Liddy’s involvement in this specious attack did not surprise me. He had once planned to kill both Howard Hunt and me, he had said in Will, but his orders to do so had never come—although he did not say who he expected would send them. “Howard Hunt had become an informer,” he wrote, and when Hunt agreed to testify he became “a betrayer of his friends, and to me there is nothing lower on earth…. Hunt deserved to die.” About me, Liddy wrote that the “difference between Hunt and Dean is the difference between a POW who breaks under torture and aids the enemy, and Judas Iscariot.”[2] The subtext of Liddy’s statement is that the U.S. government had become his enemy and that Richard Nixon had become something of a Christ figure for him. Attacking Howard Hunt and me was consistent with both his conservative politics and his personality. He sought to resurrect Nixon for conservatives and blame others for his destroyed presidency. His attacks on Mo, however, were inexplicable. It did not strike me as consistent with his macho perception of himself to attack a noncombatant woman, yet he traveled the country repeating the false story that Phillip Bailley had told him. Clearly, Silent Coup had come at a perfect time for Liddy. Since the first publication of Will in 1980 he had made a living by putting his dysfunctional personality on display. By the early nineties speaking engagements were becoming less frequent for him, and his business ventures, including several novels, were unsuccessful. Silent Coup put him back in the spotlight, where he loved to be—publicly misbehaving.
My former colleague Chuck Colson’s appearance on national television to endorse Silent Coup truly surprised me and stunned Mo, who was deeply hurt by his gratuitous attack. Chuck and I had crossed swords at the Nixon White House only once, and even then we had not communicated directly. I had had virtually nothing to do with his office, or its nefarious activities, except for the time Chuck had wanted to firebomb and burglarize the Brookings Institution, convinced that this Washington think tank had copies of documents the president wanted. When I learned of his insane plan I flew to California (where the president and senior staff were staying at the Western White House) to plead my case to John Ehrlichman, a titular superior to both Chuck and myself. By pointing out, with some outrage, that if anyone died it would involve a capital crime that might be traced back to the White House, I was able to shut down Colson’s scheme. As a result, over the next several months I was told nothing about Colson’s shenanigans, such as his financing the infamous burglary by Liddy and Hunt of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office after Ellsberg released the so-called Pentagon Papers, which was a precursor to the later Watergate break-ins.
After I eventually broke rank with the Nixon White House, Colson had set about trying to destroy me for telling the truth, though he backed off after purportedly finding God. He also became rather busy with his own problems. On March 1, 1974, Colson was indicted for his role in the Watergate cover-up, and six days later he was indicted for his involvement in the conspiracy to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Chuck, no doubt, sensed even more problems to come, because the Watergate Special Prosecution Force was considering charging him with both perjury and subornation of perjury.[3] He was facing a lot of jail time. However, the prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to a single—and given what he was facing, innocuous—charge in exchange for his cooperation, although in the end he proved to be utterly useless as a government witness, since the prosecutors could not vouch for his honesty.
Chuck and I had agreed to let bygones be bygones during the Watergate cover-up trial when we found ourselves only down the hall from each other, under the federal Witness Protection Program, at the Fort Holabird safe house in Maryland, just outside Washington. Until Colson started promoting Silent Coup I had taken him as a man of his word, and we had even continued to visit from time to time after Watergate was behind us. When I saw Colson promote Silent Coup on Crossfire, I was still unaware of his earlier prepublication discussions with Colodny about this invented history. (Colodny had illegally tape-recorded all of his telephone conversations.) Why, of all people, would Chuck Colson promote Silent Coup ’s conspicuously phony account of Watergate? Where was his conscience? How could he call himself a Christian? I promised myself I would find answers to these questions, because I did not understand what was compelling his behavior.
The promotion campaign to sell the book to conservatives worked, thanks to Liddy’s nationwide tour, in which he appeared on countless right-wing talk-radio shows. By July 7, 1991, Silent Coup had peaked at number three on the New York Times best-seller list. On July 12, 1991, our answering machine handled a very early call. When Mo checked the message I heard her shriek, and ran to find her standing beside the answering machine sobbing and shaking. “What is it?” I asked but she could not speak, as tears poured from her eyes. As I held her I could feel every bone in her body trembling. “What is it?” I asked again.
“Liddy. He’s called our house.” Before Mo could explain, the phone began ringing and I answered.
“Is this John Dean?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
“Yes, it is. Who’s this?”
“Wow, that’s cool. This is really John Dean?”
“Yes. Who is this, please?”
“Oh, I’m nobody. I was just listening to the radio and Gordon Liddy was on, and he gave out your telephone number, so I thought I’d try it. Talk to you later. Bye.”
Immediately the phone rang again, this time it was a collect call, which I refused. To prevent further nuisance calls I used a technique that makes all our phone lines busy. This diverted Mo’s attention and calmed her, and she now asked me to listen to Liddy’s message, so I played it.
A smug-sounding voice said, “This is G. Gordon Liddy, calling you from the Merle Pollis Show. John, you have…” “W-E-R-E Cleveland, let’s get our call letters in,” the host interrupted. Liddy then continued, “…you have promised that you will sue me and Len Colodny and Bob Gettlin. Let’s get this suit started, John. We want to get you on the stand, under oath, yet again…. Come on, John. I’m publicly challenging you to make good on your promise to sue.” The host added, “John, this is Merle Pollis, the host of the program. Would you say hello to Maureen, for me? I said she was the prettiest of the Watergate people, next to G. Gordon Liddy. I hope she’s still just as pretty. I, ah, this, this new book, however, reveals some things about Maureen that irk me. I didn’t want to think of her in that way, and it makes me very sad, and it also makes me feel, well, never mind. Thanks, John.”
Liddy would get his lawsuit, but on our terms, not his. Rather than give him the publicity he desperately wanted, we spent the next eight months collecting evidence and preparing the case. For eight years our lawsuit made its way through the federal courts, and St. Martin’s tried every possible ploy to prevent its going to trial. Had we taken the case to trial, Phillip Mackin Bailley, the key source for the story about the purported call-girl ring, might rank as the worst possible source of information in the annals of defamation law. Bailley had been in and out of mental institutions throughout his adult life. When we deposed him, Bailley’s attorney arranged for a psychiatrist to testify under oath that his client’s mental condition made him unable to distinguish fact from fiction. While St. Martin’s and the other defendants were spending over $14 million of insurance company money trying to make us go away, it eventually became clear to them that we were prepared to go whatever distance necessary to make fools of them all, and that we had the evidence to do it.[4] By the fall of 1998 we had also accomplished our underlying goal of gathering the information necessary to show that Silent Coup was bogus history. Ultimately, it seems, they had hoped to win the lawsuit by simply outspending us, but when that strategy failed, they sought a settlement. Neither Colodny nor Liddy wanted to settle, however. Colodny had somehow used a rider on his homeowner’s policy to get the insurance company to pay for his defense in the litigation, though ultimately his insurer forced him to settle. Liddy, on the other hand, had nothing at risk, since all of his assets were in his wife’s name and St. Martin’s was paying for his attorney. After we settled with St. Martin’s and Colodny, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan put an end to the litigation.[5] While the final settlement agreement prohibits me from discussing its terms, I can say the Deans were satisfied.
2.
Eric Nordon, “Interview of G. Gordon Liddy,”
3.
See Watergate Special Prosecution Force, January 9, 1974, Memorandum to Bill Merrill from Phil Bakes, Subject: “Charles Colson—Synopsis of Areas where Colson may be Perjuring Himself or Have Some Involvement.” This memorandum sets forth nine areas of interest to the prosecutors, which I have summarized: (1) Colson’s testimony that he had no knowledge regarding the recruitment of homosexuals to support McGovern, and the fact that his top aide Bill Rhatican contradicts this. (2) Colson’s claim that he never instructed Jack Caulfield to firebomb the Brookings Institution; rather, he claimed that Ehrlichman instructed him to have Caulfield obtain the Brookings documents. Ehrlichman denied giving Colson such an instruction. Caulfield and this author testified that not only did Colson give such instructions, but I had to fly to California to turn them off. (3) Colson denied discussing phony State Department cables with Howard Hunt, or having knowledge that Hunt had prepared such, that would have shown an involvement of the Kennedy administration in the assassination of South Vietnam leader Diem. Hunt contracted Colson’s denials, as did secretaries.(4) Colson’s own memorandum, obtained by the prosecutors, contradicted his testimony about whether Dan Ellsberg should be criminally prosecuted.(5) Evidence of Colson’s role in the break-in of the office of Dr. Fielding, Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, for which Colson would later be indicted. (6) Colson’s contradictory testimony about when he learned of the Ellsberg break-in. (7) Colson’s possible destruction of evidence, since he walked out of the White House with his files, returning only some of them after he left, with the omissions being conspicuous. The prosecutors believed “Colson may have sanitized his files.” (8) Evidence that Colson orchestrated a physical assault on Dan Ellsberg and others when they were demonstrating in May 1972. (9) The suspicion of the prosecutors that Colson had suborned perjury of several people.
4.
This $14 million figure was given in open court by an attorney for one of the insurance companies involved. We believe it is a conservative number, and, in fact, the actual amount may have exceeded $18 million. Not long after we filed our lawsuit, and had defeated the early motions to get the case dismissed, St. Martin’s general counsel, David Kaye, boasted to a group of attorneys at a bar association meeting that they were going to employ a scorched-earth spending policy—endless motions, depositions, etc.—that would make us regret having filed the suit, and force us to drop it. It is a very small world, for Kaye’s remarks got back to me within days of his making them. While we could not outspend an insurance company, we simply planned accordingly, husbanding and marshaling our resources, and making our own preemptive moves. One day I will write about this lawsuit, for I believe public figures—who find defamation law stacked against them—should hold others responsible for false and harmful statements.
5.
My Los Angeles attorneys (Doug Larson and John Garrick of Iverson, Yoakum, Papiano & Hatch) had cleared their calendars for a trial against Liddy back in Washington, and, in fact, we were packing up files and making plans to return to Washington, when the federal judge handling the case, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan, forced a settlement with Liddy. That was fine by me, because it was not really fair to our lawyers, given that Liddy’s assets were hidden in his wife’s name; it would take years to unwind his affairs, and we wished his wife, Frances, no ill. More important, my Washington-based attorney, David Dorsen, was very interested in keeping Liddy busy for a few more years. David told me that he had offered to represent Maxie Wells (whose telephone had been wiretapped in 1972) in a lawsuit against Liddy, for Liddy was also defaming her based on Phillip Bailley’s fantasies, and she was ready to file an action. I told David we would assist in any way we could. But Liddy got lucky when Maxie sued him. The case landed with a federal judge in Maryland, where Liddy resided, who could not have been friendlier to him. The judge threw the case out, claiming Ms. Wells was a public figure, and that she could not meet the high standard of proof required. Dorsen got the case reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, but the reversal meant that when the case went to trial, he had less than a friendly judge. Indeed, the judge refused to permit Mo or me to testify, yet permitted Liddy’s lawyers to put on a parade of witnesses who claimed they all believed