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In 1969 Richard Kleindienst, who was then Deputy Attorney General, hired Dean as the Justice Department's liaison with Congress. As such, he was in charge of lobbying efforts for the ill-fated nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. His loyalty to the Administration so impressed senior White House staffers that he was hired to succeed John Ehrlichman as presidential counsel in 1970. In that job, Dean appeared to be a man of rigid principle, even when he was secretly helping to cover up Watergate. Once a junior staffer asked whether he could accept a $200 honorarium for a speech. "No, sir," Dean declared. What if he turned the money over to his church? "No," Dean repeated. "Nobody on the White House staff is going to accept money for anything."
Undoubtedly, Dean's career was furthered by his good looks and his command of the social graces. Detractors also suggest he was helped along by his first marriage—to Karla Hennings, the daughter of the late Senator Thomas C. Hennings of Missouri. She bore his son John IV, now 5, but the marriage ended in divorce three years ago. Last fall Dean married Maureen, a former insurance saleswoman from Los Angeles.
From the outset, John and Mo Dean maintained a low social profile in their $70,000 brick town house on Quay Street in Alexandria's affluent Old Town section, just 200 yards from the Potomac. Now, of course, the profile is lower still. Occasionally, they eat out with the Goldwaters, who live across the street. One recent Saturday, another neighbor, Ervin Committee Member Lowell Weicker, dropped in for beer and pretzels. Before the worst of Watergate, the Deans played tennis and golf, swam and sailed their 18-ft. boat. Nattily dressed in broad-lapel suits and wide ties, Dean used to drive to work a purple Porsche 911 as highly polished as his shoes. Now he and Mo stay home. Although hidden from public view by drawn shades, he still looks tanned. The tan is inexplicable; he told a recent visitor: "I haven't been in the sun for days. I would call it a bourbon pallor; except I haven't had a drink for days either." For the most part, in these last weeks leading up to his climactic appearance before the Ervin committee, he has worked in his basement, putting his letters and other documents in order, preparing for his ordeal.