DEAN, JOHN WESLEY, III

born Oct. 14, 1938, Akron, Ohio, U.S. U.S. lawyer who served as White House counsel during the Nixon administration (197073) and whose revelation of official participation in the Watergate Scandal ultimately led to the resignation of the president and the imprisonment of Dean himself and other top aides. Dean was graduated from the College of Wooster (Ohio) in 1961 and received a law degree from Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.) in 1965. From 1966 to 1967, he served as chief minority counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. A two-year tenure as associate director of the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws preceded his accepting appointment in the Nixon administration as an associate deputy attorney general. In 1970 the president selected Dean as White House counsel. Dean first came to national attention in 1972, when Nixon named him to head a special investigation into possible involvement of White House personnel in the Watergate case. As was later revealed, he refused to issue a proposed fictitious report denying a cover-up, and when implications of White House involvement became stronger, Dean began telling federal investigators what he knew. Nixon fired Dean on April 30, 1973. Two months later Dean testified publicly before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, explaining in great detail how White House officialsincluding the presidenthad obstructed justice in order to mask their participation in the events following the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The former White House counsel was later imprisoned for his role in Watergate, a role that he recounted in his book Blind Ambition (1976).