Thats not what it was about. Okay. You guys want to pick up the point about the bay of pigs . You want to start . Go for it. All ill say is, nixon was i read the question a couple different ways. Nisksson was often interested to ask his people, could we release some prior records from president s kennedy and johnson that he thought would look embarrassing to him. And he wanted the bay of pigs records themselves out. It was not a high moment for kennedy foreign policy. So i think nixon does talk, does scheme at times to release records out about democrats, and predecessors that he thought would make them look worse and him look better. Let me add one thing about the kennedy assassination. I had the privilege of getting to interview gerald ford. He became president 40 years ago. And president ford, ill always remember, he called me over, i did my interview and he said, come here. I went over, and he said, you see this stack . He had a huge stack of papers. I said yes. He said, you see this stack. It was this small. I said yeah. He said the little one is about my presidency, the letters on the kennedy assassination and warren commission. That many people were writing him. People are obsessed with kennedy assassination. It goes on, and people will read anything. What ive seen of the tapes of the bay of pigs, it means the bay of pigs. Like luke said, embarrassing kennedy on the context, actually, i think we know fairly definitively that it was, the whole idea, and there are other discussions on the tape about it, is that part of the that was the essential illegal act in the coverup. The purpose of it was to say that, oh, we did this breakin. This breakin occurred because, or its related to Real National security concerns that have to do with the bay of pigs and go all the way back. And that now, nixon tried to initiate a coverup and keep the fbi from investigating. At the same time, you can certainly make an argument, we dont know definitively what happened in the kennedy assassination. And are there possibilities that castro was somehow involved . We dont know. But to use this as the meat of putting something together is it aint there. Okay. Thank you. Please, your question . Bruce guthrie. Quickie point. We did lose another war, the invasion of russia, after world war i. But ignoring that, did the tape, gerald ford as you mentioned replaced Richard Nixon. Did the tapes talk at all about how much he brought gerald ford in on discussions of vietnam and how he felt about how things worked out once he left, and ford presided over the demise . Thank you. Unfortunately, the taping system did not run for nixons entire presidency. It ran until we saw at the outset of the program, butterfield revealing the existence. The taping was turned off in july of 73, even before ford became Vice President. As minority leader of the house of representatives, though, he was called over for both republican events and bipartisan congressional leaders, and they received a very basic briefing from time to time on vietnam. Not the details like kissinger discussed. Fortunately, not everything is dependent upon the tapes. Theres an awful lot of other material around. Enormous amount. As far as the way in which nixon dealt with ford, it was in a nice way. But he did not bring him in to serious discussions about the war. As far as nixon was concerned, he was already out of office. The vietnam war ended more or less january 23rd, 1973. He then left office in 74. The war went on until april 30, 1975. But Richard Nixon at that time, he was out of it. He was trying to recuperate at that point. Gerald ford had the problem of being the president at the time that the war was finally lost. Richard nixon lost that opportunity. You know, nixon once said one quick line, Richard Nixon once said about gerald ford, he played football one too many times without his helmet. Not that smart a guy. Remember how he got to be Vice President , and that was agnews resignation. And there was a lot of talk, knowledgeable talk at the time, and some of nixons people will tell you it is the case, that ford, he viewed ford as impeachment insurance. That they will never impeach me if gerald ford, and the contempt that youre talking about, is part of that. And, of course, it didnt work. And not only that, i mean, i think where shelby was reading this thing about the son of a part, that what we see in gerald ford is one of the most courageous acts by a modern president , to pardon Richard Nixon. Because he knew that but he knew that he could lose the presidency if he didnt. Its amazing. Question, please . My name is louisa holden. Im quinn holdens mother of environmental planning. And i want to thank you for your discussion tonight. And what this does for me is it really brings a question of who can we trust to light. And here we are 40 days, 40 years later. And i was 16 when nixon got impeached. So i remember it. And im thinking to myself, and im going to personize this a little, my son is kidnapped from massachusetts to new york on june 6th, 2003. And internationally kidnapped to great britain. And im here in washington because this has been a 12year coverup. I reached out to everybody in the press. Cbs, nbc, the Washington Post, and im wondering, 40 years later, from nixons impeachment, are we better off, and is the press asking the right questions . And why is it that george w. Bush and president obama, who run the department of justice, and have totally obstructed justice from the felonies, havent been impeached or held accountable or had to report their misconduct, intentional . I think your question has been posed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Actually, hasnt your case been written about . I believe it has, hasnt it . No, actually, theres only been one article on the boston globe yeah. I just wanted to make sure what i was thinking of. I dont want it to get off track too far. Shes raising a very good question about the press. And what did the press do back then. What is it doing now. Exactly. That sort of thing. I think thats a very legitimate question. What did we learn from back then. And are we better off or worse off . Youre a big reporter. I mean, you actually did pretty well 40 years ago. I think that there is a lot of great reporting going on in this country. I think, lets look at what the boston globe did on pedophile priests, and the secrecy of the vatican. The notion that there isnt great reporting, look at todays New York Times, todays Washington Post, wall street journal. On the web, great independent reporting. What we lack are the strengths of journalistic institutions that are respected by consensus for giving readers and viewers what Good Journalism is, which is the best obtainable version of the truth. And i think that the view of the press reflects the same cultural and ideological divisions in the country. But to me, the really big difference between the time of watergate and now is people who are looking for information, rather than looking for the best obtainable version of the truth. More as, again, that happened eventually at the time of watergate. You cant quantify this, but i think the huge numbers of people in this country are looking for reinforcement and ammunition for their own ideological beliefs. And political beliefs. Right, left, center. But theyre not looking for good reporting. Theyre not open to good reporting. So i like to turn this question around a bit. I think weve got a cultural problem, not a repertoirial problem. Yes, please . Hi. Im from santa barbara, california. The question i have is, a similar question. Today what you see is a lot of what theyre calling the war on the press. The guardian, president obama is prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as any president prior to him. Im going to ask you for a question, please. The question is, does shock of watergate and all that spying give context to the nsa and the government having spied on everyone in the room here already . Do you feel if watergate happened today, it would have the same impact and shock to the American People . Thank you very much. Thats an interesting question. Look, watergate and nixon stands for the great cynicism of the American People about government. A great new mistrust, that governments corrupt. Kennedy did not leave that feeling, one now can go back and look at the things, but at the time eisenhower didnt leave that taint in a sense the way that nixon did. I think everything after watergate becomes a problem. And theres one way to look at the breakin here at watergate. Its almost quaint when youre teaching the cold war history, the thirdrate burglars and all this kind of stuff, compared to look how widespread spying is now. Weve got the Obama Administration spying on merkel and all this. Yet the nixon tapes show a person operating without character and moral. Ronald reagan and gerald ford, certainly and barack obama, jimmy carter had a moral fiber to them. Morality of some kind. You cant just be real politic, i dont care, bomb them, get rid of them, spy on anybody, break anything, because president s have to be accountable to the law. Nobodys yet found barack obama and the nsa doing anything wrong in the snowden incident. Its government as usual. He doesnt have his fingerprints on things the way nixon did. Thank you, doug. Thank you very much. Final question. Thank you. Its a good setup about Good Journalism. Mr. Bernstein, you and bob woodward did Good Journalism. The deep throat, the person we now know, mark phelps, incredible source. Can you enlighten us about that . And tell us how incredibly helpful was he in expediting your reporting . Deep throat, mark phelps, the Deputy Director of the fbi, with whom bob met maybe ten times, a dozen at the most, during our watergate reporting, theres too much mythology. Were probably partly to blame for it. What the great thing that phelps did is more than more often than not, he confirmed information that we had obtained elsewhere. If you read the book, look at the movie all the president s men you see every night were going out and knocking on doors, and people who worked for Richard Nixon are saying, theres a secret fund. It paid for this. It did terrible things. And then deep throat would confirm, yes. And maybe add a little more to it. But the great thing that he did was, for us, is gave us a sense that we were right. You know, we had what we called the twosource rule. Then it came to be a three source rule. We had these things nailed down. And yes, deep throat was helpful in terms of context on a few occasions. But no, this was really lets look also for a minute and give the Washington Post the institution of the Washington Post what it deserves here. Forget about woodward and me. That here we have a publisher, catherine graham, and an editor, ben brown, and this goes to some of the differences in the press today. Because i dont think we have the leadership in the press about commitment to the best obtainable versions of the truth, as many levels as we had then. But think about this. That when we discovered this secret fund, as it were, that was the beginning of the unraveling, a few days later a subpoena server came to the Washington Post. Called me up, i got a call from the guard at the desk saying theres a guy down there for a subpoena with me and woodward and our notes. I said, dont let the guy up. And i called ben bradley, and ben said, dont let the guy up. Let me do something. Hold off a minute. And he called me back in a few minutes and said, bernstein, you get the hell out of the building. Thats the first thing. And i just called catherine graham, and she says, those are her notes, theyre not your notes. And if anybodys going to go to jail, its going to be her. That was fantastic. Fantastic story. [ applause ] fantastic story. I think we are out of time now. But i want to thank all our three marvelous panelists and all of you for showing up. I wanted to make the following point. It kind of grows out of what doug just said a moment ago. I learned in 1974, i believe, that my phone was tapped by Richard Nixon. I knew that on two occasions my office at the state department, cbs, had an office at the state department, as did most of the reporters covering the department. That that office had twice been broken into. Once i actually saw people running away, because they had seen me approaching. Four or five times our income tax was audited. Not a penny found out of line, but it was a terrible problem each time. There were a lot of things and i ended up on nixons enemies list. And every time that one of these other issues came into play, my two daughters would ask me whether they could respect president nixon. Because he was president of the united states. And i said something like, you dont have to respect nixon, but you ought to respect the office of the presidency of the united states. Because with all of the madness that he represented, there was still a system in play that could get him out of office, that could squeeze him out of office, that could lead to his voluntary resignation. Because his own people were saying to him, you dont have the votes. And at the end of the day, no matter how bad nixon was, the system itself could not be perverted even by a guy like Richard Nixon. So i take my hat off to the guy for a couple of things that he did, but not for too many things. And i dont want to go overboard on praising this man, but he was our president , and from that point of view, what the heck. Thank you all so very much for coming. Thanks very much. [ applause ] on the next washington journal, well talk to democratic consultant and pollster doug schoen about gridlock and the possibility of bipartisanship in washington. Then historian Douglas Brinkley will discuss the 48th anniversary of president nixons resignation. Recently mr. Brinkley coedited the book the nixon tapes. Well take your phone calls and follow the conversation on facebook and twitter. Washington journal live each morning 7 00 eastern on cspan. Friday night on American History tv, president Richard Nixons resignation, 1974. At 8 00 eastern, that nights cbs news special report. At 8 30, president nixons address to the nation announcing his resignation. A panel of journalists, including the Washington Post bob woodward and Carl Bernstein discuss watergate and president nix nixons resignation, 8 00 eastern right here on cspan3. Charles colson was a special counsel in the nixon white house. He talked about the final days of Richard Nixons presidency, and the watergate breakin, as part of the nixon librarys oral history project. This is 1 hour and 20 minutes. People today, the hightech media world, gets stereo typical pictures of particular characters on the public stage. And they then conclude that thats all there is to that person. Nixon was a very complicated personality. Hes characterized for history as the evil emperor who punished his enemies, was vindictive, and mean and vicious. He was actually a very kind, decent many. There were many, many times we would have discussions, even though i was a guy with a political portfolio, and i was the guy with the task of mobilizing outside groups, he would just talk about, we have to do this because this is the right thing. In 1964, riding in the back of his limousine with him, up to his apartment on the upper east side, he had said, you know, we have to do this, because the kind of world our children and grandchildren are going to live in depends on it. He could be an incredible idealist. And people dont see him that way. Unfortunately, they wont, because hes got the cartoon of the 5 00 shadow. And he was anything but. He was a very decent human being. Brilliant human being. Horribly flawed, as all human beings are, in my opinion. Maybe to excess because of the experiences in his life that left him suspicious about things, and people. But very complicated man with a very good streak in many respects. We have these tapes. How should students of the tapes listen to the tapes . The problem with the tapes is theyre onedimensional as well. I spent a lot of time in public speaking. An awful lot of what you do is body language. An awful lot of what you do is the way you move your facial expressions. It is the emphasis you put on things. It is far more than just the words you hear. You also cant listen to a conversation out of context without understanding, and still understand what the real intent was out of that conversation. So i remember when i was preparing my own defense in the watergate trials listening to some of the tapes. I couldnt make them out. And i didnt remember them. And they were so garbled, one of the prosecutors thought we were talking about doing something devious to senator kennedy. It was colonel kennedy we were talking about, coming out of the office, talking about the situation in vietnam. So i know theyve refined the tapes and ive listened to some since. And theyre onedimensional. They wont tell you everything. You wont know when nixon was kidding. You wont know when he was playing devils advocate. You wont know when he was having a disagreement with the staff, that he got the opinion you wanted to hear. You cant take that off the tapes. Id like you to preserve an anecdote you told John Whitaker about a joke you played on him. Kissinger had the right, although he abused it, to come into the oval office, or the eob Office Without having somebody announce him, or take him in. I always went in through steve bull. But kissinger walked in whenever he wanted to. Nixon told him to feel free to come in and interrupt anything. Henry would do it for trivial things. One day nixon was really ticked off at henry for a variety of things. And we were in the executive office building. The far door swung open. It was henry. I caught a glance of him. Nixon did not appear to look, but i know he knew it was henry. He immediately said to me, i think it is time we use nuclear weapons, that Everything Else has failed. And i looked at kissinger, he stood in the doorway absolutely paralyzed. Somebodys going to hear that o