Hearings, investigating the intelligence activities of the cia, fbi, ins and nsa. Look for our programming every weekend on cspan3. Coming up next, a discussion with two men at the center of the events known as watergate. Alexander butter field fle flekts on the subject with bob woodward. The event was cohosted by the Harry Ransom Center in texas and the lyndon b. Johnson president ial library. Its an hour. Good evening, i want to welcome you to this conversation with Alexander Butterfield and bob woodward which will be conducted by my friend and colleague, mark updegrove. My name is steve ennis, im director of the Harry Ransom Center which is pleased to be co sponsoring this evenings progr program. Bob woodward has a special tie to the university of texas. In 2003 he and his wraug post colleague Carl Bernstein, placed their watergate papers here at the universitys Harry Ransom Center. It was a historically excite in acceptance. The identity of deep throat was made public. Many hours of white house recordings had been released by the national archives, and the Ransom Center has continued to supplement its watergate holdings most recently with the generous gift of papers of legendary Washington Post editor ben bradley. Which we look forward to opening for research use early in 2017 in the intervening years, the watergate papers themselves have been heavily consulted by our students and historians while collectively, the country as a whole has continued to come to terms with that National Crisis in its continuing impact on our political life today. The watergate archive continues to give up new insights into the nixon presidency, and for years to come, it will continue to ground those histories in an historically verifiable record. But tonight were not here to read documents. But to hear from a participate an in the day to day workings of the Nixon White House. Alexander butterfield served as bob haldermans deputy and it was he who changed history by first divulging the presence of a taping system in the oval office during testimony in the Senate Judiciary committee i believe we have a brief clip of that testimony. The installation of the listening devices in the oval office of the president . I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. When were those devices placed in the oval office . Approximately the summer of 1970. I cannot begin to recall the precise date, my guess mr. Thompson is that the installation was made between and this is a very rough guess, april or may of 1970, and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall 1970. Alexander butterfield also is the primary source for Bob Woodwards highly readable account of this history the last of the president s men. This promises to be a wide ranging and engaging conversation, and ive been assured one without gaps, certainly not as long as 18 1 2 minutes. Watergate as we know, changed the relationship of the press and the presidency looking back on events, we know that one of the historical ironies is that the press arguably may have exercised its greatest power on the eve of a digital revolution which has profoundly reshaped the news industry. Before our time, before the era of big data, before public debate over government surveillance, it was an era of magnetic tape. The public debates then were about the separation of powers and the Public Interest and the workings of our Democratic Institutions of power. Suffice it to say our notions of executive authority and the Public Interest were profoundly shaped by the final years of the nixon presidency. The last of the president s men is the story of that pivotal time in American History, but i would add, its also a deeply human story about the nature of the presidency itself. And the loneliness of power. And, of course, the anxieties, fears and motivations of our 37th president. Please join me in welcoming to the stage, Alexander Butterfield, bob woodward and mark updegrove. [ applause ] alex, bob welcome back both of you have graced this stage before. You were here for an evening with Alex Butterfield, and bob, you were here with your partner Carl Bernstein, Robert Redford and me as we celebrated the 35th anniversary of the film, all the president s men. I want to start with you. We saw that clip of you revealing the white house taping system. I saw it sideways but i recall the incident. It was you. It was you. I saw it. You ought to tell them why you hesitated. There was a pregnant pause there . Yeah, the pause is because Fred Thompson said, are you aware . During the time of that testimony, i had already come to the faa, i had been there four months so i thought to myself, we might as well be accurate here about everything we say in this testimony, and i didnt have a clue if they still had listening devices. I just paused and said i was aware rather than i am aware. Lets talk about that moment. How did you come to work for Richard Nixon . I do tend to i cant be brief. But i will say this, i had just learned, i was in australia as the senior u. S. Military officer in the country. With my office in the american embassy, i had just heard, before the nixon election, in 68 when nixon squeaked by Hubert Humphrey to win the presiden presidency. I just received word that i was to be extended for two years. That was like the kiss of death to me, it seemed that way. I was going to be coming up on eligibility for brigadier general. I was a career officer. I admit i was fairly ambitious and if i was going to stay in australia, which was a wobderful place, its not where you want to be when youre coming up for general officer or admiral in the navy. I was desperate, i didnt know what to do. The ambassador and i went up to new begin any. A rainstorm came along, i grabbed a paper and read it, it was about nixons election. I was reading this toktok. I saw the name, theyre talking all about nixon winning the election. A flame i knew very well, bob hal de man. We were at ucla together and i thought, a light went on. Im stupid, but im not that stupid. If i could somehow attach myself to this california mafia coming into washington, i realized they wouldnt have a lot of washington experience. I did. I worked for mcnamara during the johnson days, i spent roughly 20 hours a week in the Johnson White house. I felt as though i was almost a staff member there. I felt i had some things to offer. You. Had a wonderful phrase which you told me about. Being in australia was not the smoke as you called it . That you wanted to be in the smoke which meant to be in vietnam or the white house . Yes. Bob latched on to that term. I said you need to be where the smoke is if youre going to be noticed. Bobs done a lot of smoke himself he knows all about smoke. So anyway, it worked. I wrote a letter to bob and attached all kinds of Little Things, bells and whistles and planned my trip to washington, so i would arrive roughly when the letter did. Made a call to the Richard Nixon transition headquarters. Talked to his aide and got an appointment with him for two days later. Talk about your experience in the white house for a moment. While that clip is still fresh in our minds. Clearly as steve said, that changed the course of history. It also changed the course of your life . Yeah. How did your life change after you gave that testimony . Well, i was an enigma in washington, i think i lost a lot of friends. I didnt want to testify, i had come to like nixon. I worked very closely with him. Thats how i gathered some of these anecdotes that i passed on to bob. You would never know this if you werent working with him. Pretty much constantly all day, i didnt go home until 10 00 or 11 00 at night. I was there saturday and sunday. Even i saw some of these oddities you might say. Or instances of paranoia, only one, two, or three times. I understood it, military people are the hardest guys to understand something that redowns the disfavor of the president. My revealing the tapes began this inquiry i was sort of an enigma i didnt let that bother me well, it did bother me, but i hope it didnt affect my work. The word enigma i think a lot of people in the nixon entourage, white house supporters didnt think of you as an enigma, but as a son of a bitch. Yeah, yeah. And the interesting thing is, they meet every year including cheney, rumsfeld, this whole group, and many of them still feel that way, i dont think i would be welcome in that group. Right. Bob, many of us have followed the thank you for mentioning that. Just wanted to get the record straight. By the way, i think the nixon people feel pretty much the same about you . Youre a little more of an enigma to many of the nixon folks. Yeah. Many of us thought that the epic story of watergate more or less ended with the revelation of deep throat, one of your most important sources on the story. Anonymous sources at the time. It came out it was the Deputy Director of the fbi. And then we get the last of the president s men. Talk before how this book came to fruition. Well, it was a number of years ago, alex and i were here when you had redford for all the president s men movie discussion, and we chatted and i said, next time youre in washington call me and well spend the day together, and maybe im going to start calling you the enigma, the enigma said theres more to the nixon story. And so when i was in california, visited him at his apartment in la jolla. What really blew me away, going into your apartment there, you had all these boxes of documents, which you had taken out of the Nixon White House. Awaiting your arrival. No, no, i did that for you. Not only that, but he had lunch also ready. I was more interested in the documents, a lot of them were new and then you told stories, let me give an example. You made the important point. You think historys over. And with these documents and your personal story, the odyssey in the Nixon White House are many added dimensions, i particularly was struck. You told me the story about Christmas Eve 1969, you went over to the executive Office Building next to the white house with president nixon and he saw that some of the staff people had pictures of john f. Kennedy on the wall. And then he came back and said to you, he said, this is an infestation. This is disloyal. I want those pictures out and so you launched an inquiry, and you told me about this, i kind of thought, well, you know and then in your documents are these memos that you wrote to the president saying, with pride, describing how you got all the kennedy pictures out of the staff offices and the title of this memo was sanitization of the staff offices, you went through what you had done to get make sure there were no kennedy pictures in the staff offices and they had all been replaced by nixon pictures. And to see the documentation of this and your firsthand story as witness, and in the book, there is incident after incident of this kind of angry behavior on the part of nixon. And what really struck me and hit me emotionally, not all but also as a reporter, you see this isolation of nixon. Thats right. This nixon who walls himself off intentionally time after time and that picture which you describe of him leaving the white house the oval office at night, alone going over to his executive Office Building, sitting there keeping his suit jacket on, putting his feet up, having a scorch, having his man servant manola make dinner for him alone. Of course. You kind of say, gee, he can have dinner with anyone in the world, probably. Who does he have dinner with . Himself and his yellow legal pad where hes sitting there going. Its sad. Its sad, and pat was over at the residence by herself, unless the girls were having dinner that night, or one of them, at the white house. Talk about the nixon marriage in a moment, but bob you write in the introduction of the book, abouty experience with alex and the stories he told as well as the documents he handed over to you. Seen up close through his eyes and documents nixon is both bigger and smaller. I think we got a glimpse of why he might have been smaller a moment ago how was he bigger in your view . There were memos in there and there were incidents. You put it together, because we have the tapes and you can hear nixon talking about some of these things. And nixon knew how to bring people close. There is alex described this, and there are documents and there actually is a tape recording of a cabinet dinner nixon had before the 72 election at camp david, you listen to this nixon, hes funny. Not something you normally associate with Richard Nixon. He described his chief fundraise fundraiser maurice stands. He said maury has this responsibility. And hes accused of all kinds of illegal activities and hes not guilty of most of them and then he said at the end. Weve got helicopters. The cabinets there weve got helicopters out there four of them, to take you back to washington get on the helicopters fast, those are the only four that have not been shot down in vietnam. And you see this he knew how to charm people actually. Something he probably didnt do enough. Right, incidentally the jokes were written for him. And he didnt tell them very well. No, he couldnt, he dn. He was very awkward. You had very intimate access to this president. Frequently you are the most staff person to see him in the morning and the last at night. Describe Richard Nixon that you saw . Well, yes after the 11th month of the first year. November or december. The president called me in and pop and he thought we should change. Not change offices. Bob haldeman, make that clear. I was bobs deputy from the start. He thought that maybe bob was getting sort of what do i want to say, detoured during the day by all of the trivia which is a part of the operation of the oval office throughout a day. And not sit back and think. The president said, i want you to be more like the assistant president. Let alex take your office and deal with the minute to minute stuff. We had just been given the Sherman Adams office in the end, as a gesture to the Vice President agnew. The last guy you want to give an office to, because he has a beautiful office up on the hill as president of the senate and hes got one across the street bob just went over and said ted, to spiro agnew, were going to have to take it back. He only used it for a few ceremonial things and he was happy to do it. Bob took that grand office. And bob was bob haldeman, the grand mogul. You had the office right next to the oval office, with a special door that went from your office to the oval office to nixons office. Right, through a little passageway and small room, which president clinton made favorite. Its the private office off the oval office. Its not even a private office. There is a cot in there and a desk and a little hot plate and a toilet. Well, it was private when president clinton used it, i guess. Well, yeah, its always been there, and its always been private. You do have to go through that Marvin Watson had it i think when you all were in the white house. Its that office on the west side of the oval office. From late december i guess on. For the other three years and a month or two into 73 i had that office, that put me in very close touch with the president. Now i am the first one to see him every morning every day. And then i never went home until he went over to the residence to bed. He always did that around 10 30 from the eob. Sometimes he went directly home, it was usually when something was happening. Some family event in the white house. He loved that solitude and we worked much differently in the Nixon White House. The senior people there, price harlow henry not so much, henry worked directly with the president. The other senior people had to work, im sure they didnt like this. They had to work through haldeman and or me, nixon didnt like thats why i had so much trouble can i suggest he tell the story about the state dinners . Nixon calls you in and says, im sick and tired of those sobs that come to the state dinner sticking their face in mine and bothering me. And he had a solution. Tell them what the solution was and what you did. Do you mind, is this okay . No, this is all good. This was almost unbelievable. At a normal state dinner, for those of you who dont know, theres a Big Cocktail Party in the east room for about 30 or 40 minutes. The waiters are passing drinks on trays. Ready made drinks of all kinds. And then the receiving line forms and you go through the receiving line, the president , mrs. Nixon and the state guest. The head of government or the chief of state thats being hosted on that occasion. And then people file right on down through the cross hall to the state dining room and they have dinner. When they come out of the state dining room, they go into the three rooms, the green room, the red room. You see why he was such a great source. He has almost a cinematic memory of things. You do, now, get to the point. First i have to ask, what was the question . No, i. So he got all excited one day, and he hated that he hated that 30 minute period after dinner and before the entertainment started back in the east room. Thats where everyone ends up, back in the east room. Theres a 30 minute coffee and cordials period. Congressmen, everyone who wants to talk to the president. People are sometimes neglecting the state guest he got all excited one day, and said i thought what we can do. He gets out the guest list. Incidentally, this is about 10 after 7 00 for an 8 00 state dinner. Hes very quick about changing. Henry and i are down there shining our shoes. And i hope that he would get to the point pretty fast because i had a lot to do. He said, heres what were going to do. Im looking at this guest, and