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Even before Watergate, Dean was hardly known outside the tight-knit circle of the White House staff. He shunned publicity, avoided controversy and cultivated a reputation of being one of Nixon's most faithful liege men. As presidential counsel, he worked out the legal basis for Nixon's impoundment of funds, broad use of pocket vetoes and Executive privilege. He also helped arrange Nixon's commutation of jail sentences being served by Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa (which was widely interpreted as a political gesture in return for Teamster support of Nixon in the election) and by Mafia Capo Angelo ("Gyp") DeCarlo. Nonetheless, Clark MacGregor, who headed the re-election committee after John Mitchell resigned, recalls Dean not as part of the power elite but as a "wall sitter"—one who carried out policy rather than helped make it.
Born in Akron, Dean was raised with his sister Anne in several Midwestern cities, as their father rose through the executive ranks of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. Later the elder Dean settled in Greenville, Pa., where he became vice president of a company that manufactures playground equipment. At Staunton, young John studied self-hypnotism to improve his concentration and roomed with Barry Goldwater Jr., who now is his neighbor in Alexandria, Va. Dean graduated with a low B average and got by at Colgate with gentlemanly C's before transferring to Ohio's College of Wooster in 1959.
There he founded a student pre-law club, played the part of a redneck witness in a campus production of Inherit the Wind and wrote a senior thesis on "The Social Responsibilities of the Political Novelists." He earned a master's degree in public administration from American University in 1962 and his law degree from Georgetown in 1965.
He joined a Washington law firm, but his career as a practicing attorney ended sourly six months later. Assigned to help prepare a client's application for a new television station, Dean was discovered to be working on a rival application—for himself and some friends —and was fired. He was promptly hired as minority counsel for the House Judiciary Committee by its ranking Republican, Representative William McCulloch, who was both a fellow Ohioan and Wooster alumnus.
For two years, Dean concentrated on civil rights legislation and on criminal law reforms. In 1967 he became associate director of a now defunct panel (the National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws), which was set up to advise Congress and the President. There he struck one colleague as courteous, pleasant to work with but somewhat facile. Recalled the colleague: "He gave the appearance of having more poise and assurance than he really possessed."