The Man Everyone Wants to Hear From

A LAWYER himself, Richard Nixon might well admire the meteoric rise of John Wesley Dean III. Though he is only 34 and has never been in private law practice, the fastidious blond attorney from Akron is Counsel to the President of the U.S. Dean is also the White House staffer to whom L. Patrick Gray III handed over the FBI'S files on its Watergate probe. As a result, his name has turned up more than any other in the Judiciary Committee's hearings on Gray, and he is the man whom the Senators most want to question. But the President, invoking the widest possible interpretation of Executive privilege, has said that Dean, or for that matter any White House staff member, past or present, will not testify. Interestingly, Nixon's statement on Executive privilege was written by Dean himself.

In many other ways, Dean has influenced White House policy. He worked out the legal basis for the President's impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress and his broad use of the pocket veto. He drafts all Executive orders and prepares legal opinions for the President on many matters. A cautious, loyal follower of orders, he is totally trusted by the President. Unlike many a Cabinet member or White House aide, Dean has easy, frequent and direct access to the boss. Since the Gray hearings began, Dean has refused to be interviewed or photographed by the press.

Dean attended Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, where his roommate was Barry Goldwater Jr. The two are neighbors now in the Old Town section of Arlington, Va. According to Goldwater, the young Dean was "very outgoing and quite intelligent." Dean's grades, mostly A's and B's, were helped by self-hypnosis, which he taught himself to improve his concentration. Dean studied at Colgate, Ohio's College of Wooster and American University, and he graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1965.

Rep. William McCulloch, of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, gave Dean his first Government job as minority counsel for the committee. After two years, Dean became associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Criminal Laws, a panel to advise Congress and the President. Now defunct, the commission advocated the elimination of mandatory prison sentences and abolition of the death penalty, two positions that Dean's current boss opposes. A colleague on the commission says that Dean "was a very decent guy, but without a very solid base in principle."

By the time that Nixon took office in 1969, Dean's reputation as a friend of the Administration and a diligent worker had been established. Richard Kleindienst, then Deputy Attorney General, hired him as the legislative liaison for the Justice Department because "everybody in town recommended him." Dean was in charge of lobbying for the Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell nominations to the Supreme Court. Just before the Senate rejected the Carswell nomination, a frustrated Dean remarked to a colleague: "If we don't win this one, I might as well hang up my hat."

Nonetheless, Dean's loyalty, combined with his pleasant manner and "pretty face," says one acquaintance, made him popular with "the public-relations and imagery-minded people" at the White House. He was promoted into the White House to succeed John Ehrlichman as Counsel. "I cried when he left here," says Kleindienst.

Off duty, Dean maintains as low a social profile as most of his Administration colleagues. He putters about his townhouse installing kitchen shelves and light fixtures. He and his second wife, Maureen, play tennis, sail and recently took a Berlitz course in French together. But his anonymity has been badly bumped by the imbroglio over Watergate. "The current happenings around the White House have driven him almost to the point of exhaustion," says a friend. As Dean well knows, the waves from Watergate contributed to washing out another close Nixon aide, Dwight Chapin. They threaten to finish off L. Patrick Gray III, and they could even inundate John Dean.

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