And we are now 15yearsold and the founders and staff deserve a lot of credit. [applause] into the vibrant Community Institution that it is today we are delighted to be hosting. [applause] they reveal that the abuse and the book she said as the riveting account of how they developed their blockbuster story and its consequences in the movement. As they note in their process that broke in october of 2017 it was as if a wall had come down. Many women not just in this country but around the world stepped forward to tell their own stories about mistreatment. In addition to the impact of the reporting, the way they went about confirming the stories that others before them have tried, provides a terrific case study of what goes into the first investigative journalism. People often think such just fall into the laps of reporters when in reality what is involved in is a lot of painstaking reporting running into dead ends, coaxing details out of reluctant sources, spanning out documents, substantiating information, dealing with skeptical impatient editors all while enduring often intense efforts by the subjects of the investigation to thwart and even sometimes to threaten. The example set and the affect this kind of reporting can have stands as a powerful counterargument to the skepticism about and denigration of the news media today. They brought years of experience and jody who joined the times 15 years ago spent a while at a local reporter and wrote a book about barack and Michelle Obama that came out in 2012 and recently the reporting has focused on the workplace particularly the treatment of women. Megan has concentrated much of her attention on the treatment of women and children 2014 as a reporter she was a finalist for the pulitzer for exposing an underground network where parents gave away adopted children they no longer wanted to strangers met on the internet. The work led to the pulitzer last year. [applause] the review in the New York Times remarked that the book is a bit like a feminist all the president s men, so it is particularly fitting that they will be in conversation here with bob woodward. [applause] bob has been observing and reporting major developments for nearly half a century. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes for the watergate scandal and the coverage of the 9 11 terrorist attacks but the surprises alone hardly begin to reflect the enormous journalistic legacy. Fear is a devastating look inside of the presidency that came out last year and it was the 19th book all have been National Best sellers and i wouldnt bet against another one coming out in the nottoodistant future. Please join me in welcoming. [applause] thank you. Its great to be here. Lets get right to it. First of all, this book is a masterpiece. [applause] people who are not journalists should read it because its about how you sort out information and decide to publish. I love it and i have my copy here so the first question is what was the origin of the collaboration between you two . We would like to start by thanking everybody. This is the launch of our book tour and we are so thrilled to be here tonight and also grateful weve got some sources in the audience tonight so we want to thank them for being here also. [applause] i think when it comes to the question and answer period there are people if they want to get up and identify themselves. That is a good question though. The truth is that in 2017, the New York Times more broadly decided that it wanted to dive into the reporting on Sexual Harassment, so the investigation was one of many that started the year and we were moved by the work of our colleagues. They had broken the bill oreilly story and showed how they paid out millions of dollars to silence women. Lets pretend its a movie. Is this in the newsroom of the New York Times, did you know each other . Megan was very new at the paper and i saw this woman in like 2016 for i could tell this pretty formidable because she was giving these difficult stories and also i saw her belly going like this as the stories got more difficult like this is what was happening to her body. I had two kids at the time and i knew what she was doing wasnt easy but we didnt know each other well. We only met a couple of times. She was actually on Maternity Leave in the spring when i started working on the weinstein story it was a part of the answer to this question but the editors asked are there other powerful men in American Life who have perhaps abused women and covered it up and i was trying to get people on the phone and engage them. Getting their phone numbers was like an investigation unto itself and then theres the question of once you have them on the phone what do you do to earn trust. Sometimes just in the first 45 seconds, you know so i called for advice and she was in full on Maternity Leave like she just put the baby down for a nap and was telling me about some of the reporting she had done on allegations against donald trump and she was saying the arguments she often made for them was luck, i cant change what happened to you in the past but together if we were arm in arm we may be able to take your pain and put it in a constructive purpose. This is the standard outreach line that you use in the. This is the first conversation that we had while i was on Maternity Leave. I had started my career first in wisconsin than in chicago and its something that i found. What reason does a woman have to open up. When did you know you were a team or even more important when did the editors . Its funny because when my editor called and told me to call meg and i didnt think that much of that now i have realized she understands the newsroom and i understand so you were kind of tricked into it. When she said that line on the phone, something in me changed and i didnt want to get off the phone with her i wanted us to have sources. She still had another couple of weeks and had a choice in terms of what she was going to cover when she came back. So we go back and join the investigation and i had to take the day to think about it. I have been covering trumped up until having this baby and i watched for four months as i saw the hardhitting investigative work land and not have an impact so this was the question whether or not you you want to write stories that will have an impact. Lots of people havent heard of them. You made him famous. I barely knew who he was and i had out. When jodie started to tell me about some of the allegations that she heard, i had a hard time seeing them as victims and to really comprehend as investigative journalists looking to give a voice to the voiceless. I had a har have a hard time wry head around hollywood in fact this has happened to these women allegedly suggests nobody is immune and if we can crack the story we might be able to help make a difference. When was the first real breakthrough . In your book you got the chronology and so many characters and so forth. What is the moment when you said this is something that has legs as we say in the News Business. Three actresses, rose mcgowan, ashley judd, Gwyneth Paltrow not in communication with one another, barely knew each other told us these terrible stories. And at this point they were not on the record. So far off the record. That is what is in a positioa position because it created this because on the one hand there is while these are highvalue forces and their stories are very convincing and other stories matchethe storiesmatch , none of them are ready to go on the record so what do we do. What did you do . We basically realized that it was going to have to be broken with evidence and not just with we sort of had a theory that maybe we could persuade actresses to hold hands and thrust together and have safety in numbers but together because we couldnt tell them who else we were talking to it was hard to get them to do that and then also if we did that it may have still created like a traditional he said she said dynamic where the story would have sparked a debate so into making this different because that is your goal. We realized right away we were going to need records and evidence and that went beyond these accounts we were hearing and so this is one of the ways in which we also turned to emily steel and the bill oreilly story. They have done something remarkable they are. There. They basically helped teach us how to track down these secret settlements. So the key here is a settlement, or some sort of an agreement to be silent. Right. There were women who were reluctant to tell their experiences. There were also women at least eight for legally prohibited from telling us what happened because weinstein forced secret settlements on them. It happened just not in the case of weinstein that Sexual Harassment and assaults across the country women are often told that their best option in these cases is to basically accept money in exchange for silence. What do you think of that because it it seems your big breakthrough is rose mcgowan when she had 100,000 settlement that was concrete. Weinstein or the company had paid her, right . We were basically able in the course of our reporting to show that we were able to trace the financial trail of payoff that have been made. Is it a secret settlements that have been used to basically hide the truth to allow people like weinstein to cover his tracks we realized if we could basically unearth just the fact that the settlements had been paid over the years that would be evidence into itself and so we were actually able to track down settlements that had stretched from 1990 to 2015 and there were a variety of ways in which we were able to document. Shes just one of many. You have him on the wonderful lines in the book you say knowing about documents is good. Having seen documents is excellent but actually having copies is a celebration. Now, when was the first time you actually got worse all documents that showed women had been paid off to be quiet . So, i go to london that summer to meet with a former assistant who had a settlement. Megan is basically an og texting me like you are going to see the papers. So shes the coach. Even in the scenes in the book where its really one of us doing something, we are both there because we are preparing before hand and a strategizing etc. And so when i laid eyes on these papers, the clauses were so shocking. They went beyond a kind of standard settlement agreement. These young women were in this case legally overpowered and essentially prohibited from talking about their own Life Experiences if they wanted to tell a therapist, they needed special permission. If they wanted to talk to an accountant he needed special permission. One of these women couldnt tell her future husband about what had happened to her. They were not even allowed to retain copies of the settlement papers that they sort of cleverly couched them together. But imagine being told that you have to abide by an agreement, but yothat you cannot even haver own copy of. How do you break that . You know, from the beginning, she was thinking of just breaking her settlement which is a courageous thing to do because it would have exposed her to the potential legal and financial liability and i thought i couldnt push her into that because it was such a big risk and remember we act now like it was kind of inevitable, but it was not ordained at all that any of this played out the way that it did. We thought we might be publishing a really controversial story and then our sources might be vulnerable to a lot of attack so what we basically said his look, even if you cant go on the record, there are so many other people who know about the settlement and so many people that miramax who know you disappeared into that youve got money. There are lawyers and lots of people we can talk to. What if we just write about this in the document everything we can not happened and you dont go on the record and that is what she agreed to. Did you ever use the argument if you are silent you are enabling this . I think the truth is that for women that have experienced sexualharassment and a salt they have already undergone so much pain in their lives that we are not trying to show we dont want to bully anybody into doing anything into sort of coming forward, that isnt an effective strategy and we dont think that is the right thing to do and its worth noting that there are women that have [applause] there are women that have entered the settlement but still have not gone on the record and are still terrified. Its one thing to be asking a source to speak about something painful from their past and another thing to ask them to break something in which a legally binding document in which weinstein can come after them for money. But dont you think that they are liberated for the protection of the he is preparing to go on trial for criminal charges, so hes got much i think hes paying attention to other issues right now. He is being sued now for the financial compensation said he hasnt gone after anybody, but i think that you say that there are 80 women that have charges against weinstein. How many of those are public now and how many of them are off the record for the next volume . I believe that is the public count. There are other women including a few that we write about in the book that havent come forward. But the key thing to remember especially as the trial comes up is that the accusations very. Some are accusations of rape and assault in the purview of the criminal Justice System but a lot of them are charges of Sexual Harassment and it is a civil violation of the sort of restitution for that is a lawsuit you can sue for that you cant have somebody arrested. So that is part of the question of whether weinstein will eventually face any accountability at all is so fraught because the criminal trial is a big question and the sort of combines lawsuit of the women is also still a big question. This is important. You are experts on interviewing and going down and really explaining peoples experiences. In all of your work did yo thatu find any women that actually made up allegations . In the course of our reporting we have not come across any fabricated allegations, but what i can tell you as you know auerbach actually starts with reporting that i did in 2016 and many women that came forward with allegations against him so while we havent come across fabricated allegations, we also include in the book some of those instances in which we didnt report allegations because not because we didnt believe the person, but because we havent been able to obtain corroboration. There was one woman, a former beauty pageant contestant who told me a story about being sexually harassed and growth by donald trump when she was in the ms. Universe pageant and she had provided some potential corroboration that didnt materialize. It didnt mean i didnt believe her but we got to painstaking details to describe all of the Due Diligence that we do to move forward with publishing a story like this. Talk about rebecca who was your roll up the sleeves editor because theres a marvelous scene in the book where she takes you to a quiet bar as you describe it. To tell utell us what she said. This is in the summer of 2017 we have been reporting for weeks and weeks that we know so many things and weve spoken to several actresses with convincing accounts and we have done some of the corroboration. We knew about a whole bunch of settlements and at that point we also talked to miramax employees who said its a terrible problem. I had some knowledge of it at the time. We are feeling nervous and we are feeling tell what she had to say. We are nervous because we have a feeling of responsibility and we want to know if we can land of the story and she listens to everything that we have and it says is any of it on the record and he said no and she said you do not have a publishable story. How did you feel . We felt pretty devastatin de. It was one of the more memorable moments that we worked so hard on. There was a lot of drama in the pages of the articles that came out, but there was also so much that played out behind the scenes in so we were grateful to finally be able to show the reader is what its like not just working with sources but also in the newsroom when your editor is telling you so, whats the strategy for getting out of the whole because shes saying not publishable and as we all know in the News Business thats what counts. Thats the job so how do you navigate our . We kept calling Company Employees and we finally call this guy and figure talk about him because he was very important. One thing you never know in journalism is who is going to end up helping and who isnt and its almost always impossible to predict that the outside of the story. And the people that helped expose the truth and half the people that helped conceal it and this is the sort of surprising hero figure. Hes essentially been the company accounted for 30 years. Hes done the books im always famous movies weve seen. He is a relatively unassuming guy. Hes a shortcoming in his late 50s, has kind of an accent and has been described to me as kind of just a rough loyalist someone unlikely to help that finally someone said to me he hates Harvey Weinstein. [applause] and that was our opening. [laughter] so i called this guy but then doesnt also make you nervous . That somebody [applause] heres what i wahere is what i t i was worried he could be a spy. As you know to get information, you have to give usually at least a little bit of information in terms of what you are writing about and i worried that it was a setup. We now know a lot about what he was doing to try to stop the story but at this point, we are kind of imagining it and one of the things he could have done if he could have positioned the Company Insider to sort of play ace words but actually be a spy or even worse give us fake information and a stor in the sh would have been the most devastating thing of all. So, he gets off the phone quickly to give me the email address and we start corresponding. Even just the fact that he is fighting back its advance and he said he was going to take the weekend to decide. So this wasnt in the book but we kept emailing and since we are in a synagogue maybe i should say hes the child of Holocaust Survivors and im the grandchild of Holocaust Survivors and it turns out we grew up at the same places and our families even spend summers in sort of the same bungalow colonies where Holocaust Survivors who didnt really have any money spent their summers. What you did is knock on the door strategy without an appointment. So to answer your question , i started to ask all these things that happened in the nineties he was specific with a little bit of information but not that much so why arent you asking me about these recent offenses . And it turns out that unbeknownst on the tiny part of this but within two years in 2014 or 2015 there was a series of problems that were more and more visible for the Company Leaders i didnt know it but i was talking that they were doing internally and failed because they felt they had already taken action and it hadnt come to fruition so talking to the press is a last resort but it was a very principled decision on their part. Okay. Because he has an appearance and three or four scenes in the boo book. We were so glad we had an opportunity to show what a True Team Effort this project was. And the editor of the times really basically said they had exchanges in the past and said this guy will come at you we didnt suspected be former israeli spies with our investigation. [laughter] but he was useful and had experience and was able to help us with some serious ground rules so we were very careful how we handled ourselves every step of the way but to make sure there were no conversations that were off the record. He also said. Until we were ready to go to him he said dont take me off record you go when you got the goods but that has to be in on the record conversation because if you go off the record and do i am the important man routine to share the real truth he will smear your sources and then be engaged in dirty business. So every conversation is secretly taped. Thats right. Did that bother you quick. With the New York Times we and our colleagues are working with secretive figures all the time so we were not surprised but it wasnt really useful to us so you really have to make sure the reporters and the editors because weinstein was trying to call the publisher at the New York Times said make his case known so they really didnt give him any opportunity to come in the back door to intimidate or bully us out of the story. Was there a disagreement quick. It wasnt even as much of a disagreement as a worry. Two months before we publishe published, megan finds out about the really irregular series of transactions that was involved in for years so i will tell you something about my partner when you get into something you dont really let go. [laughter] so very quickly there was a suggestion that turned out to be true that weinstein had properly improperly used a Charity Auction and the money they thought they were giving to aids was really going to help weinstein. So the disagreement that we had with that was interesting but on the other hand telling us the stories in the hotel room at this point in the weinstein investigation there are so many rumors coming at us and a lot of them turned out to be true Angelina Jolie has a story and you have to talk to selma hayek has a story you cannot nail it down so it felt way too big for only two reporters and making couldnt pull herself away from the aids charity so we thought we were under investigation with the Attorney Generals Office and they were trying to subvert the case. [laughter] [applause] so it worked out but megan did take time to do the aids story but a way to swear off of weinstein in person but the stuff that he says in the meeting was extremely surprising it was part of his playbook that was very successful reality he was getting people to march behind him when he wanted to do something. And megan really nailed what happened in the story because that was published so now we will hold you to account. And then we basically had to show our sources that we meant business and we would report the truth when we found it. But as you spend all this time on him, you have to ask the question which you really dont address in the book is why he behaved this way. I know youre not psychologists but share with us why because there are so many strange things that he does he comes to the New York Times and at one point he says to you you think that im bad, im worse its almost like he waves the red flag or there is a fatalism like you are going to catch me. Thats a good question we could try to get to the bottom. What we think is more important is the psychology of the people around him of the alleged misconduct and what were they thinking and how do they respond so what do you do and especially his partner Bob Weinstein was his only sibling who had been in business with them and had two companies for decades from the time he was alleged predatory behavior we came out that first story what does bob know and when did he know and finally he opened up to us with a series of interviews for this book and it is an interesting psychology. My reading he crossed a line that was the turning point so there is that long letter bob sent it is the parade of deplorable. What we found out in the interviews that he sent this letter two years before it goes public and said i was aware of allegations of Sexual Misconduct against my brother going back to the nineties and there is money to silence women but people chose to believe him when he said they were attempted shakedowns it was only extramarital activity im bad and i cheated on my wife but then with Bob Weinstein he had a rationale that he said his brother was a sex addict. So why. I will tell you what we know. This is how power works. [applause] that is what the evidence says. It is about sex. But its not so what i would say part of the way it is power it is work they were actresses they showed up sometimes on the first day of work there are so many women in this book that were harassed or assaulted the first day at work or when they first met weinstein they showed up with their ambitions and aspirations and their hopes and dreams for what you see again and again is that weinstein can turn them against them so whether these women will have a shot at achieving what they want to and whether those stories are bait and switch. But there is some type of sexual crime. One of the things that we realized is in 1990 when we could research and identify the weinstein investigation going to work there straight out of college and was sexually assaulted on the job and then silence through a settlement and when we could start to report out what happened we found that with the cfo of the company was aware of this. This was 1990 Harvey Weinstein said i have done something horrible i promise it wont happen again. It was remarkable for us to realize this isnt but time and again he was confronted with his behavior even 27 years before an investigation claim to have knowledge of what he had done was wrong and promises to chang change. Why. What drives him . Because then he goes too far. This is important to understand in your search for his behavior and if this was a compulsion obviously but why . If we had him here on sodium penta fall the truth serum, it may take a lot but what is this about for you . He will say power. But his power was as a movie producer and what you see in the story is the way he weaponize every day aspects of the workplace in pursuit i will say this gross but its important part that especially in the later years he would have female assistance procure supplies of penile erection drug like viagra but direct injected directly into the penis they tell stories having to keep supplies giving it to have more than once a day. This was a Prestigious Company making the movies that we all saw and what is remarkable to us it is contracts and assistance in pursuit of whatever they wanted. What is rosebud for Harvey Weinstein quick. Is it some weird foreplay i will just inject this. [laughter] i think its beyond the limits of our knowledge. Even as investigative reporters they are Big Questions we want to tackle in this book is not the psychology of weinstein who had engaged in this long pattern of predatory behavior even women who worked in his company but we wanted to tackle the questions of complexity how is that companies can be complicit and those who are enablers so those are the things we are all wrestling with now so how did one of the most prominent feminist attorneys in the country cross over to the other side to work with weinstein in 2016 and 2017 quick. I understand you dodging the question. But what is important is the behavior and the impact on these women. Time and time again. So tell me about the lawyers in this. Yes and lisa bloom i will pause on her for a second there were a variety of highpowered attorneys who came into his orbit to help him conceal and spin and lisa bloom we knew she had worked for weinstein we had her in the reporting toward the end she said she went to work for him she was only where he made inappropriate comments and wanted to help him apologize but in the course of reporting this work we have confidential records that shows she had much deeper knowledge of very serious allegations and played a much darker role in this memo people can read for themselves what this lawyer was saying and she felt all those underhanded tactics she would use against his accusers and it is a playbook with all that experience we also saw her billing records our by our that shows as those intelligence officials in working with one of another most prominent attorney in the country like gay marriage before the Supreme Court and was also one of the biggest offenders over 15 years we thought it was important to eliminate in the circle that helps to enable him. This is like lanny davis one of my favorite lines in the book and says lanny i am tired of this. Weinstein hired so many highpriced attorneys and pr people so as you get to the final showdown with weinstein it was thinking who was representing you . Who do we even call if we want a straight answer . But our experience the lesson for us is all highpowered legal help in the world does not do anything when you have resources and documents in 20 years of allegations and a grave institution thats willing to cover up. [applause] [cheers and applause] because that was the tip off. Those pr people are those that help journalist and did end up helping us in some ways and you ask a potent question of where we are now in the metoo move on movement is it too much change or not enough . What is your answer quick. We didnt want to stop with the publishing of the weinstein story about the me to movement we were grateful enough to have the opportunity to report behind the scenes as Christine Mallozzi ford and her path to testify in washington. You say that you interviewed her dozens of hours. Do you believe her quick. She is probably the most precise and diligent subject ever reported on so we talked about what was happening for her she was on her way to washington and even the day before she testified when she had some of her advisers trying to coach her to go in front of the Judiciary Committee and she refused to be coached she knew the answers to the questions that they were obsessively writing so all i can tell you is that the telling of her account i have not encountered somebody who appears to be as precise and obsessed with the truth. [cheers and applause] but she didnt have some precise memory on when this happened or exactly where and so forth. And that has been used what she testified to and said and the interesting question now over Christine Mallozzi ford with kavanaugh is if he would just say you are in the district of columbia and somebody gave you that information so was it sufficient would that have meant your standard to publish that quick. The reason your question is so interesting because your paper the Washington Post that really did publish exactly that story. But that was in the midst of the Supreme Court question so im asking a different question. And i really mean this. Teacher journalism seminar and i will assign it as a manual about going through a difficult case. The Justice Kavanaugh case unfolded was very difficult with everything that we know it created some precision but there is some imprecision and not the corroborating witnesses that you wanted so would you have publish that . That is part why we wanted to write about it because the weinstein story was a case that we felt we had to take on a much broader case. So the first thing i would say in answer to your question i dont think the fact that doctor ford remembered everything about that night isnt a block of credibility but i would say the opposite. [applause] so i think that to acknowledge what they dont remember that the reason is basically there are questions that are totally unresolved and controversial which is that number one was like at this behavior under scrutiny but also the verbal abuse that includes in the question that its very powerful to go back for a long time but the further back you go the harder it is number two how do we get to the bottom especially from many years ago and what does accountability look like for this behavior . But you would be disappointed in me if i did not press you. Im getting to the answer of your question but from the first moment we heard about the ford allegation this potential Supreme Court justice is about to be appointed a woman who is a Research Scientist whose business is precision so we would not have made that final call but we tried very hard to speak to her even before this was a political story. You will leave it up to the editors of the New York Times to decide what to publish quick. But Christine Ford did not come forward with her allegation is a lower court judge but as he was considered for one of the most powerful jobs in the entire country that she felt she had a civic duty to report that. There are questions on news organizations when we publish and why and in some cases you look at a pattern of predatory behavior and if you look at the truth they will keep hurting other people youll most think it is a Public Safety issue but then there are other considerations like the Supreme Court. Which she have been better off staying quiet in her own life . You pose the question but you dont answer it. We know after the testimonies of both sides he is now on the Supreme Court and doctor ford is still in california he will be a visible public figure we can trace what happens to him but as people across the country continue to ponder how hes doing and in our experience. [applause] when i had the first interview with h months after that , she was still in hiding. Her Security Advisors did not feel it was safe. Also if she was to retain control of her own story and obviously was unable to. I think she became a vehicle in the many hours we spent interviewing her its clear she had no interest to catapult herself to become a major figure of the me to movement but yet another reason we wanted to write about her is she did become a vehicle as people saw her as a hero others saw her as a villain we want readers to see this is a real person and the behindthescenes story is so much more complicated. Would you have one dozen of the sources and the actresses to gather i think it is fascinatin fascinating. So you were there and did all this work, what did you learn about yourselves . Thats the hardest question. You will tell me im not answering your question but i really am. [laughter] [applause] i believe in the journalistic process, bob. It isnt about me or you it is important to do these gigantic stories but the tools that journalist across the country and across the world use every single day and if you follow the process and use the judgment they really do work. Megan and i are happy about certain decisions but i feel fundamentally thats how we fee feel. Thats a brilliant answer because the answer is you picked the right profession. The best job in the world. What did you learn about yourself . I had been a reporter for 20 years with a variety of stories and i think for me one of the things i learned in the course of reporting from that first phone call from Maternity Leave we started working together from my first day back to an a half years ago. So in addition to subject matter and journalism just an incredible partnership so for me to learn to work so closely with a fellow journalist, that has been one of the most unexpected and fantastic treats about doing this work. [applause] now we go to questions microphones have been provided. [laughter] i think we would be remiss if we did not ask you a question or two given whats going on in washington. [laughter] [applause] so i have a hypothetical for you you are the investigative assignment editor of the universe. What is it as an investigative journalist you most want to know how trump used his office with leadership. What do you think do we not understand quick. There is so much and we have got to remember the ukrainian story that has a lot of attention given to ed rightly pseudo one dash and rightly so, and i will send a copy and i hope you will sign it to adam schiff who is running the investigation. [laughter] because his power to run that investigation. [cheers and applause] you cant do it in two weeks or two months or say we found three women who were assaulted or harassed but you have to look at the whole universe and thats what you did in this case and hopefully in the internet age there is a way to slow down for everyone to be entitled to a full investigation of listening of what you did knocking on doors ups and downs to one of the most wonderful rides anyone ever had. But i dont think youre answering my question. [laughter] [cheers and applause] but what do you most want to know what trump did and did not do quick. I think part of the question is why . Why did you do this. I have written books on nine president s from nixon to trump that is 20 percent of the president s we have had. I once went to a Junior High School for a friend one of the students raise their hand and said what was Calvin Coolidge like . [laughter] but all president s are isolated and maybe the most isolated president. Because he has no Political Office or no government experience he has experienced that he made it to the topped presidency and he did it on his own and you can see the confidence that he shows publicly and when he meets in the oval office with advisors they can have ideas and advice but im here but you are here because of me. I did this all by myself. As far as hes concerned hes in control. This is unfortunate for him and the country, its what George Cannon that was called the treacherous curtain of deference yes mister president , we agree. And the reality thats out there so thats why for the Washington Post and the New York Times so much because we bring reality into that bubble he has constructed. And acting out of all of that and he was not stopped due to deference of other people. But what we are facing in this governing crisis the major issues of the middle east i have all kinds of information in my book of tariffs in china 99 out of 100 economist will say the north korean policy he almost got us into a war with north korea there are all the basic economic form policy issues. How did we get there . And what is the outcome . Just like south korea you talk to people in south korea and they are next to kim jungun. And they are worried whats going on and whats the strategy not to over dwell on this but that what i can recount from the National Security Council Notes why are we spending all this money with nato. Were suckers and we would be so rich the secretary of defense says mister president we do these to prevent world war iii. s another president has to be told this is why we have these alliances and the defense system. That is one of my chilling moments as a reporter. I look forward to what you find out. [applause] and when i finish that book and then you can interview me. [laughter] i really appreciate your journalism with the Supreme Court justices and then anita hill we saw that happen with anita hill and doctor ford do you think three times is a charm quick. I think one of the things worth pointing to that when doctor ford did come forward her allegation was made public and there was a determination there would be hearings that there was an incredible opinion piece that they tried to negotiate what the rules would be and she said so many years after her experience of coming forward to testify that Committee Still did not come up how to handle sexual assault. But also one year into metoo. s you are tracking cultural attitudes there are inflections with a question that anita hill while Clarence Thomas was confirmed on the Supreme Court that she played a huge role of attitudes toward Sexual Harassment and we will be watching to see the impact but meanwhile what about the Judiciary Committee get some protocols in place. [applause] thank you for all the work you have done but having him interrupt you all night has been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life and then directly to a question i think she was gonna Say Something about Justice Kavanaugh so that was frustrating but im really interested in hearing if your experiences as women how you emotionally dealt with the information you are receiving after the kavanaugh hearings i couldnt breathe for three weeks being victims of Sexual Harassment or assault many people have so what is it like for you as women to live through this quick. We have a firm rule we never discussed what has or has not happened to us personally. We want to be a blank slate to the women we talk to want to be seen as doing our jobs it is a very unique relationship. We are not they are friends we are a journalist to bring the stories to light so when you do that work you try to be very steady because victims want to feel compassion but they are in steady hands i would not want to speak to a reporter who was falling apart or an emotional mess obviously we had a lot of reactions and feelings that we held them in reserve and thats what so valuable to have each other as partners because we can be very professional and then call each other and say oh my gosh. We trade off on the emotions i do well then she struggles and then we could help each other behind the scenes. In the final answer to your question doing this reporting has been empowering during the weinstein investigation it was very difficult as you do this reporting that we had such responsibility and desire with the stories we felt it was moving in the right direction. Somebody recently asked fun would it be the right word given the level of five. Im a journalist from new delhi i was part of the team when you did the story and you were reporting about it. So in this case that they discuss what happened to us. So with the Sexual Harassment now that you open the door do you see the future . What does that look like quick. First of all congratulations to you and your reporting. [applause] maybe we will have a chance to hear more that you did in india but we from the New York Times with the weinstein story our phones were flooded with tips and women coming forward with their accounts light coming up with a triage system in the newsroom to field all the chips and stories that were coming at us and it was a project across the newsroom the Sports Department the culture desk we were even meeting with other reporters to explain and then it spread across the newsroom and to watch it go across the country and other organizations and we cannot be sure what will happen next as a journalist. We cannot act policy reforms that for these organizations to know not only for that to do that but now there is a project across journalism to make me sleep better at night. [applause] thank you for all your years and decades of searching for the truth. Thank you. I have a question actually. But i am definitely putting both of you on my list of gutsy women. So the road about all the women and a high profile case to have those predictions. And im just wondering if there is some part of the movement. And i feel if that is something. But if we build that into the movement. What you are putting your finger on is frustrating about the whole discussion if some of these accused men will come back or not. And then on the more interesting question. With workplace consequences. In that the women we wrote about they were doing the equivalent of walking down the street as this happened they were going to their jobs, and then to be unfair about this reporting. And then to tell the stories. [cheers and applause] so why do they have to undergo to be tortured. Because we never know the cost. And how there are women in 2016. Some of them had written but this is what we do for a living. But we tell the truth and make the argument and then some of these women were attacked severely. It was a tough conversation. And there are things about outside of our control but the last chapter is a gathering of women who have all come forward and their experiences are so varied. Some were treated like heroes. Because then you never really know. I wrote my question on my phone as a College Campus advocate of everybody up on stage, thank you for everything. And this change my mind. I went to school in the middle of a cornfield in kentucky and its very different because of the whole metoo movement. Do you have anything to say to the future to the advocates or the activists that sit out in the maledominated field . It seems like you are trying to work toward a collective strength. So hats off to you for that. There was an 11 yearold girl last week got up and asked what things would be like for her generation moving forward. We cannot tell you but coming home from the New York Times and then to turn to each other at 1 00 oclock in the morning and try to get to the deadline that the story was airtight not even thinking of the impact we said you think anybody will read the story . [laughter] we just had no idea the impact and others like it would have. We cant predict but there has been a lot of people we have encountered resources who have been motivated to act because they want to help protect Younger Generations. And then i didnt come to washington to derail the nomination but if i can get there and tell my story it might make it easier for a Younger Generation to come forward. That was almost one year ago today everybody going through that. So much of what lisa and her partner were talking about with this hearings was part of me being annoying and asking questions but. Thank you all truly. So those that read your book what you hope learn from it . But i should also say every reader means the world to us because our information economy so the idea of readers committing to a book with that complicated material means so much to us or to anybody who comes on that journey with us. Would you like to introduce family quick. Yes my parents. [applause] and my brotherinlaw is here. And with my dearest and oldest friends. So real quick alternative titles what else . Because as i read this a couple of times you refer to the reckoning that there has been a reckoning and indeed there has. That once that was on the table. So like ashley judd to say they only get you when you carry the ball
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