Silent Coup: Dean, the call girls and the lawsuits

Silent Coup made Dean, not Liddy or Mitchell, the man behind the break-in. Its authors said a Washington lawyer, Phillip Bailley, ran a call-girl ring with a woman they identified as Heidi Rikan, a friend of Dean’s then-girlfriend Maureen Biner, and that the DNC was a source of clients. Bailley’s address book, seized by the FBI, was said to list Biner. [1][2]

On this account Dean knew, through prosecutors who visited him, that the ring could embarrass him and the White House. So he used Hunt and Liddy to find out what the Democrats had, which explains the key to the secretary’s desk. Then, when it went wrong, he ran the cover-up to protect himself, and Haig and the military used the crisis to remove a president they distrusted. [1][2]

Liddy came to believe the call-girl version and repeated it. A federal judge noted some facts that fit it, including the desk key and the phone extension. [3]

Dean denied it completely. He said he had met Hunt once to say hello and never directed him. His wife said she had never heard of Bailley. 60 Minutes, which had prepared a story, dropped it because the authors could not confirm the central charges. Rikan had died before the book came out and could not answer. [1]

Dean v. St. Martin’s: the Deans sued for defamation. In August 1997 St. Martin’s settled on confidential terms and returned the rights to the authors. Dean says Colodny later settled too, Liddy refused, and Judge Emmet Sullivan then ended the litigation. A settlement is not a finding either way. [1][2]

Wells v. Liddy: Ida “Maxie” Wells sued Liddy for saying she was involved with the ring. The appeals court ruled in 1999 that she was a private figure; [3] a 2001 trial ended with a hung jury and a ruling for Liddy; [6] in 2002 the appeals court ordered a new trial; [4] and in July 2002 a Baltimore jury found that Liddy had not defamed her. [5] That verdict was about Liddy’s statements, not about whether the theory is true; the trial judge said the evidence did not settle it. [6]

The theory also runs into the tapes. Nixon approved the plan to use the CIA against the FBI on 23 June 1972, and the money went to the defendants from the President’s men. Even if Dean had a private motive, the cover-up the President joined is not changed by it.