I have never liked John Dean and this book gave me 450 more pages of reasons to dislike him. Ok that might be a bit much, but the authors basically blame Dean and Haig for most of Nixon's problems. The book gives the reader a great overview of the Watergate scandal and what took place behind the scenes. If you have read a number of books on this topic then this one has a new and interesting look at what really happened. Not to give too much away but the authors make a claim that it was actually a few people that were on the Presidents staff that pushed, tricked and caused Nixon to make the mistakes he did which resulted in him resigning. We also get their guess at who good old Deep Throat was.

The authors do a very good job in detailing out all of the research they did to come to their conclusions. It looks like they read every book on the subject and talked to about 90% of the key players in the event. They give us all the instances where the statements that Dean made were just not completely correct and detail the many instances where Dean was completely wrong in many of his statements. They also have an interesting dup in the form of Woodward, which was an interesting tidbit. Overall it is hard to completely take all responsibility away from Nixon. The statements he made on tape and the full range of dirty tricks and abuse of power items that Nixon did just went too far to think that the issues around a Watergate cover up would be beyond him. The book is very interesting and is full of great insight into the administration. If you are interested at all in Watergate then you will really enjoy this book

"Silent Coup" is the result of one of the most important journalistic research efforts of the modern era. It details an alternative view of the Watergate Affair, and blows a mile-wide hole in the commonly-accepted account of Woodward & Bernstein.

As distasteful as it may be to some readers, the work generally supports the long-held claims of the G. Gordon Liddy camp, i.e. that Woodward & Bernstein's accounts in "The Washington Post" and their following books were merely an extension of John Dean's version of Watergate, wherein Dean is innocent and everyone else is guilty. However, while the book vindicates Liddy's testimony as to fact, it does not paint much of a flattering picture of the convicted felon otherwise.

Colodny & Gettlin expose Dean's supposed role of "fall guy" for what it is: self-serving lies, and lies that were (or should have been) known to the Watergate prosecutors who used his perjured testimony, given in exchange for leniency, to bring down the Nixon Administration. A carefully researched and meticulously documented thesis is posited by the authors, namely that Dean essentially sent the White House up the river in order to save his own neck and conceal his own critical involvement in literally every aspect of the Watergate crimes and cover-ups.

Specifically, an overwhelming case is made that Dean, in order to squash his own involvement in a seperate legal matter pertaining to the surreptitious use of DNC headquarters in Washington as a front for a high-class call-girl service, and in which his own future wife Mo was complicit, instigated the burglaries at the DNC in hopes of removing evidence belying his association therein. The DNC burglaries were conveniently tucked into the overall dirty tricks program against the advice of most of the operative conspirators, who, as Liddy has stated, saw no value in hitting the DNC. The value of the break-in, the authors show, was to Dean and Dean alone.

The other primary bombshell dropped in "Silent Coup" is the very under-reported fact that journalist Bob Woodward was, astonishingly, a former Naval Officer involved in extremely sensitive communications intelligence, and that Woodward almost certainly briefed Alexander Haig and others in the Nixon White House in an official capacity prior to his departure from the Navy and rapid rise to the unlikely position of star reporter for the Post, and, conveniently, the lead newsbreaker in the Watergate matter! This direct link between Woodward and the Nixon White House should have disqualified Woodward from reporting on the matter. It did not disqualify him, because those who should have known about the link apparently either didn't know, or didn't care.

This fine history of the Watergate era covers many other pertinent related topics, including the establishment of a top-secret communications "back channel", which Nixon instituted in order to sidestep the State Department and Pentagon in sensitive dealings with the former USSR, Red China, and in the prosecution and settlement of the Vietnam War. The evidence shows that the back channel was illegally compromised by Haig and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The implications with respect to the larger Watergate scandal are addressed in detail by the authors.

The work also touches many historical issues exposed by the Watergate investigations, not the least of which is the implication that Nixon may have known the truth behind the Kennedy Assassination, and that some those connected to Watergate may have been directly involved, namely E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and perhaps some of the Cuban "Plumbers". Again, this history encompasses more than just Watergate by virtue of the enormous amount of studious research that was necessary to document the central arguments contained within.

The importance of this book is further magnified by the fact that a large number of the players in the Watergate affair are deceased; fortunately for history, the authors had the opportunity to interview most of the now-dead key players prior to their passing.

This book is must reading for anyone interested in Watergate. The book's radical rethinking of the common wisdom of Watergate is both refreshing and disturbing, not only in its treatment of the facts of the case, but as an expose' of the secret agenda of Bob Woodward.

The book is objectively written and relies heavily on eyewitness accounts of the events leading up to the resignation of President Nixon. I did not feel that there was any attempt to "white-wash" the episode, rather, it is an attempt to show what really happened. The role the main stream press played was disgraceful. It was obvious to most people at the time that the press was in the midst of an unprecedented feeding frenzy over the Watergate affair. It was not obvious that the presidency was under attack by self-serving individuals out to save themselves from their own misdeeds at the expense of the President and the country. The press and academe has a lot to atone for in presenting such a distorted look at this episode in American history; this book provides the necessary information for the reader to see through the distortions and realize the true motives and betrayal that occurred. This book provides extensive references to other works that have been written over the years by the players involved and official documents generated as the events unfolded. Richard Nixon is portrayed fairly and is not presented as a demon or a saint. I highly recommend this book and feel it should be required reading for American history classes in our high schools