Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Washington Journal 20140704

For war with iran. That argument involves doing whatever it takes to get rid of the current regime and to bring about one that is friendlier. Theres also an argument to be made of fervor and of what it is you really want from us and what are you going to give in return . Is an argument for that. We are doing neither of these things. It may be possible to resolve whatever differences you have it there ran on the basis of number two. That has not been tried. It may or may not be possible and it is certainly possible to base our attend on the war against this regime. But that thought process has not been entered into. Thats the kind of thing im talking about. This has been an extraordinarily thoughtful exploration and some of the basic questions of our time up war and peace by very thoughtful expert analysts. This is his book, to make and keep peace among ourselves and with all nations. It is available outside for 20, so we encourage all of you to buy one copy if not two. Can did that angela would be happy to sign up for you. We are going to do a signing for you outside. Please join me in thanking. [applause] [inaudible convsation [inaudible conversations] cspan to providing live coverage of the u. S. Senate floor proceedings and key Public Policy events. And every weekend booktv, now for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by the tv industry and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd, like u like us n facebook and follow was on twitter. And now from washington, d. C. s politics prose bookstore, Elizabeth Drew talks about the new edition of her book, washington journal. The book originally published in 1975 covers the dissolution of the Nixon Administration got some timber 1973 to august 1974. This is about one hour. Thank you, david. Why did you just keep talking and ill drink in your words. They were lovely. Its lovely to be back here, First Time Since my last book, as david out across. We are always very welcoming to me. And i have to tell you, publishers and authors scratch and crawl into all sorts of things to be able to speak at this marvelous place. But they always said when is your next book . Youre on. It was lovely. And as david said, brad and alyssa have carried on the wonders of tradition that carla began, the energy and ingenuity and may keep going. The fact all of you come tonight is a testimony to the job they do and the reverence for books, books that we all share. Richard nixon as a hard man to let go of. I first, remember as a child in black and white, fuzzy Television Seen this odd man. He was on the ticket with general eisenhower and there was some problem of his taking some money from a secret fund. He was talking about his daughters dog, and i thought, hes interesting. Well, he never stopped being interesting. Richard axel was never boring. As david mentioned he was probably as interesting in his after presidency as he was during his presidency. I chronicle in the book beginning with spiro agnew, remember spiro agnew been in some trouble, and i have said to my editor at the new yorker, the very limited and very justly legendary William Shawn said to me, what do you think of writing next . I said i just had the feeling were going to change Vice President s and president s within a year. This is labor day of 73, a very way out their wild thought at the time. We agreed i would write a journal, not a diary a watch of the events in the truck of them and talk about them. We didnt know where its going. As he said at the time, we dont want to change Vice President s because that would be the first order of business. We did know how to change Vice President s. We didnt know how to impeach a president. We didnt know how to get another president. It was all kind of made up as we went along. One of the most distressing things about now is the way come to lose weight in which this word impeachment is tossed around. I may or may not get to this later because ive so much to talk about, but if it is such a thing, the way Richard Nixon was almost impeached was really the model. It came from the center, bipartisan, the country could accept it because it was arrived at in a very fair and methodical way. So Richard Nixon had no choice finally but to resign. He held out and he held out a republican, mainly republican senators would decision but it didnt want to conduct a trial. They wanted to get this over with and they wanted gerry ford in there before the election. We had this iconic nixon goodbye as he got onto the helicopter to take into the plane to go to san clemente, is western white house where he would retire and never be heard from again. So we thought. Well, thats not my nixon. When he got to california he was understandably deeply, deeply depressed. He had worked for decades to get to this highest place that he possibly could than anybody in this country possibly can come in this country politically, and it had all gone smash. He kind of knew in his own have you done a fair amount to bring it on, but he all always believe people are out of getting. This was is really brought about his downfall. He could not distinguish between the opponents and enemies. This became a big problem for him. But he was depressed, not well, he had phlebitis from a trip he took to the middle east towards the end but hes not going to give up. He had never given up all his life. He had always seen itself as been treated as lesser and lower than others. He was poor. His family, as i say, dysfunctional, it was not a word and that this was a really dysfunctional family. But usually they didnt tear up the constitution. But he had been looked down as a kid. He was awkward. He read a lot. He was not popular. He never really had friends. Strange kind of person to go into politics but he was just so determined about everything. He was determined, this is not going to be the end of Richard Nixon, no, no. He was going to work his way back into respectability. Imagine, this was a situation which wouldve crushed most people, and yet he was determined eriksson future of a plan. They always had a plan. A number of aides were sent out to california with him at the governments expense, and they drew up a plan called wizard. This was to be the resurgence and reemergence of Richard Nixon as a statesman. He was smart enough to know that how do you get to be a statesman . People listen to you. They will listen to you on foreign policy, not on frankly im sorry, education or environment are these things, and also those issues board him anyway. Is great triumphs were they cant with the soviet union detente. And china was the one used to his heart. So we began to make speeches. He began to take trips. He went to china and he issued pronouncements as if he were still president , or he thought he was. Our nixon never quite come he didnt change the. He would write a secret memorandum to the president on his trip or on some issue, then you of course leak it to the press and it would be in the papers. He had the interviews, this famous interviews with david frost which were not as portrayed in frost nixon. You can look at the. I take that apart pretty well. He did not confess. They just left out a few words that were inconvenient to the story. He then began to get bored in san clemente, moved to new york where he had been before after he lost the california governorship, after lost the presidency in 1960 whenever he thought he is gone. But he was never gone. I wish he were back not because he was so much fun and interesting but in any event he moved to new york and he and pat nixon, she was thrilled to be out of politics at last. She hated it. They bought a brownstone. They were vetoed at various coops of course, and he decided he would have a series of dinners with the pooh boss of new york, publishers, tankers, the council on foreign relations, whatever. These dinners i discovered, this was in the last figures i discovered this post presidency, which i found this interesting as the presidency. So he would have these dinners and everything was clockwork. At 7 00 he met people in the front, at the front door. They went upstairs. He mixed drinks. He prided himself on the dry martinis adding me. This is not a man who is very good at small talk, but they chatted away. The subtlety was not his long suit. The house was done up in chinese decor. The appetizers were chinese. The waiters were chinese. The dinner was chinese. And then after dinner they would go upstairs and they would be, it was an organized subject at the dinner and then afterwards they would go upstairs and the would be so more chatting. Nixon would look up at 10 30, look up at the clock and he would say, oh, its 10 30 and i promised i would get david cone to a house of prostitution by 11 so we have to stop now. And everybody knew to leave. But everybody wanted to come. He became a celebrity. After a while he thought new york, he did like the atmosphere for his grandchildren, on who he doted. So we moved to new jersey but he wasnt finished. There was another generation to cultivate soviet the series of dinners in saddle river where he would, roger stone you may read about what he was his operative for this. They invited journalists to Young Children at age during watergate it nobody who knew about watergate was to be around. And he could be very impressive. He spoke just with a microphone, not even a note, and he was kind of name dropping about foreign leaders i have known, that everybody was very impressed. And so in the end he wants on his own terms. He had a funeral he wouldve just loved. Three expresident s gain. Henry kissinger sort of choked as he gave his little talk. Bob dole had a tear coming down his eye. Bob dole while nixon was president has been asked would you like them to make an appearance in kansas . And he said, a flyover would do. [laughter] so my nixon wouldve seen straight through these guys. He knew that kissinger was badmouthing him up with his friends in cambridge and at the georgetown parties. He understood everything that was going on. He was onto them, but he would have been mighty pleased with his funeral. I have to say i kind of miss him. He was so interesting. Now, why did i write this journal in the first place . When i spoke to mr. Sean, we have decided for keeping the journal at the time, as i said we did know what was going and they came back to washington, and this is also why we are here again. My mentor at the time, he also happened to have been davids, john gartner, said to me, elizabeth, elizabeth, write it so that 40 years from now people will know what it was like then. It cannot be recaptured. I dont know that i wrote it any differently with that in mind. I didnt know where or whether i would be in the 40 years. It just happens that its 40 years from now. This is not an anniversary book. Frankly, the book was out of print and i wrote to peter mayor of overlook press who had a very distinguished booklist, and he wrote back and said its idiotic for the book to be out of print. Yes, we will reissue it in hardback. My heart leapt needless to say. And they said, ill write a little afterward declared things up and the came the afterward, a 10,000 word addition of all new materials, heart of which i told you but also look back on what was watergate . What was it really . With all due respect it wasnt to reporters during outstanding reporting. That wasnt it. It wasnt petty crimes or a breakin. The breakin that was caught by the way, i learned this as i was doing my reporting many years later, it was actually the fourth attempt of these burglars to get in the watergate. The first time they planned a grand dinner inside the the watergate and i would get them in the building of a could get up to the Democratic National headquarters. There was just one thing. One thing led to another and they ended up locked in a closet that night. The next time they went up, they went up and they got there but it didnt have the equipment to pick the lock. So one of the burglars, mr. Martinez, went back to miami to get a good lock pick. They came back and they went in and actually got in over the memorial day weekend, the labor day weekend. Know, the memorial day weekend that summer. But as is often the case, partner in which, they screwed up. They put the tape, the tap on the wrong phone and at the pictures, the pictures were all blurred and one of the burglars took us to John Mitchell, our former attorney general who was then head of the committee to reelect the president. Known as creep. And mitchells reporter said the 16. I doubt thats the word he used but thats it. Go back and get better pictures and fix the tap. Then they went in and they were caught. So think about watergate. Think about this. We have the white house where the president came in with a lot of hate, a lot of people he hated an and a lot of people whe assume were enemies. So he on his wage, they hired this bunch of strange people who [laughter] a former cop from new york whose first job was to tail ted kennedy because he thought, nixon thought ted kennedy would be his opponent in 1972. And so he wanted to get the goods on me. He was always wanting to get the goods on people. The main person who wanted to get the goods on of course was Daniel Ellsberg who kissinger was worked up about this and had gotten nixon all worked up. There was actually then committed probably the most dangerous, nixon understood this. He was far more concerned about the falling following havent been found up other than the watergate breakin and that is the burglars, the plumbers. They were called plumbing for leaks. It was said. They went out to california and they rated the office of Daniel Ellsbergs psychiatrist to get his psychiatric files to imagine that. A white house sending somebody out to examine somebodys psychiatric files. There was just one problem though. They had casey, there were no files. They broke in okay, and they had their picture taken. Two of them, hunt and libby, the leaders have their picture taken. They were so proud in front of the Doctors Office door. They were using cia equipment, cameras, voice changes, wigs, and so the cia got these pictures and said whats this . This is a violation of Fourth Amendment beyond anything we could imagine. Thats what the coverup was really about. Fortunately for the country the plumbers were stumblebums. They messed up everything they did, or we wouldve been in far deeper trouble. Living to watergate it was just an amazing time. Things are coming at you all the time. Fortunately, with all due respect we didnt have cable or wouldve been total chaos, but we had the morning paper. We had the radio with an occasional bulletin and we have the evening papers and evening news and that was it. Otherwise with the gaza. We had have hear you heard of t . You wont believe what we just heard. It was just like that all the time. There was the famous saturday night, called the saturday night massacre and i refuse to call it that. I was actually on a Television Program at the time, and we were sitting there but it was like being in a banana republic. The bulletins kept coming in to the president has ordered the attorney general richardson to fire Archibald Cox who was demanding the president turned over the tapes. Richardson has refused and he has been fired. Next up, the Deputy Attorney general. He refused. He was fired. This went on for the night and the bulletins were coming in. It was a banana republic, or downtown san diego someone else said but it was very disturbing but we did know where we were. The fbi surrounded the headquarters of the independent counsels office. This kind of stuff and so you just never knew what was coming next. I did a reflection on this later about what kind of people were these, and how did this happen . And i would say we didnt have time to even think about that than. I tried to and ive there is reflections for the book about what are we to draw from this and what kind of country is this . How could this be . And i said theres too much going on to think these things through. We are absorbing one after another events that run our imaginations and trying to prepare ourselves for months of bitter struggle to come. Some in the initiation of said to me the story and the Nixon Administration is full of people who are in over their heads. There may be something to that effect is not explained. There was a fanatic quality to some of the nixon, a weaving together of the public heidi and their venom. Which may have deceived even them. One cannot escape the thought that the president set the tone. My feeling throughout this is, and you can look at any, many situations and say well, you dont have to know who knew what when, who set the tone, how did this come about . One cannot escape the thought the president set the tone. Lonely and suspicious, a man with a striking lack of deep human connections. He seems to have gone through life as if in constant contact. He confuse legitimate opposition with vendetta, and so did his staff. Most of us have what a friend of mine calls and energy rate. People whose judgment we trust and whose esteemed matters matter to us. And we count on to level with us. Nixon does not seem to have had an inner jury. Is also, he was are interesting but he was very strange. Just to give you the flavor of what it was like to try to follow nixons and see what hes trying to tell us, there was a rather famous event when he spoke at orlando to a group of editors. And just to give you the sense of the language of this man, david, you dont wi when its te to pull the plug, okay . Now, we were in the disclosure stage and we had learned that okay, the breakin was june 17, and nixon came back from florida where he also had a place in the keys near his one friend, bebe raposo. And he came back and he had meetings that day with haldeman and with colson and we know that he called John Mitchell. But this is when the coverup began. But we didnt quite know that in because the tape said, get. The transcripts didnt come out until later that summer. That told us a lot but there were still more to come and there was still more that they learned in the last couple of years. Tonight the president disclosed that he did call John Mitchell on june 20, 1972, in order to cheer him up after the men were caught in the watergate. He goes on in detail why ted ran efforts of the we discover the 18 and have minutes missing on day. So there was, they tried to pin it on mr. Secretary, rosemary woods, choosing gore tried to act out how she after out how she after the phone and then putting her foot on the battle but it didnt work. She couldnt do it. In the end it was nixon sitting at camp david in front of the machine and erasing 18 and have minutes from the day from the coverup conversation with haldeman. Thats not anywhere except in what i put it all together later. He goes into detail about why the tape ran out and where further and further from the point. He explains his taping system was a little sony, these little sonys they had an ai this little lapel mic next on my desk and he said he rubbed the flag on his lapel. It was nixon who started the business of the business with the flags in the lapel but i remember john gartner said we should all wear the flag pins. We should all put the flag decals on our cars. Dont let them take it from us. The democrats and liberals werent that smart and so theyve appropriated that simple to this day. He loves the flag in his lapel and he says with a smile, the equipment president johnson had was much better metric of. Then had reports kennedy and johnson had the phones. He adds, im not criticizing sony, you see. Far be it for me to do a thing like that, that would be wrong, thats the kind way he would talk to an editor asked him his reaction discovery of the tapes, the conversations with the dean and mitchell didnt exist and the president replies, one of the great disappointments because i wanted the evidence out. He said that the plumbers and were established to stop leaks and information that were endangering national security. Anyone so serious that even senator durbin and senator baker agreed it should not be disclosed. Asked over the pentagon papers . They were a critique of the Johnson Administration and management of the vietnam war. But, of course, raise questions about the vietnam war which nixon and kissinger continued for five years. In the and got about the same deal that they couldve had when they first came in, but dont ask kissinger about or be prepared to sit for quite a while as he explains thats not the case. Ask a watergate could happen, the president replied, 72 was a very busy year. Arguing that measures have been taken to hold down the consumption of fuel on his trip to the south, he was in disney world, which was fitting. And he said that back applying hadnt been brought down, so they had used up as much fuel. We did have a fuel price it at the time. He said if his own plane goes down from this is the president talking, if it goes down it goes down and then they dont have to impeach me. And it talks about his Vice President ial papers which he had held out from the government and his finances, and he said this. I want to say this to the television audience. I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life i have never profited, never profited from Public Service. Ive earned every cent. Questionable. And all my years of public life i have never obstructed justice. Then came the famous immortal line. He said he welcomes this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, i am not a crook. Now, this is the president of the united states. Remember dignity . It was a period when it was funny, when we were laughing in the same way. It was scary. We didnt know, some peoples phones were tapped. A lot of journalists phones were tapped. A friend of mine is the wife at a columnist and she earned her very intimate conversations with a very close friend who was ted kennedys wife were being listened to, you know, at the Justice Department or in the white house. This was not funny. A friend of mine went out on the front lawn one sunday morning and the paper hadnt come and she said, they stopped the papers. Nothing became preposterous because it was all so preposterous but also scary. The president suggested to some aides that they blow up the Brookings Institution because he believed, and he was told by these as plumbers, that some papers left over from the pentagon papers were still in the office and they should set afire, and in the confusion go in there and get those papers. The president is suggesting they blow the Brookings Institution. There was somebody on the staff of the sense to stop it, but that was rare. So you also had what is learned later, you had a president who frankly was drunk a lot of the time. He was a very heavy drinker and he slurred his words, i and he s also on medication called dilantin which was really for convulsion but it was not meant for depression but somebody had given it to him for depression. Dilantin enhances the effects of alcoholism. So he would pick up the phone at 3 a. M. And called david cohen. This is the president to fire everybody on the sixth floor of the state department. This is an order. Slam it and then calling back and say this is the president calling again. That order is a people. Slain. It was up to people i called and and erlichman and being in such folks to decide whether not to carry out his orders. This was a scary thing. We didnt know it at the time so we learned a lot later. As i told you i have a passion about the subject of impeachment. It is thrown around so easily now. It is very, very dangerous. Its a very Serious Business and cities people went about it seriously. He would have been impeached by the house but some people were so afraid. He still had a following. He was not an easily dismissed figure. It might seem so nobody had a substantial following, and republicans were very torn. They want him out of there. Is wanting to go away bu but thy also did followers to be coming at them when they were up for reelection. So they were saying wheres the smoking gun . I happen to like the concept of a smoking gun because that makes it to civil. That simplifies it. It was a whole array of things but this one tape was found that showed an ordering and obstruction of justice. And that gave the republican senators the excuse to go down to the white house and so youve got to go because they didnt want to deal with it any longer. What is the moral of the story . Watch out. We have several occasions on which during the, distinguished house would go see him whe where was living in california, theres a new nixon. No there wasnt. Read these stories with some care. We had some reforms that said with us, some that didnt. But at least they got Campaign Finance on the agenda. Many of the things. Mr. Cohen itself he was involved in. I have a passion for the subject. I wanted to keep the book a lot. I hope you will want your children to read about it. We have generations who have no idea what happened in this extraordinary time when the constitution was truly at stake. And i hope everybody, if you read it before, youll enjoy it again. I found myself shrieking and laughing as i read it again. [laughter] and i hope ive made some little contribution to history into your childrens understanding of our history. Thank you. [applause] thank you, elizabeth. As we said from generation to generation, so this is perfect for lots of reasons. We are going to begin the questioning period. So just go to the microphone, if you feel comfortable say your name. Its a public meeting. And elizabeth will begin to answer your questions. Dont be shy. Tom hughes, dont you have a question . You always have a question. Youve got one coming. My name is gregory. Im not from america. Im from the caribbean, so im from a different part of the world. This raises a whole other set of questions but the most important is, do you believe based on your own experiences that what happened to nixon, i mean, would Ronald Reagan, irans affairs, potentially also impeach him, right . Giving irancontra . Irancontra. But it was too dangerous to do it at the time but its an important question. A constitutional question, in my opinion. Do you believe that watergate might potentially show that there are problems with the u. S. Constitution that maybe theres too much, too much power within the office of the president and that community, if you people their surrounding the president that things can quickly get in control in comparison with a parliamentary system where we are under certain conditions the Prime Minister is much more in control . So i was wondering maybe if you talk about that and what you feel about it. Thought about it a lot and i read about in this book, too. The Founding Fathers were pretty smart man but there was a lot of they couldnt anticipate, and they certainly didnt spell out what that meant by impeachment. They said high crimes and misdemeanors and i just want to add here, a lot of time is spent discussing what the James Madison mean, it usually a kind of heady constitutional discussion that went on. Iran contra, youre right, i actually cobroadcast those with Judy Woodruff on pbs. And they made the decision that the country just come through an impeachment and you shouldnt be one again. I have to say i think theres a gigantic difference. Iran contra was a very serious problem to it was an off the books operation that went against a congressional law. Watergate was a series of events. It was a cross the border. Im often asked and im expecting it so answer it anyway, what about now . This is nothing. Weve had nothing remotely like it where the president himself condoned these, not just criminal activities, but to set this whole atmosphere of fear and vengeance and enemies. And there was nothing like it, i pray there will be nothing like it. I think we just have to be sure to hold the president accountable and get after the congress if they are not doing so. Also get after them if theyre going crazy on one particular issue. I wont even have to mention it because they are looking for corruption at the just sort of cant find it. So it should balance out, and in the end it did balance out. The constitution worked, barely, but it worked. And i cant think of a better system. And im also very concerned about ideas for tinkering with the constitution and the First Amendment. Thats a whole nother subject to anybody can play and you dont want to Start Playing politics with the First Amendment or any of it. My name is richard. Do you think there was any truth to this thought when nixon had a had phlebitis that he was sort of not taking his own life but not necessarily fighting to live . No, i dont think did you alter the question . No, i dont think so. Nixon was not a quitter. I actually had the final section with a quote of his for quite struck me. The man is in finnish when defeated. Hes finished when he quits the and im not a quitter. And he never quit. He was as down and out as a person could be when he landed in san clemente. Imagine the shame and the horror of being driven out of office. But he didnt quit. And for that i have some admiration for the. It would have crushed most people, but he just kept going. Yes, maam. My name is eleanor bachrach. I thought a lot, as you say, it did show, watergate did show the constitution would be upheld, but i also feel that watergate, and probably coming after the vietnam war also, during the end of it, really kind of robbed us of respect for our institutions which i think has been a very long running thing. It may have opened the door for the problem is the government ideas that have been floated ever since. What . Floated. In other words, well, Ronald Reagan and the current republican party. Well, thats a long way from there to here. And, in fact, Richard Nixon was probably the last republican president he believed the government could do the good things. He was a liberal. He was a centrist kind of by circumstance. He leaned to the conservative side but he had a Democratic Congress who very strong on the environment and strong on a number of issues, and so he compromised. And a lot got done domestically, although it bored him to tears and was really interested. No, i think you can that watergate as you want to see it, but you can also see it as the institutions worked. In the in this man and his government that had gone so astray, to me the most important, or three articles of impeachment. The first one was the upshot of justice which was a procedural thing, very serious. The sega was abuse of power and to me thats really where the story was. And should be today in certain circumstances. Not here but maybe in certain states. I dont know i would want to see. But that under the administration of this person, these things went on and they were very, very helpful about what they put in this abuse of power. I think were going to be up to recognize it when we see it. And so it didnt discourage me. I didnt think it was a triumph that everybody else was saying because we almost didnt get it done and dispose of it in a way that it should have been. I always thought that jerry ford did the right thing in pardoning nixon, as he said, enough of watergate is enough, enough wallowing and watergate i think he put it, and the country had to move on. And i agreed with it. Could you imagine years of the nixon trial . We wouldve been able to think, Pay Attention to very little else. A very distinguished judicial friend who said thats wrong. He shouldve been held to judicial account, and we could go on and on that way and everybody can have their opinions. I think a workout kind of the way it should. A lot of his people went to do. Most of them went to jail. And you see these parade of communism haldeman, erlichman, mitchell, colson. They all went to chill so the was and accountability that went on. Went to jail. My name is ted cobey, and i was a College Student back and can still remember watching president nixon when he resigned. Ive read quite a few books on watergate, i guess what it wanted to ask you as an author of one of those books, is there anything still we dont know about watergate . Anything you think still needs to be answered that hasnt come out . I dont think so. Because i think in the end it wasnt the little bitty details. I could get arrested for this but i didnt really care who deep throat was. Whats the difference . The story was what nixon and the white house were doing. It was a little intrigue of the was leaking to these very, very hardworking and very smart, good reporters. But no, theres nothing that im curious about their some little detail i dont know. We have enough to really understand it, and hope thats what this book does, is it follows events but also reflects on them as theyre happening, and afterward, and afterward i go back to what was watergate, who was Richard Nixon. I think ive got him at last. He was a very complicated person, and he was. But it was fascinating to i didnt know Abraham Lincoln so i think hes the most fascinating president that i know of, and an extraordinary story. So no, there is nothing. Im not a conspiracy type anyway. I think weve got the big picture and thats the important picture. My name is jack, and chris buckleys wonderful phrase, i am a selfloathing republican. [laughter] you dont happen to think you dont have to be spent i was running the House Campaign House Committee for the alternate, and so forth. And, therefore, i was in a very tense position. But im taking this microphone for two reasons. One is to compliment you. I think you have dealt evenly with president nixon. Thank you. He was an extremely complicated man, a wonderful intellect by the way. I admired him tremendous but had a character flaw that we all have to admit. Second thing is i had a lot of differences with bob haldeman. I hated his guts, but, but im convinced that he was the man to stop those idiotic, crazy president ial vocal orders more than anyone else. We dont know spent i think he gets credit for that. He did what a good chief of staff should be. He disregarded his bosses orders when necessary. You may know more about the 90 but ive i have not seen reported anywhere who stopped not a lot was stopped after all. Some of the middle of the night calls i think they would get together and see what do we do now, you know . Its the boss again. But except for the brookings order, i dont know of any during that period that were stopped. It was supposedly come that supposedly actually horrible plan that was drawn up early called gemstone, and even j. Edgar hoover, no great civil libertarian, thought that this was a bit much and that he would not implement it. But bit by bit it was implemented. So there werent a lot of governors were people who understood boundaries around the place. Mr. Flug. As you know, i am like you, a watergate junkie. And there are a lot of us around. I agree with you that it wasnt destined that nixon would get caught and taken out of office. It might not have happened but for a series of like the happenstance, and having the right people in the right places at the right time. So i agree with you on a lot. Im still troubled about the gerald ford question, because the first one who tried to do something about stopping the watergate investigations was gerald ford when the first and investigations started in the house. How else do you think he became Vice President . Thats going to be my bottom line question. Do you think that he was that it was a deal somewhere along the line . I know many people have looked at it, including the board of directors of the profiles in courage award which awarded that honor to joe ford, came out and decided gerald ford, that which he said should win the day that when he helped the country avoid a protracted fight. But do you think there may be more that we dont know . I dont think so, jim. The question is, was there a deal . And it was very, very much a question when ford pardoned nixon. Had been made a quid pro quo, and they were investigations of it. Nobody has found anything. Forward as president had to go to the hill was it before yours subcommittee to testify on what it happened. Jerry ford was picked i believe, a lot of people were nominating themselves because they saw it was a good opening, likely, because he was safe to he was good old jerry. He hadnt been a big critic of nixon that everybody thought of him, and i think this turned out to be true, as a decent guy, a decent man, good old midwesterner from michigan. Im an ohioan so i have partiality for midwesterners. And he was safe, that he was no sparkling figure. I described a scene in your in the white house when nixon is going to announce who is his going to be his Vice President after they got rid of agnew for accepting cash envelopes in the Vice President ial office in the executive Office Building on some contractors in maryland. I mean, it was like that. So agnew was out. And i remember, i described the scene. Nixon is talking and he sort of building it up and people stand up and applaud at the thought that has to be some mistake. Jerry ford isnt standing it. He must be confused and sure enough it was jerry ford. He was no star, but he turned out to be i think just right for this. He was steady. He said of the right. I think the pardon was right to say lets put this behind us and keep going. There was a big discussion, big argument with the new prosecutor and so on as to whether or not nixon should be prosecuted. I dont know what would have been gained by the. I dont know how the man couldve been changed anymore. And he wouldve written another book i guess. He did actually when he was at san clemente, but as impeachment was closing in on them and, of course, all thought o of a certn name thats thrown around too much, he said some of the greatest books have been written from jail, of course referring to mein kampf. I dont think there was anything there. Anything untoward there. Are we dont . Not quite. Theres a question there. Do you have a question . One question that i just wondered if you had a nutshell theory on why nixon was so paranoid . Is there such a thing . Well, the question, do i have a nutshell theory why he was so paranoid. I stayed away from psychobabble. You really cant get into somebodys head. It just began very early, very early he felt that people were looking down on him and he was resentful. He wasnt surrounded by a lot of love. His father was very the mother who he kept calling us saying im not sure why because she was very cold. It was her difficult for him to win her approval even after he became president i think she finally said something nice. And he had two brothers who died and she was focusing on them. So this is just, who knows what happens in peoples heads . But he just grip recentering, presenting, presenting. He didnt know when to stop it theres a wonderful little still agree that he did after got to san clemente that they have in the afterword about how it starts out as a piece of cake. You work out your resentments and its so easy and you and you get carried away and to realize, you dont need to stop but you should have stopped. Anyway, he did it much better than undoing. So no, i dont know why. It was just so clearly there. He was very, very bigoted this came out in the tapes. Disaffected things. As i went back and read my conversations with members of cars and what they wanted to do about impeaching or not. This was a scary project. But the limit on the tapes, they said we heard that lbj had kind of bad language, but he was a nothing compared to nixon. This was crudeness that went on at this hatred of blacks and make in the jews are all psychiatrists and the blacks are just down from the trees, things like that. And the language was not, not fit to repeat. So is it just from a very early age images, he got away with punishing people he thought were his enemies, giving them off of tickets, elbowing them away from being his rivals. He just didnt know when to stop. Im going to get the last question. But first, a story. Many of you will remember a fellow by the name of Harold Carswell who was an appointee to the Supreme Court who was rejected because ruckelshaus said mediocrity is entitled to representation on the court. And a fellow by the name of Richard Harris wrote a book, wrote three articles for the new yorker that turned into a book. And its sort of a case study of how carswell was defeated. Everyone mentioned in the book, and every organization mentioned in the book who oppose carswell was audited on their tax returns. That was under Richard Nixon and John Connally as the secretary of the treasury, and thats indeed what happened. Some of those organizations, their tax exempt status was threatened, and so its a live example of what, how we move to vendetta and enemies and distinction between opponents and enemies. Now my question, elizabeth is, this is also a remarkable period of people rising to great Public Service and going well beyond what was expected of them. People and the congress, people in the staffs of the congress. Share a little bit about that with us. Because people ought to know there is such a thing as Public Service and it is such a thing as outstanding public servants. And you dont know where its going to come from. I dedicated this version of the book for those who rose to the occasion. The publishers i guess to say the page or so put it on a copyright page so you have to struggle to find it. But thank you david, because that was one of the most important things that happened. There was a lot of fuss made over the Committee Hearings because sam ervin was committee talked constitution a lot but he was a bit of a ham. And so it was a great show, and he did show the country this parade of bizarre people who were populating the white house or running around doing deeds for them or deep six in material in the potomac river. Somebody told him to deep six materials that have been found. All these bizarre things. But it was when it got to the house that he got very serious and very, very important. And there was a relatively new chairman of the house Judiciary Committee, peter rodino. He was from newark so the press and cliches being with the work every said he must be mobbed up. But nobody could find anything. He was a very quiet man, modest, and he set the tone. He hired somebody who was 27 at the time. He cant be here tonight, francis o. Brian. He was just this very bright guy. I do know really how they found each other. Francis at the time light about his age. He said he was 34. He was really kind of brains behind this thing. Francis and his brother had to find a counselor that defined to visit very short of partisan were are you, david . Okay, a very partisan staff left over from manny who had been defeated. And rodino understood this had to be seen as nonpartisan as really fair. So francis and his brother, john, he went out and they found the counsel for the committee in john doerr who have been in the eisenhower Justice Department and in the Bobby Kennedy Justice Department working on civil rights but he was a real hero but nobody could call john door a flamethrower or a partisan figure. And they understood that this had to come from the center. It had to be bipartisan for the country to accept it, and thats why the vietnam war, the invasion of cambodia, other things that have been suggested to be part of the impeachment proceedings were set aside. They had as much trouble pushing aside the lefties who want to go into all sorts of issues, and the people on the far right who could find no wrong with nixon. And then you have these members that you really didnt know about. There was a man butler was one, but from virginia, south carolina. You know i mean. James mann. James mann looked like a founding father. We thought they were all James Madison and they were very, very serious. James mann was a really conservative on the democratic side to a southern democrat, died in the wool, member of the southern democrats. And james mann was very involved in this. There was Paul Sarbanes from baltimore who was very involved in shaping article ii and they worked together, and there were republicans, caldwell butler, there was hope in from also from also from maryland. These were sort of can we solve as average figures, house members. It would have done anything very outstanding. Rodino was this sort of very plain spokesman, not terribly eloquent men. And they all rose, and they took it very safely, and we took them very seriously. And they reached this bipartisan agreement that the country accepted. Now, i can tell you afterward, i had dinner with one of these heroes to clear up some questions for the book. And he invited me to his Cocktail Party on the hill, and it was a lobbyist party to it and he telling me stories about how people really wanted to get on the Judiciary Committee because they were such wonderful trips to protect all over the world, and some of the stuff that went on that would not be fit to print. So this all just proved to me they were real normal people who, when the occasion game, they really rose to it. This was true of the staff. It was a very complicated thing to keep under control. I dont know if any of you remember seeing in your minds i that committee, watching it on television. You may not remember, you didnt see any cameras. Because francis obriant got the idea, he did want people to think that he wanted people to be right in there with the committee. So he said to the mighty brass of the networks, you want to cover it . You wouldnt through a hole in the wall. Unit going to be in the room. Now, things like that the most people dont think of. And it was, mainly it was a character that came out. They all knew, they all knew the gravity. The book will show you, i was talking to a lot of these members who truly couldnt make up their mind that they talk to me because it was i was going to write about it until afterwards. And they were very say is, what is a crime . What is a high crime . What is a misdemeanor . What does that mean . Is a just, they have to burglarize something, or is it beyond that . What is accountability . This is a very, very serious set of questions