美国国家公共电台 NPR Nixon White House Counsel John Dean Sees Uphill Climb For Trump In Leaks Fight

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

President Trump¹ is pressuring the Justice Department to go after those who leak classified information. And he is certainly not the first president to be annoyed by leaks. In the '80s, Ronald Reagan even joked about his frustration².

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RONALD REAGAN: I was going to have an opening statement, but I decided³ that what I was going to say I wanted to get a lot of attention. So I'm going to wait and leak it.

GREENE: But to understand the modern war between president and leaker, you really have to go back to President Richard Nixon and Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst⁴ who leaked a secret Pentagon analysis about U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

They came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. President Nixon learned they had been leaked to The New York Times from then-White House adviser⁵ Alexander Haig. This conversation between the two of them was released years later.

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RICHARD NIXON: Did we know this was coming out?

ALEXANDER HAIG: No we did not, sir.

NIXON: Yeah.

HAIG: There are just a few copies of this...

NIXON: Well, what about the...

HAIG: ...Full-volume report.

NIXON: But what about the - let me ask you this though, what about the - what about Laird? What's he going to do about it? Is he...

HAIG: Well, I...

NIXON: Now, I'd just start right at the top and fire some people. I mean, whoever - whatever department it came out of, I'd fire the top guy.

CHANG: The war on leaks proved costly⁶ for Nixon. In fact, it led to the Watergate scandal, at least according to our next guest.

GREENE: Yeah, John Dean was White House counsel to President Nixon. He pled guilty to his role in the Watergate cover-up. I asked him whether the leaks from the Trump administration are different from what we've seen in the past.

JOHN DEAN: There had been national security leaks out of the Trump administration, and Nixon dealt primarily with national security leaks. What happened is that some of the positions he was contemplating⁷ in Vietnam often ended up on the front page of either The New York Times or The Washington Post. And that would preclude⁸ his options. And that, he felt, was quite unfair and not good for the country. Trump's leaks, some have come through the national security community, but they've been regarding his attitudes towards the national security community, which has not been a particularly healthy relationship.

GREENE: You're saying the difference is perhaps more personal - that under Nixon's time, it was exposing decisions about national security that were being discussed. In this case, this is revealing, like, the president's personal views about people who are working for him.

DEAN: Well, for example, no better example are the heads of state conversations.

GREENE: Oh, these are the full transcripts⁹ of Trump's calls with world leaders that were given to reporters, yeah.

DEAN: That's an extraordinary national security leak and very personal. I think that there is some disagreement with the Trump presidency¹⁰ and Trump's qualifications to be president.

GREENE: You wrote that the law is not really on a president's side. It is tough to prosecute¹¹ the leakers. It's even more difficult to go after the news media using the law. Is there any reason to think that Trump will find more success here?

DEAN: Well, you know, it's interesting. The Bush II administration assembled about a half-a-dozen statutes¹² that kind of built the equivalent of what the United Kingdom has - is an Official Secrets Act. We have never done that. We've considered it and assumed it would not bear up under scrutiny¹³ at the Supreme¹⁴ Court because of the First Amendment¹⁵.

GREENE: So you're talking about cobbled together during the Bush years. And President Obama, you know, as we know, was very active in trying to go after leakers. But there is no firm law in place that makes it easy for any president to target leakers.

DEAN: That is correct. That is correct.

GREENE: You wrote that when your former boss, President Nixon, started going after leakers, that that was the precursor¹⁶ of Watergate. What do you mean by that?

DEAN: Well, he authorized¹⁷, for example, in three different taped, recorded conversations that he was ordering and wanted a break-in at the Brookings Institute.

GREENE: And this, we should say, is a think tank in Washington that some consider to be left-leaning.

DEAN: Yeah. That word got down that break-ins were something the president thought were OK. So that's where the very early origins of the kind of mentality¹⁸ that would result in a Watergate were first formulated¹⁹.

GREENE: Well, yeah, in March, you said you were already hearing echoes of Watergate - that you were seeing this from the Trump administration. Although, you said said it's not quite Watergate 2.0. Is that still your assessment²⁰?

DEAN: I think that is.

GREENE: But why do you make the comparison to Watergate? I mean, it's - has anything nefarious²¹ really been proven when it comes to Trump?

DEAN: Well, there are comparisons because, first of all, Watergate was about influencing an election - the '72 election. The Russiagate (ph), for purposes of this conversation, it too has to do with influencing an election. The echoes I hear are - there is clearly a cover-up in the White House. If you did not want to have all this suspicion about what they're doing, you'd have everybody who was involved come into a room and say, OK, I want sworn affidavits²². I don't want to have this hanging over my administration, and I want it done yesterday.

Well, that's exactly the opposite of what they're doing. So this is very similar to the pattern in Watergate. The firing of Comey, to ask him to stop the investigation²³ of Flynn, was not unlike Nixon sending the CIA over to the FBI to get them to cut off the investigation. They're echoes. And during Watergate, we wrote what you shouldn't do. We wrote the book on it. And Trump doesn't even seem to know it happened.

GREENE: This president, President Trump, is maintaining that this is a witch hunt and that there's absolutely nothing to find here.

DEAN: Well, we'll see. A very sophisticated investigator²⁴ in Bob Mueller I don't think would be wasting his time if nothing was there.

GREENE: You famously told Richard Nixon that the Watergate break-in and the cover-up was a cancer on the presidency. Do you think conversations like that are happening right now inside this White House - aides talking to President Trump about what it all means that this is swirling²⁵?

DEAN: You know, there has been a change in tone in the last few days. They're not quite as aggressive in trying to discredit²⁶ the investigation. Maybe they've figured out that rather than trying to fight everything, to try to get the investigation over.

GREENE: Is that a lesson you wish you had learned?

DEAN: I tried the same thing - to get it over. And it led to the cover-up of the cover-up, which went on for another year-plus.

GREENE: Which I guess didn't end the way you wanted it to?

DEAN: No, it did not (laughter).

GREENE: John Dean was counsel in the White House to former President Richard Nixon. Thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

DEAN: Thank you.

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