Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee at the Nixon Library, part II

you've had a few years to think about this one in retrospect what role do you think Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward Washington Post conversation played in the outcome of what role did you play what happened is you know you because of your what you've done in your Watergate exhibit you know is a professional historian the importance of phrenology you know if you you've got to understand this happened before this before him happens before that and I think what were there was real impact was with two subscribers of the Washington Post the first was judge Sarika who was trying the Watergate burglars and in his courtroom they had the Watergate burglars and Howard Hawks operational commanders and they presented the prosecutors presented the case same word Liddy's the mastermind no higher-ups are involved in judge syringa is reading in The Washington Post quite regularly that higher-ups are involved and I talked to him many years later about this and he said when he saw them he then cranked up his questioning of the burglars and in fact he's the threatened 25-year sentences if they didn't start cooperating and they eventually McCourt broke and you know wrote his famous letter saying that was burglary and higher-ups were involved but the impact on sirico was immense the second important subscribers of the Washington Post was Senator Sam Ervin who called it in member samer and Ervin called me and said come see me this is in January 73 also I think after the Katherine Graham lunch and he said we're going to think about investigating water we've read I've read your stories the implications are incredible and we have an obligation as a Senate to launch an inquiry who are your sources and I said you know we're just we can't name our sources even to you and he said I understand them but we're gonna go ahead and I hope we can get to the bottom of the involvement of the deputies committee campaign manager Jeff Rubin through the line there of course they launched that investigation one of the anomalies is it was voted 77 to zero by the Senate many Republicans signing on for this investigation and it was the gold standard of investigations they got testimony from everyone they discovered the tapes which were crucial traveling what really happened in Watergate so the the causal connection there people say make extravagant claims about the press or the post bringing down the president it's just not true what happened is the agencies of government dissented eventually the House of Representatives Pietschmann inquiry the Justice Department realized they couldn't do this normal channels they have a special prosecutor and there were problems but it was that's agencies of government that then launched an inquiry into this and took the kind of testimony and so forth that a step is what really hit before we go to questions tell us what you remember of August 9 1974 the day that President Nixon resigned if you know what it takes to a simple of paper you probably don't know what it takes to disassemble the paper which we had to do that night we did some rinky-dink feature story because it wasn't clear whether he was going to resign or not yes back and forth and the night before August night he did go on television and announced that he was going to resign but I did we had some good sausage who's you can say and like very gold well that was our secret sauce nobody felt that Barry Goldwater would have a friend of the Washington Post too much information and he was saying I think that last week he told you look Nixon's going to resign but don't say so in the Washington Post because that will cause him to stay you know that question it was in the real East Room where Nixon called together his friends and captains in your staff and it was a speech without notes it was Nixon unscripted and he talked about his mother and his father it was a very emotional you know I mean it's a it's it's Nixon draw but there is a moment in that speech which i think is so important to the Nixon presidency and the legacy of Nixon and that is at the end near the end he waved his hands this is where I why I called you and he said always remember others may think but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself now think about the brilliance no seriously of that statement he identified hey is the poison that drove too much of water gave too much of the mentality in his White House and to his credit at that day that moment he's giving up the presidency which he had fought all of his life for he is that hatch intellectually enough to realize what had happened that the Haiti had yes an impact on the he hated and what occurred and investigations president Leonard Martin came to the same we'd like to take questions and Megan and samaya will come to you in the White House when I was in the Navy through one of the jobs and or more who I was working for gave me is to be a courier to take documents over to the White House this was in my last year in the Navy of 1969 1970 and I went outside the Situation Room and I'm supposed to deliver him to somebody by name and so I had to wait and there was a guy sitting next to me and it turned out he had to wait about an hour and as I said in one of the books it's like we were two passengers seated next to each other on a long plane and so I introduced myself and he reluctantly introduced himself and he was number three in the FBI at that point I believe and we had a lot of time to talk and I was trying to figure out what to do with my life and I got his phone number and kept in touch with him and then the accident was first in my reporting career when Arthur Bremer shot George Wallace yeah before water king mark felt was an assistant assisted me that work that I did and then when Watergate came he was right in the catbird seat I'm going to take a question from the theater how differently do you think Watergate would have played out with today's instant blog media and 24/7 news coverage I don't think a newspaper can hold the story as long as the post did without without surrendering it to television and to other stories we really held we ran it was August yeah I mean we were we would run drafts of stories and you would ask questions and it would be days or weeks before we would run stories sometimes you of course could not do that now but we wanted I mean it was plain to see that we were dealing with something modestly was the earth to shake and the compulsion to be right was is born into it John wasn't it but if you have the internet and blogs and so forth a lot of young journalists have asked about this and said well you just go to the Internet and find out the point is this information was not on the Internet even though it didn't exist and at an equivalence story now in 2011 would not be on the internet that you need human sources people who were there we're gonna say this one is what it occurred and this is what it means for the human it is absolutely critical in people who were journalists now who spend all day at the computer and on those screens are missing well in a related question with newspapers becoming obsolete I didn't write this today what advice would you give a high school student thinking of pursuing a career in journalist go get a job small paper but work is just so essential I mean really I think it never stops working I don't think there was a period when I went to the office every day I generally say to reporters first of all it's the best job in the world if somebody came from Mars and spent a year on this planet went back and was asked who had or the people who have the best job in America they say the journalists why because you get to make momentary entries into people's lives when they're interesting and then you get home and all the lawyers and all the doctors you have doctors who may spend days seeing only routine cases the routine Brantley needed the routine that's boring find out something that we don't know something that's interesting so you're always on you go into the newsroom in the morning and there's that electricity still of what's in what don't we know why does why did somebody say this or do that fix your life now whose life do you think a story it would be possible in today's newsroom and what's the question have it would it be possible in today's news room to do a story like this I think absolutely and you that we haven't been doesn't care for this point but I'm gonna make it anyway what are the sayings that the post was all good work is done in defiance of mayonnaise go ahead give me the finger it's from the heart that's pretty hard but it doesn't mean you break the rules or you break the law I mean go read all the President's Men or see the movie about it you know there's Bernstein a living walking defiance of Management and it is an aggressiveness in the securio city he is immediately Carl taught me what been taught so many of us up out you just don't sit by and member once there was somebody we wanted to talk to and this somebody was getting in the cab going to New York with a bunch of other people if Carl just go through the window in between it said it calmly listen I'm at the airport I don't have any money but I have to go have dinner with these people and you know so it's not a defiance it is and you know you're the look you're the master of this you let give people a lot of string go out find out what's going you're not going to find out what's going on sitting in your office or going out for lunch occasionally you can get a whiff of what's going on but the real hard stuff you're not getting to so you need to be in that position of my judgment our judgement is this is a story we're going to do this and then you need editors and owners who say okay go to it we're gonna know look where was the risk in Watergate to Katharine Graham and Bradley they were established figures Carl if this is turned out not to be provable he could have gone to Rolling Stone and viñarock pretty I could have done something this case for like go to law school so we were young you know there's a risk on our personal level but their risk was institutional and you have to be willing to take the Institute's know risk if you're not then you you know is you always said about the paper then you don't come out it's the daily miracle the daily you never go always one is if well all of the Scalia's and original lists and the believers in what they call starting decisis because it's already been decided when I hope say it's already been decided and let the Pentagon Papers brilliant stand that's a vital ruling to the democracy in this country I really think that the biggest problem we have in this country is secret government whoever said democracy's die in darkness I think that's true and if you have a group of people who get the power and say you know we we now have the ball and we can use the government to our political will and no one's watching there's no accountability system we're in trouble one of the one of the outcomes of Watergate that you all can benefit from in this library is access to information about your government and that's one of the legacies and it's good strengthen and gladden the heart of citizens that they know they can get information about their government that perhaps the government would rather than not I still work a marine and I do spend most of my time doing books the last book Obama's Wars about what there are tens of thousands of words from top secret meetings and discussions in the Oval Office and and private decision moments for the president in that book and it's not something somebody handed out to me it's the it's the process of going around I some years ago saw all the President's Men movie again and I hadn't seen it for about 25 years and I realized all the good work or most of the good work is done at night you get the crew that night and lies during that day and and and I did four books on Bush and when I was working on the fourth one I'm going to tell quickly this story there was a general who would not talk to me and emails phone calls intermediaries radio silence and I really needed him so I found out where he lived and the ideal time to make an unannounced unscheduled visit for an interview with the general is 815 because they haven't gone to bed the dinner and so I knocked on the door at E or opens the door I'll quote him directly said you are you still doing this and now this I wanted to kind of say well I don't really like your characterization of my work but I just cosign and he looked at me and literally just kind of come on day and I left three hours later with the answers to the questions from somebody who supposedly would never talk if you have some there are some journalism students here but let me just say something about investigative reporting oh all reporting is investigative the second question you asked you're investigating somebody tells you gives you an answer and if that doesn't satisfy your dig deeper dig deeper so so I think you wanted 100 we all understand and government servants should learn to expect that all reporting is going to turn investigate Oh Fabio you're one of the most celebrated interviewers and you've interviewed most everyone who matters what tips would you give aspiring journalists about conducting successful well we talked about the internet cable news the driving forces in patience in speed slow and patient and I think the key to interviewing people is do your homework don't just google them find out if somebody I'm going to interview somebody in the Pentagon or the State Department or the White House and they wrote an article in foreign affairs or one of your thank you I'll get it and read the damn thing it's always and then ask them about it in the interview and they'll say well I thought only my mother read that it's not a ruse you have to I think the key description is you have to take people as seriously as they take themselves and people in these jobs take themselves very serious in fact I think most people take themselves seriously and if you meet them on the terms of I really want to know what you did and what you think and I'm not number I'll stay for three hours or five hours or whatever is necessary you can make inroads and there is something about people in this country most of them even we found in Watergate people who had done committed in illegal hands who kind of believed in the First Amendment were willing to talk sometimes extensively and sometimes in more limited ways but there is this community of interest that everyone has know what's going on because I don't really know I think what was right in the thing probably was did I tell a story about the part that they that Ford went on television about 30 days after he'd assumed the presidency went early on a Sunday morning hope to announce the part and hoping no one would notice it was noticed and but not by me I was asleep and Carl Bernstein called me up and woke me up now Carl who has the ability to say would occurred in the fewest words with the most drama said the son-of-a-bitch pardon the son of a I just quoted and quite honestly I thought in Carlisle thought and I think and I know van thought for a long time that there's something dirty about the pardon of evidence and an aroma of the deal there was a question of justice why does Nixon get off and why do 40 people go to jail and really dozens more of their lives wreck and 25 years later I decided to take the Bradley method and neutral inquiry what happened I could and I did this book called shadow about the legacy of Watergate in the presidencies for through Clinton at that time and I called Gerald Ford on it is to talk to about the part of the figurine you know that you say I'm sorry I've got a golf tournament but he said no come on he was in New York that day and so I interviewed him for hours there then in Colorado where he had all four hours in Rancho Mirage California were primary residence what had the time again and this is the luxury this is Bradley's gift time to read all the memoirs interview everyone who was alive do a draft of what I thought occurred go back to everyone go back to Ford again go look at the contemporaneous coverage and simply put Ford convinced me frankly he said well I did not pardon Nixon for Nixon or for myself I pardoned Nixon for the country we had to move beyond Watergate if Nixon was trot investigated further tried indicted convicted sent to jail two or three more years of Watergate he said look at the world I was living this Gerald Ford talking Cold War serious problems with the Russians serious problems with the economy said I had to preempt the process to get Nixon off the front page and out of people's lives into history and I looked at all of this example in in shadow road that I thought actually Ford's decision was a very gutsy one Caroline Kennedy the daughter of JFK your longtime acquaintance in friend the deceased president Caroline Kennedy called him said Teddy Kennedy and I read what you wrote in shadow and we think that's right we think and we're gonna give Gerald Ford the profiles in courage of one so there at the Kennedy Library months later is Teddy Kennedy who at the time of the pardon in September 1974 it called it almost a criminal act saying something human beings politicians hate to say I was wrong this was an active current in the tradition of a leader going against the grain in realizing what is in the larger that national interest in the high purpose of the Office of the President to serve the people and not himself and not the former President Nixon and I remember seeing that and so sobering for somebody in my business to think something is this way and then you subjected to new flow through me it's totally yes no have you ever feared for your life the first time bunch of Japanese planes when I didn't embarrass myself with that saying that after the Navy everything's easier if you it's quite true but happily I mean we told about how mark felt kind of warmed lives could be in danger I think I dropped it was more my paranoia but no one did try to kill reporters they do abroad all of the time and we should thank what is it 40 of 40 over 50 a year yeah mostly yeah it is it is a giant problem it is thank you no thank God not here and we the first amendment operates now there was a White House scheme when Nixon was president as it kills to to try to assassinate Jackie Anderson the columnist at Hunt Liddy concocted yeah that was in call since crowd yeah well that was fun Liddy and you know they we ran the story I know but even they couldn't figure out how to do it well it brought me to this real minor well you you know it's this somebody once the five said take your work seriously but not yourself seriously and I think that there's some truth in that and you know what when you go through your watergate exhibit which we've done a little I'm going to do it's factual is this happened and I've often said this and I bought you this but at each point in that chronology of Richard Nixon that had one strong lawyer or a who've gone in and said mr. president not this crap off you can't do this you're President of the United States you can't think in half like this if my if stopped now on the other hand there was so much there was such a mentality and that broken that maybe it was unstoppable and maybe the person who might say that would never be allowed in the Oval Office to to communicate that message but I think always that you in water gave a new chronology and your exhibit shows this you can go in and if one thing didn't happen everything after at least in terms of it being disclosed disclosure hangs on the most fragile thinnest of threads and somebody cut like that so I'm repeatedly find myself withholding judgment like the fourth case you think it's one way it turns out to be the other way he'd take the George Bush's Iraq war a big giant deal how is history is Bush once how is this judge Iraq war after talking to him for hours about how and why is that he's standing in the Oval Office city as his hands in his pockets and you know I'm thinking I'm finally going to get this Sisto be out of here how do you think history will judge Schuller rock board he takes the frogs and says history we won't know will all be comforting thought look look now he's ducking the question but we don't that makes the question in your work on presidents have you changed your mind about a president over the course of investigating and writing about that well certainly forward I mean I was through a real sea change there and it's I think it's much easier and this just is in my nature to try to ask questions and find out what happened rather than that Jack yes is about whether Ford knew or suspected that he'd lost the Jimmy Carter in 76 because of the pardon yes but we don't know because there was a part it was it was part of Jimmy Carter's effort to you know Enoch said talked about the Nixon Ford administration and so forth I think quite successfully and I just read something about how American opinion had changed about it and now there was there was a sizable 70% plus majority that approved of the pardon yeah yes I think that's right WikiLeaks with WikiLeaks yes that's right but now I'm going to pretend I am they are it's important that their mid-level classified documents secret only and it's what you know the Ambassador met with the head of state in the country and what the Ambassador things those documents rarely get to the White House and don't have much standing in terms of the decision-making by the president where it's incredible in the Obama White House the Bush White House how much is controlled by the White House it's the White House centric operation so people who make claims that WikiLeaks are the sort of documents that tell you how the big decisions are made in government exaggerating that is not the case but at the same time it's useful information of the initial idea of just the wholesale publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents without I mean you'd never do it you'd say read them depta are we going to tell somebody about secret operations and get people killed unnecessarily you were always embedding about that and I think WikiLeaks is kind of being more careful now but in WikiLeaks probably won't go down in the history books the Pentagon Papers do okay what were they after when they broke into the Watergate - did the president have a hit list and three what role did labor unions play in all of the above no Doubt's of labor unions I don't have a clue what they thought they were gonna get I think it would the testimony of the burglars and other know as you well know is that they were it was a general fishing expedition to get dirt on the enemy don't you think that's the best they all testified to different they all testified to wanting something different it all becomes under the dirt yes find something that we could will give us leverage Gibbs yeah imagine the decision to go ahead we have the job a settlement did I ever suffer you know suffer a letdown after Watergate and so forth let me tell you the story about how powered Simon's who was fenced deputy this was after Nixon resigned it was about lunchtime one day in the newsroom all these Ben's office and Howard Sanders office that these big glass panes so everyone I don't was that transparency or us yeah so what people could see the was meeting with the bosses and Howard Simons just came to his bicycle indefinitely so I came in and he had an obit page open from the New York Times and he said see that that's you and I said I looked at it and said John Jones you know 72 died one Pulitzer Prize in 1941 that's me said yeah that's you see that guy 1941 it's now 1974 ever hear of anything he did since 1941 and I said he didn't like you there no no he but then he said he said I think you like this business and there was a time when I had both I don't know how many of you remember Robert Penn Warren but I witnessed this heap he wrote you know all the king's men and some wonderful poetry upwards and I was at an event where he was being interviewed and and this very smart professor named Harold Bloom was the great Elizabethan scholar turned him and said Penn Warren I was convinced that you had reached in gentleman's 15 years ago and could not write again once say you and Warren he said I'm so happy I think that's the response to people that yeah well you did so well at a young age but so sad and it's all over with now and there were 11 bestsellers after that and you still write them another question right over there what was your reception remember the frost interview simplicity yeah yeah I remember he they were pretty good as I yeah they were at one point Frost and Nixon about Pearl in myself and and Nixon says oh yeah there they work for the Washington Post and then some liberal newspapers and you know politics in Washington that's the way it is and then he said what they write is trash and they are friends so put aside I was sufficiently disturbed to call my mother like that and I said did you see Nixon said yes and I said you see pretty sharp things he said about Carl Bernstein and my associate yes you know that's Washington that's politic and what one of the thing and Nixon had said was that we worked for the Washington Post a liberal newspaper she said it's Washington it's politics what's this about being a liberal do you think do you think Nixon was a good president I think he was turned out he was a terrible president but I think after Watergate I mean is his presidency was so you know young man how old are you you needed you have a job in journalism that's a great that's a great question and you know this is the judgment question what we know factually particularly from Ed Hayes I mean there is so much of Nixon on that tapes and there is the anger and there is the rage and there is the regular ordering of the illegal and abusive activity and it's there you can go hear it you could go hear it on more tapes I brought some examples of we you don't need to hear more about Nixon tapes but the by problem with what happened during that presidency and I agree with Ben some very important accomplishments are included but what happened in the president seen you listened to the tapes and it's always about Nixon it's so often using the power of the presidency to settle the score with somebody let's screw soon so let's put them on the tax audit list let's put them let's get them I mean they got the Secret Service to bug the telephone they Nixon got the Secret Service to poke the telephone of his renegade brother The Secret Service is supposed to be a protective agency and when you the dog that never barked on the tapes and I have not heard them all or looked at all that transcripts you don't hear the President or is a saying what would be good for the country what does the country need what's the next stage of good for a majority of people the country and so in a sense maybe the tragic part of the Nixon presidency is its smallness that he did not reach many levels that sense of goodwill people feel whether the Republicans are Democrats for a president quite I've seen it for decades that there was this this anger and this insecurity and as a result the office got diminished because they were talking about so many small things when they should have been talking about larger things I didn't hear the question yeah well the Dean was the White House Counsel who was the one who blew the whistle on Nixon early and testified in the Ervin committee and said there were all these conversations well he doesn't I mean nobody likes a whistleblower and he was not you know he paid the price this is you say was the world whistleblower he was the the snitch he was it turned out what his testimony said was was with them with the detail that actually was quite remarkable and he did not know that there was a taping system he is somebody that the Nixon people hold in the highest disregard I spoke at the Nixon Center a number of months ago and they invited me to speak there and all the old Nixon hands were there and so forth and Dimitri Sims who wrote The Times who runs the senator Thoreau said the only person we will not invite here is John Dean question back there the last question what's in the Watergate papers at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas is the how we did it and you can see the trail and in one interview somebody says something and then the next day one of us is going to somebody else and making phone calls and putting the pieces of the puzzle together and there it is a pretty large archive under the terms of our contract with the University of Texas we retain the files of people who are still alive and as people die we send the files down and later this week we are going down there to do some symposiums with academics and with Robert Redford who did the movie all the president's men we're taking a bunch of files of people who passed away and there's one in particular I can't say until later the week people are gonna be really surprised to the extent this person helped us on the second book we did on the final days and it will show how people at the very top of the Nixon administration felt disappointed felt a sense of inevitability that because of what went on he was gonna have to leave office and some people felt this sense of inevitability very early late 72 early 73 you know more than a year year and a half before the resignation so it's it's a kind of how to rather than what happened and then you see people's real language and exactly how we undertook our important than any concluding thoughts things the stories I don't write editorials so I tell you I'm very impressed by all that you're all still I don't think there's another historical forty years yet almost yeah almost forty years here I think that's fabulous it was an interesting straight is an interesting story Bob in conclusion tell us a little bit of you you've been thinking and this question came from me the theater you've been thinking about Watergate lately you've come up with a new formulation to understand well let me make it very quick did you Watergate or the mentality that drove which was Nixon and people around him the series of wars in the first war was in when Nixon took office he inherited the Vietnam War he did not like the anti-vietnam the protests and the people who were opposed to the war and it was mounting movement and so he declared war against the anti-war movement and there was you know the usual techniques of following and wiretap and so forth and then it turned out the press was in this second war reporting extensively of the Vietnam War in the anti-vietnam war movement and so they tapped a telephone 17 reporters and White House aides then in 1972 the in what they did Ellsberg burglary during that period because it was kind of the fury at the press which is publishing the Pentagon Papers and in the third war Nixon's running for reelection and the apparatus that had done the Ellsberg burglary and a lot of the secret work was just directed at the Democrats because the Democrats were a threat to Nixon stayin in office and to the Vietnam War then water hated her then there was the burglary was the fourth or which was the war on justice which is the orchestrated well-funded cover-up the denial of what had occurred and the fifth war was after Nixon left office in 74 for the 20 years of his life to a certain extent he conducted a war against history to try to minimize Watergate to say it was a blimp and avoid confronting what is in his own words and you know dozens of hours of tapes and to a certain extent the 6th war was fought here at the Nixon Library where the question was how are you going to deal with water you and as a journalist who tries to undertake neutral inquiry let's find out what happened let's find out what the facts are I think in that sixth war damn you and the professional historians and archivists have said we have to deal with the reality and that sixth war is the Watergate display out there which tells the history but it tells it in its complexity and it's not linear it's not always clear and there are lots of people saying well but wait this means that including Nixon and so forth but by and large with what I think history and I think it's kind of it's permanently there because of that age and because of that display in what's here in the line and people are going to find things that sickened them and people are going to find things that they stand up and say because there were moments in Nixon's presidency when he rose to the occasion particularly in foreign affairs where he had a vision with China in the Soviet Union which was historic and as we go through the time when you're gone when we're all gone when all of us are on this Bush says it's free we won't thank you say football and please sign up for our mailing list and come back to the Nixon Library and visit us again thank you for coming tonight and thank you both

Channel: Richard Nixon Presidential Library

Views: 9,899

Rating: 4.6734695 out of 5

Keywords: Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, Richard Nixon, Nixon Presidential Library, All the Presidents Men, Government

Id: Y4gJU-NxiqE

Length: 65min 35sec (3935 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 26 2011