Conservatives Without Conscience

Watching the authors on Good Morning America, we felt encouraged. Colodny, the older of the two, who looked to be in his early fifties, was a retired liquor salesman and conspiracy buff. Gettlin, who appeared to be in his forties, was a journalist. This was their first book. Both were tense. GMA ’s host, Charlie Gibson, an experienced journalist, was not buying the Silent Coup story relating to the Deans, so his questions focused on the material in the book related to Bob Woodward and Al Haig, which was as unfounded as the material relating to us. (Woodward was accused of CIA connections; Haig had allegedly plotted the “coup” of the title that had removed Nixon from office.) With St. Martin’s publicity department pumping out information about their sensational new book, requests for responses and appearances became so frequent we had to put a message on the answering machine to handle the requests. Not wanting to do anything to attract additional publicity to the book, however, we declined all appearances and issued a statement explaining that the charges were false.

We watched the authors again on CNN’s Larry King Live. Bob Beckel was the substitute host in Larry King’s absence. Colodny claimed that he and Gettlin were “not making any charges against Maureen Dean.” Yet I had made a note during my quick read of the book that they claimed that Mo’s alleged “acquaintanceship with [Phillip Mackin] Bailley, and the true identity of her friend Heidi [Rikan]…[were] the keys to understanding all the events of the break-ins and cover-ups that we know under the omnibus label of Watergate.” That was some “no charge.” After a commercial break, well into the program, both Colodny and Gettlin simply disappeared without explanation, as if snatched from their seats by hooks. In their places were Howard Kurtz, a media reporter for the Washington Post, and Gordon Liddy, Watergate’s most decorated felon. Beckel asked Liddy for his “theory” of why 60 Minutes and Time had “pulled” their stories on Silent Coup. Liddy said, “Well, I don’t have to go for a theory with respect to those two things, because they are on the record.” Liddy claimed none of the people charged by the book would appear on 60 Minutes. “They wanted to get John Dean, etcetera,” Liddy claimed. “They wouldn’t come on the program and face these two men. Time magazine just said, you know, the thing is so densely packed that it did not lend itself to being excerpted and they felt that they couldn’t do it.”

Liddy’s remarks were untrue, for I had agreed to do 60 Minutes (as had Woodward and Haig) and I had a copy of the Time excerpt, not to mention my letter, which had killed it. Mike Wallace, who had obviously been watching the show, called in to correct Liddy’s false characterizations. Wallace reported that he had read Silent Coup, and had interviewed Colodny and Gettlin. “And we intended to go, just as Time magazine intended to go. We checked, Gordon. I did talk to John Dean,” he said. “We objected to the fact that the authors refused or declined to let the objects of their scrutiny, these three [Woodward, Haig, and Dean] in particular, see the book, read the book ahead of time, so that they could face the charges.” As to the charge that I was the “mastermind” of Watergate, Wallace explained, “We could not, on our own, source the thing sufficiently to satisfy ourselves that it stood up as a 60 Minutes piece. That’s why we didn’t do the piece.” Mo applauded when one of America’s best-known journalists knocked down the book’s central charge.