Watergate figures fight again in the courtroom

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Feb 10, 1997 | by Timothy W. Maier

Why did the Watergate plumbers break into the offices of the Democratic National Committee? Was John Dean responsible? And did the move involve a call-girl ring being run out of an office there?

Richard Nixon is dead but Watergate still is playing with a cast of characters from call girls to dead mobsters taking center stage in a libel suit in Washington starring convicted felons John W. Dean and G. Gordon Liddy Nearly 25 years after Watergate, and ironically at a time when Nixon's tapes are making headlines, Dean and Liddy are in the middle of a tangled political lawsuit full of charges, denials and countercharges.

New allegations have emerged in hundreds of papers filed recently in United States District Court in Washington that allegedly link Dean's wife Maureen to a Capitol Hill sex ring. If true, the allegations could force the Deans to back out of the $150 million libel suit they filed five years ago against St. Martin's Press Inc., publishers of Silent Coup, and its authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin.

The new charges, hotly denied by Dean, are intended to support what Liddy and others have been saying: The Watergate break-in had nothing to do with President Nixon but was a personal enterprise by Dean to protect his then-girlfriend Maureen by removing information that linked her to a call-girl ring run out of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate.

But Dean's Los Angeles attorney, John Garrick, insists Maureen was never a prostitute or friend of the mob. "There was no call-girl ring running out of the DNC," Garrick tells Insight. "They have nothing to support it. Their whole story breaks down." The Deans declined comment.

Sources familiar with the suit say the Dean team spent at least three days in early January trying to settle the suit. The one-time Nixon legal counsel, who implicated his superiors in the Watergate scandal and served four months in prison, took exception to the 1991 books assertion that it was he who masterminded the Watergate break-in and cover-up to get information on the escort service. The book claims escorts were provided from the Columbia Plaza Hotel, near the Watergate, to out-of-town Democrats. The book also asserts that the madam was tied to the mob and a close friend of Mo Dean.

The Deans naturally did not like Liddy's suggestions that Maureen was more than just a friend to the madam or his labeling John a "serial perjurer." Nor did the Deans take kindly to the madam's lawyer and convicted pimp Phillip Mackin Bailley being a source for Silent Coup. Bailley's address book linked Maureen to the call-girl operation, and spurred Johns interest in the break-in, according to the Colodny and Gettlin book, but Garrick denies Maureen was in the address book. The Deans responded by suing both Liddy and Bailley.

In December, Colodny's attorneys dumped a 4,200-page summary-judgment motion into Dean's lap, asking U.S. Magistrate Alan Kay to dismiss the case. Dean immediately requested a continuance to respond to the motion. It was a briar patch. The motion itself stands 2 feet high with 774 separate exhibits, including a section dedicated to outing Maureen as an alleged prostitute, which the book never directly stated. The allegations, if true, could bolster one of the theories from Silent Coup that John learned about the call-girl connection to DNC from his then-girlfriend Maureen and tried to protect her.

"If this lexistence of the DNC call-girl ring would have come out during Watergate, those guys would have never gone to jail," Colodny tells Insight. "The only guy that would have gone to jail would have been John Dean." Of course, if this thesis were true, it would help the defendants including Colodny.

But, according to Garrick, none of this is true. "Preposterous," Garrick asserts. "The evidence gathered in this case strongly supports the Deans. We plan on responding to the motion in due course" with full details. The response to the motion was to be filed Jan. 31, after this issue went to press. Insight will report the Dean responses in a future issue.

That suits Colodny just fine. "We want John Wesley Dean III to answer the contents of this motion. He owes that not to us, but to all of the American people," Colodny says.

Dean already had suffered a setback a few months ago when the court ruled Maureen was a limited public figure in matters linked to Watergate. The ruling means the Deans must prove actual malice -- reckless disregard for the truth -- to win damages.

But one item in Dean,s favor is that the authors never interviewed Maureen, but instead relied on her three books -- Mo: A Woman's View of Watergate, Washington Wives and Capitol Secrets -- for background information. The books acknowledge that Maureen was friends with Heidi Rikan, an alleged madam. However the Deans maintain Rikan was not a madam. The books don't discuss the call-girl ring, but Colodny claimed the decision not to interview Mo was made by St. Martin's Press and not by the authors -- a situation that the Dean team regards as showing malice on the publisher's part.