“A Cancer on the Presidency:” John Dean Warns President Nixon of Growing Watergate Scandal
John W. Dean, Counsel to the President, on this day personally warned President Richard Nixon that there was “a cancer on the presidency.”
The warning referred to the growing scandal related to the break-in of the Watergate hotel on June 17, 1972 by operatives associated with the Nixon White House, and the cover-up of the break-in that began immediately.
Nixon ignored Dean’s warning, and as the scandal continued to grow, with revelations of many other White House abuses of power, he resigned in disgrace as the president on August 9, 1974.
Dean became a star witness in Congressional investigations of the Watergate scandal, and in criminal prosecutions of official guilty of crimes in the scandal. For his cooperation, we was allowed to plead guilty to one felony count of obstruction of justice and served four months in jail.
Learn more about the Watergate scandal: Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990)
Read John Dean’s Memoirs: John W. Dean, Blind Ambition (1976)
Check out the Watergate timeline here.
Read historian Joan Hoff’s revisionist view of Nixon: Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (1994)