Getting in line. Maybe well see. Maybe not. I think if you have any further questions you can ask them of charles as he is signing your book, hint, hint and lets thank him once moore wednesday more for the preparation. [applause] thank you for coming, and safe travels. Friday, book if there features program ford fairs and festivals. At 8 00 p. M. Merchandizes marylands gaithersburg book festival. And then chicagos printers row on the biography of russell kirk. At 9 35 p. M. Eastern, the Los Angeles Times back festival on the life and times times times s offenses investigate. At 10 00 p. M. A panel on violence crime from the san antonio book festival. And at 11 00 a panel on from the harlem book fair. A taste of this years fairs and festivals starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Friday, considering the impact of u. S. 308 si on the Domestic Labor market. Live at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan2. If thats not going to happen. If the military for the foreseeable futurer is going to continue to be asked to take on this wide range of tasks lets make sure that the military is good at it. On sunday at noon eastern, in depth is live from Hillsdale College in michigan with dennis prager. The author of the nine questions people ask about judaism, think a second time. Pie pie why the jews and the ten commandments. Join in the conversation. And at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, indicate Anderson Brouwer profiles the ten first ladies since 1960 in their book first wimp the grace and power of americas first ladies. And on monday, mary roach on the science used to improve the effectiveness and safety of the u. S. Military. Elaine on why the public has lost faith in their political leaders and smith on the opportunitiure of george w. Bush and senator trent lott and john meacham talk about president ial politics. Good to booktv. Org for the complete weekend schedule. Next a panel on Richard Nixon. Two superb authors who have both been treating Richard Nixon. T nixon is back. Something more recently said of voldmort but also nixon is back, and i remember just after he got on the helicopter, the Vice President he appointed who became president , gerald ford, said, my fellow americans, thebe Long National nightmare is over. But like a lot of nightmares there are flashbacks, so its time we thought this through. I hope there will 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 winer wean are on my far left in one man against the world the tragedy of Richard Nixon records in drastic detail how lawless and devious r nixon really was. His indictment is just excruciating and fascinating. Detailed. Deep, very convincing. And evan thomas, on my immediate left, right to your eyes, by contrast in being his book in being nixon man divided seeks to explain what it was s like actually to be Richard Nixon. He summons great sympathy and compassion in understanding that actions conflicted ultimately n. Selfdestructive person, theres plenty in tim weiners book about selfdestructiveness of the man, but the approaches are very different and thats why with these two major books by major authors, both of them experts in National Security, both of them had written books about the cia, these are people who really ought to be read together. Their books are very complimentary and its great to focus on dealing with brezhnev and then here when brezhnev stayed at the western whiteen house did not bring his wife but brought a bucksom miss sues who wore the same perfume as pat nixon and paraded up and down the hall after dark and pat nix john was not pleased. Especially when they ran interest each other on the way to the bathroom. Oh, so bad. Tim we squaring tim winers book about the fbi, enemies and his become about the cia is called legacy of ashing the history of the cia has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award. And evan thomas is a journalist and an editor with newsweek i for much of his career, and his book about the cia is called the very best men and he won the National Magazine award. I it strikes me that both men were just excellent candidates for nixons enemies lest. These were the kind of journalists with establishment journals like newsweek and the Washington Post, the New York Times, rather, in mr. Weiners case. Evan went to Phillips Academy and harvard and the grandson of man who ran six times for president as socialist, Norman Thomas help was not nixons kind of guy and yet he writes a very compassionate biography, and mr. Weiner went to Columbia University and Columbia School of journalism and the New York Times was almost as much the Washington Post, real antagonist of mr. Nixon, at least in nixons point of view. To my argument is just read these books together. One concentrates much more on specific events, like the war in vietnam, chile, the detente, dealings with china and russia, mr. Weiners book, and it very well complimented by evans study of what it was really like to be Richard Nixon, evan thomas book takes the entire life of mr. Nixon, birth through the full stenof this life and offers a great deal of insight of him as a father, as husband,o as a man who was just always striving, whereas tim weiners book tends to capture the way he was truly a raging insomniac who as he just remark ted in his attempt to deal with insomnia by meds indicating himself with alcohol, not a good formula. So, each book is so convincing you need to sit down with the two of them together. In eave vietnams last paragraph he reminds us nixon was no saint but have seemed to have martyred himself in his selfdestructive behavior. I thought that i would ask first mr. Weaner to tell us, what it was that caused him to set out to write this book. Ell us w well, about three years ago, i was at the nixon president ial library and archives in his home town, an hour south of los angeles. Talking about nixons relationship with j. Edgar hoover, whom nixon called not fire entirely send searry, my closest person friend in allll political life over the course of 25 years. When hoover actually died sixfe week before the watergate breakin. Probably wouldnt have happened probhe lived. Nixon actually said, well, the old boy died at great moment, didnt he. He had been trying to figure out how to get rid of hoover for years but never summoned the courage to do it. So giving a speech three years ago, came up and took me aside and they were excited said, what is happening . And they said by the end of 20 4 , all the tapes, the quarter of a Million Words haldemans diaries, nixons chief of staff, that were classified top secret, everything will be out. And i said, thats amazing. A 40year struggle to get these material into 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 continued to come out, and ive now listen to such much Richard Nixon, i will compare you. What i finally understood were two things i dont think had been fully understood, although god knows Richard Nixon has been written about and put on these analysts couch for lo these many years, something he detest of. Cou want was how the war in vietnam was fought on two fronts, abroad and at home, and how the war at home became the wars of watergate. It was nixon going after his political enemies. Those who opposed the war and who opposed him, that led too the crimes that brought him down. The two cars were as one. Vietnam, and watergate. Betwthe second was after listening to the newly released tapes, which cover roughly the end of the summer of 1972, until the taping mechanisms were revealed at the watergate hearings in the summer of 1973, the torment that this man went through. He knew before he was sworn in for his second term that he was doomed. That the president ial challis was poisoned. And the agonies that he put himself and this country through, trying to cling to power, must never be repeated. The violations of the constitution under the Nixon Administration were as grievous as anything we have witnessed since the civil war. And no Free Republic has survived for longer than 300 years, in the history of civilization. We have made it to 240. We need remember what happened, what really happened, in the nixon years. To make it to 300. Evan,s suppose theres kind of a story behind your book how you decided to do what you did. I worked for the Washington Post company for 24 years. And where i worked nixon was the devil. A view i shared. And but whenon meacham approached me. Writing about nixon, i felt that this wise would be 12th of 13 nixon biographies and the picture of nixon as a gad guy is pretty well established by now and rightfully so. But i want to see what it was b like to be him. To sort of put myself into his shoes. I so i set out to do that. An amazing paper trail, he hated talking to people. His aides called a yellow legal pad his best friend, he wrote a lot of notes to himself. An amazing paper trail within the white house, quite an excellent paper trail, nixon had quite grotesque action, the white house the of course nixon wrote literally thousands of pages of memoir in varying degrees of reliability and it takes 3,700 hours of tapes to cover a couple units of the presidency but they are a deep rich mother load so you can get close to Richard Nixon and that is what i endeavored to do. What i found was not the criminal mastermind. Yes he committed crimes, but rather someone who is pathologically shy and unable to confront. A big reason he dug himself such a hole in watergate was the inability to confront his own top aides. Nixon didnt know about the watergate breakin himself. He participated in the coverupe but he couldnt get everybody to ask what happened here for about nine months after that then it was way too late. Felonies were being committed. It was a coverup, and that was partly just shyness, not criminal but love im interesten hayes worldview and the way he got along with other people because i think its significant. Tim mentioned there was a nexus between vietnam and watergate. What are data begins at various places but one beginning is when they decide to breakin, nixon says three times he wants to break into the Brookings Institution after the pentagon papers had been revealed. You remember this is june 1971 and a secret history of the vietnam war. They never mentioned Richard Nixon that he is obsessed. Hhes running private diplomacy with Henry Kissinger and his obsessed with releasing and the times and the post. He thinks that its somewhere in the Brookings Institution there re a report that he himselff commissioned on a long convoluted story about how he did something illegal before the 1968 convention communicating with the south vietnameseovernmn government telling him not to make a deal with lyndon johnson. Nixon is obsessed that there is a report and he tells the folks to break into brookings. One of the aides said why dont we go ask them. Of [laughter] but nixon was crazy and at this time this is where the Historical Context takes hold. For a long time, welcome the first of all he should have just asked but if he wanted to get the political intelligence for a long time the fbi did that for president s. I did that thats how j. Edgar hoover stayed in office all those years acting as a political spy and also blackmailing them into getting dirt on them. But by 1971, the wind is changing. The war on chords, liberal wiretapping. 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 into the fbi isnt doing that anymore so what does nixon do heres the thing about the plumbers. They sound like a bunch of criminals, they were in the classic washington fashion. He was an idiot who had been dumped on treasury and on the white house so those working were hung and libby run by eagle who isnt your criminal mastermind. He was a former eagle scout. This nickname at the white house was evil crow. It was a joke. W he wasnt evil at all that he was intimidated and ran thismi group of clowns and they screwed up and broke into the psychiatrists office and then they broke into watergate and ad got caught. And not criminal masterminds. Nixon didnt even know about these breakin attempts. There is some evidence of the top aides but nixon probably not. The records are little squishy on that. Little but mostly the point is it wasnt a master conspiracy to violate the constitution. Constitution. It was a bunch of helpless guys carry out the will of the deeply insecure president. This might be a time to bring you on stage. If you make it clear again and again to current politics. We may think of nixon just as a man is out of touch and had some totally ungoverned stumble bums working with him but you tell it in a much more sinister way. They didnt call him tricky for nothing and they called him tricky since the beginning of his political career. But what we get is on top of the insecurity, the deep personal security a sense of a man cominf apart at and there was no better witness to this van but crow. At the time i time as may, 1970. A few weeks later, hoover would say no to nixon im not going tr do your dirty work in the summer of 1970. Thithis may come in 1970. Thxon has just invaded cambodiaa in search of the nonexistent bamboo pentagon who was supposedly coordinating the supply routes on the ho chi minh trail. The campus is exploding. You all remember this. The National Guard and mixing at this point hasnt been able to sleep for a solid week and haldeman notes he really needs some good rest and then comes the shooting at kent state and then as the 100,000 kids are coming to washington to protest the invasion of cambodia, nixon is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He stays up all night friday into saturday and in his own words making more than 50 phone calls and finally calling upon his valet to accompany him to the Lincoln Memorial said he can rap with the hippies about the war. Crowe was on duty that night at the white house and he vividly recalled in the history of the Nixon Library 4 30 in the morning i was in the secret Service Command post and then came the words searchlight is on the long been the code name. There were three women who are there. She didnt look anyone in the eye and was mumbling. In the structure, there was none. Theyve asked him to speak up wherever he was and he would look up and shake his head around but then he would go back to looking at his feet and he was gone again. There was no train of thought. Nothing he was saying was coherent. Rent. At first i felt in all but then it changed to respect them as he kept talking a it went to disappointment and disillusionment and then i felt pity because he was so pathetic to think hes the president of the United States. We all went through that. Most people went through that feeling. It is awful as in terrifying. A this is a microcosm of what happened to Richard Nixon as he disintegrated over the next four years. That shows the difference between then and now because it took an entire presidency to reach the point at the prospect of such a man in office where wed already gotten there we havent even completed theof primaries. Its amazing. That is the difference then and now it was never that you have these thousands of hours of tapes and we can hear you have listened to everything that was said in the oval office and nowadays we are not going to have tapes from the oval office or emails. They learned about. Instead, the oval office is going to have all of our emails and tapes of us so its kind of inverse. Do we really need to bring nixon down so hard . It seems like after reading the indictment there is nothing left of the man. I get the idea that he was so so afraid constantly and also very effective in protecting himself but did you feel that it was necessary he sometimes comes h across as a kind of political dracula and each one of your chapters is another stake in the heart. It was nixon who finally said i gave them a sword and they twisted it. And i guess if i had been in their position i would have done the same thing. This is a man who said we all remember that afternoon in 1974 of his last words to the American People always remember others may hate you but those that 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 its a lesson that we cannot forget. He makes a remarkable statement in which he says the future enemy is going to destroy you. I read that and said too late, you just realized that. [laughter] i looked and i looked in the record for some selfawareness, because this was all the way back to the childhood with his anxiety. Was he never aware this was the fatal flaw that was going toas haunt him . He says to his soninlaw a few days before he moves on its like a shakespeare play or played by the ancient greeks. I was curious to see if they ever read the play by shakespeare, its in yorba linda at the library and he ran Shakespeares Julius Caesar and he wrote a paper about it. He totally missed the point. We would talk about his own destiny but it was remarkabl