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by Lloyd Shearer WASHINGTON, D.C. hen the definitive work on the squalid Watergate scandal is fi nally written, its author most probably will be John W. Dean 3d, who at the age of 30 joined the White House staff in 1970 as counsel to the President of the United States. Dean is currently the government's star witness in its prosecution of Nix on's most intimate advisers—H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell—and three others of lower stripe: Gordon Strachan, Ken neth Parkinson, and Robert Marchan. Bright, boyish, and brilliant, Dean was privy to most of the Nixon Admin istration’s paranoid and illegal activi ties. He masterminded several of them and was, in fact, responsible for con taining the Watergate investigation until Nixon was overwhelmingly re elected in 1972. Dean knew well such ill-fated char acters in the tragedy as Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, Charles Colson, Herbert Kalmbach, John Mitchell, Pat Gray, John Ehrlichman, Jeb Magruder—prac tically the entire cast of leading men in the Watergate drama. His suggestion For years John Dean, although main taining a low profile, was infected with the Nixonian virus of revenge, the ob session to obtain political intelligence, and a seemingly callous disregard of the law. It was he, a graduate of the Georgetown University Law School in 1965, a minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in 1967, and an associate deputy attorney general from 1969 to 1970, who suggested the use of “the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” But John Dean changed. Whether it was because he was afraid Nixon would make him the Watergate scapegoat as later Nixon tried to make his former law partner John Mitchell the scape goat, whether his sense of patriotism and decency overcame the White House climate of contumery and con spiracy, no one can be certain. What is certain is that John Dear, will write his memoirs in jail—he has been sentenced to from one to four years— and that his book will surely explain, Niewspa prr Babhiye ®, among other revelations, his change in behavior, attitude, outlook, and philosophy. While Dean is writing his Watergate book, so, too, will Maureen Kane Dean, his strikingly blonde and beautiful wife of almost two years, be writing hers. Maureen Dean has joined forces with Hays Gorey, a Time magazine reporter, to pen a book on Watergate through the eyes of an increasingly bewildered wife. “It will keep her busy,” says Dean, while I'm away. And I know that with Hays at her side, she'll get the best lit erary guidance available.” Mrs. Dean, who will be 29 this month, is somewhat of a melodramatic “mystery woman.” A Californian reared in Mar Vista and educated in Culver City, she has the kind of figure men don’t believe the first time. They have to look at her twice. She is 5 feet 5, weighs 108 pounds, and her size-6 fig ure has as many curves as a scenic rail way. There is nothing subtle about her sex appeal or her blue-green eyes. In looks she resembles a combination of the late Jean Harlow and the late Mari lyn Monroe. Last year when the TV cameras zeroed in on “Me” (which is what her friends call her), the American public perceived for the first time what sort of impression Mrs. Dean was making on the spectators and the press who jammed the Senate caucus room to hear her husband “finger” the President of the United States. No interviews in June of 1973 when reporters called on her at the house she and her husband occupied in Alexandria, Va.— it has since been sold to Sen. Lowell Weicker— Mo” refused to answer all questions, explained politely that she would give no interviews, and eventu ally declined even to answer her door bell. Her widowed mother in Culver City, Calif., changed her phone to an unlisted one, and her uncle, Anthony Kane, who owns a jewelry store in San Pedro, also greeted reporters with the “silence treatment.” Even Susan, Mrs. Barry Goldwater Jr., her neighbor and closest friend in Alex andria, clammed up when newsmen tried to obtain information concerning John Dean's “knockout of a wife.” The truth about “Mo” Dean is that her blonde beauty has brought her many opportunities but not much hap piness. She was graduated from Notre Dame Academy in Culver City in June of 1963 when she was not yet 18. Shortly afterwards she married a gentle man who forgot to obtain a divorce, whereupon she had the marriage an nulled. Her second marriage was more suc cessful, but not much more. She mar rried Michael Biner, a local boy from Mar Vista. “I don’t know very much about their marriage,” says Biner's mother. “They just showed up one day and announced that they were mar ried They didn’t stay married very long. After he and ‘Mo’ split up, Michael was killed in an automobile accident. He was 25. She was 24.” For a while “Mo” worked as an air line hostess and an insurance adjuster. Then she met John Dean through a mu tual friend in Southern California. The friendship ripened quickly into some thing more, and she gave up her bank clerking job and flew to Washington. There Dean got her a job as an execu tive aide to the director of the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. She was paid $10,470 a year to travel the country and make arrange ments for commission hearings. She also journeyed ahead of the commis sion to 36 foreign countries, serving as “advance lady.” Associates remem ber her as “efficient, pleasant, compe tent...a really well-liked and beautiful young woman who did a fine job and kept her nose clean.” By then her friendship with John Dean was no secret. Wed Senator's daughter Dean, previously married to and di vorced from Carla Hennings, daughter of the late Son. Tom Hennings of Mis souri, married “Mo” on Friday the 13th, October, 1972, in a wedding held at Dean‘s then townhouse in Alexandria. The couple left on their honeymoon and two days later, Dean was ordered back to Washington where the Watergate kettle began to boil. “Mo” Dean's first year of marriage to John was once described by her as “a year of crisis.” Undoubtedly “Mo” will tell much more about it in her autobiography to come, which should be interesting and well-written, largely because Hays Gorey is a seasoned, sensitive pro with the typewriter. “Mo's” book should be ready for release in 1975. Dean's book, however (both pro spective books are being agented by David Obst of Reporters News Service), will probably not be published until 1976. Negotiating book deal “John was offered an advance of $135,000 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,” says Obst, “but the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, asked him not to write anything until the trial was over. John’s deal with Farrar, Straus is now out the window. We're negotiating a new one. The idea is to get him enough money to live on when he gets out of jail so that he can write and rewrite the most detailed, substantive, authoritative book on Watergate. “John Dean knew the truth. He told the truth. One day he is going to write the complete truth. And finally the American people will really learn for the first time what happened inside the Nixon Administration.” Newspaper 4 CHIVES John Dean waits with his wife “Mo” to testify before the Senate Watergate panel. The former White House coun sel surrendered Sept. 3 to begin serving his one-to-four-year prison sentence.
Newspaper Details
Lincoln Evening Journal
Lincoln, Nebraska, US
Sat, Oct 05, 1974
Page 31
Full Page
Clipped by
Larry C.
USA 14 Aug 2026
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