RICHARD NIXON 1973 WATERGATE (Part 11) THE SINISTER FORCE EMERGES (John Dean and the Watergate Special Prosecution Force)

The Richard Nixon Experience

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"The White House counsel is a senior staff appointee of the president of the United States whose role is to advise the president on all legal issues concerning the president and their administration.
The Office of Counsel to the President and Vice President was created in 1943, and is responsible for advising on all legal aspects of policy questions; legal issues arising in connection with the President's decision to sign or veto legislation, ethical questions, financial disclosures; and conflicts of interest during employment and post employment. The Counsel's office also helps define the line between official and political activities, oversees executive appointments and judicial selection, handles presidential pardons, reviews legislation and presidential statements, and handles lawsuits against the president in his role as president, as well as serving as the White House contact for the Department of Justice."
(This is the definition provided by the website Wikipedia)
If ever anyone in the history of employment ever failed anymore totally at the job description provided in the hand book than John W. Dean, I would like to know who it was. His entire job description can be summed up in shorthand like this
"Sit there and when you hear something that sounds illegal, say Mr. President, you can't do that"
That is all you have to do, I mean really how hard can it be?
John Dean not only did not do that, he actively made himself the "desk officer of the cover up" , and when he goes up to Camp David to write the report the President has asked him to write, he suddenly realizes all roads filter into one that leads from the Committee to Re-elect the President to the White House Staff itself, like the middle of an hourglass, through one "poison line".....HIM.
So what does he do, he shops a deal, at first to the career prosecutors who want nothing to do with it, and then to the Ervin Committee. That committee totally controlled by the Democratic Party, leap at the chance to embrace "The Chief Desk Officer of the Cover up"
All of this occurs while another force emerges and enters the battlefield. This force more sinister than anything Richard Nixon has had to face since the North Vietnamese gave up in Paris.
A force determined that they would destroy Richard Nixon using any tool, distortion, lie, or sleight of hand they could engineer; they were the partisan lawyers who made up the staff of the Watergate Special Prosecutors Task Force and it is their sinister rise that begins in this episode.