Do you trust your memory?
by
Matt Giwer © 1995

      Something has recently been brought to my attention. The book Remembering and Forgetting; inquiries into the nature of memory by Edmund Blair Bolles, 1988, Walker Publishing Company. In particular Chapter 17, The Emotional Memory of John Dean. (For those who want to claim this is politics, this book is apolitical and this is simply an interesting test case.)
      For those who do not remember, John Dean was the most believed and most quoted witness at the Watergate hearings. Most of the impressions people have today of Watergate come from his testimony. It was clear, direct and compelling.
      Years later when transcripts of the Nixon tapes were made public it was taken as an opportunity to compare Dean's memories (which were down to which conversation on what day along with nearly verbatim recounting of the discussions) with the transcripts.
      The interesting thing is that not only was his testimony clear, direct and compelling, it was nearly 90% wrong. In comparing the two on one meeting we have on page 250 of the paperback edition...

      "Of the twenty-six separate assertions in Dean's testimony, fourteen have no historical basis, seven are badly distorted, and two are completely false. That leaves three correct assertions..."

      Perhaps some of us just might have a false impression of what happened in absense of those tapes. More interestingly, everyone who testified was dealing from memory (when they could "remember" anything) and that is what formed public opinion. There is no reason to believe the others were any different