Conservatives Without Conscience

A smug-sounding voice said, “This is G. Gordon Liddy, calling you from the Merle Pollis Show. John, you have…” “W-E-R-E Cleveland, let’s get our call letters in,” the host interrupted. Liddy then continued, “…you have promised that you will sue me and Len Colodny and Bob Gettlin. Let’s get this suit started, John. We want to get you on the stand, under oath, yet again…. Come on, John. I’m publicly challenging you to make good on your promise to sue.” The host added, “John, this is Merle Pollis, the host of the program. Would you say hello to Maureen, for me? I said she was the prettiest of the Watergate people, next to G. Gordon Liddy. I hope she’s still just as pretty. I, ah, this, this new book, however, reveals some things about Maureen that irk me. I didn’t want to think of her in that way, and it makes me very sad, and it also makes me feel, well, never mind. Thanks, John.”

Liddy would get his lawsuit, but on our terms, not his. Rather than give him the publicity he desperately wanted, we spent the next eight months collecting evidence and preparing the case. For eight years our lawsuit made its way through the federal courts, and St. Martin’s tried every possible ploy to prevent its going to trial. Had we taken the case to trial, Phillip Mackin Bailley, the key source for the story about the purported call-girl ring, might rank as the worst possible source of information in the annals of defamation law. Bailley had been in and out of mental institutions throughout his adult life. When we deposed him, Bailley’s attorney arranged for a psychiatrist to testify under oath that his client’s mental condition made him unable to distinguish fact from fiction. While St. Martin’s and the other defendants were spending over $14 million of insurance company money trying to make us go away, it eventually became clear to them that we were prepared to go whatever distance necessary to make fools of them all, and that we had the evidence to do it.[4] By the fall of 1998 we had also accomplished our underlying goal of gathering the information necessary to show that Silent Coup was bogus history. Ultimately, it seems, they had hoped to win the lawsuit by simply outspending us, but when that strategy failed, they sought a settlement. Neither Colodny nor Liddy wanted to settle, however. Colodny had somehow used a rider on his homeowner’s policy to get the insurance company to pay for his defense in the litigation, though ultimately his insurer forced him to settle. Liddy, on the other hand, had nothing at risk, since all of his assets were in his wife’s name and St. Martin’s was paying for his attorney. After we settled with St. Martin’s and Colodny, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan put an end to the litigation.[5] While the final settlement agreement prohibits me from discussing its terms, I can say the Deans were satisfied.

Despite most of the news media’s fitting dismissal of Silent Coup ’s baseless claims, the protracted litigation provided time for the book to gather a following, including an almost cultlike collection of high-profile right-wingers. Among them, for example, is Monica Crowley, a former aide to Richard Nixon after his presidency, and now a conservative personality on MSNBC, cohosting Connected: Coast to Coast with Ron Reagan. Other prominent media-based conservatives who have joined the glee club are James Rosen and Brit Hume of Fox News. How these seemingly intelligent people embraced this false account mystified me, and I wanted to know.

Throughout the prolonged Silent Coup controversy it had gradually become clear to me that St. Martin’s, Colodny, and Gettlin were in it for the money. Had Phillip Bailley, or some other such source, claimed that Pat Nixon had ordered the break-in, they no doubt would have turned history upside down to try to sell that story as well. When we contested the bogus account, they all fought to save face. In addition, Colodny, who called himself a Democrat, had never been given much attention until he was embraced by the right wing, where he has found new friends. Liddy wanted revenge, even though Silent Coup showed him as a greater fool than history already had; promoting it did, however, provide an outlet for his aggression—not to mention that it also landed him his own talk-radio show, which has thrived. As for Colson, his reason for promoting Silent Coup remained a complete mystery for me, as did the motives of people like Monica Crowley, James Rosen, Brit Hume, and all the other hard-core conservatives who embraced this spurious history and made it a best seller. The only thing I could see that these people had in common was their conservatism.