Nixon, Wiretaps and Government Secrets

[Editor's Note: This is the edited transcript of an interview between Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! and John Dean and Daniel Ellsberg. The interview originally aired on Democracy Now! on Thursday, April 27, and the full transcript and audio of the interview are available from Democracy Now!.]

Amy Goodman: We are joined by two figures who played central roles in the fall of President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal of a generation ago, John Dean and Daniel Ellsberg. Dean served as President Nixon's chief counsel. He exposed the government-sanctioned break-in of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the government analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers and earned himself a spot on Nixon's enemy list. Dean and Ellsberg join us in our firehouse studio to discuss Watergate and the abuse of presidential power from Nixon to Bush.

John Dean has become a vocal critic of the Bush Administration. Daniel Ellsberg remains an advocate for greater openness in government and supported other government whistleblowers. They both join us in the Firehouse studio. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! So, it was 33 years ago that you were in court, Dan Ellsberg. Explain what happened.

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, we had been in court for four-and-a-half months at that point. A fairly boring trial. A lot of documents to go over for the press and [inaudible]. And on one morning, an announcement came in from the judge in the courtroom, a memo from Earl Silbert, the Watergate prosecutor, saying that burglars, on the orders of the White House, had broken into my former psychiatrist's office to get information on me. Well, this came from John Dean, though some ten days earlier, twelve days earlier, the President had sat on that information for that period of time, forbidding Peter -- the acting Attorney General to send it on to the judge.

But finally, they threatened to resign, because they would be involved in obstruction of justice if they didn't send it on. So when that announcement was read in court, it was quite electrifying. For once the reporters who had been stuck in Los Angeles, while their colleagues were doing exciting things on Watergate in Washington, envisioned headlines "Watergate Meets the Pentagon Papers Trial." That was the headline they all wanted. And they dashed from their seats during the court for the payphones in the hall. It was just like the movie Front Page for the first time in the trial, and not the last time.

And three days later, Ehrlichman testified about the existence of the Plumbers, the -- supposedly to stop leaks, although another of their jobs was to leak what the President wanted out, classified information, just like Bush's selective leaking of the National Intelligence Estimate recently.

Juan Gonzalez: And John Ehrlichman then was --

DE: Ehrlichman was the domestic counsel, and Haldeman was his chief counsel. So Karl Rove kind of combines the jobs -- or until recently. So they -- three days later it was announced that they had been involved in this. And President Nixon that night announced the resignation of "two of the finest public servants I have ever known," Haldeman and Ehrlichman -- and John Dean, who wasn't included in those adjectives, and Richard Kleindienst, the acting Attorney General at that point. I lost several Attorney Generals, actually, in the course of that trial.

AG: And you were on trial because?

DE: I was on trial on the same kinds of charges that are being brought up today for unauthorized possession of copies of documents relating to the national security. There are several such trials coming at us now. Mine was the first in our history, prosecution of someone for a leak. As a matter of fact, I was reminding a Yale man last night there is a statue of Nathan Hale outside Yale and outside C.I.A. headquarters, which is staffed with Yale people. Nathan Hale, our first spy. And I remember saying at Yale once that it occurred to me that I'm the first American prosecuted -- he was hanged -- for giving secrets to Americans.