Good evening, good evening. I'm Persis Drell,
I'm the Provost of Stanford University. And it is my very great pleasure
to welcome you to The 53rd Carlos Kelly McClatchy Symposium. We are very fortunate to have both Susan
McClatchy and Will McClatchy here tonight. And so I would like to thank them,
for all that the McClatchy family has done to support the study
of journalism here at Stanford. >> [APPLAUSE]
>> Now, I think this is a particularly
important time for us to reflect on the role of
journalism in our society. I think we can probably
all agree that a free and independent press remains
critical to our democracy. In its mission to seek out and
present the truth, the press holds the powerful accountable
and helps us engage as citizens. No other institution has
the power to question our leaders, expose corruption, and
inspire social change. By analyzing and providing context for
local, national, and global events,
our free press educates and empowers us. Now in recent years we've seen
many transformational changes in the news media, along with major
shifts in the ways we consume news. Including the rise of digital media,
social media, and cable news. Media companies that are decreasing or
eliminating resources for local news and
thereby creating news deserts. The decline of newspapers and
because of it, fewer reporters charged with
keeping an eye on those in power. And increase in the spread of
misinformation and the ability to screen out news that doesn't adhere
to our political or personal ideology. And, perhaps most importantly,
the erosion of public trust in the media. And worse,
increased hostility towards the press in our own country and around the world. Tackling these challenges is the goal of
the newly formed Stanford Journalism and Democracy Initiative. Which has brought together
our journalism program The John S Knight Journalism Fellowships
and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Under the leadership of Jay Hamilton,
the director of the Stanford Journalism Program and
chair of our Department of Communications. This initiative is dedicated to helping
journalists make better use of data and algorithms, fight against misinformation, eradicate news deserts, and
root out bias and intolerance. Stanford scholars in economics, law,
political science, computer science, and business are collaborating with
journalists to address these issues and to help understand the workings
of our political system. Now tonight, we're gonna have
the great pleasure of hearing from somebody who is uniquely qualified to talk
about today's challenges in journalism and the workings of our political system,
Bob Woodward. >> [APPLAUSE]
>> After 47 years at The Washington Post
covering nine presidents, he is a true expert in understanding
how institutions in Washington work. In his first nine months as
a reporter at The Washington Post, Bob Woodward had more front page
stories than any of the other 60 journalists on
the Metro reporting staff. He started out by conducting a series
of local investigations on topics like outdated and mislabeled
prescriptions dispensed by drugstores, health law violations in
expensive restaurants, doctors profiteering from Medicaid. And corruption in the police department's
elite unit that was investigating the honesty of the rest of the force. His reporting brought
The Washington Post two Pulitzer Prizes. First in 1973, for the coverage of
the Watergate Scandal with Carl Bernstein. And second in 2003,
as the lead reporter for the coverage of the 9/11
terrorist attacks. He is the author or co author of 19 books, including his most recent bestseller Fear, which is a fascinating look
inside the current presidency. And I hope we'll be hearing
more about that tonight. He will be interviewed tonight by
RB Brenner, a former Metro editor and Sunday editor of the Washington Post. Who guided the newspaper its
Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. RB is a lecturer in the Department
of Communications and the managing director of the Stanford
Journalism and Democracy Initiative. So please join me in welcoming
RB Brenner and Bob Woodward for this year's McClatchy Symposium. >> [APPLAUSE] >> Thank you Provost Drell. Hello to all of you, and to those watching
on the video stream from other locations. And Bob, welcome to Stanford. >> Thank you. >> So let's jump right in. In the past 20, I mean 48 hours, you had Democrats winning
back control of The House. You had Jeff Sessions being
forced out as Attorney General. Matthew Whitaker, a critic of the Muller
Investigation is now in charge of it. And the president,
at a news conference yesterday, said he would work with Democrats,
but if they tried to investigate him, he will go on a quote, warlike footing. I'm not gonna ask you to predict
the future, but from your reporters eyes, what will you be looking for
in the coming months? >> We'll see, I think this is part
of the problem with our business. You are asking questions
like a talk show host, what happened today or this week? And the problem is, we don't know
the answers to those questions in terms of what really happened or
what drove the president. The war like stance, I think is not new. I think it's been going on,
obviously for a long time. And so we've gotta think about how we, and I tried to do this in the book,
can Trump go back and look at what we ran by
covering on a daily basis or a weekly basis,
what drove him, what happened. And because I had the luxury
of time to work on this, it can tell you some things
that you didn't know. And to just review the bidding
real quickly of that reporting effort that you had
people in the White House, chief economic adviser,
Gary Cohen, the Staff Secretary, other people stealing documents
from the president's desk. Worrying that he actually
will sign them and take some of his impulses and
translate that to policy. You have top secret national security
meetings in which the President laments, as he still does today in rallies
saying where are we spending all this money on our joint defense
agreements, NATO, in Europe, or in South Korea, or in the Middle East? And it reaches a point where
it really stunned me that the Secretary of Defense
had to tell the President, and this is the first year after
Trump had been in the office a year. Said, we're doing all of these
things to prevent World War III. That's job one of the president,
he shouldn't have to be told. And so there is enough new and
I think the new summary shows we have a governing crisis, that this is I call it in the book, a nervous breakdown of the system. But in all of the substantive areas, Trump has decided to do
things based on ideas he has, that are not valid, on various impulses. And we better wake up that this
is really a governing crisis and we're gonna suffer if we don't
figure out how to deal with it. >> Let me jump back to the one
push back I would say to this is the removal of Sessions and
the fact that the governing crisis also could be the future
of the Mueller investigation. >> Yes, it could, but we know,
and I report in the book that Sessions was out,
but just not officially. And Trump actually mocked him and said things about him,
that he is mentally ill, and in public, we knew this was going, and the Mueller investigation
is a question mark. I think it's very serious,
important investigation. As I worked on this,
I didn't find anything new or dramatic, that in the last page of the book,
Trump and his lawyer, John Dowd, actually go through and think Mueller
has something they don't know about. I think that's quite possible. And that may change the whole context,
but we don't know. >> So the story you brought up in
the book about the letter that was, essentially the letter to try to pull
the United States out of NAFTA and Cohen said, take it off the desk. In a more large sense, is that an example,
of we have a government right now where unelected officials are making decisions
of when to follow the president's wishes, when to slow walk them,
in some cases when to defy them. In your mind is that patriotism or
insubordination? >> Happily,
I don't have to make a judgement on that, I get to just describe what happened. But imagine going home and
your spouse saying, how was everything at the office today? And say, well,
I just lifted papers from the president's desk in the Oval Office
because I am afraid he might actually implement some of
these dangerous policies. So I think in many ways you can argue it's not the way to run a government, but that's Trump's fault. He denied that a document had been removed
from the Resolute desk as I described, and just anticipating that denial,
I print a copy of the document. If you wanted, I would have brought
the original here to show you. That it's when Trumps reads that, he should say hey wait a minute,
what's going on here? Is this the way to run the government? I think people who do things
like that look at it from their point of view as an act of conscience and
courage and I think you can argue, sometimes you
have to say no to the President. And if he finds out or
doesn't like it, he can fire you. >> So I want to hit on Mueller a bit. How well do you know him and
what's he like? >> [LAUGH] I don't know him well enough. It's interesting. Some time ago, I was talking to somebody
who worked very closely with him in the intelligence business. And I asked that question and
he said, well, Mueller is the sort of prosecutor that if he finds out you rip
the mattress tag off, he will prosecute. >> [LAUGH]
>> And people used to jokingly call him Bobby the Mattress Tag Prosecutor. >> [LAUGH]
>> So he tends to take the violations literally. You remember as a child,
seeing that tag on the mattress? >> Yes. >> I remember I think I was in fourth
grade and I looked at that and I said, my God, just like that and I go to jail? Very scary. >> [LAUGH]
>> I also first talked to him after he became FBI director after 9/11. And he said some things about
how he babbled at a meeting at Camp David after 9/11,
didn't put it in the newspaper, but I did put it in the first Bush book
I did and ran into him at a reception. And he said,
I see you got the babbling in. And I thought that's interesting, he's reading his press clippings somewhat
more carefully than you might think. Where that goes, I don't know. What I do know from Watergate, if a president's going to resign or be removed in any way you
need clarity of evidence, like the tapes in the Nixon case. And in the Nixon case, there was
closure because the evidence was so powerful and
all the Republicans turned against Nixon, essentially forcing his resignation. And I don't see that we had tapes. I don't know whether there's prosecutors
will tell you, you need a narrator, one person who can kind of tell you
the story, a storytelling witness. And I don't see that. But maybe it's there. I think you can really say that Trump, I make this point in the book that
he doesn't have a to do list. The reason they can steal
documents off his desk, he doesn't remember that
they were there and he doesn't have a,
these are the things we need to deal with. And so that's That's a governing problem. All of these things who Governor
need governing problems. >> I think we were talking
a little earlier this evening and you talked about Nixon if he had just sort
of said what Trump says it's a hoax and not really turn over and
cooperate in certain things. It might have had a very
different fate in Watergate. >> Nixon after he filed the fired the
first Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox made two serious miscalculations he turned
over eight of the tapes that had been subpoenaed, including the ones that one
of them that was the most incriminating. And he thought the problem was
the first special prosecutor because he was an effing
Harvard Law professor. And he then said, okay,
I've got rid of Cox so we appointed somebody else,
Leon Jaworski and then Jaworski,
saw if you get into this what happened, saw that first tape that was really
incriminating about Nixon okaying 12 times in one meeting the payment of blackmail
money to people for their silence. Jaworski then led
the charge against Nixon. >> I've heard you say a lot that specifics
are the building blocks of journalism, and the power of your book is the specific
scenes and the specific details. But a book like Any Piece of Good
Journalism also has overarching themes. You talked about the crisis of governing. What in your mind are the other
big themes of this book? >> That whether I comment this try to come
at this from a non partisan angle, and I've been called leftist I've been called
member of the right wing conspiracy. But thank God last year
somebody called me an ultra centrist whatever that means, maybe,
>> You there might be the only one now. >> Yes, that's right. And what it shows is we better wake
up that these I could sit here and bore you and list all of the major
policy areas in foreign policy and with North Korea or with Afghanistan or
in the Middle East. I mean, look at the gamble. Each one of these things is a gamble
the tax cut is a gamble and Trump sells this is a great achievement. If you look at the tax cut, they cut corporate taxes for from 35 to 21%. Trump wanted to go lower to 15 and
they said no, we can't get that. It is a tax bill that helps
businesses corporations, and people who are wealthy,
but it's a classic economic stimulus that
will boost the economy. We are experiencing the boost Trump
was selling it still is selling it But if you look at some of the numbers
they will make your stomach hurt. Because economic activity is going down,
the trade war with China, the business with Mexico and
Canada in the new NEFTA. Anyway all of these things
if you pull them apart you realize you better be deeply
worried the problem in the media culture is that impatience and
speed. And Trump leads everyone around I
mean everyone's taking the bait and we cover tweets as if that is major news. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But we've lost our capacity to really
dig and understand the details and lots of these things, and
sad is in the details. So the Washington Post, our paper
has certainly put a lot of reporting resources on this administration
compared to any other one. But do you feel like
it's not just numbers? It's sort of the way you do it. And is there still a failure of
the press to cover this President? >> It's not a failure. It's that you got to do a lot more
digging and have a lot more patience. I was talking to the head of one of
the Television networks on the new side so how many people do you have covering
Trump in the White House said about 50. That's a big number. How many are doing long term digging
projects, said maybe four or five, that's not enough,
that we need to know I'm. Sir, look at what happened in
the deal with Saudi Arabia. They forgot to read what's in the CIA
files about the Saudis like to kill people, and they killed
>> Khashogi. >> Jamal Khashoggi, who used to write for
The Washington Post. I mean,
that is a people say it's grisly, but it is a policy failure to not incorporate
that knowledge and I have in the book. The intelligence agencies, the Secretary
of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Adviser saying,
don't make this deal with the Saudis now. And it is Jared Kushner,
the president's son in law, who at the meeting stands up At
the end of the table with and says yes, I understand all of this,
but this is an opportunity. And by March of last year,
President Trump had not been President,
two months they agreed on this. Arrangement and
started to go down that trail with, I know because I've worked on this and
the CIA, the ruthlessness of
the Saudis is not a secret. It's not a secret particularly to the CIA. Anyway You can go pick China,
the trade war there, the all of the issues going
on with immigration and so forth that are substantive. And I'm just saying factually,
it's a crisis. It's a government crisis. Don't overlook it and don't drown. In Trump's really astonishing ability to seize the news cycle. >> Let's talk a little
bit about General Mattis. We corresponded a little bit, and
you'd mentioned that Mattis is a big fan of Barbara Tuchman's book,
the Guns of August. About how World War I
was an accidental war. Does Mattis worry about that now? >> Yes, he does because the generals
know the horror of war. The problem from covering nine presidents, not all the presidents fully understand
the nightmare that war is and that they should try to
avoid war at all costs. Now sometimes you have to go to war If
you were attacked in General Mattis, Barbara Tuchman's book, guns of August is a brilliant
excavation of how we got into World War One and
everyone was planning for it. No one actually decided and then somebody. Let the fuse the assassination
of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo started that and
I'm sorry to linger on this but
this is the world we're living in. Barbara Tuchman begins her book in 1910, so four years before World War One starts. And it is the funeral of
Edward the seventh I believe of England and
at his funeral are nine kings, four queens all kinds of
representatives of royalty and she says, the funeral began
at nine Big Ben struck nine. And then she writes but
on history's clock. The sun was setting on the old
order of kings and royalty. I think right now, a century plus, the old order the sun set on it. And the political parties, republicans, democrats didn't find a way
to reorient themselves to what's really going
on in the country and that Trump alone seized history's clock, and I don't think we understand it. I certainly don't understand it. But he has done it, and it's not just
history's clock, it's the presidency. And you can tell, I'm worried about it and I think everyone should worry about it. And I think and
this is not anything personal or partisan, it is just look at what. The gambling that's going on
with all of these policies and they say the the price will
have to be paid someday And going back to the Christian era and Saudi
Arabia and then obviously Trump and Putin. There's certainly the perception that
things might be driven not by policy and what's the best interest of
the United States and our government. But also there's entanglements from
someone who was not in government who's had financial dealings
with Saudi Arabia, with Russia. How should we be looking at that? Yeah, and the answer just is not clear. And Trump and Putin, I mean,
there obviously is some sort of romance there, but
if you get into the policy. Trump has been very tough on Russia and
Putin and this April, when chemical weapons were used
in Syria by President Assad. Trump went on television and gave a speech
excoriating Putin as the one behind this. Is the one who has made the mistake and there are certain sanctions
being imposed on Russia. So I think Russia is more of a mixed bag. It's some of these areas like China. China's very smart in a terror force. Trump said, we can win a terror force. Somebody who knows said when
it comes to terror force the Chinese have a PhD and
we are in kindergarten. And there is a lot going on and
that that terror for that is not surfaced in there
a lot of people who grow and sell soy beans, for instance, who are very unhappy in
losing lots of money. I also wanted to double back a little
on this issue of you talked about not enough reporting resources
going really deep, but I'm also seeing examples and I'll cite
Two of really deep reporting that just seems like would have five ten
years ago had that lasting impact. And I'm thinking of the New York
times investigation of essentially how the president
became wealthy. And that was I think 18 months or two years of really good
investigative reporting, and it sort of was in the news cycle
about 24 hours and it was gone. And even your book I think certainly made
a enormous impact, but it just seems like the way we're processing
information is just this warp speed and that's a factor here. Yes.
But the tax issue with Trump, that was a wonderful article about what happens
in the New York real estate business. And I remember after it came out talking
to somebody in the New York real estate business who said, yeah,
that's what we all do. And I think that's quite true. But, the difference is, at least for
a certain percentage of Trump voters, it was the sense of this is this very
successful businessman who's gonna take the success of his business career and
bring it to government and that's sort of exposed that
maybe is not the case. Well, maybe we all should have gone
into the New York real estate. [LAUGH] But that's more of a real estate story than a Trump story, quite frankly. And yes, my book,
I walk down the street sometimes and people will come up and
say, when is he resigning? And people have lost sight of
the timeframe and in watergate. We did the stories in 72 and
it was almost two years before Nixon resigned and
there were a series of incidents, particularly the disclosure of the tapes. And it was going to the Supreme Court and
the Supreme Court unanimously saying,
you have to turn over the tape. We somehow have to get out
of the frame of, let's say, where all this is going and
get into the frame of let's find out what's really
happening on these things. And the modern presidency, I think, has become a crisis management. And presidents don't have the time or
the inclination to think strategically. Where do we wanna go? It's how do we manage that daily crisis? And it's, we're not we're not getting
to a point where we figure out. My God, what's the next stage of good for a majority of people in the country and that's the President's job and
that's just not happening. Given the crisis you talked about that
you also said earlier That you've tried very hard to not be seen as
a partisan, you're a journalist. But there have been times in appearances
where you've probably come close to being perceived as anti Trump sort
of how have you tried to navigate maybe a line that you never thought you'd
get this close to In your career. >> And it's a good question and
lots of people said to me. You're gonna become a combatant in this, because of the information but
I have not got a lot of hate mail. I have not received a lot
of love mail either. But you're exactly right. It's everything is seen
through a partisan lens the country clearly is
divided in in a way that I've never seen no one is
really ever seen before and so Is this good for Trump or
is this bad for Trump? And I think that's not the question. The question is,
is it good for the country, is it that next stage of good for
enough people And I don't think Trump either in
terms of his personality or his managerial skills is found
a way to navigate to that. In a time when we don't have a new
war when the economy at least superficially is going on. He should be able to navigate there. >> So I want to talk a little bit
about deep background reporting. I know when the subject of
anonymous sources comes up, you say they're not anonymous to you,
which is certainly true, but I think the public often
doesn't understand. First what a deep background source is and
why it's they're so valuable to reporting. So,
>> What do you think of the backgrounds? >> Well, the background source from the
Washington Post culture is that I can use the information but
I don't say where it's coming from. And if it's a background source I say a
senior administrator administer official. >> Right, but I think the value
of deep background is when you're working on a long book project,
find somebody say, there's a meeting about
the following at the Pentagon. And it was kind of contentious. Then you can find people who were there,
get somebody who has notes, review it with others. And you're not naming
any of the sources but you're telling what really happened and it has a kind of verisimilitude,
that yeah, that is right and seems true and in fact,
it is true but you don't get there. In an afternoon, or a week of reporting,
you only get there in a year or more of reporting, and
people who find those documents. >> So drilling down that a little bit, so
obviously, without revealing the sources. But I'll talk about if people
were on the record, Eric Cohen, Steve Bannon, Rob Porter when we're
reading this is from that person, were at least able to assess,
that person was fired. That person was rival of this person, so when you do this very complex
deep background reporting, how do you make sure that you're taking
into account all of the various agendas. And the knives that
are out because of you, we're trusting in you because
we as the reader can't do that. >> Yes, but I can do it and it hit me when it says it 515 on July 18. Tuesday they had this meeting in
the chief of staff's office and these were the people and
this is the dialogue. It has the notes from
people who were quoted, who have been asked or
don't dispute what's in there. And it's all about time
against the problem for me. And is somebody going to accept
that that's much better than going to all those people and saying now on
the record, the press has kind of become. On the record relieves
you as a reporter from the responsibility of reporting untruth. And you go to the White House and you say, chief of staff Kelly,
did you call the president an idiot? Did you say all of these things
others have, no, absolutely not. And/or he won't talk to you. I just think we've got to accept
the responsibility of saying, yes, it's on my head, my back, that
these sources have been cross checked. And there is so much reporting behind it
that gives it a kind of authenticity. And I think people understand that. I would love everyone to say, okay, now you can identify all of the sources. Some of the best information,
most important information in the book came from three sources who
are not named in the book at all. And probably people I can say with
certainty that you'd never heard of. But there are people in government
backbenchers, people who are in offices, people who keep diaries and so
forth that can bolster this. >> I'm gonna throw in one question here
from a faculty member who had given me this earlier because it relates and
the question is I'm reading. Exactly says since
the Janet Cooke scandal in 1981, many newsrooms began to insist that
reporters share with at least one senior editor the identity of unnamed
sources is there an editor at Simon and Schuster who knows
the identity of your sources. >> The Janet Cooke scandal I was
the Metro editor young reporter who did the story about a eight year old
heroin addict whose mother was and boyfriend were making allegedly this
eight year old a heroin addict. And it turned out to be fabricated and
she won a Pulitzer prize for the story. And it was a deep embarrassment and fault on my part to not push that. And in the case of who
the sources are happily, I went over some of them with people and lawyers at Simon and
Schuster, my publisher. And my wife, Elsa Walsh,
knows all the sources and she was if the source wasn't good,
she would say, get your ass in the den and call people or go see people and she was very tough. And she read the book six times,
edited it six times, and most importantly, and
I tell her this is very personal, but she realized this was our
joint kind of family project, and I was able to work Pretty
much full time on this. I think there was 50 days I
worked every day and every night. And she not once dropped
the penalty flag on me, saying, I thought we were married or I thought we should go to dinner or
do something. And everything was focused on the book and
she is secure enough, she was happy to have me go off and
see somebody and knock on some doors without an appointment
cuz she could read or do other things. But never once did she say to me,
it was always work harder at this because
she felt that it was a consequence and
that she read transcripts and listened to a tapes, and so forth. And so, that is for anybody in any job, and it's more than a blessing. If you don't have that kind of,
if there are penalty flags being dropped all over the house, it's very difficult
to proceed with something like this. >> So, a two parter here. You did four books on
George W Bush's administration, did books on Obama,
presidents going back to Nixon obviously. This administration seems and
this president so unconventional, but what's your approach to doing this book
much different than these other books? >> I discovered that I'd become lazy. And I was having people over for
dinner or lunch, and I learned this from Carl Bernstein and
Watergate. When we started working on Watergate,
I'd been a reporter In a weekly newspaper for
a year in the post nine months, Carl actually was a reporter since birth. >> [LAUGH]
>> Since age 16, he worked as a copy boy at the Star. And Carl was and still is a renegade. And he in Watergate said,
we're gonna only get BS if we go see people in the White House,
they probably won't let us in. Go see people at the committee
to re-elect the president, we're gonna have to go knock on doors
at night and win people's trust. And I found in working on this book,
I was not doing that. And we all have fork in
the road moments when you're gonna go this way or
that way you're gonna. And it was 11 o'clock at night,
I had the number for somebody at the White House and
I thought 11 o'clock at night. This last year I was 74 years old,
I said, you idiot, go to bed. >> [LAUGH]
>> And for only the reason I had the phone number,
frankly. I called and said I wanna talk to you and
he answered and he said, yeah, yeah, the brush off,
ever get the brush off. And I said well, and he said, call
the office tomorrow, we'll get together. And I said, well,
how about now, at 11 o'clock. And then he called me a dirty name and
said, why 11 o'clock at night? And I literally said,
I'm four minutes from your house. And he said, how do you know where I live? >> [LAUGH]
>> I said I have good research assistants, and that's not hard. And said, okay, come on by for luck, his wife was out of town. And so, we started talking and it was almost dawn when I left. And subsequent interviews,
I said how about documents? No, I don't have any documents,
just a few things, no, no, and then finally, well, yeah,
maybe I have something up in the attic. And he goes, and he comes down with boxes. So, I was giving up too easily and was a real discovery about the process of winning people's trust. And I also found in terms of process, not taking information off
the record means you can't use it. And I said, no, you've gotta
give me information I can use, I won't say where it came from and
people would acquiesce to that. I think a group of reporters
in Washington kind of, it's an elite club people know all
these things off the record and they're not telling the readers or
their viewers. When the book came out and
somebody denied something, one of the great reporters in Washington
called me and said I have hives, because I've heard that person say
exactly that thing off the record. And so, we're sealing up a reality that I don't think we should let be sealed up. And that means just you got to go back and I've got one person who
helped me with this book, the tape transcripts are 820 pages, would take you a couple of days
to read it and sort through. And so, it's a matter of level
of effort and having the time. I think we make a mistake by not
giving reporters patience and time and say, keep going back,
keep going back until you really get it. And to my embarrassment, I feel I did not realize that myself. >> The second part of my question, then
I'm gonna go to the audience questions is, when Trump was inaugurated,
did you expect to do a book this soon or was it sort of like you saw what was
going on away was like the bad signal went up and
feel like I better get on this? >> Well, it depends on your perspective, from the point of view of my
publisher it was too late. >> Okay. [LAUGH]
>> Wanted the books sooner rather than later. And so, no,
you don't know what you're going, when Trump called me in August and said he regretted that we
hadn't done interviews or an interview for the book and so forth. And I said it to him, first said,
I'm gonna tape this, right, yes, sir? And he said, okay. >> Do you wanna, just for
those who might not have known >> Yeah. >> Just sort of the idea that
the book was finished, and then you get this phone call. >> Yeah, and
that I said it's a pivot point in history. And I couldn't ask him a question
cuz the book was printed. Hundreds of thousands of copies. And if I asked a question he answered
it and then the book would be out and he'd say, he asked me this and that and
it's not in the book that's not fair. So I had to really I put
a restraining order on myself during that 10 minute call to not ask any questions but
it is a pivot point in history. People say well it's not normal I
don't worry about it not being normal. No precedent is normal. But he was elected to not be normal that that shouldn't be
the index people it's not normal he's breaking protocols it's.. The way things worked in the past,
this Barbara Tuchman's order is disintegrating, being supplanted. And it needs to include
some of the old order and I think he doesn't have any patience for
that. >> So
I'm gonna turn to some of the questions. First one is About your view of Trump's intentionality as it
relates to our constitution. Does your research suggest that he
fully understands our constitutional system specifically in relation
to separation of powers? Is that a question or a joke? >> [LAUGH]
>> Well, you can deliver the punch line. >> Yeah, well, no,
that's not the way he thinks. He might roll out the term
the constitution every now and then, but what is the way he thinks? The way he thinks is, he has ideas they ask him I have
meetings where do you get those ideas? Or I had them for 30 years and
if you disagree with me, you're wrong. And so there is something immovable
about him on some of these really important foreign policy and
economic issues. I mean, this is serious audience, it serious people and are entitled to not a sugar coated version
of what this is there could be things that
happen that are crises that should have been avoided because of this way of doing business and it is. Look, Mattis,
I quote the White House Chief of Staff saying He won't listen to anyone. He won't listen to anyone and then I demonstrate scene after
scene when he won't listen. He does his, so,
>> And I'll get back to the next one. But do you worry that there's gonna be
fewer and fewer mattresses there so that in the end, if it's this
way now we could be a year from now where there's just loyalists and
yes, people there. >> But all these fuses that are lit, one of them can go off and
there's no way to look at. Look, there are many questions and the good relevant questions about how
do you compare this to Watergate? >> This is the next question,
so go for it. >> Well,
I looked over your shoulder on that. >> [LAUGH]
>> You have good eyes. >> Okay. No and how is it? How does it relate to Watergate? And you've got to ask
the question what was Watergate? And Watergate was a massive criminal
effort led by the president to subvert the process of nominating and
electing president. And Nixon launched wars on the media and on the anti-war movement on the system
of justice in the end on history. Okay, so Watergate was big illegal. Why Watergate? And [COUGH] that's a complex question,
but my, the best answer I heard was from Senator Irvin who headed
the Senate Watergate committee. And he said, why Watergate? Because it was a lust for political power. I don't know whether
there's criminality or the massive effort that relates to Trump. But if you're looking for
a description of what drives him, I think it is the lust for
political power. By his own acknowledgment,
he is a man who understands lust. He is a man who understands power. The title of the book comes fear from
him telling me in a young reporter at the post, real power is, I don't like
to use the word Real power is fear. So he understands political power, and the lust for political power is dangerous. And I think it. So that end of Watergate. Why watergate relates to Trump? I think quite well. >> Next one is the historian
Michael Beschloss of said last night that the firing of sessions
raises the possibility, we could be entering territory. 10 times worse than Nixon,
unquote with respect to the Moller investigation, do you agree? >> Michael Beschloss is a terrific
historian and a friend of mine, but the key word there is could,
well, yes, it could. And Martians could land tomorrow and
it could be 10 times. Well, Michael, could it be 11 or 12. That's the kind of inflammatory speculation that I do
not know what it means. I mean, definitely could be
a crisis Muller investigation. I think Trump knows enough to not make Nixon's miscalculation. He gets rid of Muller. That's it. The office is gone and he's not
gonna turn over any more evidence so could happen, would happen. >> This is relevant to
the students in the audience. The question is,
what were you like as a young reporter? And what advice do you
have to young journalist. >> Wow,
I asked this question occasionally and I say to young journalists or
people in any business or profession, that if you're supposed
to work eight hours and you work two hours more,
So make it ten hours. You're working 25% more, I think you will increase your
usefulness to the institution or the people you're working for, and
your usefulness to yourself by 50%. I think if you're supposed to work
8 hours and you work 12, 50% more, you will actually double your usefulness
to the institution and yourself. It is so
much about time against the problem. And that kinda sounds, well,
of course, that's our view, but it's, I think we haven't
drummed into ourselves enough. And because how do you spend those
two hours, four hours extra? You go down avenues that maybe you
wouldn't see in the eight hours, you ask questions that you wouldn't see, you have intellectual engagement
in what you're trying to do. And so that's my basic thought on that. >> How do you get people
to open up to you so much that the CIA director said
he wishes he had recruited you? [LAUGH]
>> Yeah, and CIA director, Gate, said, well, I get people to spill their guts about
things that they shouldn't talking about. But see, that's the problem with
the CIA and the CIA director. They think when reporters learn things
about how we run the government and what's going on and
if it's uncomfortable for the CIA, somebody's spilling their guts. My view is somebody's telling
what they should always tell. And it's you've got to win trust. I say this, let's promote you, let's say
you're the Assistant Secretary of Defense. I'm coming to interview you. What are you thinking? >> Well, if I think you're
gonna help further my agenda, I'm looking forward to it,
if not, I'm extremely defensive. >> So
what do you think I'm coming to you to do? >> That you probably know a lot and
you're trying to expand your knowledge. >> Yes, and I'm trying to win,
build a relationship, and if you wrote an article 30
years ago for Foreign Affairs, I'm gonna get it, and
not just Googling you. And I'm gonna read it and say,
on page 36, you said the following. And you might think I thought
only my mother read that article, and it's not a ruse,
I wanna know how you think. And then I'm gonna treat you as
seriously as you treat yourself. People in Washington, I think people
everywhere take themselves seriously. And so that's a process, and I'll come
back, I'll try to get into your home, I'll try to say are there documents in the
attic, and get you to share them with me. But that takes a lot, it takes time. >> I'm gonna veer for a second. But it just made me wonder about what's
your overall take in the Edward Snowden's, the idea that there are other
means that people are taking to get information out
that aren't gonna through reporters like you who
are also going to [CROSSTALK]. >> The NSA analysts did go
through the Washington Post. >> Yes, ultimately. >> I did. >> Yeah, yeah. >> And they won a Pulitzer Prize for
it, so you missed that, I guess [LAUGH] >> No, no, I got that, but certainly WikiLeaks. >> Yes, I mean, there are other avenues
of delivering information [INAUDIBLE]. So I think the question is,
after Nixon resigned, and Katharine Graham, the owner, publisher, CEO of
The Washington Post wrote Carl Bernstein and
myself a private letter. And said,
you guys did some of the stories, and before you start thinking
too highly of yourselves, I want to give you some advice. And she said, the advice is, beware the demon pomposity. That's really wonderful advice. Tone it down, the pomposity doesn't work, except maybe in the Trump White House. >> [LAUGH]
>> But it doesn't work in the news business, and we've got to find a way to,
as I say, take a Valium gargle, and kind of not get stick
to the reporting and it's too much attack of Trump or on MSNBC, CNN, too much love of Trump on Fox News. And you need to find some way to,
these are the facts, these are the facts,
so facts are important. And I think they win the day if we
find a way to stick to them and dig into what really
happened at 5:15 on Tuesday, July 18th, in the White House Chief
of Staff's office. >> And then to be fair to the President,
I should ask, what has he done well and right? >> Well,
he won an incredible political victory. He can be nice. In that phone call to me,
he didn't attack me, he said you've always been fair to me. In the book, he asks lots of smart
questions about North Korea, Afghanistan, on Afghanistan. That war started in 2001,
that's been gonna for 17 years. And Trump asked their desk,
what are we doing, why are we there? And the General said, no, well,
we'll change the strategy a little bit. It's just a few thousand troops, but
I know when reported in the book, he still wants to get out of Afghanistan. He might be right about that. So it's not one-dimensional Hugh Hewitt who is a conservative radio talk host. I was on his show and
he talked about the book and he said, this is really an important astute book. And he said he's gonna buy copies and airdrop them into every
embassy in Washington, which I encouraged him to do that,
and apparently, he hasn't. >> [LAUGH]
>> Will there ever be a public reprimand of the President when he
publicly chastises a reporter? >> Well, I think the President has
a right to publicly chastise a reporter. I don't worry about that at all,
and I think I've done this for 47 years,
I've never once gone to a White House briefing because I knew I was
not gonna learn anything. I never once went to a White House
presidential press conference. You have to work from the outside in. And so for everyone to get so
exercised about what Trump says about the press, I mean,
I don't like it, I don't agree. But the only way, Ben Bradley,
the editor of The Post said, the key always is nose down,
ass up, moving slowly forward. >> [LAUGH]
>> And I think that's good advice, particularly the part about ass
in the air and moving slowly. >> Mm-hm, and I guess Marty Baron's line
now is, we're not at war, we're at work. >> Yeah, he's the editor of The Post now. >> The enemy of the people label, and the fact that you talked to reporters
when I last visited the Washington Post, the security was much tighter
than it had ever been before. Reporters out there say there is
something in the air that is ominous. What is your feeling on that? >> Yeah, I don't like it. But I, again, the answer is not to kind of open your emotions on television or in press briefings. It is to, I mean,
suppose all of this energy were directed at what's really happened? Why did Trump get us out of the Iran deal? What's the Iran policy? What's the CIA doing? What's the Pentagon doing? There's endless reporting opportunities,
and it's hard. It's much easier to go to the press
briefing and stand up, and yell at the President. >> Mm-hm. >> And I can understand the drive, and I don't fault reporters for
getting wound up. But I don't know whether
it leads to the big answers of the big questions of what
the policy persistence. >> What,
I guess this is a companion essentially, what do you think has enabled Trump to so effectively question and
undermine the media? >> Well,
some of it is we've taken the bait and he's a master at this. I mean, look, it runs in his blood,
or in his genes, and so forth. But again, and can I just-
>> Please. >> Tell a long, somewhat long story
about the lesson of being wrong. It's so easy to be wrong and miss things. And I wanna go way back to,
it was September 1974, and Nixon had resigned in August. So Gerald Ford was President,
been President for 30 days. And Ford went on National
television on a Sunday morning and announced he was giving Nixon
a full pardon for Watergate. And it was surprising,
particularly to me I was asleep. And Carl Bernstein called me up and
truly then, and still has the ability to say what occurred
in the fewest words with the most drama. >> [LAUGH]
>> And he said, have you heard? And I said I hadn't heard a thing,
I'm asleep. He said, the son of a bitch
pardoned the son of a bitch. >> [LAUGH]
>> And I was proud of myself cuz I
figured out what had happened. >> [LAUGH]
>> And I remember thinking at the time, it's perfect,
it's the final corruption of Watergate. Nixon, behind all of this,
40 people eventually going to jail. He gets a pardon, Ford gets the
presidency, there was an aroma of a deal. And if you look at the histories,
two years later in 76, Ford ran against Jimmy Carter. And Jimmy Carter said,
I'll never lie to you, Ford's part of the corrupted
Nixon administration. And that's why Ford lost,
Carter became President. And it was pretty much
embedded in history and certainly in my head, and
I never did the reporting on what really happened
until 25 years later. I undertook one of my book projects,
a book called Shadow, about the legacy of Watergate in the
presidencies of Ford through Bill Clinton. And I called Ford up, never met him,
never interviewed him, and said I'd like to talk to you about
the pardon, figuring he'd say, I'm sorry I've got a golf tournament,
I can't do that. >> [LAUGH]
>> But, no, Ford said, sure, I'd be happy to talk to you. Turned out to be the most honest, open, public official I think I've ever dealt
with that I had this luxury of time. But 25 years later what really happened? Got all the contemporaneous coverage,
interviewed everyone who was alive, interviewed Ford six times,
kept going back with new questions, new information, had all the legal memos. And kept chipping away,
what really happened? And it was the last interview at,
he had a home in Colorado, his main home was in Rancho Mirage,
California. Go out there for the last one,
tape recorders going. And I said, okay,
why did you pardon Nixon? And he laughed and he said,
you keep asking the same question. And I said, yes, I do because I
believe that you have not answered it. And then he said, astonished me,
he said, you're right, I haven't, I've not told this story to
anyone including Betty, his wife. He said, here's what happened, and I have to take you to becoming President, and that was in August. And he said,
I never wanted to be President, I wanted to be Speaker of the House. And I was President in August 74, and every question was about Nixon and
Watergate. What's gonna happen? Where is this leaning? And he said then,
a week before Nixon resigned Al Haig, Nixon's Chief of Staff, came to see me and said if you pardon Nixon,
he'll resign, you get the presidency. And I'm sitting there and
I'm saying, holy shit. >> [LAUGH]
>> There was a deal. And I said, so, you made a deal? And he said, no, I rejected that deal. I knew I was gonna become President,
anyway, Nixon was finished. I was being offered a deal of something, you give me a million dollars and
I'll give you that bottle of water. >> [LAUGH]
>> Well, you can have it anyway. And the way he looked at it and
I think, properly, Nixon was finished. And I said, but you did pardon Nixon, why? And he said, now this is the question. And then this is why our business is
great to be in at certain moments, cuz hr said, let me take you to
what was going through my head. It's all about Nixon. I had this offer from Haigh,
which I'd rejected. But the economy was in trouble,
the Cold War was still going on. I had a letter from the Watergate
prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, saying that Nixon was gonna be
investigated because of the quality of evidence,
criminal evidence against him. He would be indicted,
tried, likely go to jail. So he said we'd have two
more years of Watergate. And he said in this plaintive voice I'll
never forget, I needed my own presidency. The country needed a new president, not a rehash of Nixon in Watergate. So I preempted, and pardoned him. That was the only way to get
out of the ditch we were in. And so I wrote in the book that instead of
this being corrupt, it was quite gutsy. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of
John F Kennedy, called me up and said she and her uncle Teddy Kennedy
read this in the book and agreed. And she said we're giving the profiles and
courage award that we give each year at the Kennedy Library,
we're giving it to Gerald Ford. Not for his lifetime achievement award,
or being a politician, or for being president, but for
the single act of pardoning Nixon in the national interest,
not his own political interest. And of course her father's book,
the late John F Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage,
was about eight senators who self-sabotage their own political career for
the national interest. They gave that award to Ford. I did not go, but I watched it. And there was Gerald Ford,
somewhat vindicated. Teddy Kennedy getting up and saying,
you know at the time of the pardon in '74, I thought it was almost a criminal act,
but I was wrong. This was truly an act of courage
in the national interest. And I'm watching that and
what a cold shower, because I would have staked my life
in 1974 that this was corrupt. Then you look at it anew,
25 years later through a neutral lens and do the reporting and
what was I was sure was corruption turns out to be the precise
opposite of courage. How humbling,
how humiliating to be so wrong. Now, you cannot have that
experience as a reporter and not think,
we're sure of some things now, or we're absolutely confident and
it may turn out that they're wrong. And so when I undertook the Trump book, it was to do the reporting now. Not 25 years from now and go back and say, this is the governing crisis. This is the nervous breakdown that I
didn't tell you about at the time. And so it builds your stamina for doing the reporting. And at the same time, withholding
judgment when you have not done the work. When you have not sat for
the 820 pages of transcript with somebody who was there who has notes
and documents and cross checked it. And so you are in a state of, what's true? What's real? What's verified? And what does it mean? And we just don't know,
unless we do the reporting. >> I can't think of a better way
to bring this evening to an end. I just wanna thank you so
much for your generosity. >> [APPLAUSE]
>> For more, please visit us at stanford.edu.
