The book section of today’s Washington Post includes a review of Russ Baker’s book Family Of Secrets by Jamie Malanowski (once a mainstay of Spy magazine in its 1980s heyday, later managing editor of Playboy) which includes this observation:
In a particularly weak section, [Baker] argues that [George H. W.] Bush was complicit in a plot to undermine Richard Nixon. Here Baker relies on revisionist accounts of Watergate that point to John Dean as the one who ordered the break-in, or to the CIA as conspiring to oust Nixon. Bush is linked to these fuzzy schemes primarily by having, like the Watergate burglars, a CIA connection. In addition, Baker finds it suspicious that Bush advised Nixon to come clean about the break-in. But such advice was highly conventional and could be considered anti-Nixon only if you buy the idea that Bush prodded an innocent president to admit to something that didn’t involve him. Baker doesn’t convincingly cast Bush as anything beyond a sycophantic, Zelig-like presence in the Nixon years.