Blind Ambition (John Dean) Blind Ambition by John Dean was

To summarize Dean's story is to move across the panorama of Watergate to examine the mindset of top government officials, who were so ambitious that they were "blind" to the laws of the Constitution. Dean opens his account when he flies to San Clemente in July, 1970 to be interviewed by Nixon and his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman as the potential successor to John Ehrlichman as counsel to the President.

The story ends in December, 1974, after President Nixon had resigned in disgrace, the only president ever to have done so in the history of the United States.

In between are the events that show the unique personality that Watergate brought out in Dean. The author was at first completely caught up in the righteous atmosphere of the White House. He bought into the attitude that poisoned everyone from Nixon right on down to underlings like Jeb Stuart Magruder, deputy campaign director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, and Charles Colson, special counsel to the President, known as the White House "hatchet men."

Dean's book is a chronicle of the way he was seduced by his blind ambition. He allowed himself to be convinced that, even when he was breaking the law and contributing to the "obstruction of justice" that ultimately led to Nixon's remo

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gs were." Mitchell, for all his faults, understood that Nixon was isolating himself, and that this lack of information could be his downfall. No summary of this book would be complete without a mention of the way Dean showed how various governmental institutions were used in service of the Nixon administration as it fought against its "enemies." It is shocking to realize that the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and at times the I.R.S. were used to gather information that could be used against those who were even suspected of "insubordination," when all they were doing was expressing their own dissenting political views. In describing and evaluating John Dean's point of view, it is very important to remember that both Dean's testimony to the Senate and the writing of Blind Ambition were constructed to save his political skin and prevent him from doing any more prison time than he would have to. Dean shows this point of view extremely well when he writes about Nixon's introduction of "the Dean Report" on August 29, 1972. At first Dean was flattered at the attention that he was getting, but then he came to understand that Nixon was actually trying to pin the cover-up on him. Even at the time Dean is candid in pointing out that "I didn't
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Approximate Word count = 1283
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)