DOBBS: More tonight on the top story of the day, did Karl Rove leak the identity of a covert CIA agent in order to discredit a critic of the White House? My guest tonight is John Dean, who served as White House counsel to former President Richard Nixon. He has written several books for counting his days in the Nixon White House during Watergate. And, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," a criticism of what he styles as the imperialism and secrecy of the Bush administration.
Joining us tonight from Los Angeles, John Dean.
Good to have you here. As we look at an investigation that, now has last longer than that into Watergate, what do you make of what's going on?
JOHN DEAN, FMR. NIXON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Well, I've certainly had some flashbacks to memories of days past, when I saw that press conference yesterday and again today. I was all but waiting for Scott McClellan to make it an inoperative situation like Mr. Ziegler did.
DOBBS: The -- referring to Ron Ziegler, the press secretary for President Nixon and his famous response about those statements being, instead of false, inoperative, I believe was the way he put it.
DEAN: That's what he said.
DOBBS: The Democrats have already taken hold here. They're on the attack. The White House is hunkered down, if not bunkered down. What is, to you, the rational response here on the part of the White House?
DEAN: Well, they're obviously doing the classical defense of the stonewall and you know, keep it up, keep the front up and hope that some intervening news story is going to come along and take attention away from this, which can always happen.
They've been very fortunate in the past, of that indeed happening: When people got too close to issues they didn't want them to get close to, that some intervening story has relieved them. And that's what I think their game plan is.
DOBBS: And Karl Rove in this -- his attorney now admits and in a perhaps bizarre piece, it appears that "Time" magazine leaked some material to "Newsweek" magazine. I can't say that for certain, but it appears that way. The fact is: It's unclear whether -- what Karl Rove may or may not have done here is even illegal.
DEAN: That's right. It isn't clear.
DOBBS: What's your sense of that?
DEAN: I -- we can't tell on the facts we have alone, whether we have a law that's been violated or which laws have been violated. The attention is focused on the CIA Identities Protection Act and that hasn't really been my concern.
I don't -- I think probably the lawyers involved in this case are looking at the other potential concerns. You take the prima facie facts we have and this could very well be a couple statutes that are involved with Mr. Rove.
He could be, well, converting government information to his own political uses and putting it out, and that is a violation of the law. It could be the statute that got a lot of those of us involved in Watergate, which is if he is conspiring with others to do what he's not being paid as a government employee to do, which it would be in this instance, to leak information for political purposes. That in turn, could be a violation as well.
DOBBS: Effectively, fraud and conspiracy.
DEAN: Yes.
DOBBS: The idea here, though, that we don't even know whether a crime has been committed. We don't know what in the world takes two years to investigate about what is pretty much a straightforward leak. And we have a Pulitzer-prize-winning "New York Times" reporter, Judith Miller, who is not being exactly treated like Woodward and Bernstein here for her role. In point of fact, she is the only -- at this point, clear victim in this entire proceeding. Your thoughts?
DEAN: No question. It's a travesty that she's in jail at this point and she's protecting some source, who is not in jail or who is not even fessing up to relieve her of that responsibility.
But you know, there are a lot of potentials here that -- how this may unwind and the reason I think the fact that there's more to happen, is that when I read the opinion of Judge Hogan in the contempt proceeding, and I read the court of appeals decision of Judge Tatel...
DOBBS: Judge Hogan, the judge who sentenced Judith Miller for contempt.
DEAN: Correct. And Judge Tatel was the -- on the Appellate Court that reviewed that decision before it went to the Supreme Court and both of them have looked at the sealed record. And in that record, which they redacted in their opinion, but in their look at it, they said, this case is not where it started, it has made a dramatic turn, and this information that is now being requested by this special counsel, Fitzgerald, is needed.
And therefore, they could see no basis to get around the problem of holding her in contempt or Cooper, if he wasn't willing to testify. So, something's happened in this case, Lou, that we don't know and that's why I think it may be -- well, it may be close to being over, we -- the fat lady hasn't gotten near the stage yet.
DOBBS: Yes. And I said that Judith Miller was the only victim in this. I should say there are two other victims, one a press that does need the ability to protect its sources; not to be above the law, but to be able to enforce a pledge of confidentiality.
And of course, the public's right to know, which is being confounded here by both government and an inability on the part of a number of people to be forthcoming.
John Dean, we thank you for being here tonight.
DEAN: Thank you, Lou.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/12/ldt.01.html
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