Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush

John Wesley Dean, John Wesley III. Dean

Little, Brown and Company, 2004 - Political Science - 253 pages

Nobody knows more, both from first hand experience and legal expertise, about the abuse of presidential power and their dangers than John Dean, former counsel to President Nixon. In Worse Than Watergate, Dean delivers a stunning indictment of the current Bush administration, and issues an urgent alarm to the nation: the Bush team's obsession with secrecy and their willingness to deceive make them even more dangerous than Nixon's. Dean brilliantly explores Bush's emphasis on image over substance; his angry, mistrustful personality; his excessive fear of leaks; his reversing the work of his predecessors in opening up government; his imperial governing combined with deeply flawed decision making; and his serious abuses of national security secrecy. From refusing to explain the precarious health of the powerful vice president to hiding the identity of those setting the nation's energy policy, from obstructing 9/11 investigations to unprecedented secrecy in the name of fighting terrorism, Dean exposes the dangers of a presidency that is using weapons of mass deception against the American public.

About the author

John W. Dean was born in Akron, Ohio on October 14, 1938. He received a B.A. from The College of Wooster in 1961 and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1965. He served as the White House legal counsel to President Nixon for a thousand days. He also served as chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee and as an associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice. He has written numerous non-fiction books including Blind Ambition, Lost Honor, Conservatives Without Conscience, The Rehnquist Choice, Worse than Watergate, Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, and The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush
• Authors: John Wesley Dean, John Wesley III. Dean
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2004
• ISBN: 031600023X, 9780316000239
• Length: 253 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / General