John Dean writes, "Undoubtedly, those from the White House have been asked if they spoke with the president about the leak. It appears that one or more of them may indeed have done so. If so - and if the person revealed the leaker's identity to the President, or if the President decided he preferred not to know the leaker's identity. -- then this fact could conflict with Bush's remarkably broad public statements on the issue. He has said that he did not know of 'anybody in [his] administration who leaked classified information.' He has also said that he wanted 'to know the truth' about this leak. If Bush is called before the grand jury, it is likely because Fitzgerald believes that he knows much more about this leak than he has stated publicly. Perhaps Bush may have knowledge not only of the leaker, but also of efforts to make this issue go away - if indeed there have been any. It is remarkably easy to obstruct justice."

Julian Coman writes, "John Dean has accused the Bush administration of trumping even the Nixon regime in secrecy, deception and political cynicism. In the latest book to attack the conduct of the current United States administration, Mr Dean says that it has created potentially the most corrupt, unethical and undemocratic White House in history. His Worse than Watergate, the Secret Presidency of George W. Bush is published this week by Little Brown. Bush and [Vice-President Richard] Cheney are a throwback to the Nixon time," Mr Dean, 65, told The Telegraph last night. "All government business is filtered through a political process at this White House, which is the most secretive ever to run the United States. 'This is not in the public's interest. It's in the White House's interest, and the interest of Bush's re-election. The White House is being run like a private business, with the difference that it is not accountable to the shareholders - in this case the voters.' "

"BILL MOYERS: What is worse than Watergate? JOHN DEAN: If there's anything that really is the bottom line, it's taking the nation to war in a time - when they might not have had to go to war and people dying. That is worse than Watergate. No one died for Nixon's so-called Watergate abuses. BILL MOYERS: Let me go right to page 155 of your book. You write, quote, 'The evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense.' JOHN DEAN: Absolutely is. The founders in the debates in the states- I cite one. I tracked down after reading the Nixon impeachment proceedings when- Congressman Robert Kastenmeier had gone back to look to see what the founders said about misrepresentations and lying to the Congress. Clearly, it is an impeachable offense. And I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people."

John Dean: "Dick Cheney is a political disaster awaiting recognition. In the book, I set forth a relatively long list of inchoate scandals, not to mention problems worse than scandals. They all involve Cheney in varying degrees. Bush can't dump Cheney, for it is Cheney, not Rove, who is Bush's backroom brain. He is actually a co-president. Bush doesn't enjoy studying and devising policy. Cheney does. While Cheney has tutored Bush for almost four years, and Bush is better prepared today than when he entered the job, Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. Cheney knows how to play Bush so that Cheney is absolutely no threat to him, makes him feel he is president, but Bush can't function without a script, or without Cheney. Bush is head of state; Cheney is head of government."

John Dean writes, "Recently, and now famously, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia refused to recuse himself in the lawsuit involving his friend and duck-hunting compatriot Vice President Dick Cheney... It is an extraordinary case -- in which the Vice-President contends that he is, in essence, beyond the reach of the law. It began as a set of rather pedestrian discovery matters in two consolidated civil lawsuits. Now, however, because of Cheney's stance, it could be a landmark Constitutional decision... The result, Judge Sullivan argued persuasively, would be to 'eviscerate the understanding of checks and balances between the three branches of government on which our constitutional order depends.' In other words, it would be to forever change the government, and the system our Founders envisioned. "

"An aide to House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers (D) denied Tuesday that the Michigan lawmaker is drafting articles of impeachment against Bush, but declined to close the door on that prospect. 'We are aware of no plans to file articles of impeachment at present,' the aide said. The demurral came in response to comments made Sunday by Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Appearing on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Nader suggested, in the course of reaffirming his own support for Bush's impeachment, that Conyers 'is going to file such a request.'... Several Web sites, including Democrats.com and VoteToImpeach.com, are, in varying degrees, devoted to the idea... Democratic leaders have steered clear of supporting actions such as impeachment in response. Referring to Nader's remarks about Conyers' plans, a Democratic leadership aide on Tuesday said, 'Until he actually files [articles], it's not something we're focused on.'" Join our campaign at impeachcentral.com!

John Dean writes: "Can the President of the United States arrest any American he suspects of being a terrorist and toss him in a military brig, deny him a lawyer, omit to bring any charges against him -- yet indefinitely keep him imprisoned nonetheless? Can the President kidnap foreigners charged with violating federal law, and bring them to the United States to stand trial? How about Osama bin Laden, for starters? These are only a few of the issues raised by cases now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that will examine the limits of presidential powers. As David Savage, the legal writer for the Los Angeles Times, has noted, this is a remarkable collection of cases."

John Dean writes: "But as I will explain, I have a slightly different take on what has occurred and why. Here is what the latest positioning of the tea leaves tells me... When the lawyer -- diGenova, Toensing, or someone else -- went to the government seeking immunity for his or her client, Ashcroft would have heard that the middle-level person was offering to finger the high-level leaker. At that point, he would have realized he himself knew the high-level leaker; and decided to recuse himself from the case, and let Fitzgerald take over. After all, as Comey pointed out at the press conference announcing Fitzgerald's appointment, Fitzgerald -- as a U.S. Attorney -- would not have to consult with anyone at the Justice Department before making an immunity deal. Accordingly, Fitzgerald could 'flip' the middle-level person -- offering him or her immunity to testify against his or her superior -- without the permission, or even knowledge, of Comey, let alone Ashcroft."

John Dean writes, "David Corn, has written a powerful - not to mention disquieting - 324-page polemic addressing the pervasive mendacity of George W. Bush's administration. It is entitled The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. Actually, calling the book a polemic is misleading. It may be more accurate to call it a bill of particulars - the document that provides the specific charges underlying an indictment. In this case, the charges are highly credible. Corn is an experienced and respected Washington journalist. His evidence is overwhelming, his tone is measured, and his book a jaw dropper. This devastating work is not a laundry list of false statements; rather, it is the chronology of a residency. Corn found that 'lies, in part, made this resident, and lies frequently have been the support beams of his administration.' In sum, Corn has done for George Bush what Ken Starr did for Bill Clinton: provided evidence that places his residency in jeopardy."

John Dean writes, "Regardless of whether or not a special prosecutor is selected, I believe that Ambassador Wilson and his wife -- like the DNC official once did -- should file a civil lawsuit, both to address the harm inflicted on them, and, equally important, to obtain the necessary tools (subpoena power and sworn testimony) to get to the bottom of this matter. This will not only enable them to make sure they don't merely become yesterday's news; it will give them some control over the situation."

John Dean: The new GAO report "very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress.... To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no. Amazingly, it did so without even bothering to claim that the documents sought were covered by executive privilege. It simply refused.... The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false.... Moreover, the documents that were turned over were useless: 'The materials were virtually impossible to analyze, as they consisted, for example, of pages with dollar amounts but no indication of the nature or purpose of the expenditure.' They were further described as 'predominantly reimbursement requests, assorted telephone bills and random items, such as the executive director's credit card receipt for pizza.'"

John Dean writes: "This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations. Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless. The report - entitled 'Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy' - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice Resident Dick Cheney lied to Congress."

John Dean writes: "Bits and pieces of information have emerged, but the story is far from complete. Nonetheless, what has surfaced is repulsive. If I thought I had seen dirty political tricks as nasty and vile as they could get at the Nixon White House, I was wrong. The American Prospect's observation that 'we are very much into Nixon territory here' with this story is an understatement. Indeed, this is arguably worse. Nixon never set up a hit on one of his enemies' wives... Frankly, I am astounded that the Resident of the United States - whose father was once Director of the CIA - did not see fit to have his Press Secretary address this story with hard facts. Nor has he apparently called for an investigation - or even given Ambassador and Mrs. Wilson a Secret Service detail, to let the world know they will be protected. This is the most vicious leak I have seen in over 40 years of government-watching. Failure to act to address it will reek of a cover-up."

John Dean writes that Bush's "claim that these WMDs posed an imminent threat was his primary argument in favor of war... What I found, in critically examining Bush's evidence, is not pretty. The African uranium matter is merely indicative of larger problems, and troubling questions of potential and widespread criminality when taking the nation to war. It appears that not only the Niger uranium hoax, but most everything else that Bush said about Saddam Hussein's weapons was false, fabricated, exaggerated, or phony... So egregious and serious are Bush's misrepresentations that they appear to be a deliberate effort to mislead Congress and the public. So arrogant and secretive is the Bush White House that only a special prosecutor can effectively answer and address these troubling matters. Since the Independent Counsel statute has expired, the burden is on Bush to appoint a special prosecutor - and if he fails to do so, he should be held accountable by Congress and the public."

In an important and detailed article, Michael Ruppert writes, "The writing appears to be on the wall for a beleaguered and disarrayed presidency, as key administration officials including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice either wittingly or unwittingly line up like chess pieces to take the fall for a doomed King... Statements by both Bush and departing press spokesman Ari Fleischer that the matter is now closed will likely go down as wishful and quite possibly delusional thinking. Famous last words. Recalled is the line from Watergate's John Dean, 'There is a cancer growing on the Presidency.' This is the kind of cancer that eats official after official until there is nothing left between it and the King... The noose that will ultimately hang George W. Bush is a meticulous and carefully crafted official record compiled by California Congressman Henry Waxman (D) that has been in place since last March of this year."

"White House counsel Alberto Gonzales is said to be on President [sic] Bush's short list of potential nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court. Unlike other nominees, such as D.C. Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada, it turns out that Gonzales has left quite a paper trail - in the form of fifty-seven death-penalty memoranda he prepared for then-Texas Governor George Bush. The memos were initially confidential, meant for the Governor alone. They have not themselves been published. But they have been reviewed by writer Alan Berlow of The Atlantic Monthly, and his report on their contents is disturbing indeed. The Gonzales execution memos raise serious - and, unfortunately ugly - questions, not because of what they say, rather because of what they fail to say. They also suggest that President [sic] Bush's earlier claims about how he, in fact, handled clemency requests as Governor of Texas are less than accurate."

"Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed. As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, which was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable. To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked."

Richard Nixon's White House counsel John Dean writes, "Not since Richard Nixon's presidency have the powers of Congress been in greater jeopardy. Not only is the Bush White House seeking to expand presidential powers at the expense of Congress, but the conservative gang of five on the U.S. Supreme Court are busy trimming congressional powers directly. The Bush-Cheney efforts, along with those of the Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas-O'Connor-Kennedy bloc, are raw power politics and an example of short-sighted decisionmaking. These moves to curb congressional authority also raise the question why. In Part One of this two part-series, I will look at the threat to congressional power posed by the Bush White House; then, in Part Two, I will turn to the threat posed by the Supreme Court."

John Dean writes: "Election 2002 does not give the Bush-Cheney administration a mandate to load the federal judiciary with right wing judges. The voters, after all, had the economy and the war on their minds - not the federal courts. But if you doubt it's about to happen, just sit tight and wait."

Nixon's White House counsel John Dean writes, "President Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton are together asking the government to reimburse them for some $3.5 million of their legal fees resulting from Ken Starr's independent counsel investigation. The story says they 'racked up' about $11 million in legal bills for Whitewater and other investigations while in the White House. Their defense fund, reportedly, paid about $7 million - leaving a hefty sum yet unpaid... The Clintons should - and may - get at least partial reimbursement of their fees. They have fulfilled the statutory criteria for reimbursement, and thus only a partisan political decision will lead to the failure of the reimbursement request." Will Republicans and their Federalist Society judges trash the Rule of Law one more time? Stay tuned...

David Cogswell writes, "There was something deeply flawed about letting Nixon hand-pick his successor... And it wasn't only -- as John Dean had called it -- a cancer on the presidency. It was a cancer on the whole rotten system. By not removing it, the corrupt structure stayed intact and provided the infrastructure for the crimes of the Reagan-Bush regime, which conducted its own secret war in Nicaragua, Nixon style. Those crimes are now being covered up by the Bush II regime, which has elevated many of the criminals of the Iran Contra affair and restored them to positions of power at the top of the U.S. hierarchy... At one point during the impeachment struggles, Nixon tried to threaten the FBI by telling it if it didn't back off 'all that Bay of Pigs stuff' would come out. Nixon's aides and advisors said that when Nixon talked about the Kennedy assassination, he talked in code calling it 'all that Bay of Pigs stuff.' So go figure."

In a letter to Karl Rove, John Dean pulls no punches. "It's unimaginable that the Bush Administration would want to risk repeating the mistakes of the Nixon presidency, yet the continuing insistence on secrecy by your White House is startlingly Nixonian. I'm talking about everything from stiffing Congressional requests from information and witnesses, to employing an executive order to demolish the 1978 law providing public access to presidential papers, to forcing the Government Accounting Office to go to Court to obtain information about how the White House is spending tax money when creating a pro-energy industry Vice Presidential task force. The Bush Administration apparently seeks to reverse the post-Watergate trend of open government." You go, John!

Stirling Newberry writes, "This breath taking shift, from the long standing line that it was ridiculous to believe that the government had any information, to evidence that specific, credible and timely information had reached the highest levels of FBI HQ has taken less than 10 days. As with all fast moving stories, the place to start is with the facts. The facts that show that there had been specific, credible and timely warnings in the possession of US law enforcement."

"Secrecy itself has risen to the level of a policy in the Bush administration...Conservative columnist Phyllis Schlafly has been quite blunt about this secrecy business. In March, she blasted the White House for the VP's refusal to turn over the records of his energy task force...Ms. Schlafly declared correctly that: 'The American people do not and should not tolerate government by secrecy.' And she told the Bush White House that no one's 'going to buy the sanctimonious argument that the Bush Administration has some sort of duty to protect the power of the presidency.' Bruce Fein, a former Justice Department official whose Republican credentials and constitutional scholarship are exemplary (said) 'What the president [sic] is claiming is legally and historically absurd and politically stupid.'" John Dean concludes "To claim a need for secrecy to restore presidential power is disingenuous at best, and a deliberate falsehood at worst. Secrecy is the way of dictatorships, not democracies."

David Brock's 'Blinded by the Right' and John Dean's 'Blind Ambition' are book-ends of the Right Wing Conspiracy. "Dean's marks the early days of Nixon's... dirty tricks to neutralize political enemies -- and Brock's chronicles its maturity [the attacks on Bill Clinton and the installation of] Bush in the White House. This continuum of Republican attack politics from Watergate to W. is the [story of] how the conservative attack machine worked in the 1990s and who had become its key players.The book's value in dissecting the dirty tricks -- along with detailing the raging hypocrisies of many right-wing operatives... In both cases, the conservative attacks on these 'traitors' had a 'pay no heed to that man behind the curtain' quality... the grotesque portrait of the Republican attack machine [has] been known for years, reported in books, such as 'The Hunting of the President' by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, and at a few Web sites, such as Consortiumnews.com."

"Lots of people have theories on the identity of 'Deep Throat,' the famous Watergate whisperer who helped spell the end of the Nixon presidency. Now, former Nixon White House Counsel and key Watergate player John Dean will take his stab at cracking Washington's mystery of the century, releasing 'The Deep Throat Brief' as an e-book through online magazine publisher Salon in June...Dean -- whose 1973 Senate testimony helped force Nixon's 1974 resignation -- will release his 40,000-word manuscript on June 17, the 30th anniversary of the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee's Watergate headquarters. Dean told the San Francisco Chronicle he spent some 20 years going through archives and tapes to develop his theory on 'Deep Throat'." Alexander Haig, Diane Sawyer and Leonard Garment are all suspected of being Deep Throat. Or could he be James Schlesinger or Richard Ober, with whom Woodward worked when he was a naval intelligence officer?

John Dean writes, "All of my Rehnquist sources think the seventy-seven-year-old Chief Justice will resign after the 2002 elections, regardless of who wins the Senate. And he'll do so well before the end of Bush's first term, so that the vacancy is not held over until the 2004 presidential election. In short, we'll have a new Chief Justice before the next presidential election." Which means we must elect a SOLID Democratic majority to the Senate in November. And on a lighter note, Dean adds this tidbit: "I'm in Washington doing some Deep Throat sleuthing. That's right, the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Watergate source for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. I think that thirty years of hiding is enough. So I'm going to surface him for the 30th anniversary of Watergate on June 17, 2002. More about that in a later column..."

"Most people have long forgotten Richard Nixon's plans to reorganize the Executive Branch after the 1972 election. He planned to exercise the powers of the presidency more aggressively than any president ever had, and a cornerstone of his plan was cutting off Congressional oversight...Bush has structured the White House homeland security operation as if modeled on Nixon's old (and discredited) governing plans. All the... policymaking is being undertaken at the level of the White House staff - where it is immune from Congressional oversight. As a result, the government is being run in secrecy more typical of a big corporation than an open, democratic society. The White House Office of Homeland Security was [ostensibly] created to give Americans both real safety and reassurance. Yet its structure, characterized by secrecy, is actually reason for concern. Most troubling is its similarity to the Nixon model, which was designed to hide abuses of power." So writes John Dean.

"Only the president has the right to executive privilege, not the vice president. It's never gone that far. It's really a uniquely presidential privilege, and the president himself must invoke it, and there has be no invocation of executive privilege here. What they've said is, we challenge GAO's authority to even ask for this information. That's different than executive privilege. What this appears, Paula, to me to be is the first step of a cover-up. This is the way you start it. You stall, you stall, you stall. You try to get something like this to go on until it is no longer an issue, until something intervenes and replaces it, or the issue becomes moot for some other reason. That's the early signal here... Certainly the way we did during Watergate was to try to stall everything, and this is a stalling action." So says Nixon White House counsel John Dean.

Nixon White House Counsel (and Watergate whistleblower) John Dean says the GAO's legal case against Dick Cheney is a slam-dunk. So why is Cheney fighting an impossible battle? "For the Vice President to prevail would only require the support of the same five conservative justices who put the Vice President in his current job with their ruling in Bush v. Gore... Osama bin Laden himself could not concoct a more hurtful blow to our democracy... If Vice President Cheney were to prevail in such a suit, the high Court will have decided that Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch is limited to only what the President and Vice President are willing to permit. This would be an awesome realignment of power in Washington. Before Bush v. Gore, I would have said such a ruling would be impossible. Today, all I can say is it is a time for vigilance." All we can say is - Impeach the Felonious Five!

Salon.com columnist John Dean writes, "Many observers believe that the 2000 presidential election story is over and dead. I don't. Rather, I think these events are going to return to haunt future elections, not to mention the Senate confirmation hearing of the next nominee to fill any vacancy on the United States Supreme Court. For example, after reading these books, I would not be surprised to discover that Enron's political largess was somehow involved in the Florida vote-counting debacle." OF COURSE Enron was involved in the stolen election in Florida. George Bu$h is the Enron (bogus)POTUS, and he's done his best to deliver -- including a $250 million Enron tax rebate, even though Enron paid no taxes!

"Not since Richard Nixon went to work in the Oval Office has there been so concentrated an effort to keep the real work of a president hidden, revealing to the public only a scripted leader…When [Bush] arrived in Washington to assume the presidency, he had his records as governor of Texas hidden, shipping them off to his father's presidential library, where they are inaccessible to journalists and scholars…He has refused all congressional requests for information about how he has developed his policies, most recently denying details of Vice President Dick Cheney's huddles with oil and coal executives in closed sessions to create a new energy policy…But the most closely guarded of all secrets, held even closer than national security matters, is the extent to which 43rd president consults with 41st president, Papa Bush. " So writes John Dean, the famous whistleblower of the corrupt Nixon Presidency.

In the middle of the fluff, Bob Woodward writes: "The CIA work with the Northern Alliance and tribes in the south is central to that strategy. Operationally, it means that once the CIA locates opposition groups in Afghanistan that have the will and capacity to hunt and kill Taliban and al Qaeda members, those groups will receive covert or overt U.S. support in the form of weapons, ammunition, food and money." (Remember Iran-Contra-Drugs?) Since Watergate, Carl Bernstein exposed the CIA penetration of the media (Operation MOCKINGBIRD), while Woodward has been a booster for the CIA. Before joining the Washington Post, Woodward was a Naval Intelligence officer. It is thought that Deep Throat was one of his friends from his days in Spookland. Was Deep Throat Alexander Haig (as John Dean speculated)? Or maybe former CIA Director James Schlesinger, who as Nixon's Defense Secretary instructed the Joint Chiefs to check with him first before reacting to Nixon's orders?

John Dean writes: "No hearings were held in either the House or Senate on the USA PATRIOT Act, and few — if any — members of Congress were really aware of what was actually in this massive, complex, highly technical 30,000-word statute...The reach of this new law is far beyond those who appear involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. The USA PATRIOT Act adds a new, and fourth, definition of 'domestic terrorism.' In doing so, they have made many home-grown political activists that have protested their opposition to the programs of the World Trade Organization on the streets of Seattle and Washington into terrorists." Dean adds that, "The USA PATRIOT Act was jammed through the House and Senate, with those calling for regular order being labeled unpatriotic." Many Democrats reportedly opposed this bill, but they were cowed by being called 'unpatriotic,' and reckoned it would pass anyway. Russ Feingold (D-WI) was the only Senator with the guts to stand against this tyrannical bill.

"George W. Bush plans to politicize his judicial appointments. No other conclusion can be drawn from the recent report that he is dropping the American Bar Association’s screening of judicial selections, based on the dubious claim that the ABA has a liberal bias." So writes MSNBC columnist John Dean.

"The distinction between illegal bribery and legal campaign contribution, as some would have it, is as fine as the hair on a frog's back. Accordingly, there are 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 100 members of the U.S. Senate whose conduct, where campaign contributions are concerned, is probably legally indistinguishable from that of Clinton when he was president." So writes Watergate figure John Dean, arguing against an investigation of Clinton over pardons. But the conclusion that should really be drawn is that it's time to end the campaign finance system of legal bribery and replace it with FULL PUBLIC FUNDING for federal campaigns.