Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 64

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Popular Culture Review

memoir’s end, in which Irving faces prison, the author accepts the ramifications of
his self-delusion: “My reputation as a writer was crippled; I was known as a liar
and a con man; I had achieved...not fame but notoriety. I owed...well over $1.5
million to McGraw-Hill, the IRS, and our lawyers” (376). And when asked if it
was an experience worth repeating, Irving concludes that “I’ve lost too much” to
ever take such risks again (377).

Abuses of Governmental Power
In John Dean’s Blind Ambition and Charles Colson’s Born Again , both
memoirists acknowledge that the lure of power in the Nixon White House led to
their legal and ethical breaches in the Watergate scandal. As counsel to President
Nixon, Dean says he soon learned that if he wanted to travel upward into a position
o f confidence and influence, he would have to “travel downward” through power
plays, corruption, and finally overt criminal acts. True advancement, Dean writes,
came by proving he would go to any lengths necessary to demonstrate his loyalty
to his White House superiors. He adds, “Slowly, steadily, I would climb toward the
moral abyss of the president’s inner circle until I finally fell into it, thinking I had
made it to the top just as I began to realize I had actually touched bottom” (1976,
16-21). Although Dean’s role in the Watergate cover-up gave him daily access to
Nixon’s inner circle, the attorney increasingly became concerned that “soft spots”
in the plan would eventually lead him to prison. When he expressed those concerns
to Nixon, the president made him feel guilty and disloyal: “He was implying that I
was abandoning ship. I felt beaten down. I felt I had lost confidence by admitting
to a certain weakness. My rise in the White House was over” (181-182, 206). On
July 11, 1974, Dean’s sense of foreboding came true when he was sentenced to
four years in prison for his part in the cover-up (356-360).
As special counsel to President Nixon, Colson’s job was to serve as the White
House troubleshooter or “hatchet man,” specializing in dirty tricks against Nixon’s
political enemies and to deal with government officials who leaked classified
information to the press (1976, 58-59). On June 21, 1974, Colson was sentenced
up to three years in prison for conspiring to break into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s
office for the purpose of disseminating damaging information about the man who
leaked the Pentagon Papers (222-224, 285). Shortly before beginning his prison
term, Colson announced he had become a born-again Christian, and later he would
develop a prison ministry program (179-195, 393-395).
The m emoirs o f Dean and Colson reflect a conscience-based ethical
justification, with both authors emphasizing their loyalty to President Nixon. As
aides to Nixon, they believed their major loyalty was to the presidency, with other
loyalties (such as to family, friends, country, or personal values) taking a secondary
position. Christians, Rotzoll, and Fackler (1987) point out that choosing loyalties is