Good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the nixon library. My name is jim byron. Thank you. And im the president ceo of the Richard Nixon foundation, and its my pleasure to welcome you here this evening. We have a truly terrific evening in store for you and let me begin by welcoming some special guests starting with larry higby whos a member of the board of directors of the Richard Nixon foundation. In sandy quinn a member of the board former president of the Nixon Foundation colonel jack brennan. The Marine Military aid the president nixon and his chief of staff in the san clemente years judge, jim rogan. Thank you for being here, sir. Jean hernandez the mayor pro tem of the great city of yorba linda. Thank you for being here gene. I want to welcome dr. Lori cox hahn, who is the doybee henley chair of president ial studies at Chapman University and her colleague dr. Luke nichter, who is the james . Kavanaugh chair in president ial studies, which is a new program at Chapman University and were joined by the dean of students, dr. Jerry price as well at a new program at chapman that the foundation has helped to put together and were really excited about so thank you all for being here. In addition. I want to thank all of our president s Council Members that are here tonight for their support which makes this evening and all of our evenings like this possible. This evening. I have the pleasure of introducing two men who are contributing mightily tonight to american history. And im very pleased that cspan is recording tonights conversation for future broadcasts and the Nixon Foundation is broadcasting live tonight as well because this conversation will illuminate the Richard Nixon that these men knew and knew very well. Today is the 50th anniversary of the day on which president mrs. Nixon departed Andrews Air Force base. On their way to china and that ensuing week would become known as that which changed the world. Dwight chapin was on that Plane Air Force one 50 years ago today. And was experiencing perhaps the apex of his more than 11year career working with Richard Nixon. Dwight was born in kansas attended the university of Southern California and joined the nixon for Governor Team in 1962 at 21 years old. He had caught the political bug. And his hard work and uncanny ability would take him to nixons side throughout the entirety of the historic 1968 campaign and into the white house on january 20th 1969. Dwight has written a terrific new memoir. The president s man, which you can see here to my left and much of it deals with his work with president nixon. The president s man is without a doubt one of the most important contributions to the understanding of the nixon presidency and president nixon as a person that has yet been written. Dwight will speak this evening with frank gannon. Frank joined the Nixon White House in the summer of 1971 as a white house fellow assigned to counselors to the president Donald Rumsfeld and bob finch. He then worked for John Erlichmann on the Domestic Council staff. Along with colonel brennan and a handful of other staff members. He was asked by president nixon to fly a Board Air Force one on the final flight home to california on august 9th 1974. Frank worked with the former president in san clemente for five years as Richard Nixons chief Editorial Assistant organizing the researching and writing of his memoirs working with ken khichigan and diane sawyer. Frank received his bs from the Georgetown University school of Foreign Service a masters from the London School of economics and a phd from oxford. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please join me in welcoming Dwight Chapin and frank cannon . Okay. Good evening. Ladies and gentlemen. What a great great group we have here. I want to thank you all for coming. This obviously is a huge occasion for me, and i am really honored to have frank here asking the questions. So we hope you enjoy it. Were going to have some q a at the end and be thinking of any questions you might have as you listen to us. Frank well again, thank you for being here and helping to launch dwights a superb hook. Its quite a story. Its ranges over a whole period of history and a whole period and whole gamut of emotions from this little plenty of ecstasy, but theres a lot of agony. Its sort of goes from the kansas to the white house to the forbidden city to the lompoc federal correctional institution. So its its a book for all seasons and its book for young people who are you know, contemplating beginning a career and thinking about Public Service and for other older people who are sort of assessing or analyzing lifes choices and and assessing a life, so, i begin with very pedestrian questions. Why a book why this book . Why now . Why . Title why this cover . Okay, well. Why now . Well, the frank and i were involved in the renovation of this library. And that we completed that work about four years ago and it dawned on me as i was doing that work with frank that Richard Nixon was really only known for two things. China opening it or watergate. And through the renovation process it became we learned so much more about him. We knew it but it kind of flagged it in our minds. And so i i felt after finishing the project that i had an obligation to history to put down what i saw and put it into my words one of the unique things about my book is most people writing these memoirs do it 10 minutes after they leave the white house. I i had been out 50 years. And so i i had a sense of perspective and i was able to take and to put that apply that on what we had witnessed. So one of the main reasons was for history. Another reason was i have grandchildren and i wanted my grandchildren to know what had happened to their grandfather and what happened to president nixon. Alive put forth as honestly as i could what happened with me, and so its a combination of things that led to the book being written. Why this title . The title the title of the book came from my publisher. I at first thought oh, this is to ostentatious. I mean the president s man to me was bob haldeman or Henry Kissinger or John Ehrlichmann the more senior men, but then they added they came back to me and they said but were going to modify that and say the memoirs of nixons trusted aid and that that made me feel a lot more comfortable and i became happy with that title. We have a few slides here tonight some that are from dwights copiously illustrated book illustrations, which is rare in a book both in black and white and in color and but im going to begin with one that is not in the book. Thats a favorite of mine in case theres any doubt about who dwight shape. I who do i shape in his or the role . He played pictures worth a thousand words and this picture tells me this is the this was the phone. The president s desk. So it has the white house number four five six one four one four, and then it has a couple of outside lines. It has a signal core line and that has chapin and haldeman and then up above it has chapin rosemary woods and bob haldeman. Thats the buzzer and the buzzer when the president pushes the buzzer. You go in asap if he pushed the line button, then he its a direct line to your desk. And then this less that leaves any doubt, this is a part of the diagram of the ground floor of the west wing and so theres the cabinet room the oval office and then of course the real center of power is dwights office, which is which is right outside. Yeah. We put mine right in the center there. You can see that and so this is theres this cover. I know that you had some choices. That this was the this cover was the the result of deliberation this was another another choice. I called this your j crew catalog and i think thats i think thats thats where it can be now seen but what was the rationale but this is actually the picture that i wanted on the cover and this was taken at the Balboa Bay Club in september of 1969 and nixon was going to go out on the columbia, which was a sailing vessel that had been in the us cup races and we are getting ready to board here and hes talking to me and i i liked the casualness of that but my publisher felt that the book would be much better accepted and would be better in terms of the marketing and believe me folks. Its all down to the marketing. So we moved from this cover to the one that city of us in my office that that cover on the book. This is my office which was between the cabinet room and the white house and this door here goes right out to the rose garden so i i was in i had some very valuable real estate. To begin at the beginning briefly. This is your family. This is my kansas my mother and dad. Thats me. I was 13 years old. I almost had my full height by that time my sister linda and we lived in kansas on a farm. And this is you want a farm. This is a horse on a farm. This is my horse pat and im proud to say that we won the white ribbon in the Barrel Racing at the local rodeo. I spent a lot of time on my horse. I spent a lot of time with friends writing around the kansas plains and you can tell its the kansas planes. Do you see any tree at all . Moving right along because we only have a short time and everyone should read the book to fill in all the backstory and the in the meantime you begin moving up to the campaign. Actually. This is moving way ahead because this is moving to 68. Yeah. You arrive at 20 broad street, which is the nixon law office and and campaign office. What was the lie of the land like there 20 broad street . Yes. Well when i moved from i was living in Southern California had gone to usc and i got moved to new york city and when i got to new york city bob haldeman who was had been my boss at j. Walder thompson said i want you to call rosemary woods who was nixon secretary and and tell her that youre available to come down. Volunteer so i would go to i would go to my work at j Walder Thompson and then after work i would get on the subway and go all the way down to wall street and and help out. So what they did is they assigned me to a woman who was in a Conference Room like three or four floors down from where president or at that time former Vice President nixons office was in the law firm that and the woman that was training me to answer the male. Was that Lady Patricia nixon and so mrs. Nixon is the one that taught me how to answer correspondence and how to how to handle it the the significance of that in my opinion and i talk about this in the president s man was that she got to know me and she got to know my about my wife susie and about our daughters kimberly and tracy and and she would ask me. Questions and and out of that became a trust because the role that i ended up being in was the denominator was trust and so i think she communicated to mr. Nixon that this young man had some of the elements of trust that they were looking for and thats what led to my getting the position that i got. We did skip a little or i skipped a little bit ahead here because the first time you came across nixon candidate nixon was in 62 so can to go back from 68 to 62. Can you described the first time you saw him the first time you met him what that 62 campaign was life in 1962. Nixon had come back from washington dc where he had been Vice President and he decided to run against pat brown for the governorship of california and there we are Campaign Headquarters was wilshire boulevard and we were told to all assemble on a given day. I think it was in an august of 72 of 62 and and in came mr. Nixon and and the thing about it. Thats this interesting to me is he had been congressman senator Vice President for eight years and he had about him this mystique. I mean in a former president a Vice President and so he came in and he went around and he greeted all the staff and shook hands ask us some questions. I like to point out that there was one young man standing there talking to him who ended up being mayor of san diego congressman senator governor of the state of california. It was pete wilson, and he was with us that day. And then but that was sort of just a grip and grin with nixon at that point. You didnt because also there was hr bob haldeman who was your mentor and boss at jay Walter Thompson and who introduced you into nixon circle because i think the story of how and why he had to do that tells a lot about Richard Nixons personality, right . I i always had to have a summer job my parents insisted on it and i didnt have a job in summer of 1962 and dad arranged for me to go down and interview at the nixon for governor headquarters. I went in there and a young lawyer from usc by the name of herb combock some of you may know interviewed me and he left the room and he came back and he said i wanted to take you down the hall to meet someone and it was bob haldeman. He was 35 years old and bob became probably the single most important man in my life as it relates to all of this nixon history and i write in my book. I ride in my book and i mean it that was the day. That my life changed for the better. Forever and how was it that he slowly brought you into nixons circle into nixons ken well, bob. Had i i dont know that he had a plan, but he got to know me and he unliked like mrs. Nixon. I think a trust relationship developed and the one of the most significant aspects of it. Was that when nixon ran for governor in night. Pardon me when goldwater ran for president in 1964. Nixon went to that convention and he held an event with mrs. Nixon on the sunday before the convention started and the purpose of the event was to thank all of the delegates from 1960. It was a very shrewd calculated reception very nixonian in the thought process of how it happened and and bob positioned me right next to mr. Nixon. Im the this young kid and im standing there and then next. Is the former Vice President and then mrs. Nixon so as all of these delegates came in for hours, i mean everybody came so i would introduce myself and they would say their name and nixon here is kind of listening for that name. Many of the people he knew but it helped refresh his memory and then they would pass on to him. So you know, he was hey bob nice to see you again or harry or whoever it was so but that was the first time that i really got involved directly with working with mr. Nixon and mrs. Nixon and as you say in the book, it was him getting to know you and to trust you because the jobs you did were well done that made him at ease with you and it was that ease that sort of characterized the relationship and and the closeness of it. Yes as the clock goes ahead here and youll find this in the book. After in 1967 as i after i become his personal aid, its just the two of us traveling all over the country. No, no other aids or anything occasionally pat buchanan might go if there is a big speech or ray price one of the other speech writers, but for the most part it was just the two of us criss crossing the nation doing political events and so forth and for a young man, like myself who at this time is 26 years old at that juncture, you know, it was just one phenomenal education. Today that role is sort of known white and well known as a body man. I think in those days when the media was just travel was becoming easier and politics was picking up into a media enterprise the role of the young assistant was new then so i dont know that you were present at the creation, but you were among those present at the creation of that. And working with him and observing him was really it was a master class both in psychology and in retail politics in the book you talk about some of the rules he had like about dinners and introductions and the time hats and i did a schedule one time and this is the buzzer went off. And he i walk into his office and he says dwight. It says here that after dinner. I dance with this lady. Only candidates for sheriff dance so there were rules like this never a hat. No kind of hat because theyll try to take some crazy picture of me and so forth. So it he had i i learned all these rules and of course he had this phenomenal secretary rosemary woods who had been with him since he was in congress and and she was of immense help. She was a tutor of mine and and really helped rose was one of the most brilliant people and the role. She played in his career was far beyond secretary and confidant and she was so close to the family. Well when i started working in the law firm there were five filing cabinets in front of Pat Buchanans desk. We were in a room pat buchanan and rosemary woods and myself and then these five filing cabinets where anybody that did any correspondence or had any role in the Nixon Campaign from 60 or 62 . Everybody is in this filing cabinet. And rose had me do all the filing. And i thought why am i here . I mean, you know the the this is crazy, but the brilliance of it was that i had to do all that filing and learned the names of everyone across this country that was that ended up in one way or another being involved in the campaign. And so it it was a knowledge enhancement exercise that turned out to be very important. Once you had established this trucks trust with nixon and he knew you could get things done as you describe in the book. You had a couple of baptisms by fire and one involved in eastern shuttle. From new york to washington. Oh, this is a great story.