William K. Wolfrum Chronicles

(Note: I’d long meant to tackle John Dean’s recounting of Watergate, “Blind Ambition” and have recently started reading it. I will be giving short recaps of the book over the following weeks.)

Blind Ambition

Chapter Two: Firefighting

Synopsis: Young lawyer John Dean settles into his job as counsel to President Richard Nixon, giving it all he has. On Dean’s first day, he faced with an ethical dilemma when he’s asked to sick the IRS on the owners of a magazine that printed a story negative to the Administration. Dean quickly and eagerly folds.

Dean then works to get a secret, illegal, domestic surveillance program into effect, but J. Edgar Hoover, who has experience with this sort of thing, is a thorn in the administration’s side. Dean’s office then spies on anti-war Vietnam veterans. Dean’s office then spies on a filmmaker who made a satirical film on Nixon’s White House. Dean then has to work to keep the Happy Hooker scandal from exploding. Dean’s office barely avoids commissioning a burglary to steal information harmful to the White House, while the Executive Branch does all it can to make the Judicial Branch impotent.

Finally, Dean does the best he can from keeping a scandal exploding when a memo from ITT’s Washington lobbyist, Dita Beard, reveals a relationship between ITT’s providing funds for the Republican National Convention and a Justice Department settlement of an antitrust suit favorable to ITT.

Money Quote 1: “Tom Huston came to brief me. With rapid conviction, he told me the nation would surely crumble from within if the government failed to deal with the revolutionaries and anarchists who were bent on destroying it.”

Money Quote 2: “As we kicked ’scenarios’ around the room, a public-relations strategy emerged around two central themes: hide the facts and discredit the opposition.”

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Blind Ambition: Chapter 1

–WKW

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