Feb. 3, 2012

An inside look at the Watergate scandal that engulfed President Richard Nixon’s White House enlivened what might have been an otherwise nondescript CLE ethics seminar at Skaden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP’s downtown Los Angeles office Monday. The seminar featured former White House counsel John Dean, who was the Nixon administration’s official counsel during the Watergate episode. His testimony before the Senate committee tasked with investigating the incident played a prominent role in Nixon’s eventual resignation. Dean, who has already authored a book on his Watergate experience, compared his actions as White House counsel to the responsibilities of attorneys who uncover criminal wrongdoing by a client and what steps should be taken legally and ethically to satisfy their responsibility to report the wrongdoing. Along with fellow author and attorney Jim Robenalt, who has helped spearhead the presentation, Dean recalled the cover-up that spiraled wildly out of control in the weeks and months after five members of the Committee to Re-Elect were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. Fittingly, one of Dean’s clearest memories of Watergate was making a list of all the possible people involved in the cover-up and thinking at the time, “How could so many damn lawyers be involved in such a thing?” While that question may never be answered definitively, Dean is doing his best to make sure no more attorneys succumb to the pitfalls he and many of the other Nixon staffers did.