John Dean: Memo to President-Elect Obama ... Change the Nature of the Response to the Blagojevich Scandal
December 12, 2008
President-Elect Barack Obama
Office of the President-Elect
Chicago, IL
Dear President-Elect Obama:
I am writing with a suggestion that might help to remove you and your new administration from the still metastasizing scandal of Governor Blagojevich trying to sell your senate seat. Needless to say, until the news media is satisfied that you and your new administration have no complicity in this matter, they will continue to focus on it. Because of my own personal experience with Watergate, the mother of modern presidential scandals, not to mention being a student of scandals that followed, I speak as someone who learned the hard way by making mistakes and then watched as others made their own similar and unnecessary blunders. First, a bit of background.
It is trite but true that the best antidote to a growing scandal is transparency, and that making all relevant information, both good and bad, public sooner rather than later is vital, as is releasing more information rather than less, for all these actions help resolve matters more quickly - presuming innocence or, at worst, innocent mistakes. If, however, you or your aides are guilty, up to your ears in dealing with Blagojevich, I still recommend that you ignore the Nixon presidency precedents - for we wrote the book on what not to do. If Blagojevich has poisoned your presidency, you might confer with Vice President Dick Cheney, who has taken "stonewalling" to new heights and shown that cover-ups can actually work if you do not mind having a thirteen percent public approval rating. But this is exactly the type of behavior in Washington that you have promised to change. I submit that the lessons of Watergate remain relevant to this day and apply to the Blagojevich situation, as a few examples might suggest.
Nixon had many opportunities to prevent the disaster that befell his presidency, none more than at the outset of Watergate. If following the arrests of burglars at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office complex on June 17, 1972 Nixon had issued a memorandum to his White House and reelection campaign staffs demanding that anyone with any direct or indirect knowledge or involvement with the matter immediately submit a full written explanation to him, an explanation which in turn would be released by the press office, or if not willing to do so submit their resignation, there would have been no Watergate cover-up. In fact, if I learned anything from Watergate it was that in the interest of the nation presidents (which would include presidents-elect) must openly and aggressively confront any and all scandals that affect them. The more innocent they are the more aggressively they should address the problem to end it before it grows. You might speak with President Carter, whose passivity let several scandals unnecessarily get out of hand during his term in office (e.g. Lancegate, and Billygate). While Nixon would have been confronted with his complicity in some nasty national security decisions because of the earlier work of the Watergate burglars for the White House, and he would have received several high-level resignations, there would have been no cover up and nothing that would have haunted and unraveled his presidency.
Speaking of high level resignations, another lesson I learned was that when something goes very wrong memories of those touched by it get very bad, and few volunteer anything. For example, before the first White House meeting, forty-eight hours after the Watergate arrests, with the chief of staff Bob Haldeman, the president's top assistant for domestic affairs John Ehrlichman, the former attorney general and campaign manager John Mitchell, attorney general Dick Kliendienst, and yours truly who was White House counsel, I told Haldeman that since I had heard plans to break-in the Watergate offices being discussed in John Mitchell's office and tried - but clearly failed - to turn them off, I was fully prepared to resign. I expected to hear similar disclosures from others at this meeting to assess how to best deal with the problems created by the Watergate arrests, and protect the president.
To the contrary, no one said anything. Haldeman was silent on his telling me to have nothing to do with such operations when I had informed him after hearing them and he never mentioned my offer to resign; Ehrlichman was silent on having approved an earlier break-in at Dan Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office by the people arrested at the Watergate; Mitchell would not admit he had approved the Watergate break-in plans for almost a year; and Kliendienst would not tell anyone what he told me after the meeting - on a pledge of confidentiality - that the man who had bungled it all, Gordon Liddy, had sought him out on a golf course after the arrests of his men at the Watergate and confessed. In short, no one seemed to have the president's interests in mind only their own.
There has never been a better moment than now for you to take decisive action by proceeding aggressively, proactively, and in the process change the way presidents deal with scandals. According to the New York Times transcript of your December 11, 2008 news conference you were again asked a series of questions about Blagojevich. When responding, you stated: "What I want to do is to gather all the facts about any staff contacts that I might -- may have -- that may have taken place between the transition office and the governor's office. And we'll have those in the next few days, and we'll present them. But what I'm absolutely certain about is that our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat. That I'm absolutely certain of." Presumably that material is being gathered at this time, and the sooner it is released the better for events are unfolding.
What is not clear is that you have all the information you need, but you should insist that your staff provide it. Following your press conference, the Chicago Sun Times published a story of the refusal of Rahm Emanuel, your designated White House chief of staff, to respond to questions about his involvement with Blagojevich, and a Chicago television station is reporting Emanuel did, in fact, meet with Blagojevich to discuss filling your vacate senate seat. If true, as I read the transcript of the press conference, you have misspoken; if not true, in a post-Watergate world the burden is on you to prove it is not true - and you can only do this by having information from Emanuel explaining his actions in full. No one would be surprised if Emanuel or others did have discussions with Blagojevich or his office about your successor, but denying that such discussions took place will be the start of a cover-up. You should place the burden on your staff to give you all the information for cover-ups only compound problems, and if anyone withholds information, they should suffer the consequences.
No president (or president-elect) can operate in a fish-bowl. On the other hand, when it comes to scandals, there is an exception and a need for extraordinary transparency. Thus, if you truly want to change the scandal paradigm, you should operate in a fish-bowl to show you have absolutely nothing to hide. Accordingly, I offer this suggestion for your consideration: Email all your past and present staff, all designated appointees, and any others with whom you have an informal relationship if they could have had contact with Blagojevich about your senate seat, and request they all report to you any and all such information that in any manner relates to the appointment to fill your senate seat. Instruct everyone to err on the side of too much information. In addition, tell everyone than when responding to you that they should also post their responses at your website to make them public. In short, you should insist that the public be told everything that you are told, and you should make it all available at you website - www.change.gov. Such action by you would forever change the standards of presidents in dealing with potential presidential scandals and nip this one before it can cause any more problems for your new administration. This would be a change everyone could believe in.
Respectfully yours,
John W. Dean
Read entire article at TPM (Liberal blog)
President-Elect Barack Obama
Office of the President-Elect
Chicago, IL
Dear President-Elect Obama:
I am writing with a suggestion that might help to remove you and your new administration from the still metastasizing scandal of Governor Blagojevich trying to sell your senate seat. Needless to say, until the news media is satisfied that you and your new administration have no complicity in this matter, they will continue to focus on it. Because of my own personal experience with Watergate, the mother of modern presidential scandals, not to mention being a student of scandals that followed, I speak as someone who learned the hard way by making mistakes and then watched as others made their own similar and unnecessary blunders. First, a bit of background.
It is trite but true that the best antidote to a growing scandal is transparency, and that making all relevant information, both good and bad, public sooner rather than later is vital, as is releasing more information rather than less, for all these actions help resolve matters more quickly - presuming innocence or, at worst, innocent mistakes. If, however, you or your aides are guilty, up to your ears in dealing with Blagojevich, I still recommend that you ignore the Nixon presidency precedents - for we wrote the book on what not to do. If Blagojevich has poisoned your presidency, you might confer with Vice President Dick Cheney, who has taken "stonewalling" to new heights and shown that cover-ups can actually work if you do not mind having a thirteen percent public approval rating. But this is exactly the type of behavior in Washington that you have promised to change. I submit that the lessons of Watergate remain relevant to this day and apply to the Blagojevich situation, as a few examples might suggest.
Nixon had many opportunities to prevent the disaster that befell his presidency, none more than at the outset of Watergate. If following the arrests of burglars at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office complex on June 17, 1972 Nixon had issued a memorandum to his White House and reelection campaign staffs demanding that anyone with any direct or indirect knowledge or involvement with the matter immediately submit a full written explanation to him, an explanation which in turn would be released by the press office, or if not willing to do so submit their resignation, there would have been no Watergate cover-up. In fact, if I learned anything from Watergate it was that in the interest of the nation presidents (which would include presidents-elect) must openly and aggressively confront any and all scandals that affect them. The more innocent they are the more aggressively they should address the problem to end it before it grows. You might speak with President Carter, whose passivity let several scandals unnecessarily get out of hand during his term in office (e.g. Lancegate, and Billygate). While Nixon would have been confronted with his complicity in some nasty national security decisions because of the earlier work of the Watergate burglars for the White House, and he would have received several high-level resignations, there would have been no cover up and nothing that would have haunted and unraveled his presidency.
Speaking of high level resignations, another lesson I learned was that when something goes very wrong memories of those touched by it get very bad, and few volunteer anything. For example, before the first White House meeting, forty-eight hours after the Watergate arrests, with the chief of staff Bob Haldeman, the president's top assistant for domestic affairs John Ehrlichman, the former attorney general and campaign manager John Mitchell, attorney general Dick Kliendienst, and yours truly who was White House counsel, I told Haldeman that since I had heard plans to break-in the Watergate offices being discussed in John Mitchell's office and tried - but clearly failed - to turn them off, I was fully prepared to resign. I expected to hear similar disclosures from others at this meeting to assess how to best deal with the problems created by the Watergate arrests, and protect the president.
To the contrary, no one said anything. Haldeman was silent on his telling me to have nothing to do with such operations when I had informed him after hearing them and he never mentioned my offer to resign; Ehrlichman was silent on having approved an earlier break-in at Dan Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office by the people arrested at the Watergate; Mitchell would not admit he had approved the Watergate break-in plans for almost a year; and Kliendienst would not tell anyone what he told me after the meeting - on a pledge of confidentiality - that the man who had bungled it all, Gordon Liddy, had sought him out on a golf course after the arrests of his men at the Watergate and confessed. In short, no one seemed to have the president's interests in mind only their own.
There has never been a better moment than now for you to take decisive action by proceeding aggressively, proactively, and in the process change the way presidents deal with scandals. According to the New York Times transcript of your December 11, 2008 news conference you were again asked a series of questions about Blagojevich. When responding, you stated: "What I want to do is to gather all the facts about any staff contacts that I might -- may have -- that may have taken place between the transition office and the governor's office. And we'll have those in the next few days, and we'll present them. But what I'm absolutely certain about is that our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat. That I'm absolutely certain of." Presumably that material is being gathered at this time, and the sooner it is released the better for events are unfolding.
What is not clear is that you have all the information you need, but you should insist that your staff provide it. Following your press conference, the Chicago Sun Times published a story of the refusal of Rahm Emanuel, your designated White House chief of staff, to respond to questions about his involvement with Blagojevich, and a Chicago television station is reporting Emanuel did, in fact, meet with Blagojevich to discuss filling your vacate senate seat. If true, as I read the transcript of the press conference, you have misspoken; if not true, in a post-Watergate world the burden is on you to prove it is not true - and you can only do this by having information from Emanuel explaining his actions in full. No one would be surprised if Emanuel or others did have discussions with Blagojevich or his office about your successor, but denying that such discussions took place will be the start of a cover-up. You should place the burden on your staff to give you all the information for cover-ups only compound problems, and if anyone withholds information, they should suffer the consequences.
No president (or president-elect) can operate in a fish-bowl. On the other hand, when it comes to scandals, there is an exception and a need for extraordinary transparency. Thus, if you truly want to change the scandal paradigm, you should operate in a fish-bowl to show you have absolutely nothing to hide. Accordingly, I offer this suggestion for your consideration: Email all your past and present staff, all designated appointees, and any others with whom you have an informal relationship if they could have had contact with Blagojevich about your senate seat, and request they all report to you any and all such information that in any manner relates to the appointment to fill your senate seat. Instruct everyone to err on the side of too much information. In addition, tell everyone than when responding to you that they should also post their responses at your website to make them public. In short, you should insist that the public be told everything that you are told, and you should make it all available at you website - www.change.gov. Such action by you would forever change the standards of presidents in dealing with potential presidential scandals and nip this one before it can cause any more problems for your new administration. This would be a change everyone could believe in.
Respectfully yours,
John W. Dean