John Dean Joins Authors Critical of Bush

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Registered: 03-18-2000
John Dean Joins Authors Critical of Bush
1
Thu, 03-25-2004 - 12:18pm

Watergate's John Dean Joins Authors Critical of Bush.


http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aYywddazhzys&refer=us#


John Dean, who served prison time for his Watergate scandal role as White House counsel for Richard Nixon, is adding to the shelf of books critical of President George W. Bush and his administration.


Dean's ``Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush'' has risen to the 40th spot on Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc.'s bestseller list. Shipments to stores have just begun, and the book won't be fully distributed until April 6, said Heather Rizzo, head of publicity at publisher Little, Brown & Co., a unit of Time Warner Inc.


``I'm not interested in Bush bashing,'' the 65-year-old Dean said in a telephone interview about the book, which draws comparisons to Nixon's White House. ``I'm not interested in scandal mongering, but I am interested in raising the serious problems that relate to presidential secrecy.''


``Worse Than Watergate'' joins an already crowded market, led by former White House adviser Richard Clarke's ``Against All Enemies,'' from Viacom Inc.'s Simon & Schuster, which reached stores Monday. It is number one on Amazon's and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Web sites and has benefited from Clarke's appearance Sunday on Viacom's CBS News program ``60 Minutes'' and his testimony yesterday before a government commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.


``That whole genre is really big right now,'' said Ryan Martin, a supervisor at a Borders bookstore in Manhattan. ``We have entire displays'' of books taking issue with Bush.


Favorable to Bush: Books favorable to Bush also are competing for customers, such as talk show host Sean Hannity's ``Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism,'' published by Regan Books, and commentator John Podhoretz's ``Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane,'' from St. Martin's Press.


Cross-selling is a factor in sales. Amazon tells its customers on the Web page for Clarke's book that buyers also are choosing Dean's book.


Dean writes that like Nixon's White House, the Bush administration ``spends far more time crafting the president's public image and working on the politics of reelection, than on truly addressing the business of the American people.''


``Bush is the most stage-crafted presidency we've ever had,'' Dean said in an interview.


`Incognito'


He contends in the book that Vice President Dick Cheney is ``effectively a co-president incognito,'' working behind closed doors and not answering to Congress or the public. Dean writes that Bush isn't ``stupid, only ignorant -- and apparently by design.''


The Bush administration declined to comment on the book, because ``we haven't seen it,'' White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said.


Clarke's book claims the Bush administration didn't take al- Qaeda seriously prior to Sept. 11 and was focused afterward on linking Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to the attacks. Other top sellers, also from Simon & Schuster, are Ron Suskind's ``The Price of Loyalty,'' about former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and Craig Unger's ``House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties.''


Watergate Role


Dean, a longtime author, is best known for telling President Nixon in 1973 that efforts to cover up events surrounding the Watergate office burglary were becoming a ``cancer'' growing on the presidency. Dean's televised testimony to a U.S. Senate panel led to Nixon's resignation in 1974, and Dean was convicted of obstruction of justice in the affair.


``I knew I was capable of doing something that others weren't capable of doing, and that it taking an insider's knowledge and connecting the dots,'' Dean said of his Bush book. The former Nixon aide recently retired from a career as a private investment banker in Beverly Hills, California, and now writes and lectures full-time.


Dean's book comes as attention is focused on the Sept. 11 probe. Bush and his aides have challenged Clarke's account that they weren't intent on fighting terrorism before the attacks.


Secretary of State Colin Powell told the commission on Tuesday that Bush ``made clear his interest and his intense desire to protect the nation from terrorism'' and wanted to do more than ``swatting flies,'' a reference to his view of the Clinton administration's approach.


National security adviser Condoleezza Rice disputed Clarke's assessment yesterday, saying the administration always considered terrorism ``important and urgent.''

cl-Libraone~

 


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Registered: 09-05-2003
Fri, 03-26-2004 - 7:05am
I am not really sure why anyone would read that book, it is essentially a huge OP-ED peace from a Criminal.