Cspan created by americas Television Cable companies and brought you as a Public Service by a public cable provider. Youre watching book tv on cspan2 and as we get closer to the election, book tv and American History tv which is on cspan three have teamed up to bring you programs about past president ial races. Beginning now with book tv its a Panel Discussion about Richard Nixon with authors evan thomas and taylor weiner. This is from this years Annapolis Book festival. Immediately following this program on book tv, touring American History tv on cspan three to watch the first ever televised debate between then massachusetts senator john f. Kennedy and incumbent Vice PresidentRichard Nixon. Were talking today to two superb authors who have both been treating Richard Nixon. Nixon is back. Something more recently said of baltimore. But also nixon. Nixon is back and i remember just after he got on the helicopter, the Vice President , he appointed who became president joe ford said my fellow americans, the Long National nightmare is over. But like a lot of nightmares, there are flashbacks so we thought this through, i hope there will even be a few remarks that reflect on our current crazy primary season but in any case, these two topflight writers have given their sharply contrasting readings of Richard Nixon. Tim weiner on my far left, one man against the world the tragedy of Richard Nixon records in dramatic detail exactly how long and devious nixon really was. His indictment is just excruciating and fascinating. Detailed and deep, very convincing. Evan thomas on my immediate left by contrast in being nixon a man divided seeks to explain what it was like to be Richard Nixon. He summoned the great sympathy and compassion and understanding that the conflicted andultimately selfdestructive person. There is plenty in tim weiners book about selfdestruction. But the approaches are very different and thats why these two major books by different offers, both of them experts in National Security, both of them and written books about the cia. These are people who really ought to be read together. Their books are very complementary. And its great to focus in tims book about some events like dealing with brezhnev and then to turn to evans book and here in much more detail that for example brezhnev when he insisted in staying at the western white house is offering his wife but thought of her a masseuse who wore the same perfume as pat nixon and paraded up and down the hall. Nixon was not pleased. So in weiners career. Oh, so bad. Tim weiner was the National Security correspondent for the New York Times. His book about the fbi is called enemies, the history of the fbi and his book about the cia is calledlegacy of passions. The history of the cia and he has won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book award. And evan thomas is a journalist and an editor with newsweek for much of his career and his book about the cia iscalled the very best men. And he won the National Magazine award. It strikes me that both men who are excellent candidates for nixons enemies list area these were the kind of journalists with establishment journals like newsweek and the Washington Post or New York Times or in weiners case, evans went to Phillips Academy and harvard and hes the grandson of a man who ran six times for president as a socialist. Norman thomas, he was not nixons kind of guy. Yet he writes a very compassionate biography. And Mister Weiner went to Columbia University and Columbia School of journalism and the New York Times, almost as much as the Washington Post a real antagonist of mister nixon, at least in nixons point of view so my argument is, read these books together. One concentrates much more on specific events like the war in vietnam, chile , the dctente dealings with china and russia, thats Mister Weiners book and its very well complemented by evans study of what it was really like to be Richard Nixon, evan thomass book takes the entire life of mister nixon through the full extent of his life and offers a great deal of insight about him as afather, as a husband , as a man who is just always striving whereas tim weiners book tends to capture the way that he was truly a raging insomniac who as you remark attemptedto deal with his insomnia by medicating himself with alcohol. Not a good form. So each book is so convincing need to sit down with the two of them together. Evans book is not so sympathetic. In his last paragraph he does remind us nixon was no saint but he does seem to have martyred himself in a lot of his selfdestructive behavior. I thought i would ask first Mister Weiner to tell us what it was that caused him to set out to write this book. . Three years ago i was at the nixon president ial library and archives in his hometown an hour south of los angeles talking about nixons relationship with J Edgar Hoover. Who nixon called entirely, sincerely, my closest friend in all political life over the course of 25 years. Who actually died six weeks before the watergate breakin. It probably wouldnt have happened. Nixon actually said, the old boy died at the right moment, didnt he . Trying to figure out how to get rid of over four years. Three years ago, after giving this speech, the Nixon Library took me aside and said whats happening . They said by the end of 2014, everything, all the dates, the quarter of 1 Million Words of haldemans diary that were classified top secret will be out. I said, thats amazing. A 40 year struggle to get this material in the hands of the American People where it justly belongs so i put aside what i was working on and the tapes began coming out in 2013, they continue to come out and ive now listened to so much Richard Nixon i can plausibly do Richard Nixon which i will spare you. And when i finally understood were two things that i dont think had been fully understood although god knows Richard Nixon has been written about and put on these analysts couches for lo these many years and by the way, being psychoanalyze he contested area one was how the war in vietnam was fought on two fronts. Abroad and at home and how the war at home became the war of watergate. Was nixon going after his political enemies, those who opposed the war and who opposed him that led to the crimes that brought him down. The two wars was on, vietnam and watergate. And the second was after listening to the newly released tapes which cover roughly the end of the summer of 1972 until the mechanisms were revealed that the watergate hearings in 1973, the torment of this man went through, he knew before he was sworn in for his second term that he was doomed, that the president ialchalice was poisoned. And the agonies that he put himself and this country through chronicling the power was never repeated. The violations of the constitution under the next and administration were as grievous as anything weve witnessed since the civil war. No Free Republic has survived for longer than 300 years since the Ottoman Empire in the history of civilization. Weve made it to 240. We need to remember what happened, what really happened nixon years to make it to 300. Devon, i would suppose theres a theory behind your book. I work for the Washington Post for years and where i worked, nixon was the devil. Of you i share. But john meacham, who i went to about writing about nixon, i felt this was the 13th nixon biography and i thought the picture of nixon as a bad guy is pretty wellestablished by now and rightly so but i want to see what it was like to be him. I sort of put myself into his shoes. So i set out to do that. I was writing about a president that left an amazing paper trail. He took a lot of notes himself. He called his yellow legal pads best friend. So he rock road a lot of notes to himself. I was in the house with his aides , and nixon would have quite a wellrun, for all his actions and crimes, the white house was a fairlywellrun place under hr haldeman. Then of course nixon wrote thousands of pages, literally thousands of pages of memoir of varying degrees of rope reliability and there are the tapes, 3000 hours of tapes which are really only covering a couple years of his presidency but they are a mother load so you can get pretty close to nixonand thats what i endeavored to do. What i found was not the criminal mastermind but rather someone who was pathologically shy and unable to comport with his subordinates. One of the reasons he dug himself into this big hole was his fear of others, his inability to confront his own top aides. For instance, nixon did not know about the gift, he participated in coverups. He did but he could not get everybody, his top aides in one room to ask them what the hell happened for about nine months after the breakin. By then it was way too late. Felonies had been committed, it was a coverup and thats not criminal malevolence but shyness on his part. Thats conspiracy to commit fraud but im interested about his worldview and how he got along with people and the way he dealt with those people because i think tim mentioned that the next thing, vietnam and watergate. There certainly is. Watergate, we get to various places but one big thing is when they decide to break in with nixon. There three times on tape that he wants to break into the Brookings Institution after the pentagon papers had been released. The pentagon papers, you remember in 1964, its a secret history of the vietnam war. The pentagon papers never mentioned Richard Nixon but he was running a secret diplomacy and hes upset about leaks and hes upset about the times and he thinks that somewhere in the Brookings Institution there is a report that he himself commissioned on a long and convoluted story about how he did something illegal before the 1968 convention election, excuse me of communicating with the south Chinese Government to tell them not to take it. And nixon is upset that theres some report, he tells his folks to break into the Brookings Institution. One of his aides, hr haldeman says why dont we just go ask them . But nixon was crazy at various times and certainly at this time and this is where Historical Context is useful. For a long time, first of all, he should have asked but if you wanted to find something or get political intelligence, for a lot long time the fbi did that for a president. Thats how fdr stayed in office for all those years was acting as a political spy and also blackmail. But by 1971 the wind is changing here. The war on court is there, theyre liberal, theyre starting to outlaw wiretapping or put restrictions on wiretapping and restrictions on what the president can do and J Edgar Hoover, hes hopeful. He stated office for a long time because of political instinct and he can see the wind is shifting so when nixon says i want you to dig up dirt on ellsberg, hoover refuses to do it. Hes out of the game of black bags and burglaries. The fbis not doing that anymore so what does nixon do . He goes inhouse and creates his own Investigative Unit within the white house call the plumbers, remember them . Heres the thing about the plumbers. They sound like a bunch of arch criminals, hunt and liddy. Those guys were stumbled on. They in classic washington faction. It wasnt like james bond. They were actual humans. They were fools that had been dumped on the white house by the cia. They are dumping them on the cia because they didnt want to keep them in the cia. Even liddy. Liddy was an idiot whod been dumped on the treasury who had been dumped him on the white house. Working for the plumbers were hunt and liddy and they were run by a gay guy named eagle grove. This guy was a former eagle scout. His nickname at the white house was the evil crow, it was a joke. But he was intimidated by nixon and he ran into this crew of clowns and they screwed up. They broke into ellsbergs office, made a hash of that then broke into watergate, did other things as well and got caught. They were not criminal masterminds. Nixon didnt even know about these breakin attempts, there was some evidence that his top aides there, certainly probably not. The record is a little squiggly on that. But mostly, the point is it wasnt a conspiracy to violate the constitution, it was a bunch of hapless clowns running around to carry out the will of the deeply shy leader. This might be a time to bring crow on stage. But you make it clear to him again and again the phrase gutter politics. We may think of nixon just as a man who was out of touch and had some devious and totally ungoverned stumble bums working for him but you tell the story in a much more sinister way well, they didnt call him tricky dick for nothing and they had called him tricky dick for a long time because of his political career but we get in one man against the world is on top of the insecurity and deep personal security, a sense of a man coming apart. And there was no better witness to this then eagle blood crow. The time is may 1970 which later hoover would say no to nixon for the first time, im not going to do your dirty work and then appreciate the plumbers in 1979 but this is may 1970. Nixon has just invaded cambodia so its this nonexistent bamboo pentagon, coordinating enemies roots on the ho chi minh trail. The campus explodes, you all remember this and the National Guard kills for kids at penn state. Nixon at this point hasnt been able to sleep fora solid week. Haldeman notes in his diary, the president really needs some good rest. And then comes the shooting at kent state. And then theres 100,000 kids coming to washington to protest the invasion of cambodia. Nixon is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Hes up all night and by the end of saturday, in his own words is agitated and uneasy, making more than 50 phone calls and finally calling on his valet to accompany him to the Lincoln Memorial so he can rap about the war. And blood crow was on duty that night at the white house and he vividly recalls in an oral history that 4 30 in the morning i was in the secret Service Command post and over the loudspeaker came the wordssearchlight is on the lawn. Searchlight being the president s codename and i immediately punched in the number andsaid the president is out and about and i think hes in the rose garden. They said, render assistance now and so i did and i saw where the president was going to the Lincoln Memorial. I couldnt have gotten more than two or three minutes after he got there, went up the stairs to see what was going on and found him in discussion with 15 Young Students who had come in from all over the east coast and there were these three women there whose eyewitness accounts of the conversation are the only ones we have read their names are lynch s and ronnie thunder. He didnt look anyone in the eyes, he was mumbling. As forest structure, there was none. Someone asked him to speak up and he look up and poked his head around but then he would go back to looking at his feet and was all gone again, there was no train of thought. Nothing he was saying was coherent. At first i felt off and that changed right away to respect and hes as he went talking it changed to disappointment and disillusionment and then i felt pity because it was so pathetic and just plain fear that hes the president of the united states. I think we all went through that. Anyone who lived through this , not many in this room did went through all to fear. That is terrifying and this is a microcosm of what happened to Richard Nixon as he disintegrated in the next four years. Thats just the difference between then and now. It took an entire presidency to reach that point of fear of such a man in office whereas with trouble weve already gotten there and we havent even completed the primaries as a nation. Thats the difference then and now was really that you have these thousands of hours of tapes that youve listened to, everything that was said in the oval office and nowadays we have tapes from the oval office. For emails, no, they learned that. The oval office has all of our emails, tapes of us so its an inverse. Do we really need though to bring nixon down so hard can mark i mean, it seems like after reading the indictment that you lay out, theres really nothing left of the man. I get the idea that he was so anxious, so afraid constantly but also was very effective in protecting himself but did you feel that it was necessary . He sometimes comes across as kind of a political dracula in each one of your chapters is another state in the heart. It was nixon who famously said i gave them a sword. And they stuck it in and twisted it with relish and i guess if ive been in their position i would have done the same thing area the man has said hours before he left the white house, we all remember that in 1974, one of his last words to the American People, always remember others may hate you but those who hate you dont win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself. This is the story of a man destroying himself and doing serious damage to american democracy. And theres a lesson that we cannot forget area i was fascinated by that. As hes leaving the white house, this is his last day i helicopter, that remarkable statement. If you hate your enemies,its going to destroy you. I read it and i said well, too late. I looked and i looked in the record for some selfawareness that goes all the way back to his tricky dick days, all the way back to his childhood about his anxiety. Was he never aware that this was a fatal flaw that was going to want him after mark there are little tiny hints here and there. The son of ed cox, its like a shakespeare play or a play by the ancient greeks. I was curious if he hadever read a play by shakespeare. But his powers paper are at the library and he did he read Shakespeares Caesar and he wrote a paper about it, its a terrible paper. He totally missed the point and you cannot find, we talk about his own destiny and hes remarkably on selfaware. Do you think he knew himself . Brent says to me well, sometimes i think he took a peek read and he didnt like what he saw. I asked James Fletcher who had been nixons secretary of defense, cia director and schlesinger said no but then he looked and he said who does . Thats a fair question. When you look at the most powerful people, think about it. Youre somebody who gets up every morning thinking about the world, youre not worried about your car keys or how youre getting along with your wife. Great men and women have blinders on. Theyre going in on the direction. Its the lack of selfawareness that is so haunting in Richard Nixon is not entirely uncommon. I think lincoln knew himself but a lot of others, it raises an interesting question about greatness. Whether if you aspired to do great things if you are self reflective or if you need to have these blinders on but there are a lot of great areas here. I wonder, i was fascinated. Maybe, maybe. This is the 4 am of nixons soul. There is a 10,000 page nixon diary behind closed doors and i asked frank gannon who was nixons ghostwriter in his memoir has read the diary and i asked gannon for any insight but one of the wonderful things about history is there are always more documents. You think youre done, youre not. This very thing that dick raised here about nixons enemies just i found that so interesting. Hes so blind to his own weakness. I believe so and i think we have as an authority on this month other than Harry Kissinger once famously said can you imagine if anyone had ever loved him . I think a virtue of that book is it is imagining what he might have been had anyone ever loved him. And i dont think that you can felt the man who produced two daughters as marvelous as juliet nixon who were really marvelous human beings and how they endured, ill never know. He wasreally a good family man. I think basically he was not. Nor did he sleep with her. Thats literally true. He claimed he was always getting up in the middle of the night and making notes. But that marriage is interesting because by the end of watergate, its terrible. But when nixon decides to resign, his rosemary woods tells his wife, the early marriage ispretty good. The love letters are real and they go on for years. There are at least five or six times when nixon says im getting out of politics, im done and she says you cant. She understood him to know that that would destroy him that if he got out of politics that would be the end. She said you wont be able to leave live with yourself. I think he was fishing for that and wantedher to say that but she did and she bucked him up and gave good political advice but unfortunately when he became president , haldeman and nixons staff who was the chief of staff inmany ways, many critical ones. He really drove a wedge between nixon and his wife. More time with the president. She felt isolated, mad at haldeman, and she knew her husband well enough to know what the tapes would sound like. So did a lot of other people in the question became will you build a bonfire on the white house lawn, who will strike the match . The president s not very faithful irish that are . The valley. That would be obstruction of justice, gone to prison for 100 years. Actually not true. A day before the subpoenas arrive, they could have burned the tapes, all hell would have broken loose. Wawrote a book abo burn the tapes on the front lawn your as long as you do before the subpoena arrives, you can weather the storm. They could have given them to orderly and he would have eaten the tapes. [laughter] h he wouldve sent them aflame and held his hand over them to see a much being he could endure. There is an uplifting moment on that last tragic day. That we do want to take some questions from folks, right . We do but if you grab another several minutes or so before we need to do that. There is an uplifting momento on that day that i would like to close on because i do not want people to think that this book is 300 pages of blood and tears. I appreciate you doing that. I may of overemphasize it. No as a young man, hes gone now, on National Security council staff. A marine who went on to become a diplomat serving in iraq, lebanon, saudi arabia, syria, yemen. He was the American Ambassador in bahrain during the 1990s, and he sadly died in 2005 at the age of 65, but before he did he left his oral history. Hes on the nsc staff. He wanders into the east room where nixon is making his tragic last final address about, you destroy yourself, and he noticed nixon is in a trance. The military aide who was with him has to brace him and tell him where he is and whats going to happen, whats going to happen next. In nixon gives the speech in the morning and remember, a gloomy, gray august morning. The helicopter is waiting on the longer nixon leaves the white house. In he says farewell to gerald ford and he walks to the chopper. Young David Michael ranson, then 32 on the nsc staff, steps out onto the balcony to watch nixon flied away. There are two peoples the next two on the low balcony. If youve ever been to the white house its quite nice, just enough space for the three of us to be there. One is this young nsc aide. One is the white osha was about six by six, and the other is the secretary of defense, james law center, smoking his pipe. Nick sims james sloss and your. Two fingers raised in the v. Sign and turned and entered thee helicopter, a crank up very slowly, lifted off and disappeared into the gloom of the morning. Was almost a haunted scene. As a helicopter fit into the fall, the three men looked at each other, at each other, slow sinjar takes his pipe out of his mouth and says its an interesting constitutional question i think im still the secretary of defense. So im going to go back to my office. He looks at the ship and he says what he going to you could do te show says im going to preparest lunch for the president. Presiden spent the young nsc staffer remembered years later i thought of course, the king is dead, long live the king. The cool cat it right. It wasnt a matter of constitutional principles. Our state would carry on. Ar the present would want lunch in about an hour nap. The cook would often prefer apple stock something for important for our country. We may stumble but we dont fall. Tim mentioned a man who could have two such doctor theres a a sort such daughters. While the men from the world he was concerned about the people closest to him like rosemary woods. I was really startled to find in his book that at one point he read dictator and entire letter so as not to include the word w was afraid she wouldnt have discovered that changed his words and to start over. He was very concerned about small details for people, and she was not a small person in his life. Small person in his life. She is the one who for 16 minutes of the gap in the tape must have been somehow in the most gymnastic position where she could be i think that is a bad rap. I do remember a picture, might have been in newsweek that showed the position she would have had to hold for 16 minutes with her toe on the eraser button and her hand on the phone because she is answering phone calls and forgot for 16 minutes to lift her foot in any case. This was a passage about the day when prisoners of war come to the white house in released 491 prisoners and nixon wants to give them a party and captures a lot of style. You want to do the full thing . It is awfully good. Okay. We have good time for questions. Nixons one bright light was the return of the 591 prisoners of war from vietnam. The state department greeted them one by one. The first pilot to be shot down and captured, nixon grabbed alvarezs arms and shoulders, saying you look good to the naval aviator who had spent eight years in captivity looking down and nixon said in a sovereign tone i tried, i really tried. The president and first lady wanted to give these men, some of whom had been in brutal captivity for years, the Biggest Party in the history of the white house. On the rainy night of may 24, 1200, guests on the south lawn in a great white tent, larger than the executive mansion. A pow crossed one of them had written to former prisoners of war and their families invited to wander through nixons private quarters on the second floor. Presenting nixon with a plaque inscribed our leader, our comrade, richard the lion heart. Invited celebrities, john wayne, the pows i say ride into the sunset with you anytime. Nixon introduced irving berlin, the aged songwriter with a gravelly voice with the most famous song god bless america, the men shouted and cried the last words, god bless america, my home sweet home. At 12 30 a. M. The party was still going strong, nixon went upstairs to the lincoln sitting room. Sitting before the fire listening to the sound of laughter and music from below he felt he recalled this is one of the greatest nights of my life and he thought of watergate and was struck by an almost physical force. Picking up the phone he called julie and trish and asked him to join him. My father seemed trained as if the emotion of the evening had been too much for him. Nixon telephoned his friend, tv producer paul keys who organized the evenings performance, bob hope and sammy davis junior. No girly show for the first ladys instruction. With keys, the creator of laughter in, it was almost painful to see how sad daddys face looked despite the laughter in his voice tricia recorded in her diary. Nixon hung up, there was silence, and do you think i should resign . A wave of exclamations according to tricia, dont you dare think about it. She wrote in her diary, wanted to give him reasons to not resign. The next phone call he makes after midnight. He says, and he is either exhausted or drunk or both, he says wouldnt it be better for the country to just check out . No. Seriously. I am not at my best. I have got to be at my best and that means fighting this battle, fighting it all out and i cant fight the battle. It has gotten to me and he gets to the point if you cant get the goddamn job done you better put in somebody who can. This is 15 months before he steps down. You keep hearing him deliver these lines to his daughters are getting his wife to assure him he must stay in the residency and you wonder has he just pulled off a set up . Has he just gotten them to tell him what he must do . That is what he wanted to do. Psychologically he does that. I think it is time for some questions. I would note as i read what is going on in the papers today there is an operative for mister trump who decided he wanted everyone to know who was wavering in their delegate dedication to him that they would be collecting the phone numbers of delegates in cleveland and publishing them so people could find them in their rooms and punish them for their infidelity. Roger stone is his name and his first good political job, committee to reelect the president , working for Richard Nixon. Gone but not forgotten. Gone but back again. I think both your books are vital in looking at the individual nixon and people around him. At the same time, i think about all the victims of nixon and Henry Kissinger, not just in the beginning but going back at least five years, specifically in vietnam, chile, the united states. It goes back to 56. I wonder if you could comment on that, individuals as much as Richard Nixon. Richard nixon along with J Edgar Hoover is the most powerful anticommunist in america for a very long time, and as terrible as communism was, it did destroy lives and a lot of people in this country, Richard Nixon was fully watergate hearings. And American Foreign policy to the rise of the right immediately after world war ii and Richard Nixons rise coincides with that time. Nixon is the guy who goes to china. And any communist reputation. Was a pretty bold diplomatic stroke using Henry Kissinger as the front man but it was nixons idea, not this and are the first president to go to moscow where he signed, negotiate and find the first ever armscontrol treaty. Detente is a nixon creation. And going to the left, one thing that is hard to pin down about nixon is a famous expression not from nixon but attorney general, watch what we do, not what we say. It is hot and interpretive but it could be moderate, she was always making deals with the democrats on capitol did he do that because he wanted to say the rivers and the waters . Not entirely. He did it because ed muskie, senator from maine, was cranking up to possibly the 1972 president ial candidate for the Democratic Party and nick simsms away to outflank him by coming up with epa. Om difficult putting us. Nixon refused to invite him to the signing ceremony for the clean water act. Which is why you have to watch what he says. What he says was environment is not an issue thats worth a damn. Im thinking also beyond the political aspects youre talking about, but just as the individuals typified by things like me line, basic of our mass destruction of people or napalmed been dropped on hundreds of thousands of people, for example, just the tragedy and it didnt start with nixon. I know that. But that part of the tragedy ofd life, what their actions might if you want to talk about domestic policy instead of foreign policy, John Mitchell and went to prison for three years and eight months for his instruction of justice, also said this countrys going to go so far to the right that you will not recognize it. He said that in 1970. Well, the pendulum shifts every 30 years or so i think. And the country did go quite a ways to the right. But we have as the young nsc staffer said, we may stumble but we dont fall. We have a selfcorrecting mechanism, the constitution. Mechanism, the constitution. A couple quick questions. Regarding the midnight visit to the Lincoln Memorial was there any indication it could have been alcohol fueled in any way . Didnt Henry Kissinger report he was loaded. Something along those lines. He hadnt slept well for days and he had had a few. Regarding the tapes, what was nixons initial thought, what was happening with those tapes . To what use were they going to be put . He didnt put the system in until february 1971. He actually took out johnson, nixon ripped it out, nixon didnt want to be eavesdropped on by the pentagon. The system was installed by the pentagon and nixon was afraid the pentagon would be spying on him. Nixon was right, the pentagon did spy on him not through taping but a yeoman was going to the nsc staff and lincoln and the joint chiefs of staff, you cant make it up. Everybody was spying on everybody else. Nixon became particularly upset about Henry Kissinger boasting about foreignpolicy achievements, he was a National Security advisor, but that was nixons idea. Nixon, when they write their memoirs he wants there to be a record that shows what happened. That is the impetus for putting in those tapes and kissinger later said he paid an awfully high price for that. Absolutely right, to guard himself against the inevitable and continuing memoirs of Henry Kissinger. And also to write a multimillion dollar white house memoir. It never occurred to him that these are going into the president a library, many people would be able to listen to them. And thought they were his tapes. Something like 17 million. He fought for years and years to keep the tapes out and ultimately lost but it took forever. I used to be a student here back in the day when the lot of this was going on but i have a question. Not so much looking back but looking to our present and possibly our future, you made a comment a little while ago that said democracy lasted 400 years. That was a unique time. Vietnam, you had riots in the cities. In a lot of ways nixon was himself not at the time he was a reflection of the times. If we dont advance from back then until now. Hopefully we dont have riots in the cities, but i wonder, my question goes to the system. We have a selfcorrecting system but what we have is a system where back in those days you have liberal republicans who decided against the president and to a great extent were responsible for him stepping down. We had the polarization then that we have now, would we have ended up with a constitutional crisis and an end to democracy and what does that do about the future . [laughter] polarization, thank you. The polarization that gripped washington, where you had an impeachment process in full swing and no question nixon would have been engaged in the house, convicted in the senate and criminally convicted as a private citizen for obstruction of justice or other crimes. Has now spread, thanks in part to the political strategies of Richard Nixon, specifically the southern strategy where he is pulling off the racist governor, former governor of alabama George Wallace whose shot nearly killed, after winning primary after primary in the democratic race so if you put conservative republicans together with conservative democrats, essentially segregationist platform, then you can build a coalition that lasts. I think that coalition was broken in the 2008 election and we will see if anybody can reform it in the 2016 election. A question of process [inaudible question] thanks. I am usually loud enough and dont need one of these. The question is process. We have listened to a lot of nixon tapes. I assume they have been transcribed and indexed and things like that. Are they Available Online, on the internet now . How did you go about it . You too can go online to nixontapes. Com. A professor at texas a and m, one person listened to all the tapes, every one of them has put a lot of them online and it is fun to roam his site. Amazingly have not been transcribed, partly because they are so hard to decipher. I listened, did my listening with a head set so you could hear them on the tapes at the president ial library. A lot of the best tapes were from nixons hideaway, mumbling past each other and the transcripts very depending on who is doing them. Some people use the word ambassador, or did he say bastardized . Their difficulty is you have to spend a lot of time on them to really understand them. They have not been transcribed. I think there is some talk, it would be an enormous project. There are other sources of the Nixon Library itself, has put everything that is Available Online and you can listen online. There is also a remarkable feat that has been accomplished by the state department. Under law since the civil war, state Department Publishes a series called Foreign Relations of the united states, and the historians at the state department have done an astonishing job of transcribing nixon tapes relating to foreignpolicy that have never previously been transcribed and they are stunning. And revelatory and terrifying. We have time for one more question i think. Thanks. Both of you mentioned when the president talked to general haig isnt it time to give this up . Did he have something darker in mind . He has a story further along than tims story, the summer of 1974, nixon brings up the whole old image of a military tradition where an officer leaves a pistol in a drawer and nixon according to haig raises the possibility should you leave a pistol in a drawer for me and that made haig anxious that nixon wanted to kill him. Other people were worried nixon would kill himself and i dont know. It is hard to know how much of these are cries for help and seeking reassurance and indicates true Suicidal Ideation and they one thing about him, he would get knocked down and come back again and again. He was finished off in 62, beaten for governor and he will not have dick nixon to kick around anymore and in 1968 running for president. Even after he is driven from office he moved back, he could have just played golf, had this beautiful house, moves back to new york and lived a block away from arthurs lessons are, they hated him. And in the thick of things surrounded by people who couldnt and he and bill clinton towards the end. Two month after he resigned. October 1974. That was compounded, it flares up, and he goes into coronary crisis. He rushed to the hospital and his doctor. And wake up. And he spent 20 years of his life, and and there was an obvious and largely successful to create him as a global statesman, and 20 years later, finally use the tapes and the journals and the recollections and interviews and get a great sense of what nixon was like. And talking to tim weiner. Nixon is the one. The tragedy of Richard Nixon. And also to evan thomas, author of being [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] that was an offer discussion on Richard Nixon on booktv. If you like programs about political history, cspan3s American History tv airs road to the white house rewind every sunday at this time. Watch archival coverage of