NPR

Key Nixon Accuser Returns To Capitol With Sights Set On Another President

John Dean's willingness to compare Nixon and Trump, and to link their handling of investigations into their election campaigns, explains why he is expected to prompt live TV coverage again.
John Dean, former White House counsel to President Nixon, speaks during a hearing on the nomination of federal appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh to be an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, on Sept. 7, 2018 in Washington, DC.

America is about to be reintroduced to John Dean, the man whose cool, calm and controversial testimony in the Watergate investigation began the public demolition of President Richard Nixon.

As he spoke to the Senate's special investigating committee on June 25, 1973, Dean and his owlish glasses were imprinted on the national consciousness, his appearance carried live on all three TV networks and watched by tens of millions.

Dean had been the White House counsel when he had warned Nixon there was "a cancer growing on the presidency" that could prove fatal. Dean's diagnosis was based on his own involvement, and by turning against his boss, he was helping his prognosis come true as well.

Dean will be back on Capitol Hill Monday, called by the House Judiciary Committee, where he briefly worked as junior staffer for the Republican members more than 50 years ago.

That was before he worked for Nixon, and before the) had spawned a TV miniseries in which Dean was played by a young Martin Sheen.

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