Transcripts For CSPAN2 Q A 20130822

To be antisemitic they hate jews. He certainly didnt. [inaudible] how would you explain this these discussions with jews and the bureau of labor statistics. Where does it come from . How do you explain it . He is jews as liberals as new yorkers. He would look at [inaudible] as exceptions and but it was liberals they hated. Not hate. Liberal and jews in hollywood and new york were the target. But i look over and some of my best friends are jews. But in this case, i think it was the towelsnapping, locker room type of antisemitism. Host your reaction . Guest im proud to say there a lot of people that are interviewed open on the subject. Theres a lot for the viewer to make sense of it. Ill leave it to the view per. All i can say is that president nixons comments on the tape are more about jews in a way that is different from how william describes it. On the tape, Richard Nixon is talking about how jews have exaggerated the holocaust. They want sympathy. And they have used it to gain sympathy. This there is an anger toward juice, i believe, that cannot be explained simply in term of liberal versus conservative. But ill leave it to others to make up their mind. Let me tell you theres a now a very good collection of people speaking on this issue and publicly available. That was my job. Host here is chuck telling a story. Kissinger had the right. Though he abused it. Somebody announcing it or taking it. [inaudible] he could walk in when he wanted to. He would do it for trivial thing. One day nixon was really good ticked off at henry for a variety of things. Nixon didnt appear to look we but i know he knew it was henry. Its time that we use [inaudible] and kissinger stood in the doorway absolutely paralyzed. Somebody is going to hear that on the tape. But colson brought up the dark side. They say it was true. It was pure nixon loved it. And did that often. That sort of thing often. Host he died in 2012 at age 80. How many hours did you interview him. Guest a fantastic experience. Host was he honest with you . Guest i interviewed him twice. The first time, thats from the first interview, ilet people talk. A number of people interview often had [inaudible] the first interview is basically the second interview was the followup. I knew more i could ask it was different. Hes much less comfortable the second interview. Its not because of age. It happened a year later. I dont believe that chuck was candid. I think hes guarded, i think he was guarded. I think that charles decided what he would what he would say he did. And nothing more. There was a set of things he would apologize for and theres a whole ocean. A whole story he never talked about. That he took with him to the grave. He knew. Thats a sense. Tried to push him beyond the set stories he told. He got very uncomfortable. I did it. I hope i did it in a professional way. Ill leave it to the viewer to decide. Host were you always off camera . Guest always. Except the first two, i did the interview i had number of colleagues participate as well, and it was just the video of in the beginning. I preferred to be off camera. And when paul did the twenty or so, hes also off camera. That gives you a wonderful look. That makes the interview useful in different format. And thats why. Host he comes up in the past about you being a canadian, liberal, gay, and that Richard Nixon might not excited about you running the library. The reason im bringing it up now. Im doing a dwight did he know you were gay . Guest i never denied it. I wouldnt sort of shake host i had [inaudible conversations] guest he didnt. I dont know if he knew i was gay. I was shocked and delighted to have recorded this particular antedote, but i dont think he knew i was gay. The interview is extremely important for the development of this oral history project. Well get to it in a moment, i guess. Host this is almost two minutes. Its a story for those who dont know jack was hes deceased. Hef a columnist and the largest number of paper in the country. Guest yeah. So anybody who saw the movie j ed j. Edgar. The story and the role he plays in the story is funny. Host and the fbi at the time. Guest the head of the fbi at the time who is going to take a personal interest whether theres a homosexual ring, a gay ring at the center of the Nixon Administration. 2008 dwight was deputy good looking california guy. And well,let host 72 years old. Here is dwight. Here we are, i mean, you know, i mean, i remember going home and scared to death. Its like a time bomb. It gets out and get to the press and get it going, you know, its a disasters for all of us, you know, and its not true so the next day, each of us individually, separately, i should say, we go to the cabinet room, we sit across from us we put up our hand and are sworn in. And then each of us are questioned by j. Edgar hoover. He asked all of the questions. And the transcript of this was provided to Jack Anderson. Thats how it was stopped. And hoover was planning to give it to anderson . No. No anderson was going to go with the story. Jack around sob the column nist. He was the going put the photographer down there and im going ask him. He was working for anderson at the time, i believe. I want to meet with you as a group. The president said i want to get to the bottom of this, job. John comes up with an idea how to get to the bottom. He brings j. Edgar hoover over and doing the instigating of the questions. What the relationships were. Just i should have mentioned this before. What happens is Jack Anderson is about to go with the story that they are having sex with each other. Host bob is the chief of staff and have Young California guys, and its a homosexual ring. They all have huts little cab cabins near each other. Thats the story. I had never heard it. And the fact that j. Edgar decides the way to determine whether it was true. His own complicated sexual history was to interview each of the Young California guys. The blond california guys to ask them about their sexual preference. Well, i nearly fell over. You dont all you can hear is me stammering. Im trying not to express my surprise at the story. Which frankly, i had never heard before and havent seen anywhere. Theres. Host he was in his 20s then and substantiate to the president. Went to prison. What he he like today . Guest what a story. He was unlike chuck. Disarming and i think he came to the interview, which we did in new york. Ready to talk. And preserve his story. He was just going defend himself. But he remained close to the president. The president interacted with after the president nixon went to the white house. He felt he needed to tell some stories to set the record straight. It was an amazing interview. It got him, i believe, trouble with his colleagues and lead to a controversy for the oral history program. Because he said something on tape that he did not say to the senate, he didnt say in the trial. And something that the nixon group assimilated. Host it was richard anybodies son who was there when the dirty Tricks Campaign was nixon was too smart to order. He was sitting in the room. It was done in his office which wasnt taped. President nixon wanted it and knew about it. He wanted he worked for him for a long time. He was close to nixon. Nixon and the small staff in the 689 campaign. He was the advanced man. He later was the head advanced man. This man would close Richard Nixon. Host talk about that. He was a prank steer who had done tricks on republican candidates over the years. Rick being crazy things. Not even harmful. One day the buzzer goes off and i got president s office and hes sitting there with him. They say do you know bob says it. Anyone can do that stuff. They need somebody like that. And i said, well, let me think about it. I went out and thought about don. He was a roommate at usc he was just leaving the judge advocate position in the military and the army. 0 ting anonymous and can do this kind of thing. What happened to him. He went to jail too. Guest i actually met him. He was that close to do an interview. He almost did one and he ended up not. Host why . Guest he didnt tell me why. Host lives in california now . Guest i really shouldnt say. I found wrowt he lived as a result of my job. Host for the record, people want to see the interview can go to nixonlibrary. Gov. Or come to us in the Video Library and find the interviews. Youre now an american citizens . Guest yes. I was when i did the somehow. I did become one in 2005. Host you were educate at yale and . Guest Johns Hopkins. I have a b. A. From yale and m. A. From Johns Hopkins and ph. D. From harvard. Host secretary to the treasury also secretary of state. As the Nixon Administration he was the secretary of the treasury. When this event was talk about hes 92 years old and alive in california. Here he is talking about john dean. And the president s counsel is just [inaudible] what should i do . I said dont do it. He said what is [inaudible] he asked me how it was going. I said tell him you referred me. They never followed up with me. There was a discussion between the president and john dean about who i think [inaudible] it was an improper use of the irs. I wouldnt do it. Did you actually speak to the president about it . Guest its really important. The private made the argument, this is no argument the book absorbed that all president s and the difference was that nixon got caught. It gives president s the possibility of redemghts if they commit real crime. Frankly, sometimes president s are bad. We shouldnt think they shouldnt all be and i knew i didnt want to be a carpet banger. I didnt want to an east coast progressive that came to Orange County and decided that he was so smart and knew it all. That was that. What i dreamed was an interview like this. You have somebody of George Schultz explaining to people that sometimes president ask you to do the wrong thing and you say know. I cant tell you how proud i am because it shows why our system works. Our system couldnt possibly work if president s always got their way. Host its a long story about how controversial within the Library System and the foundation and the nixon loyalists. Guest yes. Host here is the quick question before i show more tame. Did any of them try to interfere with your request to be interviewed. Guest yes. My goodness, yes. What happened was not only this project almost made lead to my fired. Host you worked for the federal government. Guest yes. When you get a senator of the United States who takes a personal interest in your work, you can be fired. Host which senator . Guest lamar alexander. Host what was his point . Guest he felt that i was that i didnt like Richard Nixon, and he held up president obamas nomination for the new he put a hold, which you can do in the senate because of me. Which he admitted because the United States the nominee met with senator lamar alexander. Who complained ability me to him. David fairy was his name. He did not ask david too fire me. He wanted to raise his concern. And to davids credit, he didnt ask me to change what i was doing. Host he worked for Richard Nixon campaign. He worked in the white house. Guest what happened i interviewed william who was the head of the congressional office. He didnt like the interview. Tim monos. I interviewed lamar alexander. There was no trouble. I think i interviewed particular al . Arnd 2007. He enjoyed the interviewed. I interviewed tim monos in 2009. He didnt like it. He was in a sense the rabbi, if you will. Am saturdays rabbi in washington or god father. Tim tim mines i think timmons asked him to do this. Host bud went to prison. Usually the story he tells us about the photograph of elvis in the oval office. Here is another one that people my age will remember the Lincoln Memorial in the middle of the vietnam war. And to the Lincoln Memorial. Couldnt have gotten two to three minute after he got there. Went up the stairs to see what was going on and found him in discussion at the start ten to fifteen young people students woo come in from all over the east coast and the doctor was there and, you know, sanchez was there. I believe that was it. Secret service agents. It was a scary time. They got up there while it was still dark. He spent about 45 minutes maybe longer talking to these students. I heard a lot of it. Listened to it. Wrote down some of it after it was over but basically it was a time when i was really, really afraid for his safety. And i know that later on that he had never seen the secret service quite so frightened. And he certainly got that right. Didnt have sufficient detail to protect him. Somebody decided to try to attack him with something. But it was totally planned unplanned and unscripted. His own notes are extraordinary about what he covered. It was a major effort to communicate with these people. The crowd booed and got bittered. This is Richard Nixon. Host what time of night was that . Guest oh my goodness, after midnight. This is one of the greatest president ial stories ive ever encountered. The president of the United States is overwrought. He is just after we have to situate this. This is just after the kent state massacre. Its may of 1970. And he cant sleep, and he goes to his valet and he says, you know, the most beautiful just become a citizens center. The most beautiful site in this country is the Lincoln Memorial at night. Lets look at it. And he leaves the white house without his staff. They dont know about it. Theyre asleep. Now there was a fear that this was it was a march on washington. There was a real fear that the white house might be beseeched. There were all of these buses that were lined around the white house to protect the president and the president decide the on his own to leave the sanctuary to go among the demonstrators. Its unscripted. Its raw history. I heard about it and read about it Richard Nixon mention it is. Im happy we have one of the student. Northnbc located the one student that took photographs. There are only four or five photographs of the president nixon. One of the last things i did before i left i interviewed him about that experience that strange night meeting the president of the United States on the step of the Lincoln Memorial. Host were running out of time fast. Maybe what you found from your interview has been kept from the public . Guest well, potentially on my part. There are about 15 sort of 85 . 15 some of the interviewees crossed in to National Security matters, and the relevant agencies have to review the interview. I didnt intentionally engage in discussions with National Security. Where it was people. People who had done it. I asked questions. To my surprise, they apparently mentioned things that agencies want to review. Host last video, david the youngest of the people we have shown today. Hes 70 years old. Let see him on cnn. Here is a quick story. And shortly after the Farewell Speech al, the chief of staff called me. He said we forgot about a Resignation Letter. I said thats interesting. He said you dont get it. You needed to bring it. I said doesnt the president want to write his own Resignation Letter . He said hes no place to do that. We need do you to write the Resignation Letter. Said, al, i dont know what to say, but to whom does the president resign . Host how long was that . . Guest its very short. The president they didnt spend much time writing it. There is only one copy of the letter. It was sent to Henry Kissinger secretary of state. There are many copies of the later. Richard nixon signed them. Youll see on ebay. Its in washington. We borrowed it its not the nix sob nixon library. Host after all the 49 interviews total of what . Guest 350 hours. Host this why arent you writing a book about this . Guest i wasnt doing for that reason. Host but you could. Guest i know. But listen. Host anybody can get them. And write a book. Guest of course they can. That was the point. I thought it was really important to create this archive. I wanted to show that you can use the power of government to create multimedia age free video. And theres no hidden agenda. Other than the fact i wanted to create it. And i was alone and had real supportive. That was my goal to write a book. And the beauty is we touch on all kinds of subjects. We are telling you were there a couple of things that i focused on. Obviously watergate was a nefng affair. Domestic affair. It was poorly understood. I raised money. See, at a certain point the Nixon Foundation didnt want to pay for them anymore. A group of alumni of the Nixon Administration domestic policy, they raised they helped me raise money. So i used money that i raised with a group of nixon alumni to pay for it. We used trust fund money. It was expensive. My goal was to show that the federal government could it because most of the time these are all history projects are done by the private president ial foundations. They have a vested interest, i would say, in a certain legacy. Im not saying all of them have to push for the legacy. The lbj is even handed. Its not true about all the president ial foundation. It was the first time the National Archive did anything like that on the scale. I wanted it to have been for the library and not just to write a book. Host tim naftali, were over time. Guest sorry. Host formatter former director of the nixon library. P. When you write a book a lot can go wrong and that is the way i approach the world are you i have somewhat in my reporting and a lot can go wrong in 110,000 words. I have been pretty shocked