Liddy in 1992. This suit created a unique opportunity for Liddy to recount his story under oath – subject to the laws of perjury. Until Liddy's testimony, historians relied solely on Dean's account and subsequent book – a version which had up to this time had accumulated more credibility then Liddy's account because of the official nature of Dean's testimony. This all changed in 1996 as Liddy provided several days of deposition testimony in the Dean lawsuit. It was the very first time that Liddy's version of events had been officially given under oath.

June 2004 marks the 31st anniversary of Dean's Senate testimony. The "Nixon Era Times" is publishing an exclusive – for the first time anywhere – a portion of Liddy's testimony that challenges the heretofore-accepted Dean version. From now on both John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy's testimony will carry equal weight. The reader can judge the evidence surrounding these versions to determine who is telling the truth and who is not. The significance is clear: if Liddy is telling the truth and Dean is not, then the currently accepted version of the Watergate events can no longer stand.

http://www.nixonera.com/etexts/core_subjects/core17.asp

Liddy Letter
VICTORY HOW SWEET IT IS

On February 1, 2001, a Baltimore jury ruled 8-1 in favor of G. Gordon Liddy over John Dean’s surrogate, Ida "Maxie" Wells. Shortly thereafter, Chief Judge Motz gave the judgement "as a matter of law," specifically stating that "no reasonable jury could find that G. Gordon Liddy was negligent" in making the statements he made about Watergate. John W. Dean, III, former Counsel to President Nixon, who turned government informant against his client, the President, and his White House colleagues, in order to receive preferential treatment, started the litigation by suing Liddy in 1992 for defamation. When it came time for Liddy to go to trial, Dean, a.k.a. "the weasel," was nowhere to be found. Dean dropped the case at the eleventh hour to avoid having to take the stand and face Liddy.

Prior to the trial date, Dean attempted to learn how much Liddy’s lawyers, investigators, and Liddy, himself, had uncovered about the call-girl ring at the Columbia Plaza Apartments next door to the Water-gate Headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. He did so by illegally taping a speech Liddy delivered at James Madison University in 1996. Liddy gave a speech that had nothing to do with Watergate, but at the end of all his speeches, he makes it a practice to entertain questions. He answers whatever questions are asked. The only rule is that there are no rules.

One of the questioners asked Liddy about Watergate, specifically about "one of the theories surrounding the mystery of Watergate." Liddy answered the question as he always does, describing how it was John Dean who hired him to develop and oversee an all-out offensive and defensive political intelligence gathering operation for the Republicans to use during the 1972 General Election. He also stated that he had never planned an entry into the Watergate headquarters of the DNC, but that one day Magruder called him. It was clear to Liddy that Magruder was under orders from someone else because Magruder was not anyone to originate anything like this. Magruder told Liddy that he had to get into the Watergate.

At James Madison University, Liddy recounted his conversation with Jeb Magruder. Liddy told Magruder, "Yeah, well we can get into the Watergate, but we haven’t planned to do so because nobody’s there now. There’s nothing happening there now and we have not budgeted for it." Magruder told Liddy that he had to go in there anyway. Liddy instructed the Cuban break-in team to go into the Watergate and place a bug in Larry O’Brien’s office, but that is not what happened. There was never any bug found in there, and the lookout post could not hear direct line FM communications from Larry O’Brien’s office. The lookout looked directly down at the desk of a secretary, named Maxine Wells, and her telephone. And, Liddy said, "the [lookout] had a telescopic lens camera pointed at that. And that is where the wiretap was subsequently found by the Democrats on that phone."

"Now, why was there a wiretap there?" Liddy asked the audience at James Madison. "And, why did they go back in?"
This is a question of historical importance to all Americans. Richard Nixon was forced to resign the Office of President of the United States because of Watergate, more specifically, the cover-up of Watergate. But what was the purpose of the June 17, 1972 Watergate break-in? Nobody has ever really known. Thus, there was never any indictment of whomever ordered the Watergate break-in. Jeb Magruder said that it was Mitchell. Mitchell denied it in 1972 and continued to deny it until he died. Magruder was not a credible witness. He had conspired with John Dean to perjure himself before the grand jury. Many historians doubt Mitchell ordered the break-in because he had no motive. There was no political intelligence of any value in Chairman Larry O’Brien’s office at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Water-gate. That is why Liddy never scheduled a break-in there in the first place. Perhaps, political intelligence was not the objective of the break-in.

In the late 1980’s, Liddy learned about a lawyer for a Washington D.C. call-girl ring, Phillip Makin Bailley. Bailley was arrested for his involvement in prostitution in June 1972. The FBI had raided Bailley’s home and office. During the raid, the FBI seized numerous address books with names of call girls and johns. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney John Rudy, one of the books had the code name "CLOUT." Rudy has testified that his office had determined that CLOUT had the initials M.B. Thus, she was referred to as "Mike Bravo." Bailley’s secretary Jeanine testified that "CLOUT" was Maureen Biner, John Dean’s future wife.

There was a lot of publicity about Bailley’s arrest in the early summer of 1972. A newspaper article mentioned that a White House lawyer was listed in one of Bailley’s seized address books. The very next business day after that article appeared in the Washington newspaper, June 12, 1972, Liddy received orders to have the break-in team go back into the Watergate.

Liddy told the audience at James Madison about Bailley. He said, "Here’s what happened, and part of this I learned from a lawyer who represented a group of women who were running a call-girl operation across the street from the Watergate in a place called the Columbia Plaza Apartments. The name of the madam was Heidi Rikan. She used to call herself, sometimes, Cathy Deiter. And, according to the lawyer, the girls that were being used there came from two venues.Some were veterans of the Xaviera Hollander ‘Happy Hooker’ operation up on East Fifty-Fifth Street in New York City. And the others were what they called the ‘Hollywood’ or the ‘California Girls.’ Well, to make a long story short, the lawyer was arrested and they got his books that had his clients, ... all there listed, and all these girls. And code names. And one of the code names was for a girl named ‘Mo.’ Code name was ‘CLOUT.’ And according to the lawyer, she received that nickname. . . from one of the New York girls. CLOUT was a California girl, [the lawyer] told me. And he said that one Marian Taylor, one of the New York girls, thought that CLOUT was putting on airs and thought that she was better than the rest of the girls because she was then the paramour of the Counsel to the President of the United States, John Dean."

Liddy also told the audience that one of the Watergate burglars, Eugenio Martinez, had been arrested with a key. The FBI took the key from the D.C. police and tested it on all the locks in the DNC headquarters. The FBI determined that the key taken from Martinez fit the desk of Ida "Maxie" Wells.

John Dean had his lawyer illegally tape record the James Madison lecture. He sent portions of the transcript to Ms. Wells and urged her to sue Liddy. Wells was understandably reluctant to sue Liddy, but Dean left her with the false impression that Liddy was traveling the country giving lectures about her to college campuses. In fact, Liddy was not giving lectures about Maxie Wells. There would be no market for such a lecture, and Liddy would have no interest in giving one. But Liddy did deliver a lecture, mostly to corporate clients, entitled Survive versus Prevail. It had nothing to do with Watergate. Dean’s representations to Maxie Wells about Liddy’s lecture were about as accurate as his testimony to the Senate Watergate Committee about Watergate.

Thus, Dean persuaded the poor woman to sue. Ms. Wells retained Dean’s lawyer, David Dorsen, to represent her in Court. Dorsen was the lawyer who illegally tape recorded Liddy’s lecture at James Madison. Dean ran away when his trial date approached, but the Wells case went to trial in Baltimore, Maryland.

At trial there was a mountain of evidence proving the call-girl theory correct. Some of the evidence is as follows:

The key found on the burglar, Eugenio Martinez, fit the desk of Ida "Maxie" Wells, which was in the R. Spencer Oliver/ Wells section of the office, nowhere near Larry O’Brien’s office. The conventional theory of Watergate is that the burglars’ target was O’Brien’s office.
The FBI told Maxie Wells that the key found on the burglars fit her desk. She shrieked, "Oh my God. . . they didn’t get in there!" when she realized that the burglars might have been targeting her desk or filing cabinet.
When questioned by the Senate Watergate Committee about why she believed the burglars were targeting her desk, she withheld the information the FBI told her about Martinez being caught with the key.
There was never any bug found in O’Brien’s office or phone.
The bugs used by the burglars transmitted on an FM frequency, which required line of sight to the eavesdropping post at the Howard Johnson’s. O’Briens’ office or phone could never be picked up from the Howard Johnson’s. The Oliver/Wells office was directly across the street and under constant surveillance from CRP lookout, Alfred Baldwin.
Alfred Baldwin testified that he repeatedly overheard conversations of R. Spencer Oliver and Maxie Wells.
Wells testified that she often used the Oliver phone.
Baldwin testified that he heard many phone conversations specifically assigning partners for dates, including dates for dinner with discussion of specific sex acts that would follow dinner. He said prosecutors would not have heard enough to indict for prostitution, but that eight out of ten laymen who overheard the phone calls from the Oliver/Wells phone in the DNC would conclude that there was a prostitution ring facilitated from that phone.
After the Watergate break-in, Wells left the DNC. She visited a friend in Boulder, Colorado, named Joanne. While there, Wells learned that the FBI would subpoena her. Right after leaving Colorado, Wells wrote Joanne a letter in which she stated that she feared the FBI would investigate her activities while she was employed at the DNC, and that if they did they would find the making of "a real moral scandal." She instructed Joanne to destroy the letter after she read it.
A former DNC receptionist told the FBI that she believed Wells was dating a man named Bailley.
Phillip Makin Bailley, the attorney for the call-girl ring, stated that he had a contact in the DNC that helped him facilitate the call-girl assignations.
Philip Makin Bailley said that he dated Maxie Wells.
When under oath, Wells refused to state that she never dated Bailley, only that she dated a lot of people and could not remember.
Bailley’s secretary stated that Wells called Bailley at least 25 times after Christmas 1972 and before June 1972 and that Maureen Biner also called several firms.
Several former DNC employees testified that at the time Oliver was fired, immediately after the break-in, there was a rumor that he was fired for involvement in a prostitution ring.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Rudy stated that he had evidence link-ing Wells’ boss, Oliver, to the Columbia Plaza call-girl ring.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Rudy stated that his investigation had uncovered a lead that there was a link between the Columbia Plaza call-girl ring and the DNC, but that his superiors ordered him to put his investigation into the DNC link "on ice" because it would be politically explosive.
Wells stated that the only reason she locked her desk was to protect her office supplies and hand lotion from theft. Another DNC employee at the DNC at the time said that was ridiculous.
Wells wrote in the letter to her friend and confidante Joanne that there were personal documents in the desk that she hoped the FBI would not learn about.
The FBI traced a name in Bailley’s address book to "a secretary of an Administrative Assistant" in the DNC.
Lou Russell, a bouncer for the call-girl ring, was present outside the Watergate the night of the June 17, 1972, break-in.
Lou Russell tapped the phones at the Columbia Plaza call-girl ring and stated that he overheard several conversations between the call-girl operation and the DNC.
Circumstantial evidence links money John Dean took from the White House safe containing excess 1968 campaign cash to two payoffs to Lou Russell: 1. November, 1972, $4,350 2. March, 1973, $21,000 Dean was never able to satisfactorily account for the money he took from the 1968 fund. Prior to testifying about it, he asked Fred LaRue for a receipt for $350,000. LaRue refused, stating that he only gave Dean $328,000. Dean said that he needed some of it for his honeymoon, but he could never account for all of it.

Liddy’s victory in court is also a victory for all Americans. Liddy said, "My victory over Dean is a great victory for the people of this country under its re-affirmation of the primacy of the First Amendment." It means that we are all free to study the prior testimony of all those involved in Watergate, the FBI records and the prosecutor’s notes from the Archives, the sworn testimony in this and the Dean v. St. Martins Press litigation, as well as other evidence. We are free to draw our own conclusions about Watergate-an important part of our twentieth century American political history-without fear of censorship from those who want to conceal the facts and force Americans to accept nothing about Watergate except that placed into the record by Dean’s perjury and the sloppy reporting of the Washington BLEEP.

This litigation was started by Dean. With his victory, Liddy has driven a stake through Dean’s heart. In the words of the G-man, "How sweet it is!"

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