A private individual rather than a public figure. Its about an hour. Nixon had written a very scathing memorandum criticizing the administrations handling of that transition, and he criticized it as pathetically inadequate; that he thought the administration was not supporting Boris Yeltsin enough financially. And he had written this memorandum, and it had leaked and it exploded on the front page of the New York Times. So president bush was going to be forced to answer nixons criticism at nixons conference so nixon was caught in the maelstrom of all these highly dramatic events, and i accompanied him to washington for that conference. And nixon hosted a Different Group of people at his head table for each panel discussion, and i was asked to join his head table during zbigniew brzezinksis panel discussion. And i sat to the right of president nixon, and to the right of me was james schlesinger. And i noticed that there was a camera above us that was trained on brzezinksi, and brzezinksi began his remarks and i noticed some activity out of the left corner of my eye. President nixon had leaned forward, and he took a writing pad off of the table that the hotel had provided, he picked up a pen and i saw him scribbling something. And he passed the note to me, and i looked down and it said, are you having a good time . And i immediately turned the pad over because i didnt want the camera to pick up what he had written because he was supposed to be paying attention to what brzezinksi was saying. But to me that really illustrated the kind of person he was, that he was involved in all of these great events and really influencing american policy toward russia and having to worry about that, and yet at the same time he was concerned about my welfare and whether or not i was learning anything. Cspan there was a moment in the book you describe where you went to his house, and you were supposed to go to see him i think he was up on the third floor, and you caught him watching the Dick Van Dyke show. What was so unusual about that . Guest that was such a fantastic memory for me because nixon always claimed that he never watched television, and of course he did. He liked to watch the news. He watched sporting events. He used to watch football and baseball quite avidly. But he never admitted to watching sort of mindless entertainment. So i was usually about five minutes late for our meetings at the residence in the afternoon, so he normally expected me to be late. And this one day in particular i was five minutes early, and i was walking up the stairs, and before i could clear the stairs to the third floor, i heard the television going. And then i heard canned laughter coming out of that television, and i realized that he was watching something that was meant to amuse. And i was very surprised by this. And i looked at him, and he had his shoes off and his feet were stockinged, up on the ottoman, crossed, and he had the Remote Control in his hand, and he was laughing. He was just enjoying the show and the moment so much, and i just observed him for a couple of moments because i really wanted him to have those few extra minutes when he didnt have to be on, and he didnt have to be the serious Richard Nixon that he presented to me, most of the time anyway, and i really enjoyed seeing that. But then i cleared my voice and i cleared the top of the stairs, and he looked at me and he was horrified that he had been caught in the act of watching television, the Dick Van Dyke show no less. And he tried to simultaneously shut the tv off with the Remote Control and jam his feet into his shoes, and he dropped the Remote Control. And it was a big, chaotic scene but really, you know, he said, well because he was red faced, he said, well, you caught me. You caught me watching the tube. And he said, i dont do it often, but sometimes i like to see whats out there. Cspan when was the last time you saw him . Guest the last time i saw him was the friday before he had the stroke. He had the stroke on a monday, so i saw him friday afternoon. Cspan what do you remember about that particular occasion . Did he know he was in bad shape . Guest actually, he wasnt. The stroke came out of the blue, totally unexpected. Nixon was an extremely disciplined person. He ate spartan diets and he exercised on a daily basis. He used to take three mile walks every day, rain or shine, freezing cold, stifling heat. He really took very good care of himself because he dreaded the entire aging process, and he hated Everything Associated with mortality and death. So he fought it with every fiber of his being. I remember nixon being particularly pensive on that last afternoon. In fact, we sat out on the deck normally we would have our meetings in his library in the residence, but he insisted that we sit out that day. It was a nice, warm spring day. He wanted to take advantage of it, and he was quieter than usual. And it may have been im not a medical person, i dont mean to speculate but it may have been that there were some things going on in his body that even he wasnt aware of, but he seemed quieter than usual. Cspan as you know, youve got a lot of quotes in this book, and ive transcribed some of them onto our machine that puts them on the screen so that people can read along with them. Guest ok. Cspan when you read them, it gives you a greater sense of what the books all about. Why dont we look at one right now . Guest sure. Cspan this one says, the kennedys were not admirable people. This is Richard Nixon, as you transcribed it. they simply were not nice. The legend is that jack was always gracious, charming, dashing, he said, putting his nose in the air. bull. He spit on waiters and ignored or screamed at the help. I remember attending a dinner once and watching bobby, who was the smartest, and also the meanest, throw his meal on the floor and right at a waiter because he didnt like it. Bebe and hes talking about bebe rebozo knew the kennedys, and they used to socialize when they were in key biscayne. All of them used to treat the help like crap, and, i mean, they were mean. Most of the help was cuban, and they treated them like they didnt exist. Bobby was the worst. He illegally bugged more people and started it than anyone. He was a bastard. and when did he say that, and how often did he talk about the kennedys like this . Guest well, nixon always claimed that he wasnt very concerned with the kennedys, but kennedys name came up in conversation probably more than any other president that we discussed, of his predecessors and his successors. I think that nixon was fundamentally a good man and that he could not stand to see people in positions of power abusing that power and treating people who were in Service Positions with disrespect. That really grated on him because nixon, we have to remember, came from nothing. He came from poverty, and he just, through the sheer force of will and brilliance intellectual brilliance and drive climbed his way to the pinnacle of power in american politics. And he never gave up that the fact, though, that he was brought up to be a good person, and he could not understand the kind of arrogance displayed by the kennedys in those types of situations. Cspan when did you decide to do this book . Guest i decided to do it several months after nixon passed away. Actually, you know, nixon gave me a lot of responsibilities and assignments on a daily basis, so i always carried a notepad with me whenever we spoke. So nixon knew that i was taking some notes during the course of our conversations. He did not know the extent to which i was reconstructing those conversations, and he did not know about the diaries. When i began taking these notes, i knew that i was granted a very rare and highly personal view into one of the most enduring and controversial president s of the 20th century and so i did not want to squander that opportunity. So i began taking these notes essentially from my own personal memory. I wanted to remember for myself what he did on a daily basis, who he was, what he said. And it was only after he passed away and i began to look through these diaries that i really realized the value and the totality of what i had. And i met with William Safire of the New York Times in august of 1994, several months after nixon had passed away, and, sort of off the cuff, mentioned to him that i had all of this material in diaries. And he really urged me to write the book. He said, it must be written. Cspan would you have written it if he hadnt urged you to do that . How important was the bill safire imprimatur on this . Guest it was fairly important because i felt that somebody of his stature and somebody who he knew nixon so well. If he thought that this wasnt a project that i shouldve pursued, then i wouldnt have done it. Cspan wheres your hometown . Guest new jersey. Central new jersey. Cspan where . Guest a town called warren. Cspan how long did you live there . Guest ive lived there about 17 years. I was born in arizona, but i was raised in new jersey. Cspan and where did you go to college . Guest i did my undergraduate work at Colgate University in upstate new york, and im pursuing my doctorate at columbia university. Cspan skipping the masters . Guest i actually have two masters degrees as part of the ph. D. Program. Cspan and what are those in . Guest they are an ma and an mfel in International Relations cspan when was the first time that you had any contact with Richard Nixon . Guest actually, i can get into how i originally wrote the letter to him. I was a junior at colgate and i was majoring in Political Science, and i was enrolled in a course on National Security and Foreign Policy affairs. And that was taught by a very good, very conservative professor, and i consulted with this professor because i thought that i wanted to enter that area upon my graduation. So as i prepared to leave campus between my junior and senior years, he gave me several books to read, one of which was nixons 1999 victory without war. And that book had such a tremendous impact on my thinking about very crucial Foreign Policy issues that i sat down and i wrote nixon a letter dealing with the issues that he raised in the book. And it was a substantive letter, which later he told me was the reason it caught his eye. I mailed it, never expected a response. And about a month later i went to my mailbox, and i received a handwritten response from president nixon, telling me how much he thought of my letter, how much he appreciated the fact that id actually read his book and he invited me to come to his office in new jersey and discuss american Foreign Policy with him. So in october of my senior year that was 1989 i traveled to his Bergen County office in new jersey, and he gave me two hours of his time. We talked about the state of the world. And what surprised me most about that initial meeting was that he was so generous with his most precious commodity, and that was his time. Cspan and Bergen County is located where, for people whove never been to the east coast . Guest northeast new jersey. Cspan how far away was he driving into new york city . Guest he was about half an hour, 45 minutes from new york. Cspan what was the office like . How many people worked around him . Guest actually, he had an office in new jersey. He worked for years in manhattan, but the traffic was too much for him. So he moved an office in woodcliff lake, new jersey, and thats where i went. He had a very small staff four people; he had two secretaries, an Administrative Assistant and me. Cspan and what was the first day you went to work for him . Guest july 3rd, 1990. So right after my graduation. Cspan a total of four years you spent there . Guest yes. Cspan how many trips did you take with him . Guest i accompanied him on two international trips. In february, i went with him to Eastern Europe and to russia, and later that year, in april, i went with him to asia. Cspan what do you remember from that experience, the International Travel . Guest well, i remember so many things. What stands out to me the most, though, is that nixon was so generous and so good to me on those trips. He had me sit in on almost all of his meetings with the heads of state and other government leaders that he saw in these places. Cspan and youre going to do a second book . Guest yes. Yes, indeed. Im working on a second volume that will deal with nixons evolving thoughts on Foreign Policy, what he thought and what he did during the end of the cold war, which is very interesting because nixon was so gratified to see the end of the cold war. This was a man who began his political career at the very beginning of the cold war, had led the nation through a very crucial period of it, and yet lived to see the end of it. And he was so gratified because he had felt that everything he stood for throughout his political career, all those anti communist platforms, had been vindicated. So it was nice to be there, with him, at that time. Cspan weve got just a short minute video clip from the booknotes that we did with the president when he was here, and i want to show that and get your reaction to what he said. Guest ok. [excerpt from booknotes, february 1992] cspan did you write this book . Richard nixon yes. I would say, unfortunately, those who criticize the style, and it certainly justifies criticism, generally say that it sounds like me. The reason it sounds like me is that, after i take all of the and i point out in the authors note that i had some excellent people working with me marns tremeky, who was the editor, my chief editor on this book, who did made a great contribution; and monica crowley, who is in my office now; joel marks they were two full time assistants. And then a number of others wrote various papers on the various subjects. But when it finally came down to the final product, then i had to not just do the editing, but i also had to get it in my words so that it sounded like me. As i often said to people working with me, when i would rewrite something, id say, the trouble is Everybody Knows my style so well that if i leave it like this, it isnt going to sound like me. I think this sound like me. I think this book sounds like me, for better or for worse. [end of excerpt] cspan now from all the time you spent around him, how much did we see there thats like him, when the cameras arent on, and how much is different . Guest you mean in terms of who he was personally . Well, may i say that when i first was preparing to meet him, for the very first time, i was prepared to encounter the public image of Richard Nixon, which really is very one dimensional. Its sort of a dark, brooding, serious, mysterious character. And the nixon i knew, that part of him was just a fraction of who he was. And what surprised me so much and delighted me was that nixon was so much more than that. The nixon i knew was a brilliant man. He was a political mastermind, which even his detractors will concede. He was generous. He was thoughtful, thoughtful in the sense of compassionate. He was a warm person. He was a witty person. Nixon could be very funny at times, and that never, ever came across in his public image, and i think thats a shame. I tried to get some of that humanity across in this book. I hope i succeeded. Cspan how did you physically keep track of the quotes because some of them are almost page length . Guest let me tell you how i proceeded with the whole note taking process. As i said, i always carried a notepad with me during our conversations. I would take some notes in shorthand, as he was talking, so that i had key words and phrases and so forth. And then i would go back to my desk immediately and reconstruct those conversations so i had them on paper while they were still fresh in my mind. And then later that night i would go home and reconstruct them once again in my diaries so that i could put the conversation with a date and a time. And then a fourth stage occurred at the end of each week, when i would go back and review the weeks conversations. And if i had forgotten something or if an insight had occurred to me, id jot those in as well. And i think i was able to maintain and preserve the integrity of the dialogue doing it that way. Cspan and you never thought at that time you were going to do this book . Guest no, it didnt occur to me to write a book. I knew that i was being exposed to this incredible historic opportunity, so i was doing it for myself all along. Cspan was there a point where you would be exhilarated by what you had on paper . Guest yes, yes. There were many of those. Almost every day there was something that i thought, my goodness, i have such a treasure here. What a great quote what a great turn of phrase and i was glad that i was there to hear it. Cspan lets look at some more of the quotes from your book. This is one on the media. And it says, the media and i wont use the language are all you can imagine what that is. Did you see the way they sugarcoated clintons appearance last night . They are out to save the guy at any cost and to prove they were right on him. They are a lousy damn bunch. Its a wonder that we win any races with the likes of them covering us. The deception between how the elite media and the popular media cover clinton is amazing. The elitists are all for him. The popular media are all calling him an ass. It shows how disconnected those elitists are. Did he normally talk with that kind of language . Guest yes, to me. And that was very surprising to me because we were of two different generations and two different genders, so i thought that he would filter out some of that language, but he didnt. He peppered his language with mild profanity on a regular basis. But that to me indicated that he really did trust me and considered me a confidant, that he was able to talk as he normally would. Getting back to his idea about the media, nixon always said that his problems with the media or his disagreements with the media stemmed from the alger hiss case. And he said when he exposed alger hiss, he exposed the press. And he said the worse thing that you can do to a member of the press is prove that they are wr