John W. Dean

John Wesley Dean III has had a roller coaster of a life. He became a a close friend to the late conservative hero Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, then a convicted felon and disbarred lawyer in the 1970s after pleading guilty to charges of obstruction of justice in the late President Richard Nixon's Watergate burglary scandal.

Since then, the Beverly Hills, California resident has become a respected political and legal analyst, writing as a columnist for the free legal information website Findlaw.com and authoring or co-authoring eight books, some of which are extremely critical of the Republican Party he belonged to for much of his life. He is now a registered independent who considers himself to be a conservative on fiscal and many policy issues, but more moderate-to-liberal on social issues.

Dean keeps a low profile these days, but can occasionally be seen on TV stations such as MSNBC promoting best-selling books of his. Some of them include: 2004's Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, when he became one of the rare conservatives and first Bush critics in general to make the case for impeachment; 2006's Conservatives Without Conscience; and 2007's Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches.